For the Joy of the Journey

I suppose it is a function of aging that I think a lot about my childhood years. My attention recently has been on my early memories. Perhaps a catalyst was a picture of the hospital in Florence, AL where I was born.

Shortly after my birth my parents moved to TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) employee housing located on the south side of Wilson Dam. One of five houses built on the cliffs below the dam, our house was a craftsman style home with a large front porch.

My father worked in offices only a few hundred yards away. I remember him walking to and from work. The buildings where he worked was a barrack type of structure. Occasionally he would take me to visit his office.
I have several memories from those experiences. I met and was impressed by his boss who was named “Pug” Ross. He looked like a “Pug”, burly, gruff and always chewing on a big cigar. I suppose this may have, unfortunately, shaped my future expectations and role model of bosses. The outside the office building below a water spigot was my Dad’s fishing

worm repository. Each day he would throw used coffee grinds in the area, providing a rich area for earthworms. One shovel would yield all the worms we needed.  The TVA facilities included railroad tracks that were across the road from our house and a coal fired switch engine to serve the needs of the Dam and its power operations. My Dad operated the engine on occasion. I remember him taking me along and setting me on the engineer’s seat and l “drove” the train pushing on the throttle. 

It is strange how subjects invade my thinking. They seem to appear  for no apparent reason and then I  find them at every turn. Recently, morals/morality has been the center of my musing. As I best remember, two articles were catalyst in the process … one was written by Robert Reich about public and private morality.

Republicans have morality upside down. Santorum, Gingrich, and even Romney are barnstorming across the land condemning gay marriage, abortion, out-of-wedlock births, access to contraception, and the wall separating church and state.

America’s problem isn’t a breakdown in private morality. It’s a breakdown in public morality. What Americans do in their bedrooms is their own business.  … There is moral rot in America but it’s not found in the private behavior of ordinary people. It’s located in the public behavior of people who control our economy and are turning our democracy into a financial slush pump.

The second article was Morals: Our Great Moral Decline.

 … it leads to a debate over what “moral” really means. If “immoral” means “causing avoidable harm to other people” then gay marriage, pornography, sex, reality TV, soft-drug use and euthanasia are hardly immoral, even if distasteful to some.

Each of these articles were interesting in their own right, but I was mostly struck by the how the issues are centered in the authors’ understanding and definition of morality. My next encounter on the subject came with the discovery of a new book entitled “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion” by Jonathan Haidt. In the process of reviewing the book I watched two videos. The first is a TED talk by Haidt several years ago and the second is a longer interview with Bill Moyers.

All of his has generated a considerable amount of thought on morality. Questions abound…  What does it mean to be a moral person? What is the definition of morality? How do we decide what is moral? Does discussion of private morality belong in the political discourse? … on and on it goes.

I came across this article and it generated some thoughts about the subject of rules, regulations, and laws. I feel better knowing that we have finally recognized the inherent dangers of parrots and burning water skis. Maybe there should be a law against stupid. I plan to post some more thoughts about living by the rules. My Pew Note post today is relevant to the subject. “If every command is equal to another, life is consumed in rule keeping.”

Governments of both parties keep adding stacks of rules, few of which are ever rescinded. Republicans write rules to thwart terrorists, which make flying in America an ordeal and prompt legions of brainy migrants to move to Canada instead. Democrats write rules to expand the welfare state. Barack Obama’s health-care reform of 2010 had many virtues, especially its attempt to make health insurance universal. But it does little to reduce the system’s staggering and increasing complexity. Every hour spent treating a patient in America creates at least 30 minutes of paperwork, and often a whole hour. Next year the number of federally mandated categories of illness and injury for which hospitals may claim reimbursement will rise from 18,000 to 140,000. There are nine codes relating to injuries caused by parrots, and three relating to burns from flaming water-skis.

Over-regulated America: The home of laissez-faire is being suffocated by excessive and badly written regulation

In depths of winter there has been a lot activity. The past week was “the birthday week”. In addition to grandson Chase, grandson Tyler and sister-in-law Marjorie, we celebrated Ann’s birthday on Wednesday. This was a milestone – 70 years. It doesn’t feel like seventy and she certainly doesn’t look like it. We had a wonderful dinner at a romantic Italian restaurant. On Friday evening we had an open house to honor Ann. There were family, friends and neighbors who came by to eat and greet.

On Saturday we traveled to Louisville to be with Madison and her family for her baptism. I am so proud of her and her desire to be a follower of Jesus. It was a wonderful event and we enjoyed lunch together afterward.

On Sunday we enjoyed our time of worship and praise. Unfortunately Ann and I came down with a stomach virus later that day which put us out of commission for the next 24 hours.

On Monday evening we learned of the passing of son-in-law Daniel’s grandfather. Troy Crockett was 101 years old. Daniel was close to his grandfather and will be traveling to Cross Plains for the funeral. We plan to travel to Atoka this coming weekend to celebrate Neyland and Turner’s 2nd birthday. Life goes on.