Bluegrass in the Hills

I had the opportunity to speak to a group of folks gathered in the sandy backwoods of Franklin County last week. I shook hands, handed out cards, and asked each of them for their vote. One very distinguished very gray haired lady sat, arms folded, and deliberately looked at the wall as I passed by. At first I thought it was a teasing slight.

But as I stood there it became apparent that it was not teasing. I politely moved on. As the night progressed and the time came near for my five minutes of fame I thought of her and slipped my prepared remarks in the bib of my over'alls.

I took the mic and said " I have no idea what I am about to say, but I want to mention a little about who I am before I go into the political rhetoric that I know you are all tired of anyway "

"You see" I proceeded, " I was born a few miles over, but fifty years ago next month I came to visit a house less than three miles from where we stand. I came here to pick cotton with my mother, for Sam Adams, my daddy gone to Memphis. We hadn't been here a week when Mr Green came knocking in the night to say that my daddy was dead. I didn't leave that place for two more years"

I went on to tell them about the day grandpa gave me the first and only honest to goodness country whipping I ever had, The cool water from the well and hot days in the garden, and the 36 biscuits my grandmother cooked every morning in the wood cook stove. An eight year old boy lyin' in the the fall fields of sage grass on that sandy hillside below the the two room house. The color of the sky and the feel of the clouds falling into space. Just an eight year old boy and his own private universe.


I went on to talk about job creation, the need to raise incomes instead of income taxes. I said that I had not considered myself a republican before this election and that although the circumstances choose me rather than the other way round, I was running on the Republican ticket but for my money they could vote them all out.

I went on for a while, then the band started to suit up again and I stepped off the stage. I shook some hands. I had more than one tell me that I was going to force them to vote a split ticket this time and thanked me for my talk. Then as I was slipping for the door, a graceful hand caught my arm. She said with a genuine smile. " Before you go, I'd like to dance with a man who picked cotton for Sam Adams".

I still don't know how she's going to vote, but she's a dang fine dancer.

summer of '69

Had to make a long tiresome trip yesterday.

All the way up I65 to drop off my little man to visit with his grandparents.

Somewhere in Kentuk, Little man asleep in the car seat next to me, near the Corvette Museum my car began to shake. The rumble concerned me at first. A vibration and rumble is not a sound one hears, even at 80, in a Toyota Prius. Then I caught them in the rear view mirror. Yellow bumble bee color, Silver hood latches gleaming in the sun, Raised breather on the intake, Convertible with the top down. The driver, a man with long gray hair blowing in the wind.

Getting larger in the mirror and the resonant rumble in the car getting to the level that I was concerned that my passenger might awake. They pulled alongside. I saw her.

But for the gray in her hair and the lines in her face the couple might have been on their way to the drug store for a soda or the drive-in movie.

The Homecoming queen and the quarterback, 90 miles per hour on Highway 65 in a bumble bee yellow SS396.

Fifty years late for the senior prom.

Some things change. Some never do.

As the car passed and disappeared out of sight I thought about letting the hammer down and showing him what an electric car can do. Out of concern for my passenger I let it go. I am much too mature for that sort of thing.

I did notice as he passed that the trunk didn't fit just right. Nothing wrong with it. Just like a thousand that I have seen before. Came from the factory like that. Like so many things in '69 they looked better than they really were. Mismatched colors, cracks in the paint, tears in the fabric.

And I am not talking about the cars.

But in some ways 1969 was the pinnacle of civilization. The couple likely lay in the back of that car listening to Moody Blues or Janis Joplin with the top down. They watched the moon as Neal Armstrong landed in the moondust and the owner of that Chevy took a giant leap for mankind.

Today they are just going north on 65 on a sweet September day. The rumble of the exhaust raising memories of a better time deep inside them both.

1969, Prettiest boy in school married the most handsome young woman in the county. Likely worked a lifetime, raised the kids and retired. Fifty years and the payoff is a road trip to Canada with the top down. One more trip as summer turns into fall.

And I am not talking about the trees.

Ain't it the Truth?

Ain't it the Truth.

I have noticed a cloud of dumbfog rolling in around our country. It seems to be around the media flowing from the cities to the country like a morning dew. " Good Morning" has been replaced by "Duh" in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

This article ain't going where you think it is.

A few years ago a guy named James Fry wrote a book about his experience with drug addiction. He got on Oprah. She made it a book of the month club selection and he sold a million volumes. I read the book. It is really good. Then some pointy headed intellectuals started digging around and found that Mr. Fry's prison experience was actually a couple days in the county jail. William Bastone with "The Smoking Gun" wrote an expose' that eventually got Fry back on Oprah to "Apologize" for misleading the public. 2000 people asked for and got their money back from publisher Random House because Oprah told them what to think.

What is missing from all this hoopla is the book is the best account of the devastation of alcohol and drug abuse that I have ever read. Literalismist (e.g. people who study literature as science) say that the lack of quotation marks in Fry's remarks indicate an artistic license to move freely from his internal and external discourse. This is Acadam'e talk for what we used to call fiction. If it don't have quotes it is not literal. Not intended to be.

However, when the mind is involved. Particularly a troubled drug and disease ravaged mind, the internal prose can be a more accurate window into the suffering of a person than "The Truth".

When I saw all this I thought of Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues, and Bill Wilson and the Big Book. Neither were under oath when they penned their work. Neither were filled with facts. But both were filled with immense truth.

One wonders if writers like Thomas Pynchon, Robert Bly, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S Thompson, or even Kahlil Gibran could have survived the Oprah expose'

I personally doubt it. But I wasn't covered by the cloud of dumbfog. I read, enjoyed, and forgot Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Da Vinci Code and, Catcher in the Rye without once considering if the fact was more important than the truth the volumes contained.

Can you Imagine a Sixty Minutes team outside Kurt Vonnegut's house demanding the "truth". I think they might have met a double barreled shotgun. " I got your truth right here buddy".

NPR recently ran an article on Carlos Castaneda. It seems that currently there are many young doctoral students working on a thesis to disprove and discredit Castaneda's work. These young academics are setting out to prove that Castaneda was not entirely honest when he said that he could shapeshift into other animals, fly like the crow or teleport to any place in the universe with the power of his mind. On his Time cover he was listed as "An Enigma wrapped in a Mystery" Which is also acadam'e talk for the byproducts of male bovine digestion.

I read the books, saw the movie, and never once shapeshifted. I immediately brought to mind a toothless old gentleman from Phil Campbell who once told me "I ain't say'n it happened, I'm just saying I seen it."

Never mind the facts - this gentleman knew the truth. Be on the lookout for it.

The 300 at Thermopylae

All my readers are aware of the battle of Thermopylae. The younger set know of the place from the powerful semi-animated film of 2007 titled The 300. The older set, sat in awe in the 1962 version of Richard Egan facing Xerxes at The pass called Thermopylae.

Two or three might even have paid attention in ninth grade history class. But the quick and dirty synopsis is that 300 Spartans held the pass for 48 hours against an omnipotent army of Persians set upon destroying government by the people, for the people. For all time.

Had the Persians succeeded we would likely not be having this discussion about free elections today.

In the movie versions they all died of course.

I really hope a better outcome for the three hundred volunteers that I solicit today.

I stand hat in hand asking for your help. Not just support. Not just money. Not only your vote. Although I do need all that.

I have to figure out a way to organize a campaign that can put the will of the people back into the Senate Six seat and set corruption and mismanagement of your tax dollars on the back row.

No, I am in a political contest against the most powerful and best funded political opponent since the sixties. An opponent who raised over a million dollars in the last election- with no opposition.

The State of Alabama is a ten billion dollar business and it has been controlled by my opponent and his cohort for 25 years. A cohort which can raise another million any time of the day or night with a single phone call. They can probably do it every day for a year.

After all ten billion dollars of your money is at stake - Every year for the next four years.

Yes friends I have stuck my neck out. Way out. Like the turtle, the only way to make progress. Unfortunately that is also the way to start turtle soup. Also unfortunately- divisions within our State Republican Party have, for the time being, left my reinforcements behind in Greece.

So let’s review a couple of things. First and foremost, the thing on my mind is how I can bring about some prosperity brought by jobs and careers with paychecks which will support a hard-working family. That’s my first priority. To put paychecks in the hands of the people instead of government handouts. Then to lower your taxes and put groceries on your table.

And so I’m about to do the hardest thing I’ve had to do in this campaign: ask you to consider joining the club of 300 volunteers who can steer the direction of Alabama.

I need 300 people who will put their name on a paper and publicly state that they are ready to retire the 25 year term of our sitting senator in district 6.

300 people, brave enough, who will stand and agree that 136 years of a Democratic party controlled legislature in Alabama is long enough.

And from each of you I need skin in the game.

A Check. Not cash - A check.

A contribution so I can bring you the representation you deserve.

I am not asking the moon.

Just one check for $25.

Now if you are that man in the back of the room who can write a check for $25,000, don't go away, I need to talk to you later. But for now I am talking about the people who can afford to give Sunday dinner money.

Give so that I can take a box of checks to the party headquarters and dump them on the desk and say to them "These are the people who want and deserve a real change in the way we do business in Alabama."

These checks have intrinsic and extrinsic value. These checks were not just money pressed into a palm. These checks have an address and a signature and most of all they come with a face. A person. A family to whom I have made a commitment to better their lives. A concrete symbol to convince the "Authoriti" that we want and deserve a different outcome.


Please understand that this is not about the money. At least not entirely. The campaign takes money for sure, but it is about showing the party that I have people who want this to happen. If enough people will take this message to heart. Truly take it to heart. we can move our message to a lot of people and alter the outcome in November.

My most recent FCPA showed a cash balance of $159. My most recent poll showed me at 48% district wide. But yesterday Google said that 533 people read my blog. Now assuming that half are supporters that is 267 of the 300. I think I have a dozen already in my shoebox. We can win. with your help we can win.

Like the 300 at Thermopylae we stand against some long odds.

But this time we have an even chance.

Paid Political advertisement

Please make your check to
Jim Bonner Campaign account
15865 Mt Hester Road
Cherokee Alabama. 35616

Textbooks and bad pork.

I am told the Buddha died from a bit of bad pork. I suppose I lack enlightenment to understand why Buddha didn't know in advance the pork was bad. Maybe he did and ate it anyway.

But I direct the gentle reader to a couple of published news tidbits today. One article, from the Marion County Journal Record by Tracy Estes titled: State textbook funding falls by 90% over last 3 years and the other from a set of twits and tweets from my twenty five year democratic incumbent in the Senate Six race, that's if you give a toot.

In the first story, Tracy recounts the history of the Marion County School Board budget of $750,000 in fiscal 2008 and a current budget of $57,889 for textbooks for the upcoming school year.

The other story from the hand of the 'hard' working Senator himself titled: Roger Bedford Great Day in District and Handed out 14 different grants in Franklin tonight ! Headed to Kennedy and Fayette to give out more Grants in AM ! Gotta fight for your people !

Now gentle reader, therein lies the problem. Why are we allowing the blatant shorting schools money to buy textbooks and handing it out like water to people to buy votes? Do other States allow this?

One might suspect the books from last year would be fine. One might guess that second, third and fourth grade math books are the same and have been for a hundred years. One would guess wrong.

In the computer age kids are expected to learn how to to the three R's plus one. Radix. The little dot between the dollars and cents on your bank statement is no longer the decimal point. It is now the Radix Point. And among a lot of other things the State Board of Education expects your kid to know that. No child left behind expects your child to know that. And most importantly the people who design the test by which you school will be ranked for funding and possible takeover by the State expect your kids to know that.

Children as early as second grade are expected to know binary, hex and octal numbers. No Alice, this is not your fathers math book these kids don't have.

One of my campaign staffers has a dream.

A vision if you will, of a youtube video of the Russellville stadium Jumbotron and a bewildered candidate for State Senate looking at the expensive monitor, the expansive stands, pan to the underground bunkers for the massive baseball stadium, then to our twenty five year incumbent handing out grant checks to the un-needy and un-entitled. Cut to a group of tattered grammar school students in Marion County working around a table with one borrowed book.

And the Caption... Roger, you should be Ashamed!

This my friends and readers, is bad pork.

And now you can't say you weren't enlightened.

Prognostications

Prognostication

The United States has three likely possibilities before us today given the level of the Debt, Deficit and Balance of Trade.

One - Become the old Soviet Union. Remove all freedoms and require everyone to work in state jobs and live in state housing and join the state party.

Two - Allow the Union of the Americas to collapse under the weight of its own debt and make every State a sovereign nation.

Three - Allow runaway inflation to lower the value of the dollar on the international market and thus pay back these trillion dollar debts with new billion dollar bills.

This is why I entered the senate race, because I think we need some people in Montgomery who understand the situation if the worst case happens.

All of these are terrifying scenarios to me.

All of these reduce the standing of America in the world market and limit the one thing that is important to me. The future of my children and grandchildren.

There might be a fourth option. An option where we bite the bullet and begin to concentrate on the issues at hand. Jobs that create wealth instead of just passing money between Jack's and McDonald's, Set right the balance of trade, lower the debt and eliminate the deficit. This will require a work ethic that does not include one in five of our population drawing a government check and Drug laws that stop the personal and economic waste of our young people.

That will only happen if we elect people who are at least sensitive to the problem instead of people of wealth and privilege who have their golden parachutes and really feel above it all.

(A little knee mail to God on the matter wouldn't hurt either.)