Woke up this mornin’
Turned on the Mac.
Got the coffee started,
Then looked out the window.
The skies are gray,
Rain’s on the way.
It’s daylight savings time,
What can I say?
It is that time of year again, time to make the transition from the best of times, autumn, to the worst of times, winter. Although I must say with global warming these days, it is a toss up to say whether I don’t like summer or winter more. I am a spring and fall man all the way.
There is an 80 percent chance of rain Wednesday in Middle Alabamaland, and I would like nothing more than to just sleep through it all.
Alas, we have made plans to go camping again this week for one more chance to get outside in nature before the leaves all fall off the trees and turn the landscape brown.
So I will suck it up, pack the van and get out into the woods one more time before putting the canoe up for the winter. The skies should be clear and the weather cool over the next few days.
Besides, there is some good news in the headlines.
Maybe if the LSU-Alabama game had gone into four or five more excruciating overtimes it might deserve that distinction. No game without a single touchdown deserves the label, however, although it was an epic battle of two great defenses.
Alabama should have won the game. The Tide offense got into a position to score points far more times than the Tigers. But with two missed touchdown passes in the end zone and four missed field goals, and that one bad call on the goal line, Alabama did not deserve to win.
But hey, it’s not the end of the world. At least not yet.
SOUTHSIDE BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — They say it is a small world, but what do “they” know? I say the cliche is even more true today with modern social networking technology like Facebook.
I was just chatting with a blonde from Germany over my second cup of coffee in the Hippie Tree House, upstairs in the Hippie House on Birmingham’s Southside.
I crashed last night on the new couch in Hippie Stew’s place, and felt right at home. Maybe that’s because I was born five blocks from here in the old South Highlands Hospital, the first hospital Richard Scrushy purchased to create the outpatient and sports medicine empire known as HealthSouth.
Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman in front of the federal courthouse in Montgomery on a break from his sentencing hearing in June, 2007.
Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman will be back in federal court in Montgomery again Wednesday, this time making an oral argument before a different federal judge asking for a chance to be heard on issues related to “selective prosecution” and “government misconduct” in the handling of his case.
In an exclusive interview Tuesday morning, Siegelman, a Democrat, told me his attorneys will be making an argument that former U.S. Attorney Leura Canary — the wife of Bill Canary, head of the conservative Business Council of Alabama — had a partisan conflict of interest in bringing the alleged bribery and corruption case against him.
They will be revealing documentary evidence that Ms. Canary never actually recused herself from the case, he said, an issue we have reported on extensively in the past. She recused herself on the pages of the Birmingham News, but never actually filed a formal recusal document with the court, and e-mail messages show she was involved in directing the prosecution team even after she claimed to recuse herself.
Evidence will also be presented about judicial misconduct on the part of Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller, who handled the case against Siegelman. Because of that, Siegelman said, Fuller will not be hearing the evidence on Wednesday. Instead, U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles S. Coody will be presiding.
It is a cool 72 degrees in the foothills of the Appalachians, a time of year we long for during the long, hot dog days of summer.
The cooler temperatures and the ability to get outside without sweating and dodging mosquitoes relieves some of the pressure from the modern struggle for basic survival, in a place where there are precious few guarantees anymore of a job, basic health care or even a decent meal — much less the prospect of a safe retirement.
As a number of authors having recently pointed out, my generation and the one right behind us is in serious jeopardy of falling through the economic cracks in real time.
I have a couple of confessions to make on this beautiful Sunday. I won’t make them in any church, unless you consider the great outdoors nature’s cathedral.
I woke up way too early again this morning, writing the blues in my head. But you know what that means. There is an educational rant dead ahead.
The new verse to the Bad News Blues Band theme song goes like this:
Woke up this mornin’
turned on the TeeVee
saw the talking heads blathering about 9/11
promoting religion in politics and voodoo economics too.
Turned on the computer
decided to counter the BS
let’s connect the dots for people
to save the world no less.
If I could take over the Gallup Poll for a day, here is the question I would ask. I wish every American would take a second to answer it.
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It appears to me that is the real political divide we have in this country. It is not just liberal versus conservative, Republican versus Democrat. It is also the religious faithful against those who look to science instead of myth as the basis for knowledge and the source of solutions.
During the Bush Years, this came to be known as the “reality-based” community versus the “faith-based” community.
Since religion is easier to understand for those with an average IQ of 100, myth still tends to trump science in this country much of the time.
That’s how Rush Limbaugh on talk radio and Fox News made fortunes pandering to the lowest common denominator crowd, and why smarter and more progressive publications have been less financially successful historically. The mass audience can’t read or comprehend complicated arguments, or they won’t take the time to try to understand them. They tend to go for simple, black and white ideas that appeal to their preconceived notions and prejudices.
Catering to the undereducated and religious also serves big corporations, which value low wages over national economic stability every time — if they are in charge, which they are now thanks to the likes of George W. Bush and Karl Rove.
The very fate of our human species, yes, and your state too — as well as this country and the earth — may well depend on a compromise between science and religion.
Yes, you read that correctly. Not that I ever wanted to admit it before.
This will be a precarious journey with no guarantee of success like the fate of all life itself, from the beginning into the infinite future.
A top American scientist from Alabama writes that religion and science “are the two most powerful forces in the world today, including especially the United States.” That is from Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson’s book The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, which he wrote to Southern Baptist preachers who hold sway over millions of votes that could have a positive, or negative, impact on all kinds of government policies.
Poor But Proud: Twenty Years Later
Auburn History Professor Wayne Flynt Answers the Central Political Question of Our Time
by Glynn Wilson
AUBURN, Ala. — In a state where intellectuals are generally scorned as “elitists” — or as former governor and presidential candidate George Wallace liked to call them for his own opportunistic political reasons, “pointy-headed liberals” — retired Auburn History professor Wayne Flynt is one expert who is widely known around Alabama. He is someone who people seem to listen to, at least those who pay attention.
Since moving back to my home state and city a few years ago after many years of chasing a journalism career and then an academic career elsewhere, and struggling to figure out what’s wrong with this place, a key question comes up over and over again in conversation. No one seem to have a simple, satisfying answer.
Why do working class people in the South so frequently vote against their own economic self-interest?
As a historian and author, Dr. Flynt tackled this question in great detail a little more than 20 years ago in a book called Poor But Proud: Alabama’s Poor Whites.
So, you’ve lived in the Southeastern United States your entire life, and you’ve never seen it so hot on the first day of June, ever? You ask yourself — why?
It couldn’t have anything to do with climate change due to human induced global warming, right, because your local newspaper, the local weatherman, Fox News, the Republican Party — and the Tea Party — all say there is “no such thing” as global warming. They say it as if it was a matter of belief, like the things you learn in Sunday School, instead of a matter of science, where evidence matters.
Or, maybe the average global temperature of the earth is a few degrees warmer than it was when the Baby Boomers were born in the 1950s, but there must be “no such thing” caused by humans, because so many people on the radio and television say it’s not so?
All this above average heat must just be part of god’s plan, maybe even his wrath, since people are such sinners? Or, conceding the global warming part but not the industrial causes, you might say perhaps it’s simply part of a natural cycle of nature?
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
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