Visit to JFK Library a nostalgic return to greatness

The post was first published in the Wilson Times June 22, 2019

Check another box on the bucket list. Last week, I visited the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. The JFK Library was just one stopping point in a weeklong trip to Boston, but it was the one thing that most attracted me to Boston.

Had I been asked at any time, “What American political figure do you most admire?” I would have quickly answered John F. Kennedy, the youthful, heroic, farsighted, charming, charismatic senator who was elected president the year I turned 11 years old. The 1960 election infected me with an interest in politics and public affairs that led me into a newspaper career.

Visiting the Kennedy Library took me back to those years, 1960-63, when the youngest man ever elected president gave America’s young adults inspiration, hope and a commitment to service. In his inaugural address on a freezing cold Jan. 20, 1961, Kennedy laid out an ambitious agenda, both domestic and global. The world was far different then. Racial discrimination prevailed throughout the nation. The Soviet Union, promising to “bury you,” in the words of its blustering leader, was an existential threat to the United States and other western democracies. Fast-growing world populations demanded food, clean water and housing in numbers that seemed impossible. “I do not shrink from these responsibilities, I welcome them,” he announced.

In his inaugural address and other speeches, Kennedy pointed America toward the big picture, the long-term needs of the world. He challenged the nation to reach for the stars, to put astronauts on the moon in an unbelievably short time frame, “not because it is easy but because it is hard.” He invited America’s youth to make a difference in the world, and he wanted people to see politics and public service as an honorable profession, a high calling. He also offered advice we could use today: “civility is not a sign of weakness.”

Kennedy ran a brilliant campaign as the political world transitioned from the “party boss” system of selecting presidential nominees to a more voter-centric system that includes obligatory primaries. By going into primaries in West Virginia and Wisconsin, Kennedy proved he could win in states that some thought would be hostile to his campaign. His main contender was Lyndon Johnson, who eschewed primaries as meaningless. Johnson, the most successful Senate legislator in history, thought the old party-boss system would give him the nomination. Johnson looked at the past while Kennedy looked to the future and the growing importance of primaries.

The campaign sold Jack Kennedy like a commodity with jingles, campaign songs and snappy television commercials. His televised debate with Republican nominee Richard Nixon began a new era in politics. JFK Library videos of speeches and campaign events show how much politics and politicians have changed.

One video shows the entire inaugural address, and I sat in awe, as did many other visitors, and listened to a speech that was filled with challenging words, eloquence, inspiration, quotes from the Bible and other sources, a broad vision of world peace and the triumph of democracy around the globe with an over-arching aim to “assure the survival and success of liberty.” I learned on my visit that Kennedy’s is the shortest inaugural address of the 20^th century. He insisted on a short speech, but it is filled with more guidance and statesmanship than any inaugural address of my lifetime.

I was glad to see the library’s video of Kennedy’s very brief speech in West Berlin, which I consider one of the greatest speeches of any American statesman. In the June 1963 speech, he tells the gathered Berliners that they are special; they are on the front lines of a global conflict between freedom and oppression. Thus, the statement “I am a Berliner” is as great a boast as “I am a Roman” was in ancient times. He argued against the rhetoric that Communism isn’t so bad or democracies can work with the Communists and learn from them. After each excuse, he addressed the advocates of surrender, “Let them come to Berlin!” His final “Let them come to Berlin” was said in German to the crowd’s roar. All free men, he told them, are citizens of Berlin; therefore, he proudly proclaimed “Ich bin ein Berliner” as the crowd roared.

The speech is the most succinct argument for democracy and freedom to come out of the Cold War, delivered without benefit of a Teleprompter and with scant notes, which kept blowing away. It compares well for its brevity and inspiration with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and for eloquence with Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech.

Some enthusiasts claimed Barack Obama’s 2008 Berlin speech was as good as Kennedy’s. Anyone who says that has not seen JFK’s speech. There is simply no comparison.

The Kennedy Library includes the events of November 1963, but the grief of those days is not emphasized. Kennedy’s legacy, his inspiration and his eloquence, are far more important. We can only dream and lament for what might have been if not for that day in Dallas.

Baby Boomers' musical obsession keeps on changing

This post was published in the Wilson Times June 15, 2019.

Baby Boomers are the musical generation, not because of the quality of their music (some of it is pretty worthless) but because of their capacity to have music all the time everywhere.

It was this generation, my generation, the one that is fading into retirement and funerals, that grew up on American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis, American Top 40, Motown soul, the Beatles and all the melodies that provided the soundtracks of our lives.

We also grew up on a variety of musical devices. We bought the 45 rpm records, the LPs, the stereo albums, the (ill-conceived) 8-track players, the cassette recorders, the Walkman, the ear buds, the boom box, the CD (compact disc). We never had to be without music. FM radio succeeded static-filled AM radio in our cars (the first two cars I owned had only an AM band), vastly expanding the selections of in-car music.

Some brainstorms failed. At one time, you could buy a phonograph for the car. You just had to be willing to live with the record skipping every time the car hit a bump or changed speed. The 8-track and then the cassette player made it possible to play hundreds of your own songs in your car, freeing you from the autocracy of radio stations. Car cassette players gave way to in-car CD players, and we carried around CD wallets full of songs on long trips.

Even this technological freedom was not the final step, the ultimate in portable music that would go everywhere with you. Digital songs, or MP3s, could be stored in computer codes on various devices, once again revolutionizing how people listened to music.

After music file-sharing was declared copyright infringement and some Napster users were criminally charged, Apple created iTunes as a legal alternative and began selling songs for download at 99 cents each. The possibilities seemed endless.

Although I was not an “early adopter” of technology, I jumped at the concept of iTunes when Apple offered the service 18 years ago. I copied my collection of CDs into iTunes on our computer and listened to all the albums I’d ever owned. I made my own playlists or asked iTunes to create “genius” playlists of compatible or similar songs.

The opportunity to own a car with iTunes compatibility prompted my most recent car-buying decisions.

We now have iPods, which Apple invented to make its iTunes the most portabie music source ever invented. The old iPod in my car has more than 1,200 songs, searchable by song, artist, album, playlist or genre. It left the briefly popular, bulky in-trunk multi-CD player far behind. After the iPhone came along in 2008, the phone took the place of most iPods. At home, I’m able to select any tune, any album, any artist, any genre and wirelessly send that selection to the stereo speakers in my living room. Every iPod, computer or tablet on our WiFi can control the music we hear. What more could a music lover want?

But on June 3, Apple announced it was doing away with iTunes, splitting the service into three different software packages. Younger listeners, who don’t remember AM radio static or scratchy vinyl records, had begun streaming music they rent from internet sites

Streaming music — music you don’t own but rent for a fee that allows you to use a song or album for a limited time — has become the dominant music provider. Even Apple, which made digital downloads popular, began offering streaming music and even got into streaming video. Over the years, iTunes had become more and more complicated. With each new software update, I had to figure out how to do what I used to do easily but had become more complex.

The replacement for iTunes is not yet in place, and I’m hopeful that the change won’t be too disruptive. I certainly hope that my access to the thousands of songs in the iTunes on my computer will not be lost or restricted.

Please let the new version of iTunes be the last music platform I’ll have to adapt to. I’ve suffered enough technology whiplash for one lifetime.

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Greenville, UNC are at odds just like old times

Don’t mess with the leadership of the N.C. General Assembly. That seems to be the central message in a dispute between the legislature and Vidant Health, the corporation that operates the Greenville hospital depended upon by thousands of eastern North Carolina residents and by the East Carolina University Medical School.

The Pitt County Board of Commissioners poked its finger in the eye of the N.C. Senate, which responded not with a finger but with a fist. The Pitt County board claimed the authority to appoint all 20 members of the Vidant board instead of the eleven members (a majority, if you’re counting) they had been appointing. The state Senate had been selecting the other nine, and senators didn’t like anyone messing with their authority to control (or at least influence) things.

When the Senate’s proposed state budget was released, a $35 million Medicaid reimbursement to the Greenville Vidant hospital was omitted. Even in the stratospheric world of health care costs, that’s a big loss for a hospital. Vidant claims that revenue as its just deserts for being a teaching hospital for the ECU Medical School. Senate leaders say if they can’t appoint board members, the state will have no control over the management of the hospital and should not put additional state money into Vidant.

Legislative leaders have indicated they are so serious about this that they are willing to force the ECU Med School to cut ties with Vidant and build an all-new med school teaching hospital in Greenville at an estimated cost of $500 million.

As Raleigh columnist Colin Campbell has pointed out, few Republicans (who hold a majority in the Senate) opposed this power play, even those whose districts are served by Vidant-affiliated hospitals. One exception is Rick Horner, who represents Wilson and Nash counties. Vidant, feeling robust, had made aggressive moves in the Wilson market with new physician offices, health care services and strong public relations moves.

A Greenville TV station has reported that UNC has a secret plan to take over Vidant. UNC Health flatly denies the report. When I heard about this alleged conspiracy, I said, “Sounds like the ghost of Leo Jenkins.”

Jenkins, the legendary chancellor of ECU, grew that university to prominence partly by claiming that the entire state, and especially UNC-Chapel Hill and university president Bill Friday, was prejudiced against ECU. His perception was that no one west of I-95 gave a hoot about anything east of I-95, except the beaches (and then only for visits). He lamented the poverty rates in eastern N.C. counties, the out-migration of people from small towns down east, the poor-quality public schools, the lack of jobs, etc. surrounding ECU.

Jenkins’ salesmanship and determination greatly expanded ECU, but his “us against them” perception lives on long after ECU has expanded its undergraduate and graduate student populations and national recognition. The suspicion that a conspiracy led by UNC-Chapel Hill is out to destroy ECU lives on. Although an ECU alumnus is chair of the UNC Board of Governors, the heirs of Jenkins’ thinking persist in believing that the UNC board is aligned against ECU.

Besides the UNC board chair being accused of siding with the enemy (or something akin to that) and senators voting against their constituents’ health care interests, this whole episode seems bizarre. Refusing to give Vidant $35 million in Medicaid reimbursement while considering spending $500 million to build a new teaching hospital turns fiscal responsibiity on its head.

I’ve seen no reporting on whether the Pitt County board had the authority to change the composition of the Vidant board. If not, the whole issue, which is in the courts, might be moot. Pitt has submitted a “compromise” that looks a lot like a list of demands, but a sensible compromise should be doable. Let Pitt commissioners have their eleven appointees, or even twelve, and let the hurt-feelings Senate appoint the remaining nine seats or eight. You could even enlarge the board to 21 members and let Pitt County appoint twelve members.

Pitt commissioners aren’t going to win a poker standoff against a player who has all the chips.

Committed relationships, marriage, family and jobs

This post was published in the Wilson Times June 1, 2019

David Brooks’ New York Times columns always give me something to think about. His May 13 column titled “The Rise of the Haphazard Self: How working-class men detach from work, family and church” was no exception.

Brooks says our economic system that depends on competition, dynamism and individual self-interest should not be copied into our culture. Our culture should have different goals, such as “cooperation, stability and committed relationships.” He cites a study reported in The Journal of Economic Perspectives. The study interviewed 107 working-class men about their lives, work and family. Many of the men said the economic system was not working for them. Unlike their fathers, they have been unable to find a job that allows them to support a family, so they take on multiple part-time jobs, work off the clock and endure long stretches of unemployment.

This should come as no surprise. You can read it in election returns. We’ve all seen the statistics, dating back to before the Great Recession, when, a decade ago, men lost jobs at a disproportionate rate. Working-class wages have not kept pace with the rate of inflation, and blue-collar workers earn far less than white-collar peers. All sorts of efforts — job training, education grants, higher minimum wages, designated low-cost housing — have sought to address these issues, but the fundamental problems persist.

The best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy” gives one man’s perspective of what it’s like to live on the outside of the U.S. economy. Bad decisions, bad habits, drugs, inter-generational poverty and geography combine to trap people in hopeless situations.

The problem Brooks is getting at in his column and the Economic Perspectives study addresses is more than economic. Many of the men in the study were not married. They had children but might not have custody of them. They might not even know they had conceived a child until years later. “Committed relationships” were problems for many men. Although the men yearned for a close relationship with their children, they had no such commitment to their children’s mothers.

More than a decade ago, I lamented in a newspaper column the trend toward more out-of-wedlock births in Wilson and nationwide. I received some calls from angry boyfriends who told me their relationships were none of my business, and their relationship was as good as any marriage license, despite consistent evidence that marriage is the best insurance for what children need most: family stability. It’s not just a daddy problem. The women giving birth outside marriage are willing to accept that arrangement, despite all its disadvantages.

It is a cultural issue, and it creates a culture in which children are denied the assurance of family stability, which affects self-esteem, self-confidence, ambition and behavior. Fathers who are not bound by a marriage license are less likely to stick around and may be less likely to support their children and their mother. This attitude is contrary to one of my favorite quotes: “The best thing any man can do for his children is to love their mother.”

The men in the study considered themselves religious or “spiritual” but were not attached to a church. “I treat church just like I treat my girlfriends,” one man told researchers. “I’ll stick around for a while and then I’ll go on to the next one.” Another said he didn’t want a God “telling us how to live.”

Perhaps as a result of this aversion to church, some of these men seem to lack the “Protestant Work Ethic,” which is credited with making possible industrial advances since the Protestant Reformation of the 1600s. I’d be interested in seeing whether these men have problems with all authority figures, from parents to bosses to God.

I would advise these disillusioned men to find a church that focuses on love and grace, not sin and damnation. When my older brother told me he was contributing to a campaign to erect a statue on the National Mall of Moses holding the Ten Commandments, I asked, why the Ten Commandments? Why not John 3:16 or “Love your neighbor as yourself”?

 

The heart of Christianity is not “thou shalt not …”; it is love, and life should be more than a haphazard journey.

Let me set the record straight

When my May 4 column about the murder of two students in a classroom at UNC-Charlotte was published in the Wilson Times, a reader commented on the Times' website by saying I obviously was not a veteran and knew nothing about the military.

It was irrelevant to the column, but I am a veteran, having proudly served in the U.S. Coast Guard for more than three years of active duty. Those years were among the most important in my life, giving me the honor of serving with some extraordinary individuals and learning far more about life, leadership and obligations than I had ever imagined.

I am proud of my service, but apparently what irked the commentator was that I objected to the recent trend of calling everyone who ever served in uniform a "hero." Wearing a uniform does not make you a hero. Serving your country, answering your nation's call does not make you a hero. It makes you an obedient, forthright citizen willing to sacrifice time and opportunities to serve the nation.

The real heroes are the ones with a Bronze Star, a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, a Distinguished Flying Cross, or other decorations signifying bravery beyond the call of duty.

I'm no hero, but I am a veteran, and I'm proud of my service. Just so you know.

Wouk's accounting of World War II lives after him

This post was first published in The Wilson Times May 25, 2019.

Herman Wouk died last week just days from his 104^th birthday. That’s exceptional, but what is extraordinary is the fact he was working on another novel when he died in his sleep.

Still working at his craft at 103! I was amazed to find out from a news article a few years ago that he was still writing well into his 90s. Writing fiction is not a physically demanding occupation, but it is a challenging, difficult and exhausting calling, especially to be writing with Wouk’s attention to detail and development of credible, memorable characters. A fiction author juggles multiple characters, avalanches of emotions, wholly invented scenes, and, often, a background of historical events. It’s a real challenge for even a youthful brain to keep all these matters straight. Imagine what it would be like for someone in his 90s.

It was Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of World War II, “The Caine Mutiny,” that first intrigued me. Wouk took his experience as a junior officer on a minor ship in the Pacific theater and turned it into a thrilling, intriguing novel examining personalities and relationships. Its naval setting had a special appeal to me as a former Coast Guard officer. From the Caine, I went on to “Winds of War” (1971) and “War and Remembrance” (1978).

Those two novels, which together comprise nearly 2,000 pages filled with historical and fictional characters, follow the adventures, difficulties and tragedies of the Henry family. At the beginning of the first novel, “Pug” Henry is a Navy commander assigned to a desk job in Washington. By the end of the second novel, Henry has earned the rank of admiral, has been involved in every theater of World War II, from London to the South Pacific, and has met Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin. That would seem impossible in the hands of many authors, but Wouk’s narration dissolves doubts.

My illustration of how captivating a good book can be goes like this: My last act before leaving for a new job in a new city was to return the Danville library’s copy of “War and Remembrance.” One of my first acts of my first day in Wilson, our new home, was to go to the Wilson library, get a library card, check out “War and Remembrance,” then find the page where I had left off days before.

For a number of years, I have owned my own hardcover copies of the two novels, and I reread them not long ago. They hold up well; I was captivated all over again. Just as Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” has been called the best history of the Napoleonic Wars, I think Wouk’s two novels give readers the most comprehensive report of what World War II was like for Americans. His up-close account of the Battle of Midway, perhaps the key battle of the Pacific war, is awesome and inspiring.

Wouk steps aside from his novel and lists on three pages the names of the pilots and gunners in each squadron from the three American aircraft carriers involved in the battle. From the Yorktown, he lists 21 killed and three survivors. From the Enterprise, 18 killed and 10 survivors. From the Hornet, 29 killed and one survivor. Each name is accompanied by the flyer’s hometown, showing how widespread was the cost of the war in American lives. In only a few minutes of combat on June 4, 1942, they stopped Japan’s plan to rule the entire Pacific.

Anyone who prefers fiction over non-fiction and seldom reads histories, will find Wouk’s account of World War II too scintillating to put down while also providing intriguing details about the war and the people who fought it. Wouk makes FDR come alive with his expressive, eternal optimism and his cheerful friendliness. In my reading of biographies and histories of the fictionalized characters, it appears that Wouk has fairly captured their roles and personalities in these novels.

One subplot in both novels is the Holocaust. The girlfriend, then wife of one of the Henry boys spends hundreds of pages looking for a way to escape Nazi Germany’s “final solution.” Through her eyes, the reader sees the cruelty and the happenstance of the Nazis’ mass murder machine.

To make history close and intimate, to honor the courageous airmen of Midway, to show Nazi cruelty as repulsive and random as it was takes an extraordinary writer. Herman Wouk has captured the facts of World War II and shown them to readers better than any author I can think of, better than Norman Mailer (“The Naked and the Dead”), Joseph Heller (“Catch 22”) or Kurt Vonnegut (“Slaughterhouse Five”).

An obituary I read said that perhaps the most amazing thing about Wouk’s literary record is that at the time of his death, all of his books were still in print. An Amazon search listed 17 books by Wouk, including less known novels such as “Marjorie Morningstar,” “Youngblood Hawke,” “A Hole in Texas,”and “Beneath a Scarlett Sky” as well as two theological books about his Jewish faith.

Maybe the next Wouk book I should read is “Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-year-old Author.” Something more to aspire to.

Board of Elections Democrats cast their vote

This post was first published in the Wilson Times May 18, 2019

Events this week have made it clear that it’s party affiliation (or even suspicion of partisanship), not competence, that matters in North Carolina government. On Monday, the recently reconstituted State Board of Elections summarily fired its executive director, Kim Strach, and replaced her with a reliably Democratic director, Brinson Bell.

The vote was 4-3; four Democrats voted to oust Strach, a veteran investigator and administrator, who is registered as an unaffiliated voter. Three Republicans on the board opposed Strach’s ouster.

It was Strach who investigated malfeasance in office by former Speaker of the House Jim Black, former Commissioner of Agriculture Meg Scott Phipps, and former Gov. Mike Easley, all Democrats. She proved herself to be a thorough and tenacious investigator and a protector of North Carolina’s voters. More recently, Strach led the effort to uncover a surreptitious and illegal absentee ballot scheme in the 9^th Congressional District, which resulted in the nullification of the 2018 general election vote and nationwide headlines leading to a do-over election this year.

Apparently some Democrats had been lying in wait for the opportunity to pay Strach back for the party’s embarrassments of the Black, Phipps and Easley cases. All three of the Democrats Strach investigated are out of politics, and all three paid the price for their misdeeds. Strach caused some Republican embarrassment last year in the 9^th District, where the leading Republican candidate hired a consultant known for his ballot stuffing work. She resisted GOP pressure to back off the investigation of the absentee ballot scheme.

You would think that both Democrats and Republicans would welcome anyone who could get to the bottom of crooked politics and punish the perpetrators, thereby improving the reputation of public officials.

But that’s not the way politics work in this state in the 21^st century. The GOP leadership in the General Assembly made it clear that they would up the ante on the usual “spoils” system of electoral politics. With a veto-proof majority in both chambers, Republicans attempted to redefine the role of governor, stripping the state’s highest-ranking official of most of his traditional powers. Republican leaders decided they should take over the governor’s appointment powers for state boards and commissions, including the State Board of Elections. Even former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, along with other former governors, opposed the GOP legislature’s power grab. A long court fight ended with restoration of the former rule that the SBOE would have a majority of members of the governor’s party. That led to Monday’s vote to fire the state’s most successful and recognizable elections official.

Less than 50 years ago, when the Democratic Party dominated state politics, and the Democratic primary was “tantamount to election,” the spoils system was not as blatant. Each new Democratic governor got to appoint his supporters to various boards and commissions and oust the former Democratic governor’s cronies, but there was not the rancor that has taken over the simplest decisions of today. One-party rule was not a vibrant democracy, but the gerrymandered super-majority in the legislature has not been an improvement.

As another national election approaches, North Carolina voters should have confidence that the people in charge of elections are acting in a fair, non-partisan manner to protect their sacred right to vote. The public must have confidence in the outcome of elections. The widely condemned firing of Strach, whom SBOE chair Robert Cordle (a Democrat) praised for doing an excellent job, tells voters that party labels matter more than accomplishments.

Monday’s vote didn’t need to happen that way. If Democrats on the State Board of Elections had viewed the elections director decision as a test of good governance and protection of election integrity, rather than an opportunity to slap down the opposing party, they would have kept Strach as director of elections.