The Bosque Boys

The Bourne movie franchise is an astounding money-maker. Well-made and exciting, these movies are entertaining. But, are they good for us?

In these movies the enemy is our own CIA: a plot from far, far too many movies. Hollywood keeps casting the CIA as villains; and I assume that American public perception is thereby influenced.

The CIA helped us win the Cold War. And now, in this age of Islamic Terrorism, we need a smart and efficient CIA in the worst way. We need the CIA to recruit the best and brightest, to be well-funded, so that it can successfully take its place in our first line of defence. Can the CIA recruit successfully, receive adequate funding, and function with purpose and good moral, if the Agency is demonized continually by Hollywood? If the American public is taught not to respect those who labor on our behalf, indeed to assume that they are the enemy?

Don't bother leaving a comment about some past excesses. I am talking now. I would rather my family not be blown up tomorrow by some fanatic shouting the praises of Allah.

I don't plan to buy a movie ticket to see the CIA trashed, again.

The next morning after our day in the Smokies, we took a sidetrip to Dillsboro, North Carolina, home of the Dogwood Crafters cooperative (website). In a small house in a small mountain town, crafts from many, many high country crafters are for sale: corn shuck dolls, tatted lace, quilts, pottery, baskets, and more. We left with a wood-split basket and a ceramic bowl. Since the items are sold through a cooperative, not a commercial gallery, almost all the purchase price goes to the artisan.

Farmers get less than a dime for each loaf of bread you buy. Factory workers, especially in countries without unions, get a pittance from each item you purchase. For this, and other reasons, I like to buy directly from artisans/coops and farmers/farmers' coops. It seems to me that the producers should enjoy more of the fruits of their labor.

So check out your local farmers' market, roadside vegetable stand, artisan. Check into buying from coops. Viva localism.

The doctor comes into your hospital room. You assume he is there to heal you, or at least to help ease your suffering if healing seems impossible. You view the doctor as an agent of life. But, if euthanasia becomes legal and more common, then when the doctor walks through the door you will not be sure that she is an agent of life. She might be the agent of death. Without your consent? Sure. Your money is running out; the insurance company does not want to continue payments; your children are distressed at your suffering and decide they can't take it anymore . . . The doctor agrees, and assures the family that the end will be painless; and, oh, don't tell the patient what is in the syringe, that would only cause mental anxiety and distress. The doctor enters: is he an agent of life or death? You don't know.

Some related thoughts from Cardinal George Pell.

Leaving Smoky Mountain National Park on the North Carolina side, we traveled US 19 from Cherokee to Bryson City where we stayed the night. Along the way we met few cars, and the motels were older and sometimes showing decay. Bryson City was almost empty of tourists, though obviously set up to cater to people coming and going from the Park. Leaving the next morning we discovered the reason: another highway, four-lanes, had bypassed the town by a couple of miles, US 74.

The economic paths of America have always been changing. Centers become margins and back again. In early Missouri, my home state, the best roads in the state 180 years ago led to the rivers. Commerce flowed along them. Until the railroads. Then the centers changed as new economic pathways flowed with goods and people. Interstates and highway upgrades do the same thing today. Build a nice motel in 1947 and it may not have much traffic by it in 2007. Should the state compensate the owners?

Capitalism has risks as well as rewards. Take away the risks and we have created another system, one that probably will not reward anyone. In the last week some financial institutions have taken a hit in the mortgage industry. Some borrowers are defaulting. There have been a few calls for bailouts. Sad, but these are adults, who should have known the risks. Life does not come with no-risk guarantees.

We spent some time in the glorious Smoky Mountains. Staying the night just east of Knoxville, we traveled down US 441 from I-40 the next morning. Mile after mile of tourist traps and outlet stores and real estate offices. Most of the time I despise such places, but that day they struck me differently. I saw the tackiness, but it seemed appealing: American opportunism and ambition at work. We even stopped at two of the outlet stores: the wife needed new sandals and I needed a new wallet--since we don't buy Made in China, we must make an effort to find such things, and that day were successful.

The commercial activity ceased as the terrain grew rougher and the ridges higher. Then into the National Park. No entry fee! A free wonder. Green comes in a lot of shades: ferns in the shadows, maples and hemlocks; water drips and flows and falls. We took a few short hikes: within fifty yards of the road the vegetation silenced the motors of our fellow tourists. Steep slopes, high ridges, shadowy ravines, clouds above, below, and all around with occasional rain. The view from Clingman's Dome was grey. When the sun did break through at lower elevations the distant views were blurred by the "smoke" of moisture from the vegetation.

And, "smoke" from pollution. The highest ridges of the park have trees dead from acid rain, much of it caused by automobiles. We are driving ourselves to death. Including my wife and I. Interstate highways are ribbons of individual freedom--get up and go--but do carry costs. We are no longer a nation tied together by steel rails. We really had no choice if we wanted to visit the Smokies and see our son in Georgia, drive we must. When I was a child my father would take my mother and sister and I to the train station in Brookfield, Missouri. We took an early morning passenger train to Kansas City, about a 120 mile trip. After shopping and seeing a medical specialist we returned in the evening. That passenger line runs no more.

Driving from Nashville to Knoxville on I-40 I saw an information sign reading "Appalachian Center for Craft" at the next exit. We made the exit and drove the winding 6 miles to the small campus overlooking the Tennessee River.

The Center, a part of Tennessee Tech, brings together students, resident artists, faculty, and regional artisans, to learn and to produce. Web site. While traditional skills are taught and learned, many of the pieces on display and for sale have moved Appalachian artistry into the 21st century. Lots of wonderful stuff. A ceramic bowl from there now sits on our dining room table.

Schools can do wonderful things for communities, and for the nation. Our Land-Grant universities have had tremendous impact in agriculture and engineering. Law Schools shape future judges and politicians. Our national investment in education--going back to colonial days--has made our country a leader in most fields. There is a reason so many foreign students want to attend college in the United States.

But, education is broader than "book learning;" more than learning skills artistic or mental. Education, at least education that is worth while, is also about character formation. It is not enough to have an artistic eye. A student must learn the discipline of working the clay and shaping it. Rejecting attempt after attempt until a satisfying piece is made. Patience and determination as well as skill must be developed. Education cannot be value-neutral. What sort of boys and girls, men and women do your local schools seek to create?

Recently my wife and I took a trip to Georgia to see the son in the Navy. This post and others to follow will offer random thoughts from our travel.

American radio is too homogenized. FM radio from Oklahoma to Georgia and back was pretty much the same. "Country" stations played the same stuff in Tennessee and South Carolina. "Urban" stations all sounded alike. "Classic Rock" (aka Geezer Rock) played the same rotations. Depressing. Coming into Memphis on the first night I vainly scanned the FM dial for some "Memphis Music;" you know, blues or even Rockabilly. No luck. AM radio has some regional variety: usually I could find one AM station playing music I associated with its locality--"Mountain Music" in the hills, older Country near Nashville, etc.

In only a couple of short stretches could I pick up no Spanish-language radio.

Along the Interstate we had to look for regional cuisine amid the McDonald's and Arby's and Flying J's. We were able to find local, independent places, but had to look for them.

When did we begin the process of eroding regional cultures in America? With the Sears & Roebuck catalog or the A&P Grocery? Later with the radio networds? Earlier as we developed from a nation of states into a nation-state? I am not so foolishly romantic as to wish for regional cultures to come back in all their details, but I think we are losing something.

I did find that regional accents remain. Tennessee has at least three. Viva localism.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, my life revolved around football. As a kid, I never turned down a neighborhood game. For most of my young life, in a time before internet, cable, or direct TV, I listened breathlessly on fall Saturdays to the radio (KNX and KFWB news stations in LA) awaiting updated scores on the quarter-hour concerning my beloved Baylor Bears. On Sundays, I followed the greatest professional football team in the history of the game, "America's Team," the Dallas Cowboys. I dutifully and happily played football for my school in junior high and high school.

For me, football wasn't everything, it was the only thing. Bob Lilly was my first hero. Sports biographies were the first works of literature that piqued my interest. During my adolescent years, Roger Staubach and Drew Pearson thrilled me, Mike Singletary and Earl Campbell amazed and inspired me, and Tom Landry and Grant Teaff modeled for me impeccable civility and character.

Over time, however, I progressively lost interest in the gridiron. Why? Part of it is fatherhood. My oldest son is eight years-old, and I cannot recount much that has happened in the NFL since 1999. I have been busy with more pressing matters. Part of it goes back much further than that. If truth be told, my alienation with professional sports probably dates back to February 1989, when Jerry Jones fired my boyhood hero, the man in the hat, Tom Landry. The game irrevocably changed for me on that chilly day.

More than any of that, though, I have lost faith with my erstwhile religion.

Why?

1. Football is no longer democratic. The NFL is populated with persons who are completely unlike anyone I know. The NFL is meritocratic, which is good. The best and most resilient athletes make it to and succeed in the League. But the problem is that ball players are not just bigger, faster, and stronger than normal people, they are a race of superhumans.

Fifty years ago, college recruiters were interested in my dad as an offensive guard. He was 5'9" and 180 pounds. This was a period in which almost any kid in America could play football. Size mattered, but not nearly as much as speed, agility, and, most of all, grit.

Today, most kids are not candidates to play college ball. The guys on the field are not like me. Football is not representative, even on the college level. Wasn't there a time when a college football game was supposed to match the best athletes from Baylor versus the best athletes from A&M? Wasn't it implied that these were student athletes? Undoubtedly, this harkens back to a fleeting moment of collegiate athletics that has probably been extinct for 100 years--but, if college athletes are NOT viable students from their respective schools, what is the point of college competition? It is no longer exciting for me to watch the best athletes Baylor can hire play the best athletes UT can hire (and not merely because UT is so much more adept at headhunting).

My silly and naive lament: It is no longer imaginable for some coach to tell some kid from the stands to go under the bleachers and get suited-up. The tradition of the 12th Man is still alive as cherished myth in 2007--but it is empty of any possibility and merely mocks our current age.

2. Even worse: Too many Michael Vicks.

Maybe the dog-fighting charges and the federal case against Mr. Vick will unfold in a way that exonerates the superstar quarterback. Time will tell.

Regardless, I continue to ask:

Why are we paying bad people enormous sums of money to play a sandlot game?

What redeeming cultural value does the NFL embody?

Why do our communities (municipalities, school districts, major universities) continue to devote mammoth resources to aiding and abetting this pastime?

Role models? Character building? Metaphor for life?

I am no longer satisfied by those answers. This is not to say that I am bereft of tenderness for the game. If someone knocked on my door this afternoon and asked me to get out in the street and play ball, I would jump at the chance to squeeze the pigskin one more time.

Moreover, it is likely that at some point this season I will be in the stands at Floyd Casey Stadium yelling "Sic 'em Bears!" at the top of my lungs.

Having said that, to paraphrase Howard Cosell, I am merely “a shell of the fan I used to be.” More to the point, without a doubt, I am just about finished supporting the lifestyles of the Michael Vicks of the world.

Addendum: We have a lot classic fans in our reading community. The Gardener's comments make me wonder where some of you are on football today. Comments?

Here is a list of the 50 most influential churches in the U.S. "Influence" in this article means influence with other churches and pastors. These are the churches that many, many pastors look to when trying to lead their own congregations.

The top 3:

1. Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, Illinois web site
2. Saddle Back Church, Lake Forest, California web site
3. Fellowship Church, Grapevine, Texas web site

The highest ranking church with a black pastor:
9. The Potter's House, Dallas, Texas web site

Highest ranking mainline church
15. The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, Leawood, Kansas web site

Fifteen of the top 50 are independent congregations. Twelve are Southern Baptist.

I attend an evangelical church (although some of my church brethren might recoil at that characterization, as it is freighted with many connotations).

A note on meaning in re evangelical: I am using a variant of the Bebbington definition of evangelicalism, which includes a belief in the centrality of Christ and his redemptive mission as fulfilled in his crucifixion and resurrection, the necessity of conversion, the centrality of the Bible as God's word for his people and the necessity of activism (bringing the message and work of Christ to the world).

This Sunday the preacher encouraged us to think of our church as a "seminary," although not in the technical sense of an institution devoted to the formal training of professional ministers. Leaning on the Latin origin of the word, literally "seed bed," our pastor quoted Elton Trueblood, who believed "every church ought to be a seminary." That is, churches should always be places of training.

All of us are learning all the time. More significantly, churches are places to which we bring our children to learn. Even more daunting, our children are constantly learning from us. We are modeling behavior for them at all times. Our children will know Christ in large part through the lives we lead. We can tell them much--but we will show them more. We may speak of grace--but our practice will rise above the cacophony of commands and instructions.

Inarguably, one reason Alexis de Tocqueville found America such a seedbed for democracy was the evangelical ethos that was already so pervasive during the 1830s. Americans were activists, so many of them busily attempting to bring about a better world through the power of Christ.

Certainly, I recommend no official religion or denomination for the United States of America. I do not advocate breaking down the separation between secular government and American religious culture, but the preacher's message transcends the realm of the church. I cannot help but believe that the body politic is in need of some old fashioned revival. May we embrace our secular duties as citizens with a bit more fervor, turning our eyes toward the prize of strengthening our institutions and perpetuating our American values through the instruction of our posterity through our own activism. Let us be doers of the American word.