The Life Of Boyd Campbell Jackson Mississippi
In 2007, the parents of 23-year-old Jeffrey Lucey filed suit against the Veterans Administration for wrongful death in the case of their son Jeff, who committed suicide after suffering from PTSD stemming from his experience in the Iraq War and the Battle of Nasiriyah.
His case inspired singer and songwriter Tom Waits to write the song Hell Broke Luce, which is about Lucey's experience.
I see a lot of talk about people praying for help or hoping that God "hears their prayers." In Christianity, we've cultivated this idea that if you need something, and if you've been good, then you should pray for it, and, like Santa Claus, God will give you what you asked for.
I've always wondered if it worked that way. Jesus said that God is like the shepherd looking to rescue his lost sheep, so it's clear that when we're in trouble, God knows our needs and begins working on what we need long before we ask for it.
Sometimes, people use prayer to thank God for the blessings we've already received. Do you think that's necessary? I'm sure God knows that once you admit you're aware of him, that makes you about as grateful as you're capable of being.
Maybe the best use of prayer is a time to pause in life and willingly and consciously try to connect with the higher power. Just for a moment, you're like the limp and lifeless Adam in the Sistine Chapel painting, reaching out your feeble finger to touch the omnipotent finger of God. All your needs, he's already noted. He's already noted all your gracious thoughts. Prayer is a moment in time when you can recharge your life's batteries by touching the infinite source of power, and you can do it as many times, every day, as you need it.
Like many cities in the South, by 1963, Jackson, Mississippi, closed all of its public swimming pools rather than integrate them as required by the Civil Rights Act. The city argued that closing the facilities didn't violate the Civil Rights Act because closing the facilities impacted both races equally. The Supreme Court upheld this view.
In 1969, Fred Rogers's television program, "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood," had a huge impact nationally but still had a very small budget. Realizing the impact his program had on people, Rogers wanted to say something positive about integration, but since his program was for small children, he didn't want to do it in a confrontational way, and he needed it to not cost very much money to produce.
In "Mr Rogers Neighborhood," actors portrayed the characters children might recognize in their neighborhood. They were postal workers, police officers, shopkeepers, handymen, and others. In May 1969, as the issue of integration and public swimming pools grew, Rogers had an idea for a segment involving Officer Clemmons.
Without making any sort of confrontational statement, Rogers thought that Mr Rogers and Officer Clemmons could take off their shoes and dip their feet in a cool plastic wading pool together on a hot summer day. The taking off or changing of shoes was often used to represent a time of relaxation or intimacy, a letting down of defenses, on the program, as Mr Rogers changed his leather "work shoes" to cloth loafers to begin every show.
Before coming to television, Fred Rogers was a minister. In the Christian faith, the idea of washing one's feet has a deep spiritual meaning, one he hoped would be evident to adults watching the episode. For children, he hoped to gently instill the idea that black men and white men could swim together and be friends with nothing to worry about. When the two finished washing their feet and quietly talking, they shared a towel to dry their feet, reinforcing the "washing of feet" theme while also making it evident that sharing a swim or a towel wasn't dangerous. He feared that hearing adults argue about integrating swimming pools might make children afraid of it, so this was his gentle means to show them there was nothing to worry about.
In Mississippi, where much of the argument over integrated pools originated, children like me never saw this episode when it first aired because the Mississippi legislature refused to fund public broadcasting for fear it would spread a communist, race-mixing message, even though the funds for it had already come down from the federal government. (Sound familiar?) It wasn't until late in 1969 when the Mississippi Legislature voted to create the Mississippi Public Broadcasting System, which wouldn't go into effect until 1970, almost a year after the pool episode of Mr. Rogers.
In 1993, when Clemmons made his final appearance on Mr Rogers Neighborhood, Rogers and Clemmons recreated the pool scene, where they sang "There Are Many Ways to Say I Love You" together. After soaking their feet together, Rogers used a towel to dry his own feet and then used the same towel to dry Clemmons' feet, mimicking the moment in Christ's life when he washed the feet of the apostles.
Fred Rogers understood that gestures are often a far better way to teach than words. Trying to mend the wounds of the world in the minds of children, he invoked a gesture he knew well from the life of Christ. Humility creates an environment that breeds love.
You'll hear a lot about how the film handles social roles, particularly sexual roles, and the frank way the creature discovers the world through her attempts to understand sexuality. You'll also hear a lot about the arresting visual style of the film.
Most of my thoughts watching the film were about comparing how Boris Karloff handled this character in the 30s vs how Emma Stone handled it today.
How many books does it take to be considered "well-read?" I'll go to my grave, considering myself just the opposite. Part of it is because, even after fighting that dragon for more than fifty years, it's still a struggle for me to read any book, to keep my eye on the page rather than focusing on the flicker of a light bulb filament or the legs of a moth as my ADHD demands, frustrated by trying to arrange the words and letters on the page that my dyslexia jokingly rearranges.
I surround myself with people who make me envious of the books they've read. People like Catherine, who taught generations of young scholars to read Greek, or Brent, who nearly killed us all by demanding we read a new play every week and turn in a card on it, or Suzanne, who quietly sat with Miss Eudora all those years and soaked in all the magic she gave out.
I used to go to Oxford to try and catch a glimpse of Larry Brown. In a time when most people who like letters were looking for the more elaborate Barry Hannah, I was fascinated by this quiet fireman who ate one book after another in his firehouse, then settled down and wrote dozens of stories and two novels before deciding to show them to anyone.
My father wanted me to settle in and become part of the community of businessmen who provided jobs and helped build their community, like his father and his father's father, but all I wanted was to at least sit with the people of letters, even though I never dreamed of being one of them, at least not to where I'd admit it to anyone.
How many books does it take to be considered "well-read?" I have a bucket list that's quite long. Plays, novels, collections of stories. An awful lot of the science fiction I love so much comes in the form of stories because that was how you published them in the years when science fiction grew out of a few nineteenth-century novels into what it is today.
I'll never finish the bucket list. That's part of the point of having a bucket list. I'm a boy who loves to read, born an imperfect and fettered reader. I suppose that's for the best. If my reading weren't fettered and restrained, considering the sheer volume of books I'd like to read one day, you'd probably never see me again. I'd be sitting under a tree, surviving off the fruit it drops, and reading my books.
In August 1969, Hurricane Camille devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The destruction was unbelievable. In some cases, shrimp boats were found as far as half a mile inland. Many homes and businesses were destroyed. Less than 100 yards from the water, the popular miniature golf course, Magic Golf, received some damage, but the popular concrete T-Rex received almost no damage. Following the story, engineering and architectural students from around the world visit Biloxi to discover why the statue stood firm and resolute amidst all the damage and destruction.
So, every year, rain or shine or covid, they have this big party, so big they call it the "Super Bowl," and people put quite a bit of store into it. They spend months and months prior to the party pushing each other back and forth, trying to secure an invitation to the party. Even though they advertise it as the world's biggest party, they're still pretty dang stingy with the invitations.
When I was little, pretty much everybody assumed that folks from Dallas would get an invitation to the party, and, sure enough, the years came and went and the folks from Dallas almost always got their all polished-up invitation to this dang stupid party.
In the last few years, though, things have changed. They're having trouble keeping the lights on in Dallas, and the Senator who's supposed to take care of them just sneaks off to a Mexican beach vacation. I don't know what happened. Maybe they're not wearing the right kind of shoes. Maybe they don't know all the right dances, but it's been a while since folks from Dallas were invited to this party, and they're getting just a little bit sore about it.
Last night, the folks from Dallas got in a scuff-up with some folks from Wisconsin, of all places, hoping they'd get somebody's attention and get invited to this year's Super Bowl party. Well, it didn't work out that way, and the once mighty folks from Dallas will be staying home and ordering a pizza while the big party goes on. I'd feel sorry for them, but to tell the truth, Dallas fans were always kind of jerks, so maybe this will help teach them some humility.
