Not a Potted Plant

It’s been a little over a decade since Walt, one of my best friends, took his life, and left an emptiness in our lives that persisted for years. I wasn’t there, but I’ve seen it happen in my dreams more than once. He was depressed, tripping, and had access to his step-father’s gun. He went out into the woods, wrote an incomprehensible note, and put the rifle to his head and pulled the trigger. He was 19, had a wicked sense of humor, and I would have trusted him with my life. Apparently, it was his own that he couldn’t be trusted with. His life, the LSD, and the rifle. If it hadn’t been for that combination, including the rifle, I believe he’d be alive today. Instead, I only see him in my dreams, and they are almost always bad dreams.

It takes a lot for me to be able to say that the government shouldn’t have been able to take that rifle away from him. Suicide is often used as a rationale for gun control. Next to accidents, it is among the things that gun control would most likely stop. Particularly cases like Walt’s, where the suicide was likely not premeditated and the inclination would have passed with the trip. It’s extremely difficult to know something would have saved a loved one’s life, and not think that something should be done, but that’s more or less where I have arrived on the issue.

I don’t oppose all gun control. I could even come down in favor of stringent gun control in communities that favor it. I also believe, however, that you’re not paranoid if they are out to get you. While most gun control advocates may genuinely support a right to gun ownership above and beyond the expedience of conceding the point, I remember the 90’s all too well not to be at least a little concerned. Absent excessive gun control laws, I’m not sure how the ruling in McDonald vs. Chicago would even have been necessary.

The federalist in me would be fine with allowing states and local jurisdictions to set up whatever laws they want in exchange, but because guns are moveable, that’s not going to be a satisfactory solution for many. Opponents of gun control want to be able to take their guns with them, proponents of gun control rightly point out that Virginia’s gun laws will lead to more guns in Maryland, regardless of what Maryland’s laws are.

Some of it goes back to the 90’s. The 90’s were a terrible time for gun control opponents and gun control advocates pressed their advantage. Every time some kid shot up a school, that was support for more gun control regardless of whether the gun control proposed applied the incident in question. The whole thing set up a dynamic where the only way to stop this justification for gun control (logistically) is for these rampages to stop happening, which is nigh-impossible. Otherwise, each incident can be a call for more gun control. It need not be related to the situation at hand, but instead can be a general thing (Columbine did involve illicit gun sales, but calls were not limited to the specifics of the situation). Those calls are more muted these days, and met with calls for more guns, not due to the fact that our gun control laws are better or more restrictive than they were, but simply changing political dynamics. If I had to choose between the atmosphere of the 90’s and the atmosphere now, I’ll take the atmosphere now.

I’m not worried about a complete rifle ban, but do worry about Chicago-style laws. The Supreme Court has actually helped in this regard. With the constitutional protection of gun ownership, I’m more willing than ever before to consider various restrictions. It remains a firewall in the discussion of who, precisely, is allowed to own what. It’s probably the nature of that discussion itself, which has lead me to “when in doubt, oppose gun control.”

I just got off the phone with a “pollster.” I put the word “pollster” in quotes because I’m relatively sure that they were working for one of the campaigns in the Garvin/Wannemaker* race. They breezed through all of my thoughts on Republicans, Democrats, the presidential election, this issue and that one, and so on, then spent about 3/4 of the call asking “which criticism of Garvin do you believe to be most salient?” and the same for Wannemaker. Given how much less time they spent going over Wannemaker, I suspect it was either his campaign or his party that was funding the research.

I haven’t decided who I am voting for in the presidential election, though they left off Gary Johnson as a possibility (and he is the leading candidate in my mind). Notably, they didn’t leave the Libertarian candidate of the Garvin/Wannemaker race, which is another thing pointing to the fact that my responses there were very important.

They did it wrong, though. They asked whether I was going to vote for Garvin, Wannemaker, or Prince, but never asked me how strongly I felt about it (Wannemaker, not strongly). To gauge the effectiveness of various criticisms of Garvin, that seems to me a rather important tidbit. If I’m somebody who might change their mind, then that’s different from somebody that is already in Wannemaker’s camp. I’d think.

I also found it odd that they never asked about which positive issues, if any, should be focused on. I gave them a good run-down on Garvin’s and Wannemaker’s vulnerabilities as far as I was concerned (they never asked about Prince, except whether or not I’d be voting for him), but was never asked whether I think Wannemaker is right to focus on campaign finance reform or Garvin is right to focus on the Wannemaker’s support for gay marriage.

Maybe the questioning was actually more scientific than that, and had I answered differently on earlier questions they would have asked about that. Again, though, that’s where asking whether I am firmly a Wannemaker man or simply leaning in that direction.

They also wasted a question or two on asking whether I lived in a town of (insert five categories) and then later asking for my ZIP Code which would have told them that (plus, they called my landline, so they can reasonably guess where I live anyway).

The whole conversation was somewhat hard to hear due to the lack of good acoustics on their end. I could hear the questions other callers were asking bouncing all over the other side of the call.

The kid who made the call was hard to understand and couldn’t pronounce a lot of their names. I’m guessing he hasn’t been doing this long (he is, though, an American or a good facsimile thereof, if you’re curious).

I didn’t quite catch the name of the firm. I tried the backtrace the number that they called from, but had no success.

* – Yeah, these are pseudonyms for the senatorial candidates from Trumanverse state Arapaho. They may actually be congressional candidates, gubernatorial, energy commission, or some other big election. I’m not getting into specifics.

Bring a rural doctor, my wife knew going in that it would be different than what she’s done before. When we were in Deseret, there would periodically be a patient of hers that would run into us at Walmart and immediately dive in giving Clancy an update on how whatever she was last in for turned out. When I’m in Redstone, I’ve periodically run into students or the occasional teacher at the local bookstore or Walmart. But here in Callie, it’s different.

The other day she took a vacation day off work because she had an afternoon appointment (if she just takes the morning off, she can still be double-booked to the point that she would have to work through the afternoon to get through everybody). She still had an AM morning she had to go to and when she left she went to the local coffeehouse to take care of some paperwork. While there, she ran into a colleague who had herself taken a couple vacation days to take care of hospital and clinic paperwork. There were some officey things to discuss, but as soon as she was done, she ran into a patient. They chatted for a while (about, among other things, the need for substitute teachers in Callie). Clancy came back a little regretful of not having been more productive at the coffeehouse, but it was pretty apparent that the time had done her some good. That represented the good side of working and living in such a small town.

The bad side came the next day.

Clancy and I don’t live in the best part of town. In fact, she inwardly groans when she recognizes an address being nearby ours. It often (though not always) means a problem patient of one sort or another. And so it was with a patient that came in the next day. Without going into details, it was a bad visit and authorities had to be contacted (legal and professional responsibility). And wouldn’t you know it, the patient lives on our street (I haven’t a clue who it is – don’t want to know). Anyhow, on account of this, when Clancy walks the dog, she’s going to be going out the back way for a while.

Several years ago (approaching 15… gah!), I was talking to a cop and he made a comment that he would never work in the same city where he lived. He used the metaphor of eating where you excrement. Prior to talking to this cop, most of the cops I’d gotten to know had been in the city of Phillipi. My ex-girlfriend Julianne lived there her father was a volunteer fireman, and there is a fair amount of crossover between being a cop and a volunteer fireman. Not a single Phillippi police officer I knew didn’t live in Phillippi as far as I knew. The idea of living in one community and protecting another seemed rather strange to me.

When I started substitute teaching, rather than subbing in Callie, where I live, I signed up to do so out in Redstone. There were a number of reasons for this. Redstone is the bigger district so I figured I would get called in more often. Callie gave me the run-around while Redstone asked the soonest day I could take the TB test. I had my standard question when asked about it, though: “I’ve never subbed before. I figured by substituting in Redstone, if I was lousy at it, I’d be messing up some other community’s kids. Since then, I’ve heard more than once that there is actually a pressing need in Callie. It also turns out that a teacher in Redstone knows the superintendent down here and is willing to write an email of recommendation. With the kid on the way, working closer to home makes more sense. Yet, for all of my joking about messing up Redstone’s kids, I actually have that sort of sense that it’s really not bad living in one town and working with the youth of another.

(To be clear, it’s not that. I’ve grown fond of some of the “repeat customers” I’ve had at Redstone schools. I also like the excuse to go out there sometimes. But I really do find the prospect of substituting neighborhood kids to be daunting, despite the fact that the kids here are generally better adjusted than the kids in Redstone, and kids surprisingly don’t hold a grudge against a substitute who gets them in trouble.)

Which brings me back to the medical community. There is a degree of separation between the medical community here and the broader community. Most of the doctors (of the ones I know where they live) live well outside of town in unincorporated county. There was actually a big to-do here many years ago where the doctors and other individuals essentially pulled their kids out of the local high school and took over a school a half-hour away. There’s a whole story there, but it’s a part of what I consider to be a broader detachment. Before we decided we would be sticking around, Clancy and I talked about where we might get a house and she felt pretty strongly about getting one out of town. Some of it is her introversion (oddly, my introversion is why I think getting a place out of town would be a really bad idea), though another part of it is the general eating/excrementing thing.

In an ideal world, none of this would be the case. The Phillippi model would true. I think in Redstone itself, of all places, it actually does. It’s one of the things I’ve always admired about that place. Interestingly, Redstone and Phillippi are both rather blue collar. Both tend to draw sneers from outsiders. For a variety of reasons, though, they retain a degree of community spirit that I think is healthy. I am thinking that such places are the exception as much as the rule, however. I know some places actually pass laws requiring civil servants to live in town. Not much they can do about doctors, I suppose.

Today is Mrs. Likko’s birthday. And for her birthday I shall come home, put a gin and tonic in her, and take her to our backyard paradise where she will sit comfortably and be waited upon by her husband, who shall promise to not talk about the frustrations of his work day, nor to blog, all night long, the better to give her all my attention. I shall have prepared one of her favorite meals: lamb chops.

If you want to replicate what I’m serving the love of my life on her birthday, here’s how I’m doing it: Continue Reading →

The second-most popular search term bringing people to Not A Potted Plant today is “Heal Foreskin With Prayer.”

Through Him all things are possible, I suppose. Let me know how that works out for you, dudes.

In a post, and then in a comment thread about the Electoral College, Ryan Noonan develops the idea that the original intent of the Electoral College was for informed, educated people of diverse backgrounds, who hail from around the country, and who are not presently holders of governmental office.

Such people, the idea goes, should gather and hand-pick the President, divorced from partisan loyalties and with an eye towards the generalized public good. But where do we find such people? Tongue in cheek, Mike Schilling responded: Bloggers! And look at what we’ve got, right here at our disposal.

So here’s the rules: Continue Reading →

United States v. Alvarez — Ninth Circuit affirmed, the Stolen Valor Act is unconstitutional. Breakdown is Concurrence plurality by Kennedy, joined by Roberts, Ginsburg. Breyer and Kagan suggest that statute could be re-written to comply with First Amendment, meaning someone in Congress will be going back to the drawing board to pull these two closer to the dissent. Dissent by Alito, joined by Scalia and Thomas.

Health Care Cases — I’m vindicated, as the individual mandate is affirmed as a valid exercise of Congress’ taxing authority, as I thought:

…Congress ha[s] the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it. National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (pdf).

I’m still ambivalent about whether I like that, but that’s the result I thought was right Constitutiuonally. It looks at first blush as though the PPACA is upheld almost completely. Although all eyes were on Kennedy, the decisive vote saving Obamacare came from Chief Justice Roberts; Kennedy voted with the dissent. Continue Reading →

In response to an OTB post (originally about work-life balance, but turning towards decision points and regrets), Rob in CT wrote:

I will admit to some second-guessing over an offer my father once made to me: 1) go to one of the expensive little liberal arts colleges that accepted me, or 2) go to UCONN, and he puts the difference in tuition + room/board directly in the bank for me. Totally awesome either way, no doubt (ahh, privilege. How does it rock? Let me count the ways). I picked door #1. The results have been a-ok. Not least b/c I met my wife in college. But the frugal side of me always wants to pick at that one.

This is just one of those bizarre things. What kind of choice is that? That’s not a choice. That’s “I’m going to UConn.”

I don’t know how much of that is because of how I was raised, and how much of it is regional. The people for whom this is a tough decision, or who would make the choice that Rob made, tend to live in the northeast.

Last year I was informed of a possible job opportunity for Clancy in New England (the region, not necessarily the Trumanverse state). We talked about New England and what we might like about it and what we might really dislike. In the latter column was the attitude I hear about public universities out there.

As most of you know, I come from a southern heritage. None moreso than the branch of my family that comes from the north. How my grandmother ended up in the south is a long story, but once there, the last thing she wanted to be was carpetbaggers, so she married quickly and embraced the southern identity.

When Mom was 16, she had a brother who was 14 and in a terrible accident. He needed blood. Everybody warned my grandmother not to let them give her son n*****’s blood. Told this one too many times, she screamed back that she didn’t care whose blood it was and she didn’t care if it turned her son into a n*****, as long as he lived. Mom remembers this, of all the things to remember when her brother was dying, because she didn’t understand what her mother was talking about. All of her life, she had been taught differently.

You’d have to know my mother, especially when she’s telling stories in an inebriated state, that this story was not a tribute to political correctness. This was not a story where Mom learned a valuable lesson and became progressive on racial issues. She didn’t, and is not, so progressive. She is a child who was raised in the south in the 1950’s.

She will vote for Anybody But Obama. Between 1976 and 1980, she was flipped by the Southern Strategy. She has views on a lot of things that put me on edge. She has close friends who are black, and neither emphasizes or conceals this fact. For a little while, she thought Herman Cain was the bomb. She thought it was neat that (African-American) Tim Scott beat Strom Thurmond’s son in SC CD1.

When I brought home a date of Egyptian extraction, she freaked out and asked me why I hadn’t warned her about it. The thought never occurred to me. When my brother married a girl of Middle Eastern descent, she was excited about what her grandchildren might look like. It was the upside of a marriage that she did not approve of — for reasons that genuinely had nothing to do with race.

We talk about southern racism some times as though it is a thing. It is many things. Many complicated things. Different things to different people. It’s usually more complex than a simple hatred, disdain, or a view of racial supremacy. There’s a desire not to be racist, and yet a stubborn determination not to be not racist. (This is, of course, leaving aside the natural racism that resides within us all.)

This isn’t an apology to attitudes that need to be condemned or corrected. Rather, it’s a concern that the misdiagnosis itself contributes to the problem. I come at this as a native southerner that detests these attitudes and, in a way, feels them more sharply than many because they reflect on me. To varying degrees, I have family and loved ones that are so infected by it. The struggle between southern history, my own roots in the south, and a desire for a different and better society and nature, is one that occurs at ground zero in my mind.