Difficult to believe that Freedom of Religion will survive unscathed

We have taken the Bill of Rights for granted for a long time in this country.

So much so that I would be surprised if one American in 100 could enumerate all 10 amendments and what they contain. I know I can't, at least not off the top of my head. But if we're honest, we ought to accept the fact that we don't value all our so-called "rights" equally.

Those on the Left may love freedom of speech, and those on the Right may love the right to keep and bear arms, but there is at least one right which might not survive the next 10-20 years.

Be honest. Do we really still believe in freedom or religion? And more to the point, can we still afford it?

Let me start by saying that every religious person in this country certainly believes that they should be free to practice religion. Most folks who are truly religious doubtless believe their faith is the best way to live, and they have varying degrees of tolerance for those who disagree with them.

The years keep passing and memories become more and more faded

"Roger: I hope 1944 turns out well. They pass so quickly. Where do they all go?
"Biff Baxter: So quickly. Then we get old. And we never knew what any of it was about."
-- WOODY ALLEN, Radio Days

Everybody's got their memories, and as they grow older, memories fill more and more of the space in their brain devoted to remembrance.

I loved hearing my late grandfather tell me stories about seeing baseball players like Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Nap Lajoie and others. He owned a bat that he said had belonged to Lajoie, a bat that was bigger, longer and heavier than any bat I had ever seen.

My grandparents and my mother.

I loved his story about his strict father, who had emigrated from Germany in the late 19th century, and the Sunday dinner when his brother learned a lesson. The entire family, a dozen or so of them, were seated around the dining room table. My great-uncle, who I never met, complained that his plate was cracked. My great-grandfather came around the table, grabbed him and threw him through the open window into the yard.

A minute or two later, he threw a suitcase after him and said, "If you ever complain about your mother again, you can leave and never come back."

Talk about your tough love.

These days that would probably be called child abuse, but I'll be willing to bet one thing. I doubt that kids raised that way went out and killed people because they were bored.

On the whole, we weren't a generation that was all that interested in the past. People have accused baby boomers of acting as if the world started on the day we were born. I don't think that's completely true, but I know that my millennial son asked my dad more about his experience in World War II than I ever did.

Virgile had a report due in school. He asked, and was told.

I never asked. In fact, I'm not sure I ever asked any of my relatives about their lives in the years before I was born.

It took me a long time in life to understand that when you find other people's stories interesting, you're showing a certain regard for their humanity. And no matter how much you think you know, there will always be people who know more than you about something.

Interviewing Chris Evert in 1981.

Being a reporter helped. Especially when I was doing feature stories or columns about someone, I saw fairly quickly that the more I talked, the less they talked. And vice versa. I learned that short questions are more likely to yield long answers, and that waiting in silence when the answer is seemingly done can often result in even more information and better quotes.

There are so many great memories I ought to have, stories I wrote 30 years ago and didn't save.

I always thought there would be better ones, and there were, but I no longer remember the details of interviewing Chris Evert in 1981 or sitting and talking for an hour with Roger Maris in 1982.

I spent hours drinking vodka with Roger Kahn in 1983 and an entire evening watching baseball with Hank Aaron in 1984. I wrote stories every time and I no longer have any of them.

I do still have memories, a lot of them, but more of them are about my wife, children and grandchildren. The '80s are more of a blur to me now.

They pass so quickly.

Then we get old.

And we never know what any of it was about.

Republicans have us lurching toward a very strange 2016 election

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre, The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
-- W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"

If you have been a frequent reader of mine in the nearly 15 years I have been writing for various Internet websites, you can't be surprised to see me quoting Yeats. Good old Bill -- and particularly this work -- really resonates with me.

Great works of literature are multifaceted, yielding more of their secrets each time you study them.

Most of the time, I focus in on the first part of this quote. But for some reason, today it was the final part that struck me as important.

" ... the worst are full of passionate intensity."

Yesterday evening in Cleveland, 17 different candidates for the Republican nomination for president took part in two debates in Cleveland. The mere fact of the number ought to tell us that none of the candidates are some impressive that they're scaring others off.

That said, the worst and scariest of them are full of passionate intensity. They speak of going to war with Iran, of defying the Supreme Court and of shutting down private companies like Planned Parenthood. Several even say they would deny women the right to abortions if their lives were at stake.

And then there is Donald Trump, the present-day H. Ross Perot or George Wallace. Trump has certainly made things exciting, and it looks as if his election next year would enable us to mothball Air Force One for four years.

Trump does have one advantage over the other top-tier candidates. He might actually be sane, and he may be the only Republican running with a strong enough personality to actually say no to the lunatics in Congress.

He also doesn't give off that "religious fanatic" vibe, which is good, but he also doesn't look like a candidate who would care much about income inequality as president. The truly frightening part of it all is that of the other 16 candidates, most of them either haver worse drawbacks to their candidacies than Trump or are basically unelectable.

One candidate on the other side of the equation seems like he might be a good president. I like Bernie Sanders a lot, I respect his integrity and I'm very much in sync with his positions on most issues. That's why I've made two small donations to his campaign and will probably make more.

Sanders has two major drawbacks, though. First is that he'll be 75 years old on election day, five years older than anyone else who was ever elected.

Second is that of all the candidates in the race, Sanders is the farthest to the left, and American voters tend to elect the candidate who best presents himself as a centrist. That's why the most realistic hope is for Sanders to draw probable nominee Hillary Clinton a little to the left.

The real problem is that politics has changed so much. We used to be a country where one party was 10 degrees to the left of center and the other 10 degrees to the right. Most issues were settled by compromises and the country ran fairly well.

As author Thomas E. Mann says in his new book, "It's Even Worse Than It Looks," Republicans have swung so far to the right that few compromises are even possible anymore.

" ... the worst are full of passionate intensity."

When the center fails to hold, bad things happen. Will next year be a year that will see a return to a more centrist politics or will things keep getting worse?

It's difficult to imagine a Republican who could take things back to the center, and it's even more difficult to imagine a Democrat as president who wouldn't drive the right wing into a state of psychosis.

So maybe we end up wondering, as Yeats did, what will happen. As the poet said:

"... what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"

A lot less time and a lot less aggravation in my personal future

I recently discovered the most useless possible way to spend my time and brainpower.

Posting opinions on Facebook.

Especially political ones.

I'm especially seeing that as we enter into another political campaign season. I try very hard to be civil to people on the other side, even though I have little or no use for the current state of conservatism in this country.

More and more, I'm finding that arguing politics is a complete waste of brain cells.

People who agree with me praise what I say, but I don't know anything I have posted that has changed anyone's mind.

So for at least a while, I'll check for news of family and friends and pictures of my adorable grandchildren, but when I see items like the one about guy who got caught porking a pig in his local Walmart, I'll stay away from them.

As for politics, count me out until at least January.

And maybe even past that. I certainly don't think the world is waiting with bated breath for whatever wisdom I might possess.

When I write something here, I'll post it the way I've been doing. But nothing is just for Facebook anymore.

Time wasted is time wasted.

Cut the political rhetoric and let's look for real immigration solutions

When it comes to welcoming immigrants to the United States, there has always been a gap between rhetoric and reality.

Most literate people are aware of the Emma Lazarus quote so often associated with the Statue of Liberty, but the full poem is even more eloquent.

It's called "The New Colossus," and it presents the idea that if someone has nowhere else to go, he or she can come here and find a home.

"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, 

"With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

"Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

"A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

"Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

"Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

"Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

"The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"'Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she.

"With silent lips. 'Give me your tired, your poor,

"Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

"The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

"Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

"I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'"

Memories of a great career all together in one shadow box

Hard to believe how much of a life can fit into one shadow box.

Back in my single days, when classy decorations were one-sheet movie posters and cork boards covered with media passes, I probably had several hundred mementoes on my walls.

Now I have pictures in nice frames and cases of autographed baseballs. My movie poster are smaller and framed and I have some lovely night skylines as well.

The real prizes are an autographed John Elway jersey and an old, sepia-toned photograph taken in 1920 from my grandparents' wedding.

But this particular shadow box really covers the waterfront, so to speak.. Upper left is a pass from covering the Rose Bowl. Just below it is a clubhouse pass from the 1995 National League Division Series, and my press card from when I worked in North Carolina in 1982.

At the bottom on the left is my press pass from the 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York. Somewhere else I have passes from the GOP's shindig in 1996 in San Diego and the Democrats in 2000 in Los Angeles.

Upper center was my vanity license plate from the years I was a newspaper columnist in Southern California. My friend Mick said it stood for "clam nest," but he was just jealous that he didn't have a cool license plate.

The home-plate shaped pass underneath was from the 1992 baseball All-Star Game in San Diego and just to the right was a photograph of me interviewing John Elway that appeared in Sports Illustrated in January 1987.

The three smaller passes just below were from the 1991 Nissan Open golf tournament, the NASA launch of the Cassini spacecraft in 1997 from Cape Canaveral and a badge from the 1988 International golf tournament at Castle Pines in Colorado.

Bottom center is my press box card from the 1983 Peach Bowl game.

On the far right were two of the bigger events I covered in 1985 -- the World Series in St. Louis and the NCAA Final Four in Lexington, Ky.

It really was quite a good run.

*****

For the longest time, this 1979 Nicholas Meyer film was one of my very favorite movies.

It had such a great premise -- H.G. Wells chasing Jack the Ripper into the future and discovering modern-day San Francisco was anything but the Utopia he had imagined life in the future would be.

Malcolm McDowell has had a long and varied career, but he rarely plays the hero and even more rarely plays a romantic hero. In this he falls in love with Mary Steenburgen's modern woman, and he and his costar fell in love off the set and got a 10-year marriage and two children out of it.

In a movie celebrating time travel and hope for a better life in different eras, McDowell gets the best line when he professes his love in the final scene.

"Every age is the same. It's only love that makes any of them bearable."

*****

I have three wonderful grandchildren, and my lone grandson is the middle one. Lexington will be 4 years old in November, and he's about to live in the United States for the first time.

My daughter Pauline will be spending the equivalent of the next school year in Washington, D.C., learning Spanish for her three-year tour in Guatemala City. Lex will be in preschool, and big sister Madison will be in second grade.

The baby, lovely little Albanie, will be a year old this Halloween.

It's going to be an eventful year and something of a tumultuous one, but with Virgile and Sterling also in D.C., we ought to be able at least to have a nice Christmas.