I am a Daydreamer

I am a Daydreamer

I am a daydreamer.  I think I’ve always been sort of a daydreamer.  In fact, I cannot recall a time when I was not a daydreamer.  Even in grade school I found it easy to get lost in my thoughts.  A single glance out the window would take me miles and years away.  So, it was no surprise to me when I found myself daydreaming in church today.  Daydreaming in church?  That’s a bad thing, right?  Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t.  You can be the judge.

I don’t know why but for some reason a question came to my mind.  “What are the three most important words a person can speak?” I asked myself.

The answer to that question was obvious.  At least it was to me.  What three words could possibly carry more meaning than to say I love you?  “Yes, I love you!”  Then some familiar scriptures passed through my mind.  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).  “Yes, that’s true,” I thought to myself, and then another verse came to my mind.  “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15); and then another, and this one was a little longer, “Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:36 - 39).  I was on a roll.  Just like that I came up with three scripture verses from the New Testament that dealt with the Savior and love.  Then a fourth verse popped into my mind.  “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

Now, I don’t know why, but after having gone through this little mental exercise while I should have been paying attention to what was happening at church, a second question came to my mind.  “What,” I asked myself, “are the next three most important words a person can speak?”

The first thought that came to my mind was to say I am sorry.  But that didn’t quite sit right with me.  We can express sorrow for any number of reasons.  It doesn’t have to be as a result of having wronged somebody.  Then it hit me.  “Please forgive me” have to be the next three most important words that a person can speak.  After all, the receipt of forgiveness is a true expression of love.  “Yes!  That’s it!  Please forgive me must be the next three most important words a person can speak.”  Those are healing words.

My mind continued to wander, as it often does, and I asked myself how many times somebody had asked me for forgiveness for an offense made toward me.  I couldn’t think of many.  In fact, I could only think of a handful of times.  And then my mind spoke to me again.  “Yes, but how many times have you, Greg, asked forgiveness from those people you have offended?”

And there I sat in church trapped by my own thoughts, my own daydream.  It occurred to me that I’ve said that I’m sorry for something that I’ve done, for an offense given, but I have seldom asked for forgiveness.  And the sad thing is that I have a hunch that I don’t even know half the people that I have offended, which merits seeking forgiveness in and of itself.  Now, I must know.

Sometimes when your mind is left to wander it will come back to indict you.  Mine did.  Please forgive me.

I am a daydreamer.  I think I’ve always been sort of a daydreamer.  I must either stop daydreaming or I must go to work on righting the wrongs I’ve done.  I think I know which it is I must do.

Desperado Reader Reviews

C. Wolf - TWO THUMBS UP!

I was drawn into the story immediately.  The description of the foods and area made me homesick for New Mexico.  The history is so cleverly interwoven that it just becomes part of the story.   This is an author you can trust to deliver a captivating story without suggestive and vile language.   I look forward to reading more of his books.

Michael A. Gardner - Great Story

Great story! The author is so descriptive of the New Mexico terrain and geography that I felt familiar with the area, and I've never been to SW U.S. The story itself has some very interesting twists, including one that really surprised me towards the end. If you're looking for a really good week-end or airplane ride story, I highly recommend this book. Hope to see others by this author.

Esther - Excellent read

The plot was well-thought out. It didn't take long for the characters to become real people to me. I found out fairly soon that I cared what was happening to Cody, and when he overcame obstacles I was relieved for him. I also tried to come up with possible solutions for him. Nice job!Desperado

Thanksgiving 1964

Thanksgiving 1964

(Loosely based on actual events)

Gregory Talley

            I always looked forward to Thanksgiving at Uncle Tex and Aunt Mary’s house.  The 90 minute drive to Linton under normal circumstances was unbearable for anybody between the ages of 5 and 18.  But, Thanksgiving was different.  Not only was it a time for the gathering of the cousins (and the requisite cheek-pinching, ooh’s and ahs’s, and “my-how-you’ve-grown” remarks from all the aunts) but it was a time to sit back and watch for the unanticipated yet fully expected fireworks.  Thanksgiving would stand out as the granddaddy of them all.

            The day started out as a “normal” Thanksgiving, whatever that was.  Cousin Bob, the oldest cousin with children my age, pulled the clear glass bottle out of his pocket after the usual pleading of the younger cousins.  There, displayed for all to see, was the severed pinky finger permanently preserved for all to see and to remind us all of his connections to an Italian family in Chicago.  The girls ran screaming towards the kitchen.  Little Cousin Jenny stepped squarely on Foster’s tail.  Foster, Uncle Tex’s collie was perched under the side tray of Thanksgiving relishes.  Foster of course jumped and yelped, but in the process nudged the relish table just enough to send it crashing to the floor.  Silver and Berry, Aunt Mary’s cats both made a quick retreat upstairs and were not seen again for the rest of the day.

            The aunts fussed over Foster and Aunt Mary demanded that Uncle Tex place Foster outside or locked up in a bedroom upstairs.  The 10- and 11-year-old cousins pleaded with Uncle Tex to send Foster upstairs where they could play with him.  Poor Foster.

            The aunts cleaned up the mess and returned to dispensing justice to mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, rolls, home-canned green beans, stuffing, ham, and the grand prize—that year’s turkey.

            With Cousin Bob’s preserved extra finger safely tucked away, it was time for Bob’s routine of magic tricks.  First came the thumb separation trick, which us older cousins had figured out years earlier, but it still fascinated the younger cousins.  But, next came the card tricks.  Bob could always pull off a good card trick.  “Pick a card—any card.”  And so, Uncle Howard would pick a card and then slide it back into the deck.  Like magic, Bob selected the correct card.  Then Bob pulled off the magic trick of all times.  He shuffled the cards, ran them up and down his shirt sleeve, then fanned them out for all to see, then ran them back together into a stacked deck.  With the flick of a wrist, he then fanned them out on the wall.  They stuck to the wall!  Cousin Billy was so excited with this magic feat that he ran to the wall and reached for the cards.  Cousin Bob screeched, “No!”, but it was too late.  Billy got to the cards first, half of which fell directly into the small fish aquarium.

            Anxious to help our Cousin Bob, Billy reached to the aquarium filled with angelfish to retrieve the errant cards, but Uncle Sid, the consummate fisherman, seeing Billy reaching for the cards made a preemptive strike to steady the aquarium—a full millisecond before Billy drove for the cards.  What would have been Billy’s forearm reaching to the blue rock-covered bottom of the aquarium ended up being Billy’s chin being struck by the upper edge of the glass enclosure and the weight of Uncle Sid’s fish-wrangling arms pulled down on the opposite side of the aquarium.

            Billy fell backwards, chin bleeding from a deep gash, just as Aunt Ota walked in the room carrying a bowl of hot gravy, and promptly tripped over Billy.  Luckily, there were only plates and silverware on the white table cloth-covered table.  Luckily, another table cloth would be retrieved and there would be time to re-wash dishes before dinner.  Meanwhile, though some of the water in the aquarium went straight up, most of it ending up in Uncle Sid’s face, shirt, and lap.  Aunt Mary rushed out of the kitchen to find out what the clamor was all about, hit the water and her feet went flying up as her better side came crashing down on the wet floor.  While her floor-length dress worked quite well as a sponge, it did little to cover her dignity, if you know what I mean.

            Three of the four angelfish were quickly found.  The fourth was found between the three-inch wool fringes on the rug at the foot of the chair where Uncle Sid sat.  Sid found it when he stood.  The remaining three fish were transferred to Foster’s water bowl for temporary holding, where they were forgotten.

            Cousin Bob, adhering to the principle that discretion is the better part of valor, cancelled the remainder of his Mafia Finger and Magic Card Show.  Uncle Sid, with his 36-inch waist and 15-1/2 size shirt borrowed a 44-inch pair of slacks and 17-1/2 size shirt from Uncle Tex.  The cousins, with the exception of Billy, picked up pea-size blue rocks and fish castle pieces.  Miraculously, the aquarium remained intact.

            The table was finally set and Aunt Marry called for everybody to the table, including the 10 and 11 year-old cousins who were upstairs with Foster.  Uncle John was given the privilege of offering a Prayer of Thanksgiving as we all stood behind the backs of the chairs.  Bob, the magician and irreverent family member took a drink of water during the prayer, but the water only made its way partially to its destination when Uncle John thanked God that nobody had been killed in the house yet that day.  Water shooting though the nose makes such a distinctive sound.

            Thanksgiving dinner proceeded without incident.  No hits.  No runs.  No errors.  Not even Foster, who had come to dinner with the 10- and 11-year-old cousins, misbehaved.  He knew his place at the table and his place did not include begging—most of the time.

            At the conclusion of dinner, Aunt Mary announced that it was time for pie.  She and Mother and the other aunts excused themselves from the table and went to the kitchen to gather the pies.

            You don’t expect to hear a shriek from the kitchen unless there is something very wrong—like Dracula or Frankenstein peering through the window.  Clearly an empty dog’s water bowl does not merit such a reaction.  I don’t think that Uncle Tex and Aunt Mary ever replaced the angelfish.

            Before the five sisters brought the pies into the dining room, Mom asked Dad to help with one of the pies that had just come out of the oven.  Dad looked so important walking into the dining room wearing the oven mittens and carrying a fresh, hot pie.  And the pie looked so graceful as it flew from his hands and into the back end of the turkey carcass still on the dining room table.

            I do not think those were tears of thanksgiving that day.  Aunt Mary was in tears because of the perfectly ruined Thanksgiving.  Aunt Jessie was in tears because of the contribution that Cousin Billy had made to the festivities.  The remaining aunts were simply in tears and the uncles discreetly laughed through their tears.

            We cousins couldn’t wait to see what would happen on Thanksgiving of 1965.  Surely nothing could top the Thanksgiving of 1964.

            The 90-minute ride home was in silence, but I couldn’t help but smile all the way home.

I am a Mormon

I am a Mormon.

There.  I said it.  I said it just in case there was any doubt in anybody’s mind.  Maybe you suspected it, but you weren’t quite sure.  Perhaps all those not-so-cryptic messages about The Book of Mormon, Mormon Missionaries, and the use of Mormon terminology escaped you.  I doubt it.  In fact, I seriously doubt it.  But, just in case you didn’t know, I’m here to tell you that I am a Mormon.

Being a Mormon nearly all my life has presented me with some interesting experiences and with some revealing questions.  I have been asked how many mothers I have (one) and how many wives I have (one).  I’ve been quizzed about my magic underwear.  People used to call them secret underwear.  I had thought for a long time that everybody’s underwear was secret, but seeing some of the get-ups that people wear today, I’m not so sure that there is anything secret about underwear anymore.  It is no wonder people have gone to calling them magic underwear!  But no, there is nothing magical or mystical about temple garments that I wear.  I hold them as a sacred reminder of promises or covenants I have made with God and an inward expression of faith.

I have been asked numerous times how I can work all night without drinking coffee.  I have dealt with awkward social situations where alcohol seems to be the center catalyst for making conversation.  I have been denied employment because of my religion and I have been denied career advancement on more than one occasion because of my religion.  Please don’t ever tell me that I do not know what it is like to be discriminated against.

As a Mormon I’ve learned that I am going to hell because of my beliefs; because my beliefs differ from those of mainstream Christianity, even though there is disagreement among mainstream Christian sects as to what the doctrine of Christ is.  There is; however, one thing that most mainstream Christian sects believe and teach, and that is that Mormons are going to hell (even though many members of those sects do not believe that Mormons are going to hell).  By the way, contrary to popular opinion, Mormons do not believe that they are the only ones going to heaven nor do we believe that all Mormons are going to heaven.

I believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost and that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.  I believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.  I believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, second, repentance; third, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.  I also believe that a man must be called of God, by prophecy, and by the laying on of hands by those who are in authority, to preach the Gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof.  Yes, I believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth.  As part of my belief, I believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healing, interpretation of tongues, and so forth.  I believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; I also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.  I believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and I believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.  I believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.  I claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of my own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.  I believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.  I believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, “we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things.  If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things”.

(Adapted from Articles of Faith 1:1 - 13)

I am a United States Citizen

I am a United States Citizen.

I am a citizen of the United States of America.  I happen upon citizenship by birth, but I think there is more to being a citizen of this country than just a result of happenstance of birth.  And, I think there is more to citizenship than the naturalization process, though I am proud to say that I have taken the citizenship test and I aced it.

Back in the days when I was in elementary school there was space on report cards to assess citizenship.  I’m not exactly sure how citizenship was measured in grade school, but I was always pleased that I received satisfactory marks in that area.  I’m not in grade school anymore, but I think I still qualify for a satisfactory mark on my report card in citizenship.

As a citizen of the United States I vote.  I vote in national elections, including the presidential and mid-term elections.  I also vote in school bond and local elections.  While I am affiliated with a political party I do not vote for the party; I vote for the person who most closely aligns with my values and my beliefs on the way government runs.  Sometimes the options aren’t so great.  And yes, there have been times when I’ve stood in the voting booth and refused to vote for any candidate as my own private protest against all candidates for a particular office.  I vote for state and local officials using the same criterion for those candidates as I do for those running for national office.  Frankly, I believe our local officials have more impact on us as citizens than does the federal government. 

I get up at 4:30 in the morning on election day to unlock the doors to a polling location, set up tables and chairs, supply my own personal equipment to help make voting possible, and lock up the building after the end of a day’s election.  It is but a small sacrifice for such a cherished right.

I communicate with elected officials.  I have sent e-mails and snail-mails and made personal visits to express my views.  My elected officials in or for New York rarely agree with my views.

I have actively participated outside the voting booth in the election process.  I have gone door-to-door campaigning for a candidate of my choice on more occasions than I care to think.  Sometimes it was in the cold rain and snow, but I went.  I was a precinct committee chairman responsible for getting people out to vote.  I also assumed responsibility for finding and promoting candidates for public office and I have participated in political conventions.

I have testified before legislative committees advocating for action on diverse initiatives such as substance abuse prevention and domestic abuse response and treatment.  I’ve authored a bill before the New Mexico Legislature and lobbied for its eventual passage.  New Mexico had no law against Breaking and Entering until I authored the bill that made that activity illegal.

I welcomed the opportunity to serve on jury duty.  I reported to my Selective Service Board to register and make myself eligible for the draft.

I take a stand on issues that matter most to me.  I pay my taxes.  Yes, I grumble about having to pay taxes, but I pay them.  And pay.  And pay.  I stand with my hand over my heart when the National Anthem is played and as chills run up and down my spine.  I still say the Pledge of Allegiance when asked to stand and do so.

I have attended military funerals and bowed my head in reverence as Taps is played and bagpipes droned in the background.  I jump just a little at the sound of the first volley of gunfire at the graveside.  I remain at attention when a flag is removed from the coffin of a veteran, is then folded, and presented to the next of kin.

I have been a merit badge counselor for Boy Scouts for the Citizenship in the Community and Citizenship in the Nation merit badges.  I’ve taught young women how to rise, lower, and fold our flag.  I have presided over several flag retirement ceremonies and have gratefully burned the hair on the back of my hands and arms in doing so.

Times have changed, so I’m not sure what it means to be a good neighbor anymore, but I try to keep my nose out of other people’s business yet make myself available to help when I can.  I report drunk drivers to the police.  I intervene when a personal injustice takes place in my presence.  I’ll clear a neighbor’s or friend’s driveway of snow and I’ll leave the house in the wee hours of the morning or night if called upon to help.  I contribute what I can to help feed and clothe the hungry and homeless.  I’ve stopped on more than one occasion to help change a flat tire.

I’m not really sure which qualifies a person more as a citizen, taking part in government and fulfilling citizen responsibilities such as voting and serving on juries or in the armed forces or simply being involved in the community and being a neighbor.  However, if by nothing other than birth into this country, I am a citizen of the United States of America, and I am proud of my citizenship.

Thank you Los Alamos Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

While sitting at my desk at home preparing a seminary lesson, the open box sitting on the floor next to me seemed to be calling my name.  We have lots of boxes in our house right now, packed in some state of anticipation that we will move from here and return closer to our roots and branches.  This box, however, is open and is set apart from the packed and sealed boxes.

I could finally resist it no more and I reached into the box until I found an overstuffed three-ring album—a scrapbook, I guess.  I carefully opened it and thumbed through the pictures and pages.  A flood of memories rushed through my heart as I carefully ran my fingers over the pages.  Among the pages were letters from what some people would call important authorities thanking me for one thing or another, which was nice.  But then I came to the hand written notes, cards, and letters from the people I remember from on a very personal level.  The letters covered a six year span beginning nearly 30 years ago. I choked back tears as my throat tightened and until I could no longer hold the emotion within me.

I hold those pictures, notes, cards, and letters as a beautiful record of a sacred time in my life.  They serve as a reminder of a special time in my life with a faithful and loving people, some of whom no longer live in Los Alamos but many of whom remain “friends” on Facebook.

Thank you, Los Alamos Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for giving me such wonderful memories that fill a very special Book of Remembrance.

I am a Husband

I am a Husband

I am a husband.  I’ve been a husband for 44 years now.  That isn’t as long as many but probably longer than most marriages right now.  They have been good years, though I have not always been as good as I should have been.  I have certainly been treated better than I deserve.  I have been richly blessed being the husband to my wife.  That is not to say that there have never been rough spots in our marriage.  There have been a few.

We have been fortunate in our marriage in that neither one of us is inclined to argue much with the other.  Oh, we have our disagreements and we work them out over time.  There have been occasional cold wars when silence was the only communication that took place, but those have been few and far between.  Some marriages work quite well by resolving differences through heated arguments, but that has never been us.  Neither one of us want to go there. 

I attribute the success of our marriage to three things.  We have learned to let go and to unconditionally forgive simply because we know the love we share is stronger than any disagreement we may have.  We have never—not ever, not even once—mentioned the “D” word toward the other.  That word is not in our vocabulary.  Finally, we began our marriage with the end in mind.

Not long after we married we moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico.  Los Alamos is her hometown.  How does the saying go? “Marry a son and lose a son.  Marry a daughter and gain a son.”

Los Alamos has a floating population of between 17,000 and 20,000 depending upon who occupies the White House and the current state of world affairs.  Needless to say, in a small town like Los Alamos, everybody knows everybody else and in spite of the secretive nature of government scientific research in that town, there are no secrets.  And, since I worked for the police department, everybody knew me.  People there today still know me as Officer, Detective, Sergeant, Captain, or Chief Talley, all depending upon when they lived in Los Alamos and where I was in my career.  I mention this for a reason. Susan would often be asked by people in town if she was Officer Talley’s wife or Captain Talley’s wife, and so forth.  She finally got tired of the question and answered, “No, he is my husband!”

As her husband I’ve found it important to understand our division of labor.  Yes, there are chores around the house such as lawn care and laundry and those other household tasks, but those are only minor compared to the single most important division of labor.  Keep in mind that I did not establish this protocol.  She did!  Simply stated, it is my job to earn the money and it is her job to spend it.  Actually, she is a great money manager and I trust her completely with how and where she spends our money.

We had been married over 25 years before our good friend Richard Brecht taught me the secret to being a good husband.  He told me that there are three phrases that I must always remember.  They are fallback phrases and frankly they are pretty good.  They are (1) yes, dear, (2), anything you say, dear, and (3) whatever you want, dear.  With all seriousness aside, the compliant husband makes for a happy wife and a happy wife makes for a happy husband.  You reap what you sow.

***

The reality is that I enjoy being her husband.  Aside from the fact that there is never a dull moment with her by my side, especially when she is giving me driving directions, life is pretty good.  She has perfected my dry sense of humor and often turns it on me.

She is always looking out for me, looking out for my best interests.  She is my confidant and the one person in the world that I trust beyond measure.  She is often the voice of my conscience.  She has made me a better person.

I enjoy being her husband.  I enjoy travelling with her, especially by car.  It gives us uninterrupted time to talk of the past, present, and the future.  Goal-setting often takes place in the solitude of the car on long road trips.  You don’t have that intimacy on an airplane.

I enjoy being with her.  We do not follow each other around in the house.  She is often in one end of the house and I am in some other corner, but knowing that she is “in the house” brings a great deal of comfort to me.  And, I don’t go with her when she goes to get her hair cut and she doesn’t sit in the barber shop when I get my hair cut.  (However, we have dentist appointments coming up soon and for the very first time in our marriage we have them on the same day and back-to-back.)  I enjoy our morning routines, like our walks together.  I enjoy sitting next to her when we both need to be on the computer at the same time.  I enjoy being able to touch her hand when we sit together at church.  I enjoy holding the car door and building doors open for her.  I want to hold her jacket for her when she puts it on.  I really want to do those things for her.  And, there is a deep emptiness when I kneel down to pray and she is not by my side.  I miss not being able to give her a quick kiss before bed time and not being able to give her a quick love tap on her – uh – fanny.  When she is not with me I miss not being able to tell her in person that I love her.

As I write this I see a lot of the use of the word “I” and it draws to my attention the fact that I really am self-centered.  I am also very spoiled by a woman who is always there.  The thing is though that it really isn’t about me, but it is about us.  She does so much for me that I sometimes forget that.  There have been two supernal women in my life.  My mother gave me life.  Susan made me live.

I should be a better husband.  I need to be a better husband.  And, in spite of my need to be a better husband, she makes me a better man.

I am a husband.  I am the husband to Susan Schofield Talley, and that is a good thing.

I am a Brother

I am a brother.

I am a brother, but not in the traditional sense of the term.  Well, yes, I am a brother in the way that you would normally define a brother, but I cannot go there.  I don't really know what it is like to be a brother in the typical sense.  I had a brother and a sister, both having died long before I could establish that family relationship, that bond that comes as a result of having common parents.  I was seven years old when Richard Mark died seven days after he was born.  I was eleven years old when Kim, my baby sister died at the age of two following open heart surgery.  The surgery was at a time when pediatric open heart surgery was a fairly new and untested procedure.

My experience as a familial brother is very limited, so when I speak of being a brother I must speak of others with whom I have had a close relationship.  I am really tempted to name names, but you know the danger in doing that.  Somebody will be left out.  However, at the risk of offending any of my "brothers" I am going to name only one, simply because he was my first best friend and for all the time we spent together we may as well have been brothers.  Not only that, but he is also so representative of other "brothers" I have had throughout my life.

Richard Miller was my first best friend and we remain friends to this day.  We are talking about a friendship that began in second grade; a friendship that has lasted well over a half-century.

We spent a great deal of time at each other's homes, ate at each other's tables, and slept in each other's bedrooms and back yards.  We camped together, we hiked together, we fished together, and we even went swimming together.  We did family vacations together.  We laughed together and we laughed at each other.  We occasionally quarreled with each other and there may have been a time or two when we threw punches at each other.  There were "cold wars" and deep, meaningful discussions.  We talked about our futures, our hopes, our fears, and our aspirations.  We knew and understood each other's values, mainly because we discovered those values together.  We knew each other's feelings about God and we knew which girls the other one liked long before the girls ever knew--if they ever found out.  Richard could read my thoughts at the drop of a hat and I could read his mind a mile away.  We often began speaking the same thoughts at the same time and frequently ended each other's sentences.  We literally sweated beneath the same sun and looked up in wonder at the same moon.

I don't think we would have ever used the word "love" to describe the friendship we had, but I know that I would have been devastated had anything ever happened to him.  Richard had an older brother, Corky, but at times I think we were closer to each other than he was to his older brother, but only at times and only because of the age gap between the two of them.  And, I can say it now with no embarrassment whatsoever.  I loved and I still love Richard.

We once solidified our brotherhood as boys our age sometimes did during that era.  I suppose it came from watching too many cowboy and Indian shows on television.  I don't recall if it was pin-pricks or very sharp knives that we used to pierce our fingertips, but we made our brotherhood by becoming Indian Blood Brothers.  If we did that today we would end up being tested for HIV-AIDS or hepatitis for the rest of our lives.

As so often happens when we near the end of that adolescent stage we end up leaving the neighborhood where we were raised.  We both did.  If my memory serves me correctly, I may have been the first to merely test the waters.  Regardless, be both left the neighborhood and moved on to other neighborhoods.  Yet, Richard today remains my brother.  We visit at reunions, chat on Facebook, and even taunt each other now and then.  It feels so good.

Many other brothers have since come into my life.  I haven't gone fishing with them, but we often fished together for meaning of life.  We have not gone camping together, but I've always known that they have been in my camp.  We have not slept in each other's back yards, but we have shared dreams.  And while we have often eaten at each other's tables or together at restaurants and ice cream parlors, more often than not we have feasted on shared values and on the good word of God.  None of these men have become Indian Blood Brothers with me, but we have sweated beneath the same sun and looked up in wonder at the same moon.  I have no hesitation whatsoever in expressing my love for them.  With some I have wept and with all I have laughed.  And just as happens in adolescence, as time rolls on, somebody moves on.  Still, the bond lives on and should anything ever happen to any of my brothers I would be devastated.

I don't know if that is the way it is with familial brothers because as I said, I never really had that experience.  But, I have had had that deep meaningful friendship with a number of brothers.  If this is the way it is with familial brothers, I have Richard Miller to thank for helping me have that experience and affording me that opportunity.

I am a brother, but not in the traditional sense of the term, and I have a brother--actually, I have lots of brothers.

I am a Criminologist

I am, or at least I was at one time a criminologist.  By education, with increasingly larger sheepskins also known as diplomas, I am a criminologist.  By employment I am unemployed.  More specifically, I am retired.

I loved sitting on airplanes.  Well, actually I never really did enjoy sitting on airplanes.  I'm not afraid to fly.  I just don't like having to undress in front of crowds at security gates and I detest being herded like cattle.  But, I loved sitting on airplanes next to people who would invariably ask the employment question.  You know the one I'm talking about.  "What do you do for a living?"  I've always wanted to tell people that I was a spy or maybe a hit man on my way to do my next job, but I figured that if I said I was a spy that I would have to tell people what I did as a spy and that I would then have to kill them.  Claiming to be a hit man raises all sorts of red flags.  And, telling people that you are a police officer (when I was a police officer) always brought up the next question: Are you carrying a gun now?  That is an answer that you really don't want to reveal while sitting on an airplane.  Admitting that you are a criminologist sidesteps all those issues, but creates other problems.  Occasionally when you tell people that you are a criminologist you get the same look that you would expect to get if you said that you were an English or a speech professor.  But, most of the time they ask the only other question they can think of.  You also know that question. it is the why-do-people-commit-crimes question.

The honest answer to that question is, "It's complicated," which draws the same response that you would expect to get if you were to answer that you are an English or speech professor.  In order to avoid that "look" and the silence that follows, when I am asked that question I tend to turn the question around on the person and ask in return, "Why do you believe people commit crimes?"

It is amazing to me how people become experts in human behavior and crime when they can hardly tie their own shoes. Just like how everybody is an expert on police work, EVERYBODY is an expert when it comes to crime.  However, a person could say just about anything to explain criminality and be correct.  There is not one single explanation for criminal behavior.

There are some things that may be of interest regarding criminology, though most people, students in particular would disagree about that last statement.  People really don't find hard core criminology interesting.  First, there are two major types of criminologists.  There are those who are engaged in theoretical criminology and the others who are applied criminologists.  Theoretical criminologists work to explain why people commit crimes.  Many of them are in search of the Holy Grail of explanations.  Applied criminologists look to solve the Holy Grail of crime prevention, reduction, and mitigation.  In a way they feed off of each other.  Unfortunately, both camps tend to heavily rely upon research based on prison inmates--those who have already committed crimes.  People like me believe that if we want to prevent and mitigate crime that research should be conducted on those who do not commit crime.

Just as there are two major camps of approach to criminology, there are sub-specialists of criminologists.  For example, there are those who specialize in penology and others who specialize in vitimology.  My good friend Susan Korsgren is a victimologist.  She knows things about victimization that if she told them openly that she would likely be victimized herself.  What she knows is not politically correct.  Nonetheless, it is correct.

Then there are those who study the effect of law on crime.  For example, they look to see how ever increasingly numbers of laws makes criminals one day when the exact same behavior a day earlier was lawful.  For example, New York's Safe Act, which made certain types of semiautomatic guns illegal made criminals out of a whole class of really good, honest, law-abiding citizens with the simple stroke of a pen.  There are also those who who specialize in the study of delinquent behavior.  To this criminologist, delinquent behavior is behavior that consists of acts which if committed by an adult would be classified as a crime.  It comes from the idea that children under a certain age are incapable of committing a crime and another idea that was popularized by a person by the name of Edwin Schur who said that we do more harm to children by putting them through the criminal justice system than if we did nothing at all to them.  The study of juvenile delinquency can be broken down even further by asserting that the reasons for committing crimes by girls and the treatment for girls engaged in delinquent behavior is different from boys.  My daughter Nanon Talley falls into this area of expertise.

Others study the justice system while other criminologists study the justice process.  Some criminologists are the functional equivalent of bean counters or number crunchers.  They are the crime accountants.  They look at numbers.  Statistics.  They make statistical predictions based on data collection.  Other number crunchers report the numbers on countless reams of paper showing all the sorts of criminal demographic data.  They tell us what crime is like in large metropolitan areas, small villages, and everything in between.  They look at crime by state and by region, by gender and age and ethnicity and specific crime classification.  And more.  And more.  And more.  Their reporting is so massive that it would take years for one person alone to digest a single year's worth of data.

Other criminologists look at police response to criminal behavior.

Criminologists also teach.  no, they don't teach people how to commit crime.  Well, not directly anyway.  They teach about crime either in a general sense or in specific topics or even sub-tobics.

The area that people think they are most fascinated with is that of theoretical criminology.  The problem is that there is no one general theory that identifies why people commit crime.  Theorists have tried but the best they can do is to add to the body of knowledge about why people commit crime.  Such sharing of knowledge is done through publishing in professional journals, and if you are curious (and even you aren't curious), yes, I have published in professional journals.  When theorists publish they publish in areas that are of specific interest to them and use the resources of poor graduate students to help them with research and writing.

There is little agreement among criminologists as to the reason why people commit crime; however, there is agreement in one specific area.  This one area of agreement is the universal rejection of a particular theory.  In layman's terms, the rejected theory is "The Devil Made Me do it Theory".  This theory was the prevailing theory during the Dark Ages and was rejected during the Age of Enlightenment.  It was rejected because we cannot prove through the scientific method the existence of the devil or God.  I reject it for an entirely different reason.  I reject it because I believe that God and Satan can and do invite, persuade, entice, encourage, and tempt people into their camps, but because of a little thing we call agency--our freedom to choose--neither God nor Satan can force us to be good or bad.

Theoretical criminologists fall into one of two major camps.  There are those who champion the cause of Choice or Rational Choice Theory and the other camp is composed of positivists.  Positivists claim that crime is brought on by social, economical, psychological, genetical, medical, or even dietary causes (to name only a few of the causes they espouse).

Most positivists stick to their individual camps and rarely consider other explanations for crime causation.  The opportunities for research in any of the positive camps are so rich that it would be easy to spend a lifetime exploring their own individual ideas.

I guess there is another area that choice theorists and positive theorists agree upon and that is the necessity to continue research and to report findings.  That is why they are constantly writing and why you find them at major universities.  I am grateful that I was never in a publish or perish environment even though I found satisfaction in publishing.

As a criminologist I adopt both camps.  I lean toward Rational Choice over Positive Criminology at about a 60-40 to 80-20 ratio.  In other words, I believe people for the most part choose to commit crimes, but that choice is influenced (not controlled) by those factors I previously mentioned.  I tend to reject the notion that there is only one of those factors at a time that influence choice.  There could easily be social and economic reasons that contribute at the same time to a person's choice to commit crime.

Applied criminologists are grateful for the work of theoretical criminologists, but they take a much more practical approach to crime.  They focus on crime prevention and mitigation.  They look at the "why" answers and then ask, "Therefore, what?"  They ask, "Given everything we know about crime, what can we do to keep an individual from being victimized?  What can we do to keep a person from offending?"  They realize that no social fix exists.  They know that no amount of midnight basketball or removal of Twinkies from grocery store shelves will stop a person from committing crime.  And, so they focus on the obvious.  As a result, applied criminologists have identified a very simple formula to aid us all in crime prevention and mitigation.  They simply say that in order for a crime to occur that you need three things that all come together at the same time.  For crime to occur you must have (1) a motivated offender, (2) a suitable target, and (3) the absence of a capable guardian.  I'm not going to spend a lot of time elaborating on the formula mainly because by now you cannot see straight.  But also, I figure anybody still reading this is smart enough to figure out the implications on their own.  But, to help you out just a little, in order to understand the full effect of these three parts of the formula you need to consider each of the three on a sliding scale.  For example, you can reduce the motivation of an offender by ramping up the areas of capable guardians (guard dogs, NFL linebackers--just don't get an abuser, alarm systems, etc.) and by not presenting yourself as a suitable target.  Don't be walking alone at night in darkened parking lots around bars, stay sober, walk in a crowd of friends, walk to your car with keys in hand, look in the back seat of the car before you get in it, keep valuables locked in your trunk and out of sight, lock the doors to your house, put in motion sensor lighting, keep shrubbery trimmed around your house so people cannot hide behind it.  You know, all the common sense stuff.  Oh, and you should listen for the intense music in the background that is always playing just before somebody jumps out of hiding and grabs you and says, "Gotcha!"  All of these things help to de-motivate offenders.

And so, if you have actually read this far you may have learned something, which by definition makes me a teacher relative to crime, which makes me a criminologist.  Still.

I am a criminologist, or at least at one time I was a criminologist.

Mid-Term Election Thoughts

NOTE: This is long.

I’ve had some thoughts about this last mid-term election that we just experienced.  Doesn’t everybody?

In spite of what the President has tried to pass off as a poor showing of the electorate and that had there been more people voting this year that results would have been different, I beg to differ with him.  I believe that some very clear messages have been delivered and that he, as well as many of us, is overlooking a bigger picture.

Most of the attention this year has been focused on the Senate races across the country.  Everybody knows that Republicans needed to capture (and hold onto) six seats to gain control of the Senate.  That margin was easily achieved.  There are two “howevers” that need to be considered in the context of this election.  First, not every state was electing senators, which can account for much of the poor turnout.  Had every state been electing a senator there would have been a much higher turnout in this past election.  If the President is wise, he should consider the election results as a representative sample of the larger population had every state in the country been able to vote for a Senate seat.

The other bigger “however” though is what went on in the largely ignored House election.  The media spent so much time focusing on the Senate that they all but ignored the House.  Perhaps the media believed that since the House was already in the hands of the Republicans that they just assumed that it would continue to be so with no big changes.  You would expect that from a press that leans to the left.  It is like saying, “If you ignore it, it will go away.”  Well, it didn’t go away.  You see, Republicans soundly outdistanced Democrats in the House by adding more seats to the right than what they had before Tuesday.  Republicans now have well over 240 seats in the House while Democrats have only 175 (plus or minus).  “So what?” you ask.  Well, the House is often referred to as the “People’s Chamber” in Congress and if you now look at a red and blue House map of the United States following Tuesday’s election, you will see that the map is largely red.  There is not enough blue on the map to make any shade of purple.

Lots of exit polls were taken during this past election and in spite of what President Obama wants you to believe, this election was in fact about him.  The American public is tired of the failed policies.  No, the American public is angry over the failed policies.  And, the American public is angry over the direction that our nation is headed.  This election was a referendum on his job as president and on his agendas.  Is it any wonder that only a small handful of Democratic candidates for any office wanted Mr. Obama to endorse them?  Yet, Republican candidates were more than happy to have Mitt Romney show up on their doorstep.

It would be easy for some to say that the anger and discontent was stirred up by FOX News and that the money machine of the Koch brothers is responsible for what happened.  This is where we insert another “however” into the dialogue.  Such assertions overlooks the very biased CNN, MSNBC, and the other three major network news (or more appropriately defined as “opinion”) outlets.  It also disregards the nearly $75,000,000 donation to democrats from the Steyer family, or the $20,000,000 from Michael Bloomberg to democrats, or the $8,000,000 from Fred Eychaner of Newsweb Corp. to democrats.  Then, let us not overlook the $3,700,000 to democrats from George Soros.  The reality is that according to Forbes list of billionaires, of the 22 billionaires that contributed to political actions, 13 of them contributed to liberal candidates or candidates affiliated with the Democratic Party.  If you want to look at bottom dollars, consider then that the Democratic Party has successfully raised $1,152,389,442 (I’ll save you the trouble of counting digits—that is trillion) over the last 25 years compared to Republican $736,075,113 (IJReview).  Oh, and did I mention that the Koch Brothers rank Number 59 in the Big Donors to Political Parties category?  Unions gave a sweet $278 million to Democrats.  The Honorable Mr. Senator Harry Reid might want to reconsider calling the kettle black.

So, what does this all really mean?  Here are some thoughts.

1 – I think it would be appropriate for President Obama to pull out a city map of Washington, D.C. and calculate the distance between the White House and the Capitol Building.  If he is careful, he will notice that the distance is the same from the White House to the Capitol as it is from the Capitol to the White House.  Not only that, but it might be more energy efficient for him to make the trip to the Capitol than to have Congress marching to the White House.

2 – I think it would be incumbent upon the President to look at a map of the United States and see just how red that map really is.  If he wants to preserve the Oval Office for another Democrat, he would look long and hard at that map and disregard his notion that only a small percentage of the American public spoke on Tuesday and he best believe that America is angry over the direction she is going, his pick-and-choose method of what laws to enforce, his liberal use of his pen and telephone, and his unwillingness to go with the majority of the “People’s Chamber”.

3 – I believe he should abandon the “my way or the highway” approach to government.

4 – I believe he needs to come clean with all the scandals, even if it means impeachment.  Even I would be willing to delve into the mysteries.

5 – I believe he needs to assemble a summit on health care to scrap Obamacare and come up with something that will effectively replace it and that will not hurt people like me and many people I know and will be a benefit to those who want health care but who cannot afford it, all while not placing huge burdens on physicians, many of whom have left the practice because of Obamacare regulations. (Yes, that was a run-on sentence.)

6 – I believe he needs to break his fountain pen and let Congress fix immigration and then sign the bill with a borrowed pen.

7 – I believe he needs to work with Congress to develop a fair, simple, and equitable tax code.  Better yet, let Congress fill their constitutional duty to develop a fair, simple, and equitable tax code.

8 – I believe he had better build up our national defense and pay attention to his generals and admirals.

9 – If he knows what is good for him, he will abandon any action that will restrict the Second Amendment.

10 – And if he is really smart, he will start to work on restoring the honor of the First Amendment.

11 – I believe he needs to put tape over Michelle’s mouth and put her on a word diet.

12 – I believe he needs to say, “O.K., folks, Common Core isn’t making a whole lot of sense.  Let’s undo it before we permanently damage the brains of our children and their parents.”

Now, I want to save the best for last. 

To My Dear Republican and Conservative Congressmen/Congresswomen:

1 – Grow up.

2 – Don’t blow it.  The American public has spoken as of last Tuesday and they are putting their trust in you.  Don’t get a big head.  Americans don’t like you much more, if any more at all, than they do Mr. Obama.  The Oval Office is yours to take.  Don’t be stupid and try to put another Bush in the White House.  Don’t put somebody up for the White House that is so ultra conservative that you will scare away moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats.

3 – Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America was a good thought that went awry.  Hold that thought and then act on it.  As part of that contract, p-l-e-a-s-e seal our borders and err on the safe side and deny legal entry into this country to any person that belongs to a party that would in any way want to restrict the freedoms that we so thanklessly enjoy.

4 – Take your cause to the American public and invite the American public to take their cause to you.

5 – Insist that the President work with you.  It does not have to be all about him.  It isn’t about him at all and it isn’t about you.  It is about us.  Americans.  We the People.  Spend a little less time in front of television cameras complaining and a little more time listening to the public and holed up in your offices and in committees and in your respective chambers finding synergistic solutions.

I was a Cub Scout

I was a Cub Scout.

Before I was a Boy Scout I became a Cub Scout.  All my neighborhood friends would gather one afternoon a week at my friend’s house where his mother was our den mother.  Jerry Smith had to be the luckiest guy in the neighborhood to have a mother brave enough to let a bunch of rambunctious eight year-old boys gather in the family basement to play - uh, rather - work with paint and Plaster-of-Paris.  And what was really neat was that Jerry had a pinball machine in the basement!

All the neighborhood gang was involved in Cub Scouts.  Besides Jerry Smith (the luckiest Cub Scout in the world), Richard Miller, Billy Paris, Steve Watkins, and others all came dressed in full Scout uniform every week.  We did all sorts of neat things, including a visit to the local independent television station, WTTV-TV Chanel 4.  We even bobbed for apples and sold ribbons for fund-raisers.

In those days it was acceptable to wear a Scout uniform to school. Not only was it acceptable but it was desirable – even honorable to wear a Scout uniform to school.  We stood and said the Pledge of Allegiance those days and while our classmates stood with hand over heart, we Cub Scouts, defenders of freedom and virtue, rendered a smart two-finger salute on those days we were in uniform.  It was our patriotic duty to salute the Stars and Stripes.

I loved my uniform, not so much because it showed all my rank advancements and gold and silver arrowheads.  I loved it I think for the same reasons other boys loved their uniforms.  Our dads and uncles had worn slightly bigger uniforms not much more than a decade before.  For a Cub Scout the uniform was not just a Scout uniform, it was the uniform of our country for eight year-old boys.  Back in the 50s it was O.K. to love your flag and your country.  People didn’t get upset when you mentioned the name of deity.  It was O.K. to love both God and Country.

I fell in love with Stephanie Williams when I was a Cub Scout.  It happened at a monthly Cub Scout Pack Meeting.  Pack meetings are meetings of several Cub Scout dens.  I don’t remember much about those pack meetings except that they were held in the E.U.B. Church in Smith Valley, Indiana.  The one meeting I do remember though was the night of the Halloween costume contest.

I had walked into the pack meeting and was immediately incensed that there were all these girls there.  How could they have all those girls there at a Cub Scout Pack Meeting, I wondered.  And to make matters worse, they were wearing costumes!  But, then I saw Stephanie.  I knew her from school.  We were in the same class.  She was tall and had long straight hair that she wore in a ponytail and she was beautiful.  She smiled at me.  That was all that it took.

Stephanie moved away not long after that.  I never knew where she moved to and never quite understood how she could leave without saying goodbye or letting me know where she went.  I digress.

The hardest part of Cub Scouts was memorizing our Scout Promise and the Law of the Pack.  It went something like this. “I, promise to do my best, to do my duty to God and my country; to help other people and to obey the law of the pack.”  I thought I was doing fairly well memorizing the Cub Scout Promise, but it was during the learning the promise that I came to understand that there was more to memorize, and that was the law of the pack.  “The Cub Scout follows Akela.  The Cub Scout helps the pack go.  The pack helps the Cub Scout grow.  The Cub Scout gives goodwill.”  I never really knew who Akela was, but whoever he was, he was not doing a very good job of helping me memorize the promise and the law of the pack.  Still, there was something that rang very true about that Cub Scout Law of the Pack.

The saddest day of Cub Scouts was when I left Cubs and became a Weblos Scout.  There would be no more visits to Mrs. Smith’s basement once a week for an hour of discovery and adventure.  In a year there would be no more blue uniform.  However, I would be able to wear a newly acquired patch from my Cub Scout uniform on my soon-to-be-worn Boy Scout uniform.  That Weblos patch would represent that transition from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts.

Weblos Scouting brought new adventures, such as the occasional field trip to Indianapolis for White Castle hamburgers.  At twelve cents a burger a guy could buy and eat a sack full of them, and at the ripe old age of ten you never had to worry about an upset tummy from too many “gut busters.

I remember when Scouting reached its fiftieth anniversary.  Now Scouting has been around for more than one-hundred years.  I am not sure that Cub Scouting is as big now as it was then.  That’s a shame. Perhaps Cub Scouting hasn’t kept pace with the ages.

Somewhere along the line a whole lot of people (not everybody) broke the promise to do their best and forgot their duty to God and country.  I saw a lot of people helping each other immediately after 9/11, but that was short-lived.  Nowadays if somebody is in distress people pull out their smartphone cameras to capture the tragedy rather than jump in and help.  Then it ends up on some social media outlet before it airs on the six o’clock news.  And whereas the pack used to help the Cub Scout grow, it seems that the only pack that is out there now is a more aggressive pack of wolves looking for its next meal.

Is it that Cub Scouting hasn’t kept pace with the ages or is it that the ages haven’t kept pace with what Cub Scouting was fifty years ago?

I was a Cub Scout at a time when it was O.K. to love your flag and your country.  People didn’t get upset when you mentioned the name of deity.  It was O.K. to love both God and Country.

I Am a Son

I am a son.

I can’t say that I was the best son in the world.  I certainly was not the model son.  I made mistakes along the way.  Yes, at times I was disobedient and disrespectful.  I was also an adolescent.  Yes, disobedience and disrespect got me into trouble on occasion.  On more than one occasion it got me into more trouble than what I thought I deserved.  Please don’t think that I made it my life’s ambition to cause trouble.  It’s just that I was far from perfect.

In spite of the occasional disobedience and disrespect, I loved my parents because they first loved me.  There is a deep and almost hidden message in that last statement.  The bottom line is that they loved me and I knew it.  Like so many children I didn’t really understand how deep that love was until I reached adulthood.  Actually, it may have been some time after I reached adulthood before I understood how much they loved me.

As a son I was the recipient of many things.  While “things” were nice when I was young I came to appreciate the fact that those “things” came at a price.  Oh, no, they didn’t come at a price to me.  They came at a price for me.  Those things came at a price of sacrifice and that sacrifice was a symbol of love they had for me.  I didn’t fully understand that as a youth, but I always understood that they were not trying to buy my love.

As their son I received a great inheritance.  Yes, when my parents passed away I received an inheritance from their estate, which thankfully was meager.  I received an even greater inheritance from them long before they died.  I received a heritage of honor and respect among the people who knew, lived with, and worked with my parents and with my ancestors.  Indeed, I was born of goodly parents, and grandparents, and great-grandparents.  I come from good stock—patriots, veterans, laborers, mothers, homemakers.  They were farmers and coal miners and assembly line workers and clergy.  They fought in just about every war America has been involved in.  One of my ancestors was among the first settlers in Jamestown.  I stand on the shoulders of those who have gone on before me.

A time came when my parents could no longer adequately care for each other or themselves.  That is when the call of caretaker came full cycle.  I loved them because they first loved me.

I may have been disobedient and disrespectful at times.  I know there were times that my actions disappointed them.  I can’t say that I was the best son in the world.  I tried to make up for those times.

I know that not all sons and daughters can say what I am about to say, for which I am truly sorry.  Nonetheless, I am a son and I am loved.  Because I am a son I was given many nice things at great sacrifice.  I was given instructions to help me in life.  I was given a proud heritage.  I was given a home that served as a refuge from the world.

Yes, I was born of goodly parents.  I am a son.