The Capture of America’s Culture

 

The Capture of America’s Culture

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) March 11, 2023

            More and more so-called progressives (I prefer “leftists”) are increasing their grip on America’s institutions. The institutions of marriage, the family, the university, religion, human sexuality for heaven’s sake, free enterprise, freedom of speech, and even freedom of thought are particularly targeted by progressives. Why is there not more outcry? Several organizations are fighting the onslaught. Even a few celebrities and professional athletes have awakened to it. Some pulpits are addressing it but most are not. Hence, progressive ideology and policies are foisted on our children.

            Perhaps the most unsuspecting and therefore the most neglected force that is removing traditional values from the culture is public schools. I hasten to exempt Cobb County Schools from my charges of educational craziness. Cobb schools are not going crazy with drag queens, Critical Race Theory, transgenderism, or any other leftist endearments as long as board members Chastain, Wheeler, Banks, and Scamihorn are there. Atlanta and Forsyth County schools? Who can be sure?

            Overall though, public education long ago adopted a tendentious view of the purpose of schools, of American history, and of the chief characteristics of America itself. Leftists rule in so many local and state boards of education that resistance is difficult. Except for the leadership tenure of William Bennett and Betsy Devos, the federal – and constitutionally illegal – Department of Education has been run by leftists since Jimmy Carter succumbed to the National Education Association and gave it Cabinet status. Since then the claims of systemic racism, white privilege, and what I call sexual chaos have been embraced by many school systems.

             One of the least talked about influences on public schools, one that citizens often miss is that of powerful teacher unions. I have a background of resisting that influence. In 1975 I wrote my first letter to the editor, the editor of this newspaper in fact. The letter was an effort to inform MDJ readers of what was happening with teacher organizations in Georgia. The one of which I was a member, the Georgia Association of Educators, was taking a turn that I believed was not good.

            That turn was called unification. For years state associations like GAE could affiliate with the National Education Association (NEA) but teachers could join their state association without joining NEA. Unification meant that if you joined a state association you automatically joined the national organization. Call it forced “unity.” Because of what NEA stood for (collective bargaining, teacher strikes, teacher-only membership), I chose not to join. My letter argued that professional organizations are a good thing until they steer off their appointed path. I rued the fact that I no longer had a professional organization through which to contribute to fellow teachers.

            A few days after the letter was published I received a call from Fred Rainey, a man I did not know. Fred was a Smyrna, GA resident and a teacher in Atlanta. His first comment was “You must not know about PAGE” (Professional Association of GA Educators). He informed me that a small group of Atlanta and Dekalb County teachers were forming a new organization in response to unification. Right away I joined the 75 or so teachers. Times were hard or the group would never have asked me to be the editor of their publication, PAGE ONE. I was an English major, not a journalism major, and knew nothing about editing anything except high school and college essays. But with the help of PAGE members who contributed articles and with the blessing of a small living room floor, my wife and I spread and arranged news and opinion pieces on the floor, trying to get them into some kind of order that Star Printing in Acworth could make sense of.

            The 1976 issues of PAGE ONE were humble and sparse compared to today’s glitzy but substantive issues. But PAGE didn’t have over 90,000 members then as it does today. The joy of it all is that the majority of Georgia teachers then as now opposed the grip that teacher unions have on education. They oppose organizations that pit teachers against principals, superintendents, and board members and foster adversarial relationships instead of the team concept that schools badly need.

            Today teacher unions contribute over $50 million annually to the Democrat party. Thus the craziness seeping down from super-sized school districts like New York, LA, and Chicago to smaller systems throughout the country, craziness that considers schools more foundational than family, equity more important than mathematics, and localism a relic of the past.  

            Schools are the foremost perpetuators of culture. What they teach and allow is what our culture will be. Parents and non-parents alike best take note. The culture itself is at stake.

Globalism or Globaloney?

 Globalism or Globaloney?

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) March 4, 2023

            Globalism is a fairly simple study. Merriam-Webster dubs it the practice of considering the entire world as one’s sphere of operations. Economically globalism refers to free trade plus any other international agreements that lead to benefits for all participant nations. This sounds reasonable enough. Some nations have cotton; other nations have oil. All nations need clothes and all need fuel, so deals are made.

            Somehow over the centuries globalism became complex. Though Queen Isabella and Columbus are sometimes called the world’s first globalists, ancient nations dealt with each other and explored the potential of international economies long before 1492. Globalism’s long path has led to good things and bad, some of the bad things being politically contemptible and morally reprehensible.

            Think about it. Who are the biggest promoters of globalism currently? America’s globalists are typically super wealthy men who prefer to be called internationalists and who seemingly have meager if any devotion to the land of their birth and their raising. Typically their sympathizers are intellectuals, liberal professors, and college students who have been fed the globalist message and have swallowed it whole. Generally they eschew such mottos as “America First” and grow ill at chants of “USA! USA!”

            Talk about “fly-overs”! Literally and figuratively globalist activists fly over us as they go from nation to nation, palace to palace, board room to board room and conference to conference to preach their gospel. They are quick to take with them an older child or teenager who is prodigiously well-spoken and can thunder like a Billy Graham or a William Jennings Bryan. Their child star of the moment is Greta Thunberg, the Swedish protestor and provocateur who doubles as a devout globalist and a climate change agent. This young lady who no doubt has the gift of eloquence can screw up her face and swish her hand in the air at adults as effectively as an old-fashioned schoolmarm coming down on her third graders.

            Anyone who reads newspapers regularly knows who the fly-over ideologues are. The most famous is Al Gore, Jr. The younger Gore (my dear deceased Tennessee father-in-law and mother-in-law championed his senator father) was raised in Tennessee but is as much Tennessee as I am Vermont. His message is still that the end is near. Like the politicians who clamor for open borders and sanctuary cities yet live in gated communities, Gore, Jr. flies privately hither and yon to tell his audiences that emissions from airplanes must cease. Globalism, thy name is hypocrisy. Having dropped the cry of global warming, as have all the full time environmentalists, Gore has broadened his sermon title to climate change. While climate change is his focus, globalism is his broader context.

            There are definitely certain benefits of globalism. Nations need to talk with each other just as neighbors do. They need each other’s products. But its negative aspects cannot be denied. For the most part globalism has hurt the little man. Globalism allows the USA to sell its goods to Mexico, Europe, and China but it can and does hurt small local businesses. How can a Mom and Pop hamburger joint compete with transnational McDonald’s? For Americans globalism means loss of jobs when corporations move jobs to low cost countries. Cheap labor that produces an ongoing underclass doesn’t seem to bother the highly paid corporate globalists who consider the entire globe their orbit. What do CEOs care about East Palestine, Ohio or Coldwater, Kansas or Fitzgerald, Georgia?

            Globalism isn’t just about economics. It’s about socio-politics, culture, and values as well. Are we to fault the world’s little people or its middle class who fear losing their ability to keep their souls, to view their own land and culture as special, to cherish their language, and to pass on to their children certain values that other nations do not hold to? Have America’s globalist-elites not noticed that free trade with China has not led to democracy in China but has led to China’s ownership of property in America?

            Globalism has led to shuttered American factories, to downward pressure on the wages of unskilled laborers, and to outsourcing. It has diminished the virtue of citizenship. After all, “We are the world. We are the people.” As beautiful as that song is, its message has been faultily applied.   

            John Lennon’s song, “Imagine,” may be the most beautiful song ever written. Its words, “Imagine there’s no countries,” are both haunting and wistful. I for one also long for a world with no borders, but I have to remember that right now that’s not possible and that it was the Almighty Himself who confused our language and spread us out and about in the first place.

Desecration’s Path

 Desecration’s Path

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) Feb. 25, 2023

            In his notable biography of Russian leader Boris Yeltsin, Timothy Colton describes Yeltsin’s boyhood, accentuating the poverty, police brutality, and other hardships that Yeltsin’s family endured at the hands of the Communist Party. When Yeltsin’s father was arrested and imprisoned for “anti-communist agitation,” Yeltsin, his mother and younger siblings experienced grinding poverty. It is little wonder that after edging his way into politics, serving in many administrative positions and eventually being invited to join the administration of Mikhail Gorbechev, Yeltsin commenced to do everything he could to dissolve the communist system. Colton points out that Yeltsin was driven by memories of what communism’s labor camps had done to his family and to all other Russian families, particularly those in the Urals where Yeltsin grew up.

            One might ask just what has been the lasting effect of government, whether totalitarian or democratic, on the family? In totalitarian nations, the answer is clear. The village rules. Its chieftains, whether in the jungle or in industrialized advanced nations such as China and Russia, run the show, even, as in China, telling families how many children they can have. In democratic nations the appearance is that the family is an honored institution, but drip, drip, drip has been the historical reality of anti-family policy even in Western Europe and America. The family is being desecrated.

             To desecrate is to profane, to mistreat, or to diminish anything that is viewed as having high purpose. Desecration typically regards principles, institutions, or symbols that have served as honored landmarks in a given culture. Freedom of speech and obedience to parents are principles. The family, the school, the church, and the law are institutions. Flags and in many cases buildings are symbols. But which of these is the most foundational? Which came first? Which is the most influential toward a child, no matter what kind of government his or her family lives under?

            The family preceded the tribe. It comprised a little unit of government that preceded the village. For purposes probably practical and beneficial, villages united to form governmental territories. Territories merged to become societal entities called states or nations. All the while except perhaps in America the village and its chieftains or the great nation and its emperor became the focus of attention. Rendering unto Caesar became onerous. Government policies such as taxation and regulation of every stripe undermined the family. Enter, even in supposed democracies, the nanny state.

            It is reported that former president Jimmy Carter is approaching death. We should wish him and his family well. As careful students of our own governance we might want to recall that it was Carter’s Conference on the Families in 1977 that opened the door to the re-defining of family. Ostensibly held “to discuss ideas for family policy” and to garner the support of conservatives, particularly Catholics, the three-session conference became a brawl. With gay rights activists and feminists in attendance, the goal soon became “to decide what constitutes a legitimate family.” Ever since the Carter presidency the word family, like male and female, has been in flux.

            No matter what the crazy left wants or likes, no matter if “Heather has two mommies,” every person on the planet has a mother and a father. Is this fact alone not enough to indicate, yea prove, what a child needs and was intended by nature and nature’s God to have? With a president leading the way in every facet of our sexual chaos (gay marriage, transgenderism, etc.), with many public schools and practically all universities joining in on the chorus, and with pro sports and corporations lending unabated support, it should be easy to see where this path of desecration has led. It has led to “Think as I think or you are abominably wicked; you are a toad,” as Stephen Crane put it in his shortest poem. It has led to the desecration of family and marriage, to the village (the government) offering to take care of our babies within months after they are born, and to dependency. It has also led to tyranny fostered by the elites of academia, sports, and corporatism.

            Russia is still ruled by a brute, but Yelsin, as president of Russia, made life much better for that part of the world that has had a sordid history. As for Stephen Crane, he ended his 5-line poem with the words, “”I will then be a toad.” 

            When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who paid with his life for opposing Hitler, came to America in 1939, he stated in a letter to a friend, “There is no theology here. Christians have become an accommodating lot.” Maybe Americans of all faiths should ponder Bonheoffer lest the desecration continue.

 

Several Sins of Syntax

Several Sins of Syntax      

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) Feb., 11, 2013              

            So … the latest language fad is to begin conversation or the answering of a question with the word “so.” Listen for it on television. If a television reporter shoves a microphone into the face of a pedestrian and asks a question, or if a news anchor asks his or her guests a question, eight times out of ten the interviewees will begin their answer with the word “so.”

            Boys and girls, “so” is a conjunction. It’s a word that joins two thoughts or facts to each other and they must be joined in the middle, so … put “so” in the middle as I just did. Maybe the following example will help: Hines’ columns are good for insomnia, so I often find myself reading them at 3:00 AM. One more thing, in case taking words apart helps: a “junction” or “juncture” is a place of meeting. “Con” means brought together. Ah ha! This means that when subjects and verbs, or ham and eggs, or mice and men come together, they are conjoined. If this helps any at all, locate your long ago high school English teacher and tell him or her that you have mastered the conjunction. You and he or she will be conjoined in mutual joy.

            If guilty, don’t be too hard on yourself. Unlike mathematics, language is an inexact science. There are no eternal verities that govern language, no angels in the sky who weep when we abuse our native tongue. Language is like dress. It is social adaptation. We put it on and we take it off. Just be sure to put on the right language before going to the big interview you’ve been wanting.  And please, don’t worry too much about language errors at the supper table. On second thought, give at least a little thought to supper table talk. I suspect the dearth of family conversation is one cause of the decline in clear, straightforward communication. Screens, addictive cell phones, and lack of family conversation have sadly diminished language skills, leading to grunts and utterances instead of meaningful discourse. Books, newspapers, magazines and genuine conversation can improve our communication skills. Quick social media interaction cannot.

            On to other sins of syntax. Syntax, of course, means placing words together in such a way as to produce logical thought. Tell me, though, what’s logical about the expression “centers around”? That’s another goodie now used by everybody and his brother. “Centers around.” Say it again and then try to picture it. No, don’t try because it can’t be done. We can “center on” something but not around it. I hate to use the prissy word, oxymoron, but that’s exactly what “centers around” is, an expression that is self-contradictory. Compare it to Romeo’s last words to Juliet: “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” Sweet sorrow?  Or consider “act natural,” “only choice,” and “old news.”

            Well, those last ones are ingrained; we will never stop using them, but since “centers around” constitutes rebellion against geometric truth, someone start a therapy group for those who desire release from their habit.

            But let’s get serious. Sometimes syntax is intentionally warped in order to influence or control. Definitions and names are altered for the same reason. Associated Press provides a good example. In its Style Guide, AP no longer allows the words “pregnancy center” or “pregnancy resource center.”  “Anti-abortion centers” is the proper vernacular. Also “pro-life” must be “anti-abortion.” According to the Style Guide, the word “abortionist” must be avoided since “it connotes a person who performs clandestine abortions.” The Guide also forbids the term “”fetal heartbeat bill,” claiming the term is overly broad and misleading.”

            I have a daughter-in-law who has had extensive experience with pregnancy centers. Anna would tell you that the centers are equally concerned with the life of unborn babies and the general welfare of the mothers. AP, of course, doesn’t believe this.

            Not all the Guide’s verbal obfuscations are recent. In 2017 the following appeared: “Not all people fall under one of two categories for sex or gender. Avoid references to both sexes in order to encompass all people.” I ask, was Sarah Huckaby Sanders not accurate in her response to President Biden’s bizarre and supposed state of the nation address when she declared that the political left has become outright “crazy”? Men can become women and women can become men? Such rebellion against nature is craziness and the President’s speech abetted it.

            Wherever he lies buried, George Orwell … well, we know where Orwell, a former leftist, stood on newspeak. And he was right. Language, twisted and obfuscated, is the chief weapon of tyrants. 

 

Our Present Ongoing Strife

 

Our Present Ongoing Strife

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Feb. 4, 2023

            It is sad but absolutely true, and the truth must be faced. From 1607 and the founding of the first colony in America, on to 1776 and the breakaway of the 13 colonies from Britain, and then to 1945 when America began to establish herself as a military and economic world power,  Americans were a forward-looking people .

 If any one word could characterize the American spirit as it proceeded on through the 19^th and mid-20^th century, that word would be optimism. Slavery was abolished, segregation ended, capitalism thrived, and more and more citizens were able to avail themselves of the so-called American Dream. I’m defining that dream as the deep desire to overcome empty pantries and empty hearts, that is, to have plenty of food, meaningful work, and a measure of achievement and happiness. I should probably add a small house by the side of the road or a big house on a hill, or a life of service to others, depending on the nature and scope of one’s dream.

            The achievement of that dream required two things: a determined dream seeker and a country and political system that allowed and encouraged determined seekers. What if Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs, and many others had not sought their dreams? What if the country they lived in had not allowed them individual liberty and initiative? But their country did and it became a beacon to millions around the world.

            But here is the sad part. That beacon has been dimmed, not so much as to stop foreigners from coming here, but enough for American citizens to discern that they are living in a time of diminishing expectations. In other words the American Dream isn’t what it used to be. Historically that dream has required self-reliance, faith in our system of government, ruggedness, and hard work. But all of these requirements have been undermined by government programs, government giveaways, and government regulations. For far too many, the spirit of the little house on the prairie has been replaced by the extended hand reaching out to receive Big Brother’s largesse. Currently one of our two major political parties is totally committed to the continued reach and rule of Big Brother; the other major party, for all its lapses, still is better at preserving individual liberty and free enterprise.

            There is a strife that undergirds all things political in the nation today. That strife is between populism and elitism. Major newspaper editorialists have claimed that Donald Trump bestirred the populist revolt. The opposite is true. The populist movement – the Tea Party, for one example – forged a path into which a figure like Trump could step and lead. Oddly enough it turned out that a billionaire from liberal New York would become the leader of “the folks,” those who were as blue-collared as they were red-blooded, who preferred localism over globalism, and who were all the more riled up when Hillary Clinton dubbed them “a basket of deplorables.”

            These deplorables, coming primarily from the nation’s interior states – certainly not from the “Super Zips” where media celebrities, corporate CEO’s, U.S. Senators, and national anthem protesting athletes live – are still present and powerful. Doubtlessly, some of them will desert Trump for another choice in 2024, but their cause is bigger than Trump or any other candidate. Their cause is deliverance from political and corporate leaders who have little if any understanding of the lives of ordinary Americans, that is, deliverance from the elites.

            But there is another revolt as well that comprises the other side of the strife. The elites of the “Super Zips” and their comrades have revolted against traditional institutions and principles that made America a beacon in the first place. Elites do not accept limits or emotional ties to nations. You know, borders. To transnational corporatists, America is simply one place where they live and do business. To liberal professors, notions of “western culture” are or should be passé. To members of the American Federation of Teachers, schools are for teaching “equity” and transgenderism. To feminists, housework and motherhood are still to be disparaged.  All of this, too, is revolt, consequently our strife.

            Urbanization has not served us well, having moved us from self-reliance to reliance on the elitist village. Nor have out-of-wedlock births or the demise of families and communities. And yes, we need fathers since 24 % of whites and 70% of blacks are born to single mothers.

            These are not dead issues. Failure to address them in 2024 will keep us in strife and keep us disillusioned. We best fight the good fight.

 

Roger Hines

February 2, 2023     

Bow the Knee or Else …

 

Bow the Knee or Else …

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Jan. 28, 2023

            Once upon a time when the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was honored, citizens understood what their rights were regarding the free exercise of religion, speech, the press, and peaceful assembly. That’s because all four of these freedoms are clearly stated in the First Amendment. We should be glad that Patrick Henry “smelt a rat” and initially refused to vote for the Constitution. Without Henry’s boldness, the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments) might never have been added.

            With apologies to poet William Wordsworth, “Patrick Henry, thou shouldst be living at this hour. America hath need of thee.”  Patrick Henry was considered a force of nature. He was the most famous orator of all the Founders. At the Constitutional Convention Henry was unshakeable in his insistence on limited government. According to historian Joseph J. Ellis, Henry was such a burr in the saddle of Jefferson and Madison that Jefferson once said to Madison, “There seems to be no way to deal with Henry except to ardently pray for his imminent death.”

            Present conditions in America call for boldness not unlike that of Patrick Henry. Henry was not one of the big guns who established our nation. Washington, Madison, Hamilton, and Jefferson overshadowed him. As then so now do we need freedom warriors who will stand against the tide, oppose establishment leaders, and fight for the people. 

            There are two current examples of citizens standing up for what they believe and being a bit stubborn about it as was Patrick Henry. One example is the 20 U.S. House members who forced a 15-ballot vote for the new Speaker of the House. What benefit or of what purpose is power if one does not use it to pursue what he or she believes is good? The 20 representatives had the power and they used it. Media talking heads one kept referring to the 15-ballot round as “chaos and confusion.” It was the exact opposite. It was debate, nose-counting, deal-making, and use of persuasive skills, all of which are what goes on in a truly deliberative body. For decades Congress and many state legislatures, Georgia’s included, have gone from being a deliberative body to a fiefdom controlled by a few, namely the U.S. House Speaker and his or her allies or the state Speaker and his or her allies. For the decade I was in the Georgia House of Representatives, genuine debate was rare. Bipartisanship and argued-out legislation therefore suffered.

            Tony Perkins, a former member of Congress and currently the President of the Family Research Council, wrote, “Transferrence of power was never meant to be determined by the powerful few, but by a dynamic process where everyone has a voice.”  I say hoo-rah for the Magnificent 20. Like Patrick Henry they stood their ground and argued their case. How this affects Republican Party unity is not the question. How Congress and other legislative bodies should function is the question, and for decades they have functioned as the fiefdom of a few.

            Another example of standing for conviction is that of Ivan Provorov, soccer player for the Philadelphia Flyers. Provorov was recently sternly criticized for refusing to wear a “Pride Night” jersey bearing the rainbow flag. A Russian Orthodox Christian, Provorov stated that he refused in order to “stay true to myself and my religion.” He further remarked, “I respect everyone and I respect everybody’s choices,” but these words had no effect on the LGBQT community except to increase their vile intolerance for Christians like Provorov whose Bible forbids homosexuality.

            So like the NFL, the corporate world, the Democrat Party, the liberal media, the universities, Hollywood, Big Tech, the American Federation of Teachers, and Lord knows how many more entities, the National Hockey League has succumbed to intolerance. So much for pluralism and independent thought. Just bow the knee to all the crazy stuff. As the Wall Street Journal put it, “Mr. Provorov knows a basic truth. He was compelled to support the tenets of a faith other than his own. And here in America we believe that is wrong.”

            If the nation is ever loosened from the grip of sexual chaos, crime, religious intolerance, political cowardice and anti-Americanism in general, it will be because of boldness such as shown by the Magnificent 20 and Mr. Provorov. For too long normal, hardworking, middle class Americans have been bested by leftist, liberal philosophy and politics. I for one, though, believe that an awakening is happening and that help is on the way. Thanks, Mr. Provorov and you modern age Patrick Henrys.

Roger Hines

January 26, 2023

Teen Culture Then and Now

 

Teen Culture Then and Now

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Jan. 21, 2023

            Walking into the classroom for my first day of teaching was an experience that will live in infamy. In the first period class of ninth graders I made the error of thinking that I already knew how to teach. Had I not planned for this day since I was 15? Had I not watched closely all of my high school and college teachers in order to learn how to teach?         

Yes and yes. However, my confidence was erroneously based on my love for my subject, the English language. Grammar is all about the structure of a language. American literature and British literature are about the ideas and ideals that are foundational to modern western history. Who could not be excited about that? Well, at least half or more of my 120 ninth graders certainly were not.

            My error lay in my ignorance of the realities of adolescence, the rise of the American teenager, and the resulting effect these realities had on student attitudes and behavior. Little did I realize that during the four years I was in college the times they were achanging.

            It was 1966. The Vietnam War was raging. The Civil Rights Movement was in full swing. The Sexual Revolution was afoot. At Northwest Jr. High School in Meridian, Mississippi I was trying in my first class to “identify with students” (an insipid phrase that was just entering the land of educationese). I revealed that I had just turned 22 and planned to be married the following summer. “Won’t you need a better job?” asked one lad. His question sent me into a tailspin that was intensified when a lass inquired, “Why didn’t you become a coach? Most men teachers don’t teach English.”  I was already losing control. What if the principal were to stop by?

            By year’s end I came to realize that teen culture had arrived and that Americans were besotted with youth. Sociologists were calling it the Teen Mystique. Americans were actually becoming fearful of their teenagers. (“They’re so smart these days.”) I attributed the new teen machine to Elvis Presley, Little Richard, the Beatles, and other rock ‘n roll innovators as well as to the increasingly sex-drenched general culture for unwittingly creating youth culture. Unwittingly because rock ‘n roll singers didn’t set out to change the culture. They simply did their thing, but their thing changed the culture. The sensitive Elvis, reportedly responding to criticism, once said to his mother, “Mama, do you think I’m obscene?”  It’s doubtful that 20 years later members of hard metal bands would ask their mothers that question.

            Since 1960 nothing has been more characteristic of teens than their addiction to music.  The cell phone, of course, is a new addiction whether for music or constant communication with friends. Of course money has played a role. Teenagers became a market. And what big name psychologist would miss the chance to write books on the new field of study called “adolescent psychology”?

            Around 300 BC Plato taught that in order to take the intellectual and spiritual temperature of a society, one must “mark the music.” If we mark the music today we find that even schools, during lunch period and at ballgames, are giving students what they already have. On the ashes of classical and folk music we have laid the premature ecstasy of rollicking rock. Not so at little Forest (MS) High School back in the early ‘60s. Elvis and Little Richard, whom I loved, were hot but we didn’t need schools to supply us with their music. At Friday assemblies and even at halftime at basketball games we were fed a different stimulant: music that fed our aesthetic sense, not our glands.

            Four of my five classes that first year were ninth graders. The fifth class, an incredibly inspiring group of 12-year-old seventh graders, saved me. One of them, Lloyd Gray, former editor of the Tupelo Journal, visited with former MDJ editor Joe Kirby and me about 10 years ago. The three of us drove to Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, GA to hear Steve Forbert, another student in that 1966 class of seventh graders, sing and play his guitar and harmonica. The 68-year-old Forbert, who in his prime was compared to Bob Dylan, will also be performing on January 25th at The Hunt House across from Kennesaw Mountain on White Circle. As Steve Forbert plays and sings, not classical music but folk rock, he will remind me of his class of cute, well-behaved  12-year-old angels who kept me from giving up.

            If cultural history is to the nation what memory is to the individual, we best pay attention to it, especially if we have kids and grandkids.

 

Roger Hines

January 19, 2023