For the Beauty of the Earth

Lord of all, To Thee we raise this our song of grateful praise.

I did this a few months ago. I wanted to do it again. If the Chinese are right about a picture being worth a thousand words, then I've saved you untold quantities of reading tonight by assembling many things and people which are beautiful to me and which (or who) have brought joy to my life.

Cicero vs. Reed Hendricks - What's a Boy to Do?

At the recent Priesthood session of General Conference, Boyd K. Packer began a speech to the Aaronic Priesthood by saying, "Young men talk of the future, because they have no past. Old men talk of the past, because they have no future." We all laughed, that self-conscious sort of laugh that comes out of us when we realize that we have been well summarized in clear, undeniable language.

Cicero, the great Senator of Ancient Rome, said, "To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child." I've always taken that one to heart. I even had it on the wall of my classroom when I was a teacher.

However...

Just yesterday, my counsellor, Reed Hendricks of BYU-I, finished our latest session together by informing me that I live in the past and need to live more in (or did he say "for") the future. Before I could ask "What future?" a knock came at the door, and we realized his 6 o'clock had come a bit early. So I still don't know the answer to that question.

I began to realize shortly after my mission that I didn't have a clue what I was good for. Job after job proved what I could not do, but nothing seemed to point to what I was designed by my Father in Heaven to do. Finally, after many part-time jobs, six years in Uncle Sam's Flying Circus, and a few years of seriously reading and studying and discussing History, I was put in a classroom in Boise. I've told the story before. It involved the Holy Ghost. At the end of his hour of observation, Zeph Foster told me, "You are a natural-born teacher." All the praise he heaped on me after that was just frosting. I had finally heard a definitive and authoritative statement about what I was and what I was meant to be and to do. The Holy Ghost was bearing such a powerful witness to me at the time, that I assumed that Prof. Foster could feel it, too, although I didn't ask him.

So I got a teaching job and I stayed in it for twenty years. I worked very hard. I loved what I was doing. It defined me. Now I knew what I was. "Who are you?" someone might ask. Boldly, I'd reply, "I'm the History teacher at Madison High." I was somebody. I knew that the job I was doing was important, even though I occasionally ran into businessmen who questioned this. I exulted daily in getting facts, ideas, and American memories planted in the hearts of young Americans. I knew that, with the spiritual gift I'd been given, and the help of the Holy Ghost for which I prayed daily, I was teaching successfully, not only for the moment, not only for the test, but for the lifetime of my kids. And sure enough! Even now they stop me (as one did in the Conoco station on West Main in Rexburg yesterday) and tell me how important my class was to them. Even his sweet little pregnant wife yesterday remembered who I was from all the talking he'd done over the past few years.

And then came 2003, and the suspension, because I'd climbed on a desk and shouted in the faces of some of the rude ones. A few months later, early in 2004, I was forced to resign. Even now, after five years, it doesn't seem completely real. I had a testimony of what I was supposed to be and suddenly I wasn't that thing any more.

So what I've been doing for the last few years is whacking weeds, poisoning weeds, digging trenches, mowing whole parks of grass, receiving Social Security Disability, and trying to figure out what my next life mission is. Or is there even another one waiting in the wings for me? Perhaps I really am as useless and pointless as I feel.

But the First Presidency's Proclamation on the Family is unequivocal. I have a duty to support my family, and I'm not cutting it. I've got to find something that I'm good at that I can get a job doing. My flash-in-the-pan anger has already gotten me on Wal-Mart's black list. I worked hard for them for a month and made next to nothing, so perhaps I should be grateful to be removed from even the temptation to go back there. Besides, everything else I've ever tried, before or after my two decades of teaching, seemed "penny-ante" compared to teaching. When you teach, you're really making a difference in the world. When you hang a couple of hundred disposable cameras on the end of an aisle, you know that literally anyone off the street could have done it and that you weren't using a God-given talent in the doing of the job. You feel that you aren't fulfilling what the Holy Ghost testified to you that you were meant to do and meant to be.

I think what I need is part-time work that pays maybe $500 or $600 per month and really makes use of the talents and, yes, callings, that God has given me. But I haven't found such a thing yet. Perhaps if anybody who reads this little column really likes me, he or she could take a minute each day to include me in a personal prayer. It would be great if that prayer were a plea for His help in putting me where I need to be, doing what I need to do. Thanks, folks. I really appreciate it.

Pirates Must be Killed First, Understood in Retrospect

My father grew up reading the Horatio Hornblower novels. They dealt with a young man who joined the Royal Navy in the nineteenth century, back about the time when Napoleon Bonaparte was making such a nuisance of himself from Spain to Russia and all points in between. Films have been made of some of those old novels. One thing that was never murky or unclear was the morality of a character's behavior in such novels. If the person did his duty and lived or died for the Union Jack, he was a good man. There was no equivocating about whether his diet contained too much meat or whether he served on a ship that polluted the sea too much.

Pirate life in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was pretty much what it had always been. Hard. Dangerous. Sometimes profitable. Almost always short.

Pirates have been around as long as there has been travel and trade on the high seas and the major rivers. We even had pirates plying the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers in the 19th century. Jean Lafitte, leader of the large community of pirates who were headquartered at Barataria Bay in the Gulf of Mexico, was so successful that neither the US nor the British navies were successful for a long time in eradicating his fleet or his little town full of pirates and their families. Yes, a town of pirates. Just as some towns employ most of the men with logging, farming, or manufacturing, Barataria Bay employed all the husbands and fathers as pirates.

When the British invaded the mouth of the Mississippi in December of 1814, Andrew Jackson called on all local citizens to join the militia he'd brought from Tennessee to prevent this major western highway for our trade in crops from being brought under British control. Slaves were promised their freedom if they would join up. And Jean Lafitte, the pirate, was promised amnesty for himself and all his men, if he'd show up at the Battle of New Orleans in January of 1815, bringing with him his men, some cannon, and the flints and powder on which Jackson's forces were running dangerously low.

Having them there made all the difference. Their skill with cannon, developed by destroying and stealing the cargoes of so many ships over the years, made a real difference in the artillery duel which preceded the disastrously unsuccessful British infantry charge that morning when the British lost more than 2,000 young British and Highland men and we lost only about 23. But, amnesty or no, he and most of his fellows went back to piracy as a way of life.

There are people today who claim that the Somali pirates who are seizing so many ships off the coast of Africa are to be excused because of their desperate poverty. Some have stretched their imaginations so far as to blame us (spelled US) for the disastrous political and economic conditions in so many African nation-states. While I think that attitude is absurd, I am not going to argue that here and now. First things first. We must kill, sink, or capture as many of the pirates as possible.

In ever other age of human history, whether during the time of Phoenician dominance on the Mediterranean or later Roman control of it, whether a captain called himself a "privateer" and got to keep whatever he'd stolen from one nation's shipping by receiving permission for it from the queen of his own land, or whether a man (or a few women) put together pirate crews out of pure greed, there has never been historical precedent for negotiating with them, bribing them, or in any way appeasing them. The standard practice in every ocean and sea and by every government with a navy, was always to kill as many of them as possible. Sink their ships and arrest whatever bobs to the surface. If, after a trial, it was proven that they were guilty, the best they could hope for was a long time in a dungeon. Many were publicly hanged as a hopeful discouragement to others who might decide to rise above financial hard times by falling in with thieves and killers. (The Romans crucified them. So did the Carthaginians, I believe, but then they were just transplanted Phoenicians anyway.)

For you see, that's what pirates are. Thieves and killers. Some folks are making a big deal out of the extreme youth of some of the Somali pirates who are taking ship after ship in the waters within 300 miles of Somalia. I have no doubt that pirates anciently and in early modern times were also apprenticed to it at very tender ages. It's pitiful. It's sad. But it makes no difference when our sailors and the cargoes they carry are being constantly attacked, held hostage, stolen, and threatened. Pirates must be fought, actively and assertively. They must be killed in as large numbers as we can manage. We should not hesitate to use surface ships, submarines, and even ground troops to attack them wherever they live or are headquartered. We should take advantage of our air power. They are making war on us. A nation as large and powerful as ours must maintain a position of credibility. We cannot allow the rest of the world to lose its confidence in us to be what we have become in the past century - - a protector of the weak and a destroyer of threats.

In 1803 the Barbary Coast Pirates, headquartered in Tripoli, raised the annual tribute they charged all the merchant ships of all the nations who plied the waters of the Mediterranean. Fail to pay this tribute, and your ships would be seized, their cargoes stolen, and your men held for hostage or killed outright. All the great navies of the world, even the Dutch, Portuguese, Spaniards, French and even the British, humbly allowed this bullying to go on for many years. But when the annual tribute was raised in 1803, a Democrat President decided to take matters into his own hands. He sent a combined force of Marines and Sailors to attack the pirates at their headquarters in Tripoli. The Marines were marched overland and arrived just in time to attack the city as the navy charged into the harbor, firing into every vessel in sight. The fight was vicious. Ships lashed to each other were pulling each other down as they continued to fire broadsides into each other even as their crews pulled them closer together with grappling hooks and lept aboard their enemies' vessels with cutlasses and pistols.

Soon the decks were awash with sea foam and blood; cannons which had broken loose, rolled wildly about the decks, crushing some men, crippling others. One of the weakest powers on earth had stood up to the Tripolitan (or "Barbary Coast") Pirates and given as good as we got. We had to pay a one-time ransom for some of our people they already had in prisons before the fight started, but that was the beginning of the end of piracy in that area.

When the SEAL team marksmen took out the three punks who were holding one of our merchant captains yesterday, they had to await Mr. Obama's specific permission! If they'd been a SWAT team dealing with a hostage situation a mile away from the White House in downtown DC, all commands and all authority would have been local. That's how it should be in any encounter at sea. The ships and their crews have a right of self-defense. Maritime officers and men should be armed and given at least rudimentary instruction in repelling boarders. They certainly were in days of yore. The U S. Navy and the navies of our trading partners should be actively hunting down and sinking every pirate vessel they can. There should be willing and active international cooperation in eradicating these terrorists and murderers.

No matter how charming Johnny Depp is as the delightful character Captain Jack Sparrow, the reality is that pirates are among the world's worst people. They are as bad as any street gang, biker gang, drug cartel, or organized crime family you can imagine. They come from countries where their governments have been cruel and ineffective for decades. They see piracy as a way to make big bucks in a short time. That is no excuse. Just because a kid you know at school is beaten and given a bad example by his parents, does not excuse him from beating you up and stealing your lunch money. Right is right. Wrong is wrong. Let's wake up! PIRATES ARE BAD PEOPLE! Let's fight them constantly until they cease to be one of our many problems.

58 Year Olds Can Have Fun!

I don't know how old Tibbs Ridley is. He might be my age. He might be a year or two younger or older. He's an old Bannock fellow who lives on Fort Hall and occasionally goes down to Utah to work on a farm there. He's a nice fellow, very soft spoken, and seems to enjoy just watching others enjoy life.

Today was the third time I've been out shooting with him. He's Aric Armell's uncle by marriage. This time we went out to the public range here in Pocatello. It's very near the Sheriff's shooting facility out in the hilly desert, not far from I-15. Tibbs had given Aric an old AR-15 on long-term loan. Aric provided a scope that fit the carrying handle and got it loosely sighted in last time I shot with him about a week ago. I provided all the loads, since 5.56mm NATO (.223 Remington) is a cartridge I used to load a lot of before I went broke and had to sell everything. I'm pleased to be able to say that all my old handloads cycled the action of the aging Vietnam-era firearm quite well and also gave reasonably good accuracy, even though the bullet weights ranged from 40 through 60 grains! Most were about 55 grains. All water-filled containers hit by these loads exploded with gusto and satisfied our little crowd of three very deeply.


We were only shooting at about 50 yards today. The range was crowded, and the 100 yard alleys were all spoken for. But this didn't reduce our fun-factor one little bit. Someone had left some chunks of asphalt out there which I reduced to smaller and smaller chunks with my Savage Mako in .22 LR. The Savage is a thumbhole-stocked rifle with a heavy barrel and little weight-saving cut-outs along the forearm in the shape of shark teeth. We put about 80 rounds through it today and it gave us nothing but joy and success.


Now, at 58, I'm beginning to get a little deaf. I have to turn up the TV quite a lot these days, and I'm constantly irritating someone by asking them repeat themselves. My eyes are also in need of work, or at least of new corrective lenses. Imagine my pleasure, then, when I didn't miss a single thing I shot at today with my 1896 Swedish Mauser which was built in 1900. True, the distance was a modest 50 yards or so, but some of the little containers were so minuscule that they'd have been hard to see even at that distance if they hadn't been brightly colored. It may have been only half the distance I'm used to shooting, but the satisfaction didn't seem to be reduced even a little bit. Even now, at 12:34 a.m., I'm smiling just thinking about all the fun we had out there today.

"Is Anybody There? Does Anybody Care?"

Everybody in our extended family knows the words to this song from the musical 1776. John Adams, cranky and brilliant Boston attorney, has been stuck in "foul, fetid, foggy, fuming, filthy Philadelphia" for the better part of a year and still the other members of the Second Continental Congress won't "acknowledge what already exists." Specifically, since the first shots were fired on 19 April 1775, a state of war has existed between the 13 British colonies and their mother land and it's high time, Adams asserts, that we acknowledge that we are "and of right ought to be free and independent states. That all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."

But it's a hard, slow process, to get people who have been raised as Englishmen, speaking English, fighting on the side of the English in wars with other European powers, sending their more well-to-do children back to England for a good education, and praying for the King of England in Church and in private homes, to believe that now it's time to end all that, scrap what was once a good thing, start shooting the troops whom we would as recently as 1759 have cheered to see coming when they saved us from the French and their Indian allies, and throw them off the continent while simultaneously striving to create a government tolerable to all 13 states which see themselves as 13 separate nation-states, not as one nation.

But in the play and in history, a few people of real vision can see what the nation can become. "I see fireworks. I see the pageant and pomp and parade. I hear the cannons roar. I see Americans - all Americans, free, forevermore!"

When Patrick Henry gave his most famous speech, he was predicting the Battle of Lexington and Concord which was to happen only three weeks later. "The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms." But now, 15 months later, Adams and a few others cling to the notion of American independence and self-government.

It seems pretty easy to look back on their eventual success. Yes, the Declaration was written, chiefly by one committee member. Yes, after dozens of changes it was passed. But saying something and making it stick are two vastly different things. Men from Canada to Georgia will kill each other wholesale for six years before things are finally settled at Yorktown, Virginia. And even then, weak, broke, the new country must endure the derision and the bullying of many older and more established trading partners for decades, finally fighting what some have called "The Second American Revolution," The War of 1812 not to mention the shootout with the Moslem states of the Barbary Coast beginning in 1803.

But somewhere along in there a few things had been decided in a permanent way. In the Constitutional Convention, chaired by General Washington, it had been decided that the government would perform the three functions of any government by being divided into three separate and distinct branches of government. And only under special circumstances could they interfere with each other's powers. The President can call Congress into emergency session, but the House can sit as the President's Grand Jury if he's accused of crime, and the Senate can sit as his petit jury. The President can veto acts of Congress, but they can override him with a 2/3 vote. In 1803, John Marshall's Supreme Court decided that acts of Congress and even partial acts of Congress can be found to be unconstitutional if a simple majority of the justices agree that the laws Congress passes violate some part of the Constitution. I used to call it "the God law" in my classes. All other laws must measure up to it.

The Chief Justice can sit in judgment of an indicted (impeached) President, but the President gets to make appointments to that court, and the Senate must confirm those appointments.

It's a pretty nice set-up. Many other countries have tried to imitate us.

But what we did two years after the 1789 Constitutional Convention is perhaps even more important. Many people, such as Jefferson, had only given their support to the document drawn up in 1789 on the condition - the BIG condition - that a bill of rights be drawn up and amended to that constitution. In 1791, we kept that promise. Twelve amendments were proposed; ten of them made the cut. These first ten amendments are called The Bill of Rights. And just to make sure that future circumstances and future inventions weren't used as excuses to limit the individual rights of individual citizens, we said in the Tenth Amendment that anything not specifically listed in the first ten amendments belonged to the States or to the People.

Of course, human nature being what it is, each and every one of the individual rights has been challenged many, many times during the 233 years since Independence was declared. The one to attack most often these days seems to be the Second Amendment. "A well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a Free State, the Right of the People to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." So what's this "militia" thing.? It's the plural of an old Roman (Latin) word which meant citizen-soldier. Remember, among the Romans, anyone who didn't own land could not vote or serve in the army. Those were privileges reserved for people who owned a piece of Rome and therefore had a personally vested interested in seeing her succeed. A citizen-soldier was called a militium. Plural - militia. Many today would like you to believe that our modern equivalent is the State level National Guard, commanded by the governors of each state and able to be nationalized by the President like when Gen'l. Eisenhower nationalized the Arkansas National Guard so that it had to fight on the side of integrating, not further segregating Little Rock Central High in 1957.

That's not a true militia. When asked for a definition of the word militia, James Madison, often called "the father of the Constitution," said it means "the people under arms." That's where he stopped. It was clear enough to him and I hope it's clear enough to you.

Why should the people be armed? A host of answers springs to mind. Personal defense. Home defense. Intimidation of crime. Hunting. Recreation. Keeping a people practiced for the day when their government needs them to fight to preserve the above mentioned rights.

But remember the Declaration of Independence, too. Thirteen years before the Constitution and fifteen years before the Bill of Rights, the Declaration told us that we had right of revolution. Such a revolution to correct a corrupt or dishonest government cannot happen without an armed citizenry. When I mention this these days, people often laugh and say that a few million red necks with bird guns and deer rifles couldn't possibly prevail against the armed might of the U.S. Government.

But just a few weeks ago I saw a video which had been prepared by a decorated combat veteran and member of the U.S. Marine Corps. He wore a mask, realizing the kind of trouble he could get in for saying the things he said. What he essentially said was "Don't worry about it. We, your uniform-wearing fellow citizens, will never fire on our armed fellow citizens." He made that point over and over again. He acknowledged that the Constitution and specifically the Bill of Rights were under attack from people whose business it is to protect them.

So, am I advocating the violent overthrow of the government? Absolutely not! We must continue to work within this God-given system to redress the wrongs and wickedness which have crept into it in recent years. We must continue as long as there is breath in our bodies to drive from power and from positions of social leadership those who have gradually led us to accept things we would never have countenanced a generation or two ago. It has happened before. Wicked civilizations have turned around. Jonah got Nineveh, the vile capital city of the vicious Assyrian empire, to repent.

On more than one occasion in the Book of Mormon we see Jaraedites, Nephites, and Lamanites get their hearts softened by the hearing of the word of God. They turned around. They repented. They became kinder, more trustworthy people. Yes, sometimes they had to be humbled by famine, disease, or military conquest before they would repent. But there were other times when they were humbled by the Spirit while hearing the words of Prophets. It can happen again. We can choose to be better, cleaner, less lascivious, more wholesome, more honest, more morally courageous people. We can choose to become what we've always wished we were. It is the prayer of this old Air Force wing nut that we do exactly that. And we'll never do it by giving up any of the rights, enumerated or otherwise, in our inspired Constitution.

Two Grandchildren in One Day;Three in Two Days

This is an official brag. We have gone from having 9 grandchildren last week (counting Akira, which we most certainly do) to having 12 (counting Akira's little brother, which we most certainly do) this week.

Today, Sheryl's daughter Heather brought forth a little fellow named Connor William Rozar in Marietta, Georgia. Things got a little hairy towards the end and the had to go by Caesarian, but he came out OK except for a cut on his head where some doctor got overexcited.

Mary Haeberle has presented the world with a tiny creature named Penny Maize Haeberle. I'm not sure about the Maize thing. Sounds kind of corny to me. ;) Of course, as has already been noted, Zannita Armell had a C-Section delivery two days ago of the most robust kid I've ever seen at that age. (Age 0) I look for him to become a kind of Captain Moroni or someone like that.

So there you are. Brag accomplished. When more photos become available, you'll be the first to be victimized by them.

The Advent of Aric Armell the Younger

This is hardly a real blog post. I merely wanted to announce to the world that our dear friends, the Armells, have had their l ittle boy, who has been named for his dad. Let me quickly state the vital statistics while I still remember them: 9 lbs., 12 ozs. Head circumference: 15". Length: 22". This is a healthy and good-looking little Lamanite!

Akira stayed with us from about 4:50 a.m. until we went to see the little guy at around 8. She slept among us, dogs and all, as though she were still at home in her own bed.

Much to our joy, the Armells have begun to ask questions about the Gospel and the scriptures. You might mention us in your prayers, so we can do and say everything the right way.

Now we look forward to Mary's performance in a few days and to Heather's back in Atlanta pretty soon, too.

With any luck, you'll be able to blow these pictures up to be a lot bigger. Sometimes the pictures I attach to a post do that very well. Sometimes they don't do it at all. It's all a huge mystery to me. Anyway, if you can get these to expand, you'll be able to read the little captions which our newly updated Kodak programs allows us to put right on the photograph. It just occurred to me how terribly quaint that last sentence will seem in a generation or two.