The Debt Ceiling: Is It Constitutional?

Here we are only three days from financial Armageddon for our country and elements in the Congress are not willing to work out a bi-partisan compromise. Every thinking person from New York to Santa Monica, from Seattle to Miami and all points in between has an opinion (ignore the quality of thought likely in such a diverse group) and judging by reports are sending those opinions to the congress in growing numbers.

I wondered how all this got started and found at Young Lawyers Blog.com an explanation of how we (the United States of America) got started down this debt ceiling road. It is illuminating reading, especially for those who slept through civics 101. In short, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America prohibits anyone from questioning the national public debt. We have to pay our bills, regardless of what the Tea Party and any other "no tax pledge" signers think.

Last night Mary Matalin, CNN commentator, said these congress people were not interested in re-election, only in cutting federal spending. You show me a congress person who is not interested in re-election and I will show you either a senile congress person or one who knows an indictment is coming down.

The Young Lawyers Blog makes sense out of a complex topic. It is recommended reading.

Met a man from Lowell, MA, in South Africa

No trip to South Africa would be complete without looking in on Nelson Mandela's house in Soweto, Robben Island prison and the mainland prison where he was released to jubilant, cheering crowds. So in 2003, when my wife and I were on a two month self-conducted tour driving around South Africa we visited all three places.

All this comes back to mind as we approach July 18, 2011, and the 93rd birthday of Nelson Mandela, one of the most powerful, historical figures of the 20th Century.

Unless you have visited Soweto you cannot imagine the poverty that existed in that suburban black community outside of Johannesburg throughput the 20th century. I don't have any current knowledge of conditions there since my visit but if I had to guess I would say it is not much improved.


FXA outside Mandela's home in Soweto, Feb. 2003.

When we arrived at Mandela's single story, small brick house, down the street from the home of Archbishop Tutu, we were admitted by a guide who explained that the great man had lived there from about 1946 to 1962, when he was arrested and sentenced to life in prison. He served 27 years and was released in 1990 and the rest of the story needs no further telling here.

As we walked through the tiny rooms the guide detected an accent in my voice and asked where I was from originally. We had already told him we came from South Carolina. "Yours is not a South Carolina accent," he said, as my wife laughed. She said he came "from Lowell, Massachusetts."


Mary Archibald and guide at Mandela's home in Soweto,Feb. 2003.

"You know Kearney Square?, he asked excitedly." Yes, I said, "It was the center of life when I was a young man." With great relish he told us his remarkable story. He had been in the African National Congress fighting apartheid and was forced to flee South Africa or be arrested. He came to the United States and made his way to Lowell where he lived and worked for more almost fifteen years. We discussed favorite places, and neighborhoods. Despite all he had been through in his turbulent life he was so happy to meet someone from Lowell which held many good memories for him, he said. When Mandela was released, our guide returned to South Africa. He had been working at the home in Soweto for a couple of years.

I told him of our visit to Robben Island, seven miles out in the Atlantic ocean, where we were guided by a man who was imprisoned there with Mandela for 18 of his 29 years in prison and now worked as a guide in that infamous place, (which has become a tourist attraction and big money earner for South Africa.) The guide showed us Mandela's cell and shared stories about life there; we also visited the limestone quarry where Mandela worked.

It was obvious our guide, whose years in exile had been spent in the city where I was raised, loved and respected Mandela. My wife and I came away with a healthy respect for this man who had been a foot soldier in the fight to wipe out apartheid - segregation based solely on the color of one's skin and prejudice. (I regret that I have lost my notes made on that trip and have no current record of the man's name.)

Out for a Sunday stroll

What in Hell were grown men, stripped to the waist, sweating like fresh pork on a barbecue, doing in the middle of King Street lifting weights and 20 and 35 pound bags of sand when the real feel temperature was somewhere in the nineties on a sweltering, breeze-less Sunday afternoon?

It was all part of the latest effort by Charleston, SC, officials to lure more people downtown to experience the city. The city closes King Street from Calhoun to Queen to vehicular traffic on Sunday from 1 to 5 pm. Shops are open, light dining takes place in the street under massive umbrellas to block the sun. Musicians strum guitars and literally sing for their supper. Local artists set up easels and paint. Families and couples stroll in the middle of the street, although this day a majority favor the right hand sidewalk because it offers a bit of shade.

All of this and more took place with the real feel temperature approaching 97 degrees. An slow and easy stroll down the street left me with a shirt soaked in perspiration. A bottle of water from a street vendor was a necessity. Practically every police officer I saw at the multiple intersections was sipping from a large drink container. The combination of the heat and the humidity had everyone walking slow, wiping brows and breathing hard. And then there was an exhibition to defy all reason.

This was all part of a Crossfit exercise, an exercise program and competition that has gained momentum in the last few years and is used by some military special forces as a conditioning program. Suffice it to say, I considered it to border on insanity during the oppressive heat conditions on King Street, Charleston, SC, on July 10, 2011.

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Looking at good and bad

Mirror Image...
An image which is like a reflection in a mirror...everything is the same, except reversed.
Snapped this interesting picture in Seasides Farms, Mt. Pleasant, SC while on an exercise walk. (Click pictures to enlarge.)


And then there was this:



It is heartwarming that some Seaside Farms residents celebrated the birth of our Declaration of Independence with fireworks, but then they spoiled it by not cleaning up their explosive residue. I found this ugly trash scattered on the road at the end of Canyon Oaks Drive, while walking early in the morning of July 7. Someone ought to clean that up, I said to myself, and then I remembered: I was someone. I went home, returned with the box and a plastic glove, and cleaned up after these thoughtless celebrants.

An old fashioned parade

Brother and sister, Charlie Geilfuss and Joan Mills, with FXA, July 4, 2011, Franke @ Seaside, Mt Pleasant, SC (click on picture to enlarge.)

Over the 4th my third son, Patrick, journeyed to visit his brothers in the nation's capital and was on Constitution Avenue for the 4th of July parade. Patrick, an avid amateur photographer, took these pictures:
After linking up, click on Slideshow in the upper left corner to enlarge. Hope you enjoy!

A lighted faucet in your life?

Judith Martin, Miss Manners to the socially conscious, answered three questions in a recent newspaper column and began each answer with "Where were you...", as in Where were you during history class? Where were you doing civics class? and Where were you during posture class? My question is, Where was her editor when these three Q&As were being combined to form one column?

NBA owners followed the NFL owners and locked out the players. Will we be without professional football and basketball in 2911? I'm taking a peek at the Canadian Football League on TV. Don't know all the players yet but that's a small problem. I did see part of a game last Saturday night and uttered a big "WOW" at one spectacular pass play. I am betting the NFL lockout will end first. There is too much money on the table to be ignored.

Given inflation and the dwindling value of the dollar, I have not for several years bent over on the street to pickup anything less than a fifty cent piece, but just to cover all bets in case the national debt ceiling is not raised and the country goes broke, I bent over twice this week and picked up a penny and a quarter. I will miss that Social Security check but probably not as much as China and Japan who won't receive the interest payments on the American bonds they hold.

This is what America has been waiting for: "The VuPoint Temperature Sensitive LED Faucet Light (FL-IW1-VP) is a lighted aerator for your faucet that makes your water glow. When the water makes contact with the temperature-sensing metal pin in the unit, it will trigger the red LED light for hot water and the blue LED light for cold water. The intelligent sensor activates with hot or cold water, making it fun for all ages to watch the water change color. The light fits most standard faucets, and is easy to install."

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Ernest Hemingway - 50 years ago

Fifty years ago today, July 2, I picked up the Sunday News & Courier (name prior to merging with The Evening Post) and read that Ernest Hemingway had killed himself with his favorite shotgun in Ketchum, Idaho. I was shocked by the act of suicide. It was against God's law and against Catholic teaching. Back in those days I was probably more of a practicing Catholic than Hemingway, although he was also born into the faith.

I was shocked and felt let down that this bigger than life personality would take a "coward's" way out. Nothing could justify suicide, I thought. It was immaterial that I knew him only through a study of his life and reading his books and articles and watching movies based on his work. He was a young man's giant; he lived the kind of life lessor men only dreamed. The news of his suicide was just that; a story written less than 24 hours after he was found dead. No time for details. No time to explore why, although there were vague explanations: accident, cancer, money problems. Only in later years did we learn he suffered from terrible depression the last few years of his life.

He was laid to rest a couple of days after his suicide in a graveside service. No Mass in a Catholic church; he had too many wives it was said. It probably had more to do with the suicide than his wives.

And the world moved on. Something and someone else took center stage.

Over the years I have softened my views of Hemingway's suicide and the man. Somewhere along the line I recognized none of us really know what lies in the heart of another man or woman. We do not recognize the personal demons. Deep understanding is ever more difficult when our personal connection is remote to say the least. We regret the inadequacies years ago in treating depression. Even today it remains a challenge for the patient and the doctor.

Several years ago I went to Key West and toured Hemingway's house. It is a beautiful place stuffed with leather chairs made from the hides of big game he shot and full of memorabilia of a life well lived. Books abound. Those he wrote and those he collected. (Years after his death his wife Mary had to take his library to New York for controlled storage and chemical elimination of pests and insects that threatened to destroy the library.)

There is an elevated walkway from the house proper to his writing workshop. This overlooks the pool. There is a penny embedded in the concrete walk around the pool. Legend is that Hemingway put it there while the work was being done. He told the contractor "You have all the rest of my money. You might as well have this.

I went to Sloppy Joe's, Hemingway's favorite bar, a short walk from his house. Here I drank a beer in mid-morning as he might have done and sucked up the atmosphere and thought good thoughts about the man. I still have those thoughts.

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