I did something last week that I never imagined I would ever do: I acquired a cat.

So I suspect there may be something to this Mayan calendar business, after all.

Until last week, I always believed that there were basically two kinds of people in the world: People who had cats as pets and normal people.

Now that I have the blood coursing rapidly through the veins of the cat lovers out there, let me quickly assure you that I do not dislike cats, so Tiger (that’s the cat’s name) is in no danger of any sort of ill treatment. No, I guess my attitude toward cats can best be characterized as benign ambivalence.

I like cats in much the same way I like boats: Boats are a great deal of fun. Boats are more fun still if the boat belongs to a friend. So it would be incorrect to say that I have a smoldering hatred for all things feline. Cats are OK..

But deep down, I am a dog guy. I understand dogs. They are not complex animals. Dogs, even female dogs, are like guys. There are no complicated relationships between a men and dogs.

Cats? Well, there is just no figuring out a cat.

Joy, the girl I am dating, has two cats, and she made it plain from the start that if we were going to get along, I’d have to be nice to her cats. “They were here first,’’ she pointed out.

Now, six months later, I am on pretty friendly terms with her cats – Bella and Bama. Occasionally, as I am trying to watch TV at Joy’s house, they will migrate over to my lap where they strike a posture that suggests that, if I am on my very best behavior, I will be permitted to pet them. Until they tire of me, of course. It is hard to keep a cat’s attention for very long.

And now I have a cat. I want to go on the record at this point: I did not decide to get a cat. It just happened.

Here is how it happened. About a year ago, Tiger wandered up into the yard of Elsie Price, who lives just down the dirt road from her youngest daughter, Joy. Tiger was only a month or two old, so Mrs. Price took him in and named him Tiger (he is orange and white, hence the name). He was happy there until last September, when Elsie fell ill. She died in November and, for the longest while, Tiger stayed there on her property. Joy or her sister, Joan, would stop by and make sure Tiger had food and water, etc.

But two months ago, Joy decided to have Tiger “fixed’’ and bring him into her home.

It seemed like a good idea…for approximately three minutes. After that, the fur began to fly. Tiger attacked Bella which prompted Bama to attack Tiger. No cat would come to the bargaining table. Sanctions were ineffective. The U.N. of Cats was non-responsive. This went on for two months: Imagine the feline equivalent of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. That was Joy’s house.

Being a simple, trusting, innocent man, I did not see recognized the peril I was in. About two weeks ago, Joy started making observations – to no one in particular, of course - about what a wonderful cat Tiger was. Tiger was naturally imbued with all sorts of great character traits – affectionate, sweet, smart. Joy judged – again, to no one in particular – that Tiger would be a great companion for the right person, maybe someone who lived alone and led a quiet, introspective sort of life.

Before you know it, I am driving the 40 miles back to my apartment with this cat in the back seat.

It’s been a week now, and I think Tiger and I are beginning to have an understanding of the house rules. There is but one house rule, of course. Tiger does as he pleases.

Most of the week, he has spent under my bed. Using my dog logic, I thought maybe he was frightened because that’s what a dog would do if he were frightened. Now, I’m convinced that Tiger stays under my bed because he likes having a place to his own, a place I can’t comfortably access.

So he spends long stretches under my bed. Again, this is a change for me. Dogs like to be wherever you are. Cats? Not so much. Cats ascribe to the “quality time’’ canard. “It’s not how much time I spend with you that matters, it’s the quality time that counts.’’ Right. No dog would ever say that.

There is one odd behavior Tiger exhibits that I cannot account for. Joy told me, among a few hundred other things, that I should always leave the shades pulled up in at least one window, so Tiger could sit in the window sill and observe the world passing by.

Well, I did this. I pulled up the blinds and sat Tiger on the window sill. He went nuts, jumping down and running to the middle of the den where he stopped and looked back toward the window.

To approximate his demeanor, try this: Set up with your back as straight as possible. Cup your hands and put them in from of your chest, fingers pointing down. Stretch your neck up as high as you can. Open your eyes as wide as possible.

This was the look Tiger had on his face after that first look out the window. He looked like a prairie dog on sentinel duty when a hawk has shown up on the horizon.

Now, I’ll admit I don’t live in the very best neighborhood, but still…Every time I gather Tiger up into my arms, talk to him in my softest voice and pet him as I walk slowly toward the window, his head pops up like a jack-in-box and his eyes grow wide as saucers. This happens every single time.

So, of course, I do this frequently.

But aside from the window phobia, Tiger seems to have settled in and appears to be satisfied enough – no cat will ever admit to being completely satisfied, I am sure. I do like him, though.

Like I said, I never thought I would be a cat person. Of course, I never thought I’d vote for a Democrat for President, either. Sometimes you just don’t have much of a choice, I reckon.

Nov. 28: "The Dream''

My daughter, Abby, dreams all the time. I’ve heard that we all do. What I mean is that she remembers all of her dreams. But there are decades that go by without me remembering any of my dreams.

Last night, I dreamed and, for whatever reason, it remains vivid in my waking hours, a dream so bizarre as to be interesting. This especially true if you put a lot of stock into the idea that dreams are relevant to real life. I don’t put much stock in that notion and I am particularly adamant when it comes to this particular dream, for reasons that will be all too apparent.

Some parts of this dream, I remember in great detail. Some parts were vague even while I was dreaming the dream. The events in my dream seemed to be loosely connected at best, which is to say that the dream did not proceed logically from one scene to the next. If this were fiction, it would be considered very bad writing.

But I cannot be held accountable for the writing of my dream, of course. I’m just passing it along as I recall it.

I should warn you that some of the material in my dream is best considered for a “mature audience.’’ Again, this is not my fault. Some of it is pretty disgusting, too. (See previous disclaimers).

Now, having said all that, I will proceed with the recounting of last night’s dream If any of you are “interpreters,’’ I’d be interested in what you make of this dream, by the way.

THE DREAM

I don’t know where I was at the beginning of the dream. I don’t know where I had been, either. I got the impression that I was with a friend, although I don’t know who that friend was.

We are walking into a building for some sort of event. I say this because there was a man at the door and while I didn’t give him a ticket or anything, it seemed to me that we had to have his approval before we could enter.

My friend seemed to know something unusual about this man. “Watch this!’’ he said as we approached our turn in line.

The man at the door has this big sword, maybe it was scimitar. At any rate, when a man came up to him, he would take a big swipe with his scimitar and brush the front of the man’s pants without actually making contact with skin.

OK. Here’s where it gets really weird: As soon as he swiped the man’s pants with the scimitar, he would throw a fake penis on the floor, as if he had separated the customer from his, uh, appendage. Everybody laughed.

Soon it was my turn. The guy takes a big swing with the scimitar; I feel the steel brush the fabric of my pants. Then he throws the fake penis on the floor.

For some reason, I am bothered by this. The fake penis on the floor doesn’t look fake to me.

“That’s a fake penis, right?’’ I ask the man, hoping to be reassured.

“You can imagine what you like,’’ he said. “But the fact is, that’s your penis. I missed. Sorry.’’

I was not at all comforted by this, as you might imagine. Do you ever pretend one thing all the while knowing it’s not true? That’s the feeling I had. I was pretty sure it was my penis on the floor – the man with the scimitar even apologized for “missing.’’ But somehow, I just told myself that my penis was still attached and that there was a fake penis on the floor. You would think it would be easy enough to confirm, right? But I didn’t “check.’’ Maybe I didn’t want to know. That’s all I can think of, at least.

The next thing I know I am in a room. It seems like someone’s living room. There are chairs and end tables and lamps and a big sofa with several people sitting on it. I am listening to their chatter when I realize who these people are.

They are from the Westboro Baptist Church – those crazy people that picket the funerals of fallen soldiers. My eyes focus on one woman on the couch. She is in her mid-20s. I recognize her as the heir apparent to the Westboro group.

Now, in my waking world, I had recently read a Kansas City Star profile on this young woman. It was an interesting story, but it’s not as though the whole Westboro affair is something that I have much interest in. I am certainly not obsessed with the subject.

But in my dream, I recognized this woman as the woman who was profiled in the newspaper story. After a while, I could not resist. I remember leaning close to her and saying, “You are wrong and I can prove that you are wrong.’’

She just looked at me, but she didn’t seem to be angry.

It was a confrontational exchange. I don’t remember being mad. I didn’t raise my voice. “You are wrong and I can prove that you are wrong,’’ was delivered in the same matter-of-fact fashion that you might say, “I think your lights are on in the parking lot.’’

We talked for a while. I remember saying to her: “The problem with your group is that you act as though the New Testament never happened.’’

I don’t remember her response or any other part of the conversation, but for some reason, I had the sense that we had agreed to talk about this matter at some future point in time.

The next thing I know, I am slouching out in a big chair. A different woman comes up to me.

“What’s wrong with your pants?’’ she asks. She seems upset.

I look down at my pants. I am wearing blue jeans. The left leg of my jeans, from my crotch to below the knee, has a dark stain. I touch my pants leg. It is stiff; as though whatever it was that stained my pants had dried.

“I think the man at the door cut my penis off,’’ I said.

I do not remember being all that upset, though. It seemed as though I was convinced that he hadn’t cut all of my penis off, just a part of it. It could be fixed, I thought. And that comforted me.

The next thing I know, I am thinking about lawyers. How much do you get if somebody cuts off your penis? That’s what I wanted to discuss with an attorney.

I said at the beginning that I didn’t know where I was. But somehow, I’m thinking now the venue was somewhere on the Mississippi State campus because, as I was thinking about lawyers, I was afraid that if I sued Mississippi State, my professors would flunk me because I sued the school. So I thought, no, I won’t hire a lawyer. First, I’ll see if the school will offer me a settlement.

And then I woke up.

So that’s the dream. I do not suggest it has any literary value, obviously. Nor do I think it is filled with symbolism or is, in any way, a metaphor. I do not believe it is a prediction of some future event, you know, like the dream Joseph interpreted for Pharaoh.

At least I hope not.

Nov. 18: "The Hysterical States of America''

For some time now, one of those informal polls that often appear on Face Book has been circulating among my “friends.’’ The question is simple: Should people be drug-tested before they can receive Welfare?

The “yes’’ answers far outnumber the “no’’ answers.

I am not surprised by this, of course.

Yet the more I think about this reaction, the more I am convinced that it says more about the prevailing attitudes of our country than anything else. Over the past few years, our nation has become a hostage to the unreasoning passions of the few. The Tea Party and the Occupy movement represent two sides of the same coin. They are equally intractable, shrill and confrontational. Overheated rhetoric is the currency of our time. And if you don’t fall on one very loud side or another, you are irrelevant.

 

 

We have become the Hysterical States of America. The man who screams loudest, whose rhetoric is most extreme; he is the man whose voice is heard and followed.

 

 

But what does that have to do with drug testing welfare applicants?

Plenty, I think.

On the surface - which is where our passions are most easily stirred - the idea that a person who wants to apply for welfare should not be a drug-abuser seems pretty obvious. Who could really disagree with that idea? The notion that our taxpayer dollars are going to help people finance their addictions is outrageous. The more we think about it, at least the more we think about it from a strictly emotional point of view, the more outraged we are and the more convinced we become that it would be great if there was a law that required a welfare applicant to pass a drug test.

In the Hysterical States of America,we are in no mood to coddle crack-heads.

 

 

So it should be no surprise that when the idea of drug testing for welfare applicants is posed, the favorable response is overwhelming. And that is precisely what happened in Florida,where voters passed a law doing exactly that. The law has yet to be implemented; a judge ruled the Florida law violated the U.S. Constitution, specifically the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure.

Alabama, Louisiana,Kentucky and Oklahoma have also considered similar legislation while a U.S. Senator from Louisianahas proposed a federal law that would require all 50 states to implement acomparable law. Given the Florida ruling, it’s unlikely these efforts will amount to much of anything, however.

 

 

Even so, the issue is worth examining because it speaks to the current climate of debate in our country, which seems to begin and end at the raw nerve ending of our emotions, even at a time in our country when careful, diligent, thorough and dispassionate discussion is most critical. The drug-testing-for-welfare-applicants idea is merely the best available example.

 

 

So let’s peel off the emotional reaction to the question and see what we find.

First, what are the motives behind such a law? There seems to be only two possibilities: Punishment or rehabilitation.

 

 

Although I could imagine there are some who would support the law under the guise that it would help drug users see the errors of their ways, my knowledge of human nature tells me that most people really see the law as a way to punish malefactors. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, of course. So, for the purposes of this examination, we will proceed with the notion that the reason for the law is to punish.

 

 

Who would be punished under this law? Drug-users? Yes. Who else? In other words, would there be any “collateral damage?’’ Yes, an awful lot, I think.

First, if you cut off welfare money to the drug abuser, you are also cutting off welfare to his/her dependants. The law punishes the guilty and the innocent children of the guilty alike. It’s one thing to hold people accountable, but do we believe we should hold their children accountable as well? Are we that angry?

Perhaps you are thinking that any responsible adult would not put his children in that position and you would be right. Well, introduce me to the next responsible addict you run across, OK? The idea that an addict will act in his own best interests – or even in the best interests of those he/she loves – is to fail to understand the nature of addiction. Drug addicts are going to feed their addiction. Whether they get welfare or not is immaterial. But to a child, welfare can mean the difference between having adequate food, clothing or shelter and having those things at all.

Second, under the Florida law – and likely under any similar law that might be proposed – the applicantis required to pay for the drug test and would be reimbursed the cost if he passes.

The first problem is that it creates a situation where you could actually be too poor to get welfare. The second problem is far more disturbing: It creates a situation where even those who pass the drug test suffer since the costs for reimbursing the applicants for the drug tests come out of the pool of available money for the whole program. As a result, every recipient of welfare money would see his allotment decreased, perhaps dramatically decreased.

And to what good end?

I suppose it would, indeed, deny money to some desperate addicts. I suspect a few of those people might say to themselves, “Well,perhaps I should get treatment for my addiction.’’ A larger group, I suspect, would be inclined to say, “Perhaps I should rob someone or steal a car.’’ Call me a pessimist.

 

 

There is much I could add. Alcohol is far more likely to be abused among the poor than drugs, yet no one has called for alcohol tests. The drug test is for applicants only, so there would be no incentive not to use drugs once you are enrolled. Clearly, it’s achieves nothing really except to add another level of bureaucracy to yet another federal program. Generally, my good conservative friends are opposed to bureacracy, but I suppose they are willing to make an exception in this case.

Really, though, is there any need to go any farther? No matter how you dissect it, the worst result would be that the innocent would suffer far more than the guilty.

And yet when my friends – all of them kind, decent, caring people - were asked if such a law is a good idea, they loved it. They loved it because it catered to their sense of outrage and there was no effort to examine the matter carefully.

We are seeing far too much of this sort of skin-deep reasoning these days, from immigration to taxes. People are angry and somebody has to pay. Let the chips fall where they may. We are unable or unwilling to see beyond naked emotion.

Heaven help us, huh?

Oct. 28: Prop 26: Quixote rides again!

What follows is an Op-Ed piece I submitted to the school newspaper:

It has been interesting to follow the debate over Proposition 26, more commonly known at “The Personhood Amendment,’’ both in my encounters with those who are advocating for and against the ballot measure around campus and in the pages of the Reflector.

The previous opinion pieces published in The Reflector have considered this topic almost exclusively on moral and ethical grounds and it is highly unlike that anything I might add to the matter on those grounds would alter anyone’s view.

But I do believe there is another way of considering thistopic that is, at the very least, equally relevant.

As I consider the debate over Proposition 26, the more I begin to see it not merely as a debate over an issue that has divided Americans for the past 40 years, but as a microcosm of what makes Mississippi, well, Mississippi.

Last week, I spent some time observing two groups who were arguing on either side of Proposition 26. The Pro-26 and Anti-26 groups had set up shop just feet from each other on the Drill Field. I listened as advocates for both sides made their pitches to passer-by students. Predictably, each group
accused the other of distortions, disinformation and exaggerations.

Finally, I approached a member of each group and asked what would happen if the Proposition passed, which, I suspect, is the likely outcome.

After listening patiently to both parties, I am convinced that both sides are wrong.

What will happen if Proposition 26 passes?

Nothing.

Proposition 26, if passed, cannot be implemented because it will never pass Constitutional muster. State laws cannot usurp federal law and, clearly, Proposition 26 will certainly be challenged in the Courts and there is no reasonable expectation that it can meet the legal challenges.

Pro-26 advocates argue that they do have the Constitution on their side, noting that anything that any powers not implicitly given to the federal government are ceded to the states. But that argument has been repeatedly refuted over the decades. In fact, Mississippi, along with many other Southern states, used the “state’s rights’’ argument to secede from the Union in 1861 and later to fight Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s. Obviously, the tactic failed miserably in both cases. The “State’s Rights’’ argument is a thin limb for Pro-26 supporters to cling to.

Mississippi is just one of 32 states that have proposed some sort of new definition on
“personhood,’’ which is primarily a legal strategy devised to overturn Roe v. Wade. Mississippi’s version is broader than most – too broad, it seems. Neither National Right to Life, the nation’s most prominent anti-abortion organization, or the Catholic Church, whose views on abortion have never been ambiguous, offer support for Mississippi’s amendment.

In fact, there is some belief that Mississippi’s proposition might ultimate damage the anti-abortion cause.

James Bopp Jr., the top lawyer for National Right to Life, told the New York Times that the amendment is  regrettable from a pro-life perspective. “From the standpoint of protecting unborn lives it’s utterly futile,” he said, “and it has the grave risk that if it did get to the Supreme
Court, the court would write an even more extreme abortion policy.”

So, no, I won’t be voting for Proposition 26 on grounds that have nothing to do with the moral and ethical implications it represents, but because it will serve no useful purpose.

I stated that if Proposition 26 passes, nothing will happen. But that’s not true, of course. Something will, indeed, happen. What willhappen is that Mississippi taxpayers will spend millions of dollars over the next decade fighting a legal battle whose outcome is about as predictable as an Ole Miss-Alabama football game – with the state playing the role of Ole Miss. And the state will spend
these millions of dollars at a time when it is busy slashing budgets for health, education and programs for the poor.

But that’s the way it’s always been with Mississippi: We seem incapable of fighting any battles other than the ones we are certain to lose. In the meantime, the issues that should command our attention are neglected while we wage against a quixotic war on hot-button issues that have
little real impact on the real issues that Mississippians have faced seemingly
forever.

I am native Mississippian, and 52 years old, a non-traditional student both chronologically and, I suspect, philosophically. All my life, Mississippi has ranked last (or first, provided being first means worst) on just about every measurable “quality of life’’ issue. That’s “Our State:’’ Last in education,
first in poverty, last in health care, first in obesity.

So what do our political leaders do when they consider Mississippi’s regrettable state? They push legislation on things like voter ID, abortion, gun laws, etc. – measure that appeal only to passions, but do little – nothing,really – to move Mississippi up or down any of those lists. It’s almost as if our “leaders’’ are simply shrugging their shoulders and saying, “well, somebody’s gotta be last, right?
Might as well be us.’’

And yet the same people – or different people with the same views – are elected over and over again.

I hope to live long enough to see a real leader emerge in our state someday, someone who has real ideas and is determined to focus on that list and move Mississippi, at long last, in a hopeful direction. Of course, how he will be elected is another matter entirely.

Mississippi is like a house with a badly leaking roof. Our leaders respond by calling for
bigger pots.

If futility could be ranked, I know just where Mississippi would stand on that list.
Proposition 26 is  just the latest example.

Slim Smith is a seniorCommunications major from Tupelo.

Sept. 20: "Is Plato right?''

A sneak peek at my magazine column for October:



Professor Holt stood in front on his History of Western Philosophy class and posed a question that compelled the 32 students to diligently study their shoes.

It was not a philosophical question.

“How many of you read what I assigned last time?’’ he asked.

One student raised his hand. The hand belonged to the old guy who always goes to class early, sits up front, takes copious notes and never sends text messages during class. (Hate that guy!)

Dr. Holt’s eyes settled on me.

“You did?’’ he asked in a tone of wonder. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you drink beer all weekend like normal people?’’

And so it is in the world of Dr. Holt’s History of Western Philosophy class, where good is a curiosity and bad is to be expected.

For the first few weeks of class, I had pretty much made up my mind that Dr. Holt was the worst sort of teacher you could have. Now, I am convinced he is the finest kind.

He is, in some respects the caricature of the eccentric college professor. He is perpetually flustered, utterly disorganized and has an almost pathological hatred of dry-erase markers. The markers are forever running out of ink as he writes rather maniacally his Greek phrases on the big white board up front. About every five minutes, an unworthy marker goes flying across the room, followed by what can only be assumed is a string of Greek curse words.

Yet for all his imagined flaws, there is one indictment that no student will ever make against him: Dr. Dale Holt absolutely loves Philosophy.

His enthusiasm for it, his endless fascination, seems to shoot from his fingertips and the ends of his graying hair. In fact, this passion is so boundless that he often leaps from one complicated idea or theory to another, leaving a wake of ancient philosophers behind like dust from the back of a pick-up truck. We students, hardly any of us philosophy majors, struggle mightily in a futile attempt to keep up.

In short, he loves Philosophy like I love the newspaper business – even after I got kicked out of the newspaper business.

I was afraid I would fail the class. But then Dr. Holt revealed a little secret, which I was able to confirm by talking to previous students in his class: His tests are impossibly simple. He only gives two of them, a mid-term and a final.

On the class website he posted a “sample test,’’ that he says are a pretty fair representation of the real tests.

One sample question:

One of the first conceptual difficulties to be faced when studying the history of philosophy is:

A. Determining what your subject matter is: that is, answering the question, “What is philosophy?’’

B. Deciding whether to buy the book or sponge off my classmates.

C. Stockpiling enough caffeinated soft drinks to see me through the semester.

So you can see, Dr. Holt is not too hung up on tests and grades and those sorts of things.

And yet, I find that after five weeks of classes I am somehow learning more in his class than in all of my other classes, where tests and grades are serious business and the student is inclined to gorge on facts primarily for the purpose of regurgitating them at the appointed test times. I find that I am beginning to love philosophy whereas Spanish III, for example, leaves me cold and uncaring.

For the past two weeks, we’ve been studying Plato’s Republic. Maybe it is a combination of Plato’s brilliance and Dr. Holt’s enthusiasm for the subject, but whatever the reason I find that I am fascinated by it. In fact, so revealing has it been that I am embarrassed to note that my first exposure to it came at the age of 52. It’s like discovering a thing that, to your surprise, has been pretty much common knowledge to everyone else for years and years. Like Facebook, for example.

In The Republic, in case you haven’t read it or the intervening years have dulled your memory, Plato – speaking through his mentor, Socrates – seeks to define “justice’’ during an argument with his friends. Socrates’ friends, it seems to me, are almost always insufferable prigs. No wonder he wound up drinking poison. I rather imagine it would be like being trapped in a never-ending Tea Party rally.

In seeking to define justice, Plato constructs a city he calls the “just city,’’ where everyone has a well-defined role and is committed to performing the duties of that role.

The end result would be a society where each is given what is his due and each person’s work is devoted to what is best for the city as a whole.

Socrates’ friends listen to his theory carefully and it occurs to them that the “just city’’ would likely be met with some fierce opposition, for it is, in many ways, far from Utopian.

How would Socrates propose to deal with the protests that his concept would surely prompt?

Paraphrasing here, Socrates says you would pretty much have to kill anyone over the age of 8 and start all over.

Clearly, Plato was not really constructing what he considered to be a perfect society. He was merely using it as a model to define the complicated idea of justice.

But more and more I wonder if Plato’s solution – made in jest – is about the only solution we have left to fix what is wrong with our own country these days.

I don’t suppose we could really kill everyone over the age of 8, although I do have a pretty good idea of who I would start with.

But I do wonder if we have reached the point where we are so divided that we cannot grasp any real solutions.

The best example I can think of came on the night the President made his speech on the Jobs Bill.

Within five minutes of the close of his speech, I noted sadly that many of my friends on Facebook had already torn in it apart.

“It’s all about unions and redistributing the wealth,’’ one posted.

Another suggested that the job bill was merely a tool to create a socialist state.

Yet another said it was “just another bailout.’’

This seems a horribly wondrous thing to me, that common, everyday people would be able to divine and analyze the bill within mere minutes.

I asked each of those folks if they had read the bill.

Of course, they had not, mainly because there was no bill to read at that point.

Will the president’s job bill work? I have no idea. But I would like to think that all of us have suffered enough to at least approach it with an open mind.

To me, our situation is like falling off a ship far out at in the ocean. In that circumstance, you will try anything you judge might possibly float and you will keep trying things until you find something that does. I can scarcely believe that a rational person, flailing away in a vast sea, would see an object close at hand and began to theorize on that object’s ability to support his weight. I don’t think he would be too worried about the source of this object, either. No, I believe that he would approach it hopefully and put it to the test, laying aside his skepticism for the moment.

But we Americans seem to have lost that capacity. I sincerely believe we would rather drown.

I am no apologist for the President, I should point out. He seems to lack one essential quality: The ability to lead.

But I wonder, too, if anyone has that ability. I rather doubt it. The Right devours the Left and Left devours the Right. We are consuming ourselves. We are torn and bloodied and in rags, but hey, our dogma survives, unmolested and robust as ever.

Sometimes, I think it’s simply a matter that we haven’t reached the real crisis yet. Oh, I know you will hear people screaming from the rooftops that America has reached the point of desperation. And yet, just watch: As soon as a new “i-Whatever’’ comes on the market, millions of sorely-pressed Americans will stand in line for hours to throw hundreds of dollars at the cashier.

It’s one thing to theorize about going hungry. It’s quite another to actually go hungry.

Maybe that’s what it will take, ultimately. Maybe we’ll all have to suffer – really suffer – to the point where we are willing to try anything to see if it will float.

We’re not there yet.

I have a feeling we’ll get there soon enough, though.

I don’t see any other way, really, sort of an epidemic of common sense.

But as long as the question remains “Which Party is more Evil?’’ rather than “What will we do about supper?’’ we are at an impasse.

We would rather gouge each other’s eyes out than listen to what the other person has to say.

Maybe Plato was right. Maybe all that can be done is to start over.

But how?

Sept. 5: "Back in the game?''

I saw a lot more of the Ole Miss campus than I intended on Saturday.
Back in Oxford to report on a football game for the first time in more than 18 years, I found that the campus was just enough of a blend of old and new to leave me thoroughly confused.

I spent about an hour weaving through the narrow, pedestrian-clogged streets that surrounded Vaught-Hemingway Stadium trying to find the Media parking lot, which had been moved to a different location over the ensuing two decades.

When the sports editor at my old newspaper, the Biloxi Sun Herald, asked me to cover the game, I had no trepidation. I don’t know how many football games I’ve covered in almost 30 years in the newspaper business, so I wasn’t sweating this one. After all, it was a 3:45 p.m. game, so the prospect of a tight deadline - a sports writer’s primary stress-producer - wasn’t in play.

But, of course, first I had to actually get into the stadium.

I succeeded, I am happy to report, and I’ll know right where to go next time.

I found the Media entrance to the stadium with no difficulty and stepped into the elevator that would take me to the press box. The young student whose job it was to shuttle folks up and down to the various levels of the stadium, nodded and smiled.

“That’s what I want to do,’’ she said warmly, pointing at press pass attached to my shirt.

“Huh?’ I said.

“Be a sports reporter,’’ she expanded.

“Oh,’’ I said. “Well, good for you. That’s wonderful.’’

The response I really had in mind was, “Don’t you think going from elevator operator to sports reporter is sort of a lateral move?’’ But then I remembered how excited I was at the prospects of being a bona fide, paid-to-do-it sports writer all those years ago. So I suppressed the urge to speak candidly.

“Good luck!’’ I said as the elevator door opened at the press box level and I stepped out.

The game-day staff at Ole Miss, much like you will find throughout the South, is impossibly polite, friendly and accommodating, so the warm reception I received mitigated a slight nervousness that I began to feel as I stepped into the press box.

It was the assignment that made me nervous, obviously. It was just being back in this old familiar setting after so many years away.

I’ve been back in Mississippi for almost nine months now and, during that time, the word has spread among my old sports-writing colleagues of not only my return, but the circumstances that surrounded it. This was the first occasion I’d have to see any of them.

In a word, awkward.

“Hey, Slim! Good to see you,’’ said Parish, who I once interviewed for a reporter job about 20 years ago when I was sports editor in Biloxi. “I heard you were back…’’

There was a moment of nervous silence. He seemed to be struggling for the right words to say. Then, finally: “I’m sorry to hear about your, uh, troubles.’’

“Yeah, I almost never found the media parking lot,’’ I answered with a wink.

Of course, that was not the “troubles’’ my old colleague was trying to find a tactful way to acknowledge. But I was just as eager to leave to subject alone as he was.

Most of the other old acquaintances seemed happy enough to leave the subject –un-broached. But I did notice there was one fella who kept giving me an odd look, both in the press box and later, in the Ole Miss interview room. As I was walking back to the press box after the interviews were over, he finally approached and introduced himself.

Turns out, he’s been around Mississippi for as long as I have, working mainly at small weekly papers. To my knowledge, I had never met him. I certainly didn’t recognize him. But somehow, he knew me.

“Where have you been?’’ he asked.

It was just the sort of question I had been rehearsing my answer for as I drove to Oxford.

“Santa Rosa, San Francisco, Arizona, Prison,’’ I said. “Three of ‘em were job related.’’

He did not seem to know what to make of my answer, really. So he started talking about the facilities at Ole Miss, about how much they had changed since my last visit. I feel sort of bad about the way I responded now. It was sort of a blunt way to put and he had asked the question innocently enough.

Since returning to school, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering about what to do next. It’s still an open question, to be honest. I figured the first order of business was to get that degree I didn’t think I’d need 30 years ago when I dropped out of school. But I’ll graduate in eight months. Then what? The idea of law school appeals to me on some level. Getting my Masters and teaching seems like a reasonable idea, if someone is inclined to hire someone with my background (the bad part, I mean).

Then again, I could always do this – sports writing. I figure I could get a low-paying job at a small paper and start over. There is certainly some comfort level in this profession: I know I can do a credible job.

But do I want to?

A few years before I went to prison, I left sports journalism to write news columns, mainly because I began to realize that the people in the grandstands were a lot more interesting to me than the people on the playing field.

So do I really want to go back to that? I don’t know. It’s fun, to a certain degree. But still…

As we were waiting for some of the Ole Miss players to arrive in the interview room after the game, I ran into another old colleague. I want divulge his name, but he is a few years older than me and has been covering sports in the South for more than 30 years. He’s widely regarded for his writing ability, too, and is treated with deference by even the most elite of coaches.

We stood there, not speaking, just waiting for the player we wanted to talk to, when he said in a weary tone of voice, “I’m so tired of this s—t.’’

He didn’t have to elaborate. I knew precisely what he meant.

A lot of people would be inclined to think that being a sports writer is a dream job.

But you do it long enough and the new wears off and the endless demands of driving all over creation to get to games, the sometimes crazy deadlines, the long hours of weekend duty, the surprisingly fragile egos of the athletes and coaches you deal with on a regular basis, the complete lack of perspective and proportion of fans and the low pay begins to grind you down and you get cynical, bitter even. Mostly, though, you just get “tired of this s--t.’’

So that’s the dilemma: Do I start at the bottom doing something I do well with the distinct possibility that I might get soon completely sick of it? Or do I step away from what I do best to pursue some vague possibility that might end up just as empty?

I just don’t know.

In the meantime, going to games is fun and it puts a few bucks in my pocket.

For now, that’s all I really know.

Aug. 21: "Two of Life's Great Mysteries''

For some time now, I’ve been able to escape what, for a 52-year-old man, is the often surreal atmosphere of life as a college student to do some country living on the weekends.

Granted, Starkville, Miss., is not located in a sprawling urban metropolis. Nor does Mississippi State University lack a certain bucolic quality. There are plenty of open green spaces and ancient shade trees around campus.

Still, these weekend escapes to rural Pickens County, Alabama (somewhat a redundancy, since the whole county is more or less rural) have been a salve for the vagaries my new life as an old student. Out here on the Price homestead, where you have to drive five miles to find a paved road, things just don’t seem to rush at you. You have a chance to study something in detail because it's usually in no great hurry. Except for the hummingbirds, who even mate in mid-flight. Guessing you probably didn't know that.

This weekend, I cut down some small trees near the creek where the family goes fishing and stages parties from time to time. I cut some grass and spread some ant poison on some enormous ant hills that had been built in the roots of several of the great old oaks that surround Joy’s little cottage.

I also, pulled up a dead shrub by tying a rope a round it, attaching the other end of the rope to the trailer hitch of the old Ford 150 pick-up and yanking it out, roots and all. That was more fun than you would probably ever suspect. Here’s an oddity, though: It took four feet of dirt to fill the one-foot hole where the shrub used to be.

So it was a hot, busy, sweaty-stained weekend. At my age, this sort of work requires frequent breaks, usually taken under the closest available shade. Two hours into the day, I was already soaked with sweat, having sweated through my jeans even. The bandana I tied around my head to keep the sweat out of my eyes, when rung out, could fill a fruit jar, it seemed. But it’s a good kind of dirty sweat, somehow. It just feels good, in a way I am at a loss to explain.

I did run one errand during the weekend, driving over to Carrolton, the closest town, to buy some night-crawlers and crickets, just in case somebody decided to go fishing.

“There’s a cricket basket in the truck shed,’’ Joy told me.

So I grabbed the cricket basket and headed for town.

Joy had told me I could buy the worms and crickets at the little grocery store in town. I looked around the store, but didn’t see anything that looked like it might be where you would keep bait. Finally, I approached the checkout counter and asked the man behind the counter if they had crickets for sale.

“Crickets?'’ the man said in an accent I recognized as being Indian (by Indian I mean the big country in Asia).

“Yes, crickets,’’ I said.

The man made a motion as if he were swinging a cricket paddle. “That kind of cricket?’’ he asked.

“No,’’ I said. “I mean for fishing.’’

“No. I am sorry. We don’t sell them.’’

Fortunately, another customer had arrived at the counter as I was having this discussion with the clerk.

“You can get crickets at the One-Stop, I think,’’ she said. “Otherwise, you’ll have to go to Pickensville.’’

I’m not sure where Pickensville is located, but the woman said it as if it were a long drive. So I was relieved to discover that you can buy crickets (and worms) at One-Stop in Carrolton.

The man at the One-Stop took my cricket basket and returned a few minutes later with 100 (or so) crickets in my basket.

“The worms are in the refrigerator over there,’’ he said.

Driving back to the Price homestead, I looked over at the little round wire mess basket, full of crickets.

It’s a funny thing, really. I’ve seen and used cricket baskets since I was a little kid.

But somehow, two marvelous thoughts came to me as I drove along the little blacktop highway.

First, why don’t the crickets just hop out of the basket? Second, and this is probably even a greater mystery, who figured out they wouldn’t?

On the outside chance that you don’t know about cricket baskets, a description is necessary. A cricket basket (it can be round or square) is made of wire mess and is about 12 inches tall. Here’s where the mysterious part comes in. There is no lid on the basket, only a sleeve, usually plastic, that fits inside. Even so, the opening at the top is large enough for even the biggest hand to fit into to retrieve a cricket.

Now, I know enough about crickets to understand that even the most ancient, infirmed of crickets can jump a good 18 inches. Any cricket could, at least in theory, stand at the bottom of the cricket basket and hop straight up out of the opening in the top of the basket and escape to freedom.

But they never do.

But here’s the more interesting part. Someone – no one will likely ever know who – figured this out and designed a basket for keeping crickets that didn’t have a lid. The idea of a container without a lid used specifically to keep something inside that has the ability - not to mention the desire - to get out seems to defy all logical thinking.

In my mind, it is one of the great inventions of all time, not because of its contribution to society – which, at best, is marginal – but rather because it is so contrary to any conventional way of thinking.

As far as I know, there have been no real technological advances in this field. Long ago, somebody figured this out and they’ve been making cricket baskets pretty much the same way ever since.

When you buy a cricket basket, you do not have to work about a 4G version of it hitting the market next month. Strangely, that idea appeals to me.

Maybe it’s just a sign I am getting older. I find that I am comforted more by the old things that don’t change than I am excited by all the new things that change all the time.

The road in front of the Price homestead has been a dirt road for close to 100 years. Most likely, a hundred years hence it will still be a dirt road.

And the cricket basket of 2111 will look the same as the one that is sitting on the front seat of this old pick-up truck.

And the crickets won’t hop out.

They never do.

They never will.

I like that.