The UnTexan

I'M WITH BRUCE or HOW MUCH GOOD COULD A DO-GOODER DO IF A DO-GOODER COULD DO GOOD?

It was a prairie dog drive-by in Santa Fe involving a retired guy named Bruce (who obviously couldn't shoot straight), his pickup truck, a snazzy pellet gun with a telescopic sight, and a do-gooder named Steve, who said, according to the local newspaper, that "he had been sitting in his own car near Galisteo Street, using binoculars to conduct surveillance" on a prairie dog village where he claimed 14 prairie dogs have died from pellet gun wounds in the past few weeks.

Even though Santa Fe has many more of the rodents than it needs, dead prairie dogs upset Steve in the worst way. But prairie dog surveillance? The very idea boggles the mind, but Steve is nothing if not a rodent-loving mind-boggler (Santa Fe is full of mind-boggling lovers of one thing or another, but I keep away from them). So he's sitting in his car conducting surveillance when (eureka!) he sees a pellet gun barrel poke out of a pickup truck window. And. Bang! A shot rings out (It is a pellet rifle. So, I suppose it was, Pooft! A shot etc., etc.). First Steve runs to check on the prairie dogs (because he is a man who has his priorities straight), but finds no rodent carnage. I'm sure that disappointed him just a little (I am also sure that Steve, being Steve, would he have administered CPR or applied teeny-tiny rodent bandages or lamented the dead, whatever was necessary). No deaths or injuries. Whew! But Steve (again, being Steve) then rats out Bruce (rodent habits are as contagious as are some of the diseases their fleas carry) and the police cite Bruce for animal cruelty. Bruce claims he didn't kill the other 14 rodents, says he has nothing against prairie dogs "per se" (but knows Santa Fe has too many of them and they carry diseases like plague) and that, while he admits he fired the errant shot, he is "not a terminator" of prairie dogs and will man-up and accept whatever punishment is handed down. Steve no doubt is somewhere giggling in delight.

And then the story ends up on the front page of the Santa Fe New Mexican. Who, what, when, where and why did that happen? There are reasons. But this isn't about newspapers. It's about do-gooders and the silliness of prairie dog surveillance.

I don't particularly like do-gooders, but I really don't like do-gooders who aren't doing all that much good about anything that matters. At the top of my list are the fearless prairie dog protectors of Santa Fe - the most self-righteous bunch of handwringers in a city full of self-righteous handwringers.

They call themselves People for Native Ecosystems (sounds grand,doesn't it?) though their stated single purpose is to save prairie dogs, specifically Gunnison prairie dogs. That's it. And they are volunteers who work only for what they advertise as that "warm feeling of knowing you are assisting someone or something who/which really needs your help." Of course a prairie dog is a "something" not a "someone" and a "which" not a "who," but these people don't care. They prefer helping rodents to helping people (I wonder if they ever ask themselves why?) and will go to great lengths to do their "job" - for nothing more than what they advertise as that "warm feeling" that do-gooders strive to achieve. It sounds positively orgasmic the way they say it. So the prairie dog protectors must feel so warm and good about the story of Bruce, Steve and the prairie dog drive-by on the front page of the daily newspaper that they want to roll over and smoke a cigarette in the afterglow.

Another do-gooder really believes he's done something good. And I suspect Steve believes in his heart he is saving the world one cute little prairie dog as a time. But what good has he actually done?

I know prairie dogs are cute as all get out - and some people think cute doesn't deserve to die (ask any aging, formerly "cute" person - but I'm with Bruce on this one (and with the guy who suggested that if Steve and his bunch are really interested in Native Ecosystems, they will introduce rattlesnakes and other prairie dog predators - maybe even a wolf - to take care of the problem the old fashioned way. Steve can conduct surveillance and watch it happen. He might even hear the hiss, the rattle, the growl).

Years ago I had a friend named Bruce, a quiet and peaceful fellow from Tennessee pursuing a ph.d. in literature, who ended up with a skunk in the wall of the farmhouse he was renting outside Iowa City. He tried trapping it and when that didn't work he borrowed my shotgun. He hadn't fired a gun in years and didn't know if he could actually shoot the skunk, but a few days later he returned the shotgun and said with a shy grin, "I had forgotten how much fun it is to kill small, helpless creatures." He's right. It produces a warm feeling. A tingle. Thrilling. Almost orgasmic. I know the feeling. Steve would recognize it. But I'm sticking with Bruce.

PURPLE MAJESTIES, FRUITY PLANES AND THE MEANING OF AMERICA

It took me a long time to understand what we were singing about when we sang "America the Beautiful" back in the Boys Choir. What in the hell are "purple mountain majesties" anyway? Piecing together the meanings of "purple" and "mountain" and "majesties" back then, I figured we were singing about America being king of the hill. That seemed logical enough. Hadn't America almost single-handedly saved the world from the Germans and the Japs (we thought so back then). But "fruited plain?" What is a "fruited plain?" I thought the words were "fruited plane" and decided it had something to do with Chiquita Banana flying DC-3s packed with golden bunches my way from somewhere in Central America. Naughtier friends in the Boys Choir speculated that the words were actually "fruity plains" and had something to do with "queers" (as we called gay people in those days) in the "plains" where all of those "amber waves of grain" grew. Frightened, homophobic, mostly pre-pubescent boys sabotaged the song and sang "fruity plains" and giggled as if we understood what we were saying. It was our only defense against the mystery and thrill of it all (and against the homosexual farmers waving and tending all of that amber grain). We must have learned other verses, but like most Americans I only remember the purple mountains and fruity planes parts.

It turns out there are seven more "O Beautifuls" after that. And for what?

• "...for pilgrim feet" (and the pilgrims' "stern impassioned stress"), wherein God is invoked to stitch up some flaws and "America, America" is asked to "confrim thy soul in self-control..." (those damned stern pilgrims and their big-footed self-control!).

• "...for heroes proved," wherein God is once more invoked (this time as some sort of gold smelter) touching "America, America" with "divine" gains (I suppose this verse has something to do with the cost of freedom, God, and the bargains at Wal-Mart).

• "...for patriot dream..." which includes "alabaster cities" (more on this later) and entreats "America, America" to practice more "good and brotherhood" and rhymes "dream" and "gleam" (those alabaster cities gleam) and "years" and "tears." And God's grace and "crowning" (Americans are crown-haunted people, apparently in fear of becoming Canadians) are in there too.

• "...for halcyon skies" with more "amber" grain and "purple mountain majesties," (repitition already) only this time the plains are "enameled." Enameled? Why? Maybe God knows how to smelt gold AND enamel plains, but how can enamel plains grow amber grain? Maybe it's a trick those homosexual farmers know. There is more of God's grace "on thee" followed by the lines, "Til souls wax fair as earth and air/And music-hearted sea!" Waxed souls, Earth, Wind and Fire (and musical seas)? Come on. I think the writer needed a word to rhyme with "thee" and somehow misplaced her thesaurus.

• And again "...for pilgims' feet..." (and more "impassioned stress" of course) only this time thought control is thrown into the mix as "paths are wrought through/wilds of thought" by those pilgrim feet (actually "By pilgrim foot and knee?"). Apparently those stomping, kneeing pilgrims play dirty when it comes to mind control in the name of God and America. Pilgrims sound like Scientologists.

• Then we come to "...for glory-tale.." which introduces American self-justification but also the notion that "selfish gain" just might be a "stain" on the "banner of the free" and that there might be some evil lurking in the comingling of God, democracy and capitalism (But who believes that? Wal-Mart isn't in the stain remover business).

• And finally we return to that "...of patriot dream" of "alabaster cities gleam" (those alabaster cities gleaming again), only this time the dream looks to a future when "nobler men keep once again/Thy whiter jubilee." This seems to be a clear reference to the powerful desire among Tea Partiers and other white people (the ones who always deny that they are racists) to dump Obama, put the crown back on the white guy's head where it belongs, knee the homosexual farmers right in their fruity, enameled plains, restore some good old-fashioned pilgrim self control (and thought control while we're at it), wax some souls, play some Earth, Wind and Fire, shop at Wal-Mart, pretend there are no greedy stains on the banner of freedom, and stomp the shit out of Katie Holmes. America! Beautiful! Hallelujah!

That's it. Everything we are.

But how was a pre-pubescent choirboy supposed to understand all of that "America, America" stuff was leading up to a big white jubilee (not only white, but "whiter"). Who knew? Let's boogie children.

DON'T BUY CENTURYLINK: ADVENTURES WITH THE PRESUMPTUOUS BITCH OF ARROGANT UNDERSTANDING

The UnTexan is in New Mexico and would like to be writing about how good that feels. It’s nice to be back in the land where manana doesn’t mean tomorrow, it simply means not today. That’s expected and part of the charm of the place. However, there is manana and there is corporate assholery. In this case the corporation is Internet and phone service provider CenturyLink.

My complaint is simple: CenturyLink sold me services it cannot deliver, and knew it could not deliver when I made my purchase, then did absolutely nothing to ameliorate the situation.

Several weeks before coming to Santa Fe, I contracted with CenturyLink to have both telephone and wireless Internet installed at our new house the day we arrived. I bought a bundled deal that had everything my wife would need to do her job, which she brought with us when we moved. CenturyLink’s sales rep (wherever he was located, those people are everywhere) assured me there was no problem – and even checked to make sure service was available at my new address. A couple of days before leaving Texas, I received an email confirming that service would be established the day I arrived complete with order number, phone numbers, etc. We moved. But when we arrived there was no phone or Internet service. Additionally no modem/wireless router had been shipped to us (also as promised).

I called CenturyLink customer service (in Memphis, I think). The modem would be delivered the next day and everything would be up and running. The next day came, the modem arrived but nothing happened, still no phone or Internet. Meanwhile my wife was in a panic about doing her job and ended up going to a friend’s house to use her wireless Internet. I called customer service again (in one of the Dakotas) and was assured I would receive an installation visit that day. Nothing. My third call was answered by a guy in Salt Lake City who did some checking and said that I could not get service for at least 30 days because of a line upgrade in our area and that my order actually had been put on hold. He said the upgrade was because CenturyLink wants to sell people a new product. He at least got me phone service. Waiting 30 days was out of the question. I decided to try another Internet service, but my house is in the mountains and the wireless signal from their tower in Santa Fe is blocked by a ridgeline. So, back to CenturyLink. Meanwhile my wife’s panic grew even more panicky. I called CenturyLink one more time to check and this time was told, by a very pleasant somebody in South Dakota, it would be at least the end of July before I receive Internet service.

Not acceptable.

So yesterday (as my wife’s panic became the panickiest) I called CenturyLink one more time to tell them that their lying to me about installing my Internet service was creating real problems and forcing me to find more expensive service elsewhere, but that I would like to keep the unlimited long distance service that was one of the reasons I purchased the original CenturyLink bundled service. I also told them I believed I should get a discount on the phone service. I figured it was the least they could do, what with their failure to deliver all of the services they sold me. What did I get? A big laugh (literally) and the exact words, “I can tell you that ain’t gonna happen,” from the customer service rep who then passed me along to someone named Jill who must have gotten her degree (or maybe her GED) in piling up bullshit – that or they taught it to her at one of those corporate shit-shoveling seminars. Jill spoke a corporate language we all recognize as soon as we hear the first few words: I call it Arrogant Understanding. She was sure sorry I was frustrated, etc., etc., and sorry about the “inconvenience” it caused my wife (“More than an inconvenience,” I said. "A real problem." I was pissed off and she knew it. So she again told me she “understood my frustration.” Jill must have taken the extra-credit course in “understanding,” because she wanted me to know she understood the hell out of the situation, but I don’t want understanding, I want action), and she said (oops!) someone should have told me about the inavailability of service until the end of July, etc., etc, and how even she had CenturyLink phone service and her neighbors across the street could get DSL and she couldn’t get it (not my fucking problem, Jill baby) and the best she could do was give me $20 off my first phone bill (in other words, eat shit and kiss our CenturyLink ass). Big damned deal, Jill baby. I’ll take it. But I’m not through with CenturyLink yet. Strangely she seemed to think throughout the conversation that when CenturyLink was ready to hook me up in late July I’d be there, computer in hand. She even said there might be some “loyalty” perks in it for me (Jill really was the presumptuous bitch of arrogant understanding).

I’ve already called the local Better Business Bureau, which passed me along to the Better Business Bureau in Kansas City, where CenturyLink is headquartered. “All CenturyLink complaints go to Kansas City,” I was told, so I must not be the only complainer. A complaint form will arrive tomorrow or Thursday. I could complain online at www.kansascity.bbb.org but I don’t have any Internet service.

If you have a complaint against CenturyLink call 816-421-7800. Or go online and file your complaint at www.kansascity.bbb.org. And if you were considering purchasing anything from CenturyLink, don’t. Find someone else. Anyone else. CenturyLink lies. Don't buy what they sell. And if customer service wants to pass you along to someone named Jill, be ready for some shit to be shoveled your way. She'll understand.

HEARING BIG PINK, SEEING THE BAND, FINDING A RESTING PLACE

Levon Helm died last week and I got to thinking about how long his old and soulful voice has been part of my life. He was 71 when he died but Levon and I were young men with southern accents back then (he made music with his, I tried to get rid of mine; it worked out OK for both of us). He was singing and I was drowning in the mess I'd made of my life - and still more than a year away from pulling myself together enough to take a deep breath and swim for higher ground. Levon and I have gone through some stuff together.

It was 1968 and things were happening. The Summer of Love happened in San Francisco in 1967 and hippies were happening everywhere. Vietnam had happened, was happening and would continue to happen. The draft darkened my days because I knew being drafted would force some difficult choices about fighting or fleeing and both promised dire consequences (it was much easier to picture myself in a hippie uniform than an Army uniform). There were protests and they were growing. In March, Lyndon Johnson said he he would neither seek nor accept the Democratic nomination for another term in office (I watched the speech alone in a beer bar). LBJ was going (and we were glad), Nixon was coming (but we couldn't see him clearly yet). North Vietnam's Tet offensive happened in January. In March as many as 500 villagers were massacred at My Lai by U.S. soldiers (no one would know about it for a year but there was already a nagging feeling that terrible things were happening to somebody over there somewhere every day). Walter Cronkite turned against the Vietnam war (if he was against it, who could be for it?). Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April; Robert Kennedy was killed in June (a couple of days after somebody shot Andy Warhol). There was violence in Chicago and the Democrats nominated Hubert Humphrey to run for president. Jackie Kennedy married Aristotle Onasis. Nixon defeated Humphrey in November to become president.

And 1968 had its own soundtrack: Cream, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors; Marvin Gaye heard it through the grapevine and only needed Tammy Terrell to get by; Ohio Express had love in its tummy; Janis Joplin fronted Big Brother and the Holding Company in a world that was down on her; the Intruders sang "Cowboys to Girls;" the song said Otis Redding was sitting on the dock of the bay, but he wasn't (he was dead already); the Byrds released Sweetheart of the Rodeo and Gram Parsons was already rethinking country music (lots of Byrds fans hated it); meanwhile the Rolling Stones were playing let's pretend - fronted by Jumpin' Jack Flash and posing as street fighting men; and the Beatles sang "Hey Jude."

In 1968 there were music and mayhem aplenty.

The Band's Music from Big Pink came out in July 1968. I first heard it in a grubby apartment with a grubby guy named Bill and his pale, lank-haired girlfriend. They weren't dirty exactly, but they were unwashed and had achieved a sort of hippie-grubbiness that I admired, even aspired to, but didn't achieve for another couple of years (and then mostly on weekends because I was always a hippie with a good day job). Bill was a student from Antioch College who was spending a semester as a copyboy at the North Carolina newspaper where I worked as an editor - Antioch students had to do odd things like that as part of their education - and he brought the album with him from New York City, where he'd stopped off to visit friends in the Village on the way from Ohio to North Carolina (Bill intrigued me and words like "Antioch," "Ohio" "the Village" and "New York City" sounded exotic to a guy who had never been farther south than Myrtle Beach, SC, farther north than Culpepper, VA or farther west than east Tennessee). The record wasn't even for sale where I lived. I had never heard of The Band, but Bill wanted me to hear the album. He said they had toured with Bob Dylan; he said Dylan wrote some of the stuff on the album (I liked electric Dylan). Dylan even did the painting on the album cover. He said it was something I needed to hear. He hinted there would be drugs involved (I was a southern boy and my idea of a good time in those days involved large quantities of beer and the occasional bottle of Rebel Yell). "Come over after work," Bill said. I said, "Sure."

Bill was right.

The first song on side one was "Tears of Rage" and I knew from the beginning that it was something brand new that sounded like I had been listening to for a long, long time. The feeling grew as the needle moved to "To Kingdom Come" and "In a Station" and "Caledonia Mission." Richard Manuel sang; Rick Danko sang. And then the first accoustic notes of "The Weight," and then the drums, and then the voice of Levon Helm, taking me to someplace I might have been before but via a brand new route, a place of mystery and music and language gathered up in ways that were foreign and familiar at the same time. A journey to Nazareth, a message (several messages from "Miss Anny"), Miss Moses, Carmen, the Devil, Luke waiting for Judgement Day, a guy named Crazy Chester and a dog named Jack, freighted blblical-sounding words and mysterious meanings, not quite religious but hymnlike. A new song with the heart and soul of an old song. Folk music, rock and roll. Country music (but what country? Those were the days when Bobby Goldsboro was singing the smarmy "Honey" on the radio and it wasn't that country). All of those things but not quite any of those things.

We listened to the album over and over that day. I am not sure how many times because both beer and marijuana were involved, but now I have listened to The Band for 44 years - stoned, drunk and cold sober. I even saw them a couple of times in Atlanta (where I finally washed up on a slippery slope that I mistook for higher ground), once with their manager Albert Grossman in attendance. Grossman (whose wife is on the cover of Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home and reminded every guy I knew of the woman he'd never meet) died in 1986 when he suffered a supersonic heart attack aboard the Concorde on the way to London, but that night (1971? 1972?) he was taking care of business, fussing around back stage in his black-rimmed glasses and his longish hair and The Band responded with the tightest, no-nonsense concert I ever heard. They were great. I figured it was because the boss was in town. On Jan. 22, 1974 I saw The Band on its tour with Bob Dylan. What I remember most about that concert was that Dylan opened the show with "Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" and closed with a different version of the same song. I remember it being a good show, though both Dylan and the members of The Band remember that whole tour as dispirited and unhappy. I don't remember the details. Drugs might have been involved.

I was 24 years old in 1968 and my world was angry, noisy and confusing and things would get worse before they got better. The Manson murders and Woodstock (both in August 1969) and the Rolling Stones grim Altamont concert (December 1969) were in the future. A psychiatrist and a long hospital stay were in my future because 1969 was when I finally decided to save myself rather than keep sloshing around in my own private cesspool. And through it all, even in the worst of times, I could count on the voice of Levon Helm and the music of The Band to carry me to a refuge and a resting place. I still listen.

YOU CAN FEEL THE DISEASE

Remember polio? Texas is like that. Sometimes it cripples you, sometimes it sits on your chest and smothers you. But it always gets you one way or another. Ask Rick Perry. He just came limping back. And I have felt stifled nearly to death for a decade. In fact, Rick Perry and I suffer different manifestations of the same ailment: Too much Texas. I should never have come here and he should never have left. Now we are both in the process of curing our mistakes.

 

2011: GRIEF, EXHAUSTION, ANOTHER NEW YEAR IN TEXAS, AND THE DISTANCE FROM HERE TO HAPPINESS

My wife told me the other day that I should not say things like, "I hate Texas." She said I partucularly should not say them in front of real Texas-loving Texans (like some of the people we know here). She reminded me that we had just spent a couple of days enjoying a friend's farm near Tarpley, Texas, and that the friend is one of those real Texans. She said I should say, "I am not a Texan" or maybe, "I will never be a Texan" and let it go at that. And while those things are true, after a decade here I am not a Texan and never will be because I really don't like Texas. But in deference to her I will not say I hate it. The truth is that she doesn't like it any more than I do, but she is nicer about it. We need to leave. We have known that for a long time. And plans were in place.

In fact, we figured we would be back in New Mexico by now. We were moving forward. The Austin house was on the market. It was ready for viewing (and some people came to see it). We had begun to pack. But things happened the way things do. My wife's mother had a heart valve replaced along with some unanticipated bypass surgery and never recovered. Sometimes she seemed a little better, but mostly she seemed worse day after day. Pneumonia, kidney failure, liver problems, circulation problems. She spent two months in intensive care in Kansas, a few days at a rehab center a long ambulance ride away in Nebraska and, after a long ambulance ride back to Kansas, one night in a hospice center where she died. My wife spent much of that time with her mother and was there when she drew her final quiet breath. It was a difficult time for Dauna, her siblings, her family, all of us. When we returned to Texas in October, grief and exhaustion filled our days and left little time or energy to prepare for the future - or for moving. We took the house off the market. We needed a place to call home and the way we see it our house and Texas are two different things. We settled in.

October became November became Thanksgiving became Christmas became the New Year. Even the happiest days were freighted with sadness of one sort or another. Living near tears is an exhausting thing. We decided a trip west might help. We put it off at the last minute. A little later we decided again to take a long drive west, but a blizzard between here and where we were going forced us to cancel our plans and sit tight (at least that is what we told ourselves). Entropy threatened to complicate inertia. Dauna still hesitated; I insisted. I reserved a motel room in Lubbock. We drove west on a Wednesday morning and arrived in Santa Fe two days - and 698.9 miles - later. That is where our old friends are and where our life should be. It helped to visit. We felt better when we drove 509.2 miles to Tucson to visit our son Nick and meet his girlfriend a few days after that. A couple of days later we left Tucson and spent two days driving 900 miles to Austin. We covered lots of bare and beautiful western miles. It felt good.

So we remain in Texas for now. And of course it is impossible to drive far enough or fast enough to outrun grief. But we have traveled 2,100 miles toward recovering the exhilarating momentum that carried us through last summer. We are not sure exactly how far we have to go to get there and get away from here. But we are back on the road again, 2,100 miles farther along than we were 10 days ago. That is a good sign.

Dauna visits Dauna's in Harper, TX.

VISIONS OF FRUITCAKE DANCE IN MY HEAD

"Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish...." James Joyce, Ulysses

Fruitcake was part of what Christmas tasted like when I was a boy. Dense, dark, full of nuts and candied fruit. To be more specific: Claxton fruitcake was part of what Christmas tasted like. We lived in North Carolina. The fruitcake came from Claxton, Georgia and I loved anything that came from anyplace else, even Georgia. My fruitcake dreams turned Georgia into an exotic place and I'd wanted to run to exotic places for as long as I could remember. I had maps and plans. But when I grew up and the time came to run I hesitated. Perhaps it was fear of going. Perhaps it was unfinished family business (there was lots of that and some remains as unfinished as I finally left it). Perhaps it was fear of coming back. Perhaps I knew that once I began to run I would never stop again (and I haven't, not really). Whatever the reason I delayed my departure until staying was unbearable and leaving was preferable to suicide or some slower more painful form of death. Finally I could stay no longer. By then I was a man in my 20s and hoping for someplace more exotic than Georgia, but Atlanta was the only place I could run to from the middle of North Carolina with $80 in cash, no job, a briefcase full of clean underwear and a bus ticket. Georgia never lived up to my exotic fruitcake dreams - and I never went to Claxton - but I stayed anyway. Until a few years later when I left for someplace else - this time without so much hesitation. And after that for someplace else - with even less hesitation. And after that - with none. And. And. And. And here I am, for now anyway (there is always someplace else), with another birthday a week behind me, another Christmas a week ahead and a couple of Claxton fruitcakes chilling in the refrigerator. I like to eat it it sliced thin accompanied by a good cup of coffee. But I no longer have fruitcake dreams of exotic places (I've been to some and Georgia isn't one). And the fruitcakes no longer taste like part of Christmas. I lost my taste for that long ago. But I've never quit eating fruitcake at this time of year. Dark, dense, crammed full of nuts and candied fruit. I particularly enjoy the bright red candied cherries. Nowadays it tastes a little like the dimming past and a few bright dreams of the future, but mostly it tastes like life right now and I eat it without hesitation, pause, and prepare to move on.

HOME MADE DISCOMFORT

THE TEA PARTY, THE N-WORD AND TIPTOEING THROUGH THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

They read the Constitution on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday the same way Ann Coulter colors her hair -- making sure the dark roots don't show.

They left out the part about how one slave = three-fifths of a man (it was called the "three-fifths compromise," an article of the Constitution, not and amendment), which gave slave-holding southerners congressional clout by allowing them to count people they didn't really consider to be people, three-fifths or otherwise, as people for the purposes of setting up congressional districts. Slaves were property, which white southerners argued well into the 20th century was the reason they couldn't treat black people as their equals (or even as human beings) long after the 13th amendment set them free. The other amendment House members chose not to read ordered that slaves, even those who escaped to free states, had to be returned to their rightful owners. Both were crucial to the ratification of the Constitution. Leave out slavery? As we begin to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, no time seems more approapriate for including it.

The tea partiers (and their brethren the "birther" blowhards) -- who were meant to be appeased by the reading -- apparently like their United States uncomplicated by the messy realities of history (and the messiness of the Constitution). And my guess is that African Americans are a reality lots of tea partiers wish would retreat quietly back across the tracks to what southerners routinely called (offensive word warning) "niggertown" when I was growing up. It is a word I always hated, a place I always wanted to go as a child, but I was raised around white people who remained terrified of those freed three-fifths people living over there 100 years after the Civil War. Happily my southern family has become more integrated and colorful in recent years, becoming more and more a family I could be proud to belong to (I fled the south and the family a long time ago. I had my reasons but interestingly not one relative has asked me why. Ever.)

Which brings us to the N-word. And the upcoming publication of versions of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer without it. The books are being bowdlerized in pretty much the same way the Constitution was bowdlerized yesterday in Washington. I suppose everything becomes easier to understand with the dark parts left out. The N-word will be replaced in many instances in the books with the word "slave" (which ignores the message of "Oh, Freedom," the old spiritual that says: "Before I'd be a slave I'd be buried in my grave").

I don't use the N-word. Never use it in convsersation. Never have used it in conversation. Never was allowed to use it (my grandmother used it with impunity). Cringe when I hear people say it. But there is using it and then there is using it. When Mark Twain used it he had his reasons and they were good ones. I am not Mark Twain, but I am a writer and, as a writer, I would use it (and have used it) in my writing if the situation calls for it. I will use any word the situation calls for. That is what writers do, use the word that's called for, even the uncomfortable words. And they should not be removed, not even for children, especially not from Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Huckleberry Finn is not a book for children and it should not be taught to children or anyone else not prepared to deal with its darkness and complexities -- and its language, all of it. It is an adult book, an important book. Every word of it. How important? Ernest Hemingway said, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." Why mess with a good thing?

LANGUAGE IN THE DIGITAL AGE (AND A FEW WORDS ON JONATHAN FRANZEN'S "FREEDOM")

I was reading a story in my old New Mexico hometown newspaper the other day. Who wouldn't read a story headlined: "Man Cursed by Spirits Indicted for Rape."

The suspect told detectives "he's followed by spirits that tell him to do bad things and it's possible that might have happened in this case." So did they or didn't they? How does he know? How does anybody know? It's a variation of the old devil-made-me-do-it defense that doesn't usually play to well in court, especially for things like raping a child. It was a dark and unsettling story with evil spirits demanding to be read.

Then I came to this sentence: "Sandoval was accused of digitally penetrating his niece Sept. 18 while he was staying in Espanola." I hesitated over the words "digitally penetrating." What exactly does this mean at a time in history when "digital" can mean so many things?

Digitally penetrating. Is it something physical or something numerical? Is it something real or something virtual? Does it involve hands or computers? Is it fingers or alogorithms? Did those evil spirits tell Sandoval to do something or simply to type something? Is it data or music or rape?

Not only has Sandoval's niece been compromised, the writer of the story has used compromised language as well. What happened between Sandoval and his niece is not clear at first glance because the word "digital" is not as efficient as it once was. Inefficient words die as they are starved of meaning. Or they evolve. Or they learn to keep more meaningful company.

We must be able to grasp the horror of what Sandoval is accused of doing to his niece quickly and completely. "Digitally penetrating" is "digitally" inefficient.

SPEAKING OF THE DIGITAL AGE:

I would like to repost something I posted on Facebook earlier today:

Jonathan Franzen's Freedom is the most aggressively boring book I ever read -- and I have read a lot of books. It is also aggressively well punctuated. Perhaps the two things are linked.

What was Time magazine thinking?