Cranford Coulter

30 years have passed and so little has changed.

Today (October 3, 2023) marks the 30th anniversary of my mom, BJ’s, passing. From August on of 1993 comprised a season from hell for us. I will try to get the dates right. It may require a re-edit once I call April, or Bethann gets home from work. On August 4, two days after April’s 17th birthday, she broke her leg with a spiral fracture, when she stumbled on the top landing of the attic steps from her bedroom. She started her senior year in high school in a wheelchair with a cast from her ankle to her hip. We had to borrow our friend Nancy‘s hospital bed, and place it in the living room, since April obviously could not handle steps. Since Nancy no longer needed a hospital bed, she used April’s flat bed.

On September 4, Nancy was found dead in that bed of an apparent heart attack. She was 50 years old. Her family asked me to handle her funeral and the burial of her ashes, etc. I took a several days off of the job I had just started with an auto parts company in Macungie to do this. I had just returned to work. It was a bright, warm day, the 13th or 14th of September. I was riding my Honda Helix scooter down the main drag of Macungie. A car ran a red light to my left and made a left turn into the left turn lane, next to me. I started honking, because I did not have room to move right and I did not know what this driver intended. At the next intersection, while I was honking and flashing my headlamp, a landscape truck ran the stoplight to my left. I hit his front, right fender and went airborne! I flipped three times at different angles to the earth. I rolled off the hood of the truck on the way down. My bike was still running. The anti-freeze was flowing toward me. I started to scream. I did not know what was broken, but did not want the radiator fluid to get into my wounds, so wanted someone to move me quickly.

Thankfully, a member of the volunteer ambulance crew worked at the bank across the street and had witnessed the whole thing. He was already on his way out the door before I hit the ground. I shattered my right ilium and fractured my pelvis, and got some cuts on my left arm and hand. I think that was September 10. The ambulance took me to Lehigh Valley Hospital. This was back when they just had a rotation of doctors with various specialties on rotation in charge of the ER. On my day, it was a hand specialist. He kept hovering over the scratches on my hands. They got stitched up beautifully! I kept on telling him that they were not the problem. My hip was the problem. They took an x-ray of my hips. They gave me crutches and told me to walk out of there. I screamed like bloody hell! They gave me another Percocet and told me to “buck up.”

I don’t know where or if I slept that night. The hospital ER called me the next morning and asked me if my hip hurt. I said, “No shit, Sherlock! I was only screaming as I left last night.” They asked me to come back to the ER. I said, “Why don’t I just schedule a CAT scan?” They assured me they weren’t going to make me wait around all day, but get me right in, since their gurneys are uncomfortable, and I had to get a ride with a neighbor who had a Lincoln Continental, since there was no way I could fold myself into our Subaru Justy. We were there for over eight hours! I determined there and then to avoid Lehigh Valley Hospital if at all possible!

At this point I needed a hospital bed and April could graduate to her flat bed, albeit, still in the living room. Nancy didn’t need her bed anymore, so someone retrieved April’s bed from her apartment. I used the hospital bed in the dining area and April used her bed in the living room. Bethann answered the phone, “psych ward” if she was upstairs and “orthopedics” if she was on the main floor. My doctor, Priscilla Benner, loaned me her cordless phone, so I could keep it at my bed, so we didn’t have any more injuries from trips and falls. The mailman delivered our mail directly to my bed. I was supposed to be horizontal for three weeks.

My mom died on Oct 3rd. So, it was a day or two over three weeks and Bethann and I were flying to Phoenix for BJ’s funeral. The airline seated me exactly opposite to the way I requested, so that my right leg was cramped behind the bulkhead. We had an extra hour delay on the runway. They offered a complementary beverage as an apology. I chose an O’Douls. What a mistake! I ended up puking out the door of Joan Bucher’s van when Les pulled over on the way home from the airport. That was my last O’Doul’s.

I have had six strokes, many (~50) TIAs, a brain bleed, and a couple of seizures. I have gone for several years without a neurologist. I thought I found a decent one. Then I read her notes on our visit. She had not listened AT ALL. She got things exactly opposite of what I had said. She ordered unnecessary tests, because she had not listened to my recounting of my history, nor had she read my chart. So the things she got right, she treated as if they were amazing new discoveries that she had made, instead of what we had found out at HUP in August of 2011.

I am allergic to 13 different medications, and have at least two auto-immune disorders. I cannot afford to have doctors who are sloppy and careless.

Now, directly to the headline. When I was nine or ten and sick with something, my mom made an appointment with our usual family doctors. The practice had grown to include five physicians. We went there in time for our appointment. We waited for over an hour. My mom was livid. She went to the desk and let them know what the problem was, and that it was unacceptable to have a sick child sitting in their waiting room for that length of time and unacceptable for Dr. Towne to treat us this way. We were leaving. We would no longer ever see Dr. Towne; would advise Dr. Linke to let him go, and will return when someone is ready to see her son or would go directly to the pharmacy. These are her son’s symptoms. We left.

Yesterday, I had an appointment with another neurologist. He rescheduled three times to better fit his schedule. I was instructed to show up 15 minutes early. This irritates me! Doctors routinely do this. Why don’t they just set the appointment time as 15 minutes earlier? It’s a power play. On two accounts: 1) It’s disorienting. You now have two times in your head to remember. 2) It establishes the idea that you are arriving earlier and are waiting for him or her, establishing the fact that he or she is more important than you are.

Tony and I were ushered into the exam room at the quarter of time, went through the preliminaries, BP, chart corrections, etc., then waited until more than 45 minutes after the scheduled start time of the appointment. In other words, we were there over an hour. I had had it. The memory of my Dr. Towne non-visit had returned to me and I left in a not very graceful fashion.

It was not until after I had gotten home and realized the date that the full impact of perhaps why the Dr. Towne and Mom incident had seemed so immediate at the neurologist’s office. And I said some things at the neurologist’s office that my mom did not feel comfortable saying publicly as a woman in the 1960s would have, but I am pretty sure she said to them later, privately. She and my dad met in law school. She worked as a legal secretary at various times. Lawyers have to keep schedules, as well. There are ways to keep schedules and handle multiple important issues and people. Good legal secretaries know this. Good doctors know this. Skilled surgeons, who have to show up on time, know this. Not everything that needs to be said needs to be said by you, or needs to be said now. I believe sloppy schedules are largely the result of arrogance.

Afterword:

Today, (10/7/2023) I received an email from the neurologist, from a donotreply account, that said that I had missed my appointment. I emailed them pointing out that I was not the one who missed the appointment, rather it was the doctor who had. Furthermore, he had made my point regarding rudeness and arrogance by sending an email from a donotreply account, as there was no way to have a true two way, equal conversation using that.

Following Directions

My earliest memory of following directions in school was a kindergarten lesson. Mrs. Richardson gave us each a square piece of colored paper. We had scissors. She told us to round off the corners of the square. We would thus make a circle. I meticulously rounded off the corners of my square. What I ended up with resembled a television tube. I informed Mrs. Richardson that her instructions were faulty. She pointed out to me the other students’ results, which were various circular to egg shaped pieces of paper. I said they may be more circular, but they obviously did not arrive there by following her instructions. They just took the paper and scissors and cut circles.

She apologized and promised to do better in the future. We got along just fine.

When I was born, I did not come with a warning label. My parents rarely, if ever, intervened in any of my conflicts with teachers or administrators at school. My mom or dad would get a call, and they would say, “Take it up with Ford.” Or in high school, “Take it up with Cranford.” Needless to say, adults were a little shocked to hear that kind of response from parents, especially from two who were legally trained and were so involved in politics and the school board, etc. I was the youngest of four. I think it was a combination of my parents were tired of dealing with petty bureaucrats, and the fact that they knew that I could hold my own with these people any day. I guess they were right. After all, I had publicly humiliated both of our US Senators and sometime VPs on their international policy positions in open fora by the time I was 15. (Hubert Humphrey & Walter Mondale) But I digress. This is about following directions.

When I was in high school, I worked as a bicycle mechanic and part-time manager at my mom’s bicycle shop. She had a sewing machine and vacuum machine shop next door. One evening, she and my dad went out for dinner and left me to watch both shops. There was a door between the two. A couple came in. They were interested in a Viking/Husqvarna sewing machine. They asked me if I could show them how to sew a buttonhole. I told them, quite honestly, that I had never used this machine and had never sewn a buttonhole, but that my mom always told me “‘If you can read, you can cook’, so I will look it up in the manual.” That’s what I did.

I sewed a perfect buttonhole step by step and cut the slit. I was amazed! Instead of being impressed, these people were angry. They told me that I was trying to con them; and that I had certainly done that many times before, to make it look so easy! I assured them, that that was the first time I had ever sat down in front of a Viking sewing machine. Viking just wrote their instructions that well. They could try it themselves and have the same result. There was no convincing them. They left angry.

Sometimes, you just can’t win. I have replayed that scene in my mind countless times through the years. I don’t know if the price was too high, if I was too pretty, or what the problem was.

One thing I know: the directions were spot on!

And I know how to follow directions!

Just ask Mrs. Richardson.

Great Times and Great Opposition in Philadelphia Prisons

The Temptations

During my short tenure serving as a volunteer chaplain in Philadelphia prisons, I had increased the number of volunteers under my oversight from three to close to 500. We expanded services to both sides of the Women’s Detention Facility, which was severely under-served beforehand. We started GED and literacy tutoring for the Women for the first time. We started Project: Lydia providing toiletries and other personal items in a homemade cloth bag to every female inmate. We started GED and literacy tutoring in the House of Correction. When PICC opened, we immediately provided Sunday evening services and weekly Bible studies there, as well as tutoring. We brought the first rock concerts into the House of Correction. We brought The Temptations into PICC, without any outside publicity. They did it for the guys without any publicity for them. This was while I was starting Hispanic services at Graterford State Prison and leading two Bible studies a week there, and coordinating all of the protestant, evening services and Bible studies at Montgomery County Correctional Facility. I also organized training of all of the Liberty Ministries volunteers and reorganized the aftercare program for it to re-open in Schwenksville, after they closed the house in north Phila.

All of this activity attracted some attention. It also engendered jealousy. When I started serving in the prisons, I immediately made some changes to approach due to what I saw, and laid down some rules. The first thing I did was to eliminate the “invitation” in services to come forward and “get saved”. Inmates are in desperate need of friends. They will do just about anything just to have a friend. There was a fellow who had a “ministry” in Berks County prison who published a newsletter every month. In it, he published the number of souls he had saved.Most months that number was far more than the total number of inmates who had passed through the institution that month. Talk about jailhouse religion! I told our volunteers that the invitation and decisional salvation was a con. We were offering them a quid pro quo. That is not the gospel. The gospel is supposed to be about unconditional love. So we were not going to play a con. We were going to be their friends and sit down and talk with them and listen to them, etc., at the end of the service, without them having to play any games or make up a testimony.

The other thing that set us apart was that we allowed anyone to come to our services or studies regardless of their dress or orientation. People want to get out of their cells! If that means they come shoot the breeze with us, fine. Other chaplains started to look askance at us. Apparently they had not read those parts that talked about how Jesus was willing to associate with people of low degree or that on of his most famous disciples had been a hooker.

I didn’t help my case any in my Bible studies or messages. So many of the men had taken in so much of the hard-nosed, fundamentalist preaching, and were very judgmental. Many could quote Bible verses out of context to promote bigotry and all sorts of nonsense. One Friday morning in PICC, I decided to use their proof text hermeneutic and make it tie itself in a knot.

A favorite passage among those who condemn homosexual love is Romans 1, where Paul asserts that homosexuality is the very depths of depravity. I quoted that, then I quoted what Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 1:15: “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.” What Paul was saying was not only did he consider himself to be the worst of sinners, but that everyone should accept this saying for themselves and consider themselves to be the worst of sinners. Well, who did Paul consider to be the “worst of sinners”? We know very clearly from Romans 1, it was homosexuals. Paul was telling us that we needed to consider ourselves to be homosexuals as he considered himself to be. We were to look down on no one! This stands fundamentalism on its head and brings us firmly back to the gospel as Jesus preached it, which is summed up in the two most ignored words that he spoke: “Judge not.”

I told the men I’d gladly keep company with the Apostle Paul and, like him, declare myself to be the chief of sinners.

This was during the height of the AIDS epidemic. It hit Phila. hard. It was hitting the jails and prisons especially hard. The prison superintendents asked the Interfaith Chaplains Board for our input on whether or not they should distribute condoms in the prisons. This led to a heated debate. I was very disappointed. The only two who supported distribution were the Roman Catholic Chaplain, Frank Menei, and myself. Those opposed to distribution stated that all sex was prohibited in the prisons, so this would be a mixed message. Frank and I pointed out that we all knew it took place. Sometimes it took place with less than willing partners. At least, this may give them an opportunity for some protection. We also said that as people of faith and conscience, should not our first duty be to the preservation of life, not the enforcement of our morals? I went a step further and said, if there were a safe way to distribute and exchange needles, I would be in favor of that, too. This did not make me any friends with the evangelicals and fundamentalists.

While this was going on in Phila. prisons, we had another storm brewing in Montgomery County. It involved Chick Tracts, The Nation of Islam, and Liberty Ministries board member Glenn Alderfer.

I never really liked wingtips anyway.

I was born with defects in my ankles, knees and hips. As an infant, until I was three, I had to wear braces between my legs when I slept. I still was horribly pigeon toed. The only kind of shoes I was allowed to wear until I was a teenager were wingtips. The only choice I had when shopping for shoes was black or brown. Then I had to wait until they put the special heels on them. For all the good they did! I still had bloody ankles and would trip regularly, going up stairs. I hated those wingtips. My nickname was Pidge. I had a note that said I was not allowed to wear tennis shoes (that’s what we called sneakers back then in Minnesota) at any time. I had to go barefoot for gym class. I played football (not very well) barefoot. Soon enough, you’ll see how this fits in with my initial hospital stay for my infection.

A friend from church stopped by on Sunday afternoon, interrupting my mysterious telethon, with a most thoughtful gift: a small stereo radio/ CD player, and the loan of a few CDs. Bethann brought me some more of my favorites: Sufjian Stevens, Raul Malo, etc. I listened to these through the night. At one point, I asked the nurse for some water. After what I thought was 30 minutes, I got out of bed and went into the hallway looking for my nurse and the cup of water. A nurse and an aide came toward me and asked what I wanted. I told them I had asked Linda for water half an hour ago and never got it. I’m thirsty. The nurse said Linda’s shift ended seven hours ago. The aide was scampering to get a chair and placed it behind be just as I fell down onto it. They helped me back to my bed and got me some water. You remembered the part about how I was on morphine, Fentanyl, and Percocet at this time. So I passed out for a couple more hours.

After I was served what they called breakfast, the hospitalist doctor visited me. He sat down in an office style armchair. He told me, “Cranford, I’m afraid you are high.” I leaned over and puked on his shiny, brown wingtips. I said to him, “Well, it’s your fault!”

During the course of my stays he and I became good friends.

The beginning of troubles

Fred Benjamin leading the tour of his encampnent where he lived for 22 years.

It is cliché, yet apt in this case, to say hindsight is 20/20. My long ordeal of kidney failure, migraines, strokes, TIAs, aortic valve replacement, etc., all began with a scratch on the back of my neck in September of 2009.

Our dear friend, Michael Yezdimir, was dying in Abington Hospital. I felt terribly tired, but not particularly sick, when I went to visit him. I had a little scratch on the back of my neck, probably from a flying wood chip, either from icon production in my business or from working on renovating our barn to house the business. Michael passed away a few days later.

I first met Michael several years earlier. He had arranged to meet me where I was working as office manager at Diseroad, Wolff, Kelly, Clough & Bucher Architects in Hatfield, PA, for us to go out to lunch together. My pastor, Fr. Boniface Black, had referred us to each other. Mike had been raised in the Serbian Orthodox Church. All of the services were in Serbian, so he could not understand anything that was going on. He left the church. Later, he had joined an evangelical church and married and raised a family. He and his wife, Sharon, had three daughters. Mike was feeling drawn back to the Orthodox Church. He and I were the same age. I had made my journey into the Orthodox Church starting in 1997 and being chrismated in the Spring of 1999. Mike confided in me that he had hepatitis C and hemophilia. He also knew that his family would be quite resistant to Orthodoxy with all of its icons and incense. I’m sure this is why Fr. Boniface had referred him to me. Bethann had had a hard time accepting my conversion to Orthodoxy. We had waited for her to come around. That’s why I was not received until 1999, so we could be received together. Due to Michael’s health, Fr. B. did not wait so long to receive Michael back into the church. Sharon struggled for a couple of years, but eventually embraced it fully.

The scratch on the back of my neck became inflamed and terribly infected, probably from some of the people on the street giving me thank you hugs for the meals we served in the park. I am allergic to most antibiotics, so it got worse and eventually I had to see a surgeon to have it cut out. He pronounced me healed when he took the stitches out. I told him, “If I’m healed, why is there still pain and the feeling of heat there.” He said, “The incision is closed. My work is done. You are healed.”

The infection was not gone. A year later, October 2010, Fred Benjamin and I were leading a group on a tour of Center City Philadelphia from a homeless person’s perspective. My back hurt so badly I needed help getting up and down steps or over low walls in the encampments. I called my doctor. She ordered X-rays, a CAT scan, and blood work. She prescribed Fentanyl patches and Percocet for the pain. On Wednesday, I got a call from the hospital telling me that they read the images and they suspected bone cancer in my spine. I was to discontinue the Fentanyl and only take Percocet. We had to wait a week to test for cancer, and the Fentanyl had to be out of my system. Nothing definitive showed up in the blood work. The Percocet did nothing for the exquisite pain. I told Dr. Jerry Burke about this report. Now, Jerry is not my doctor. He is a very good friend who has saved my life three or four times. He saw patients at Grand View Hospital at that time and we went to the same church. The head of the radiology department, Dr. Joe Kyriakos, also went to our church. In fact, we were both in choir. Jerry called Joe and told him to look at the imaging again. He told him that no way did I have bone cancer. Bone cancer is almost always a secondary cancer. I had no history of cancer, but I did have a history of infection. Both Jerry and Joe volunteered from time to time with me to serve the homeless in Phila. with The King’s Jubilee.

I was in so much pain that Bethann did not trust to leave me home alone when she had to go to work on Saturday morning. She arranged for Serge Kaminski to stay with me. Even with two Percocets, I would scream in pain when standing up or walking.It was not pleasant for Serge. About 11am, Grand View Radiology called me, They said they looked at the images again and concluded it was not cancer and to please come to the Emergency Room to be admitted to the hospital. They were so sorry for the mistake. Bethann came home and took me to Grand View. To their credit, the head administrator of the hospital called me twice to apologize for their error.

In the hospital, they put me on a morphine drip, Fentanyl patches and Percocets, to manage the pain. They gave me MRIs from my brain to my tail bone, with and without contrast. I was in that machine for over an hour. I enjoyed the beat. I dreamed of a rock ballet to go with it. (That had nothing to do with the drugs.)

I had my cellphone with me. This was a mistake. On Sunday, while high on Fentanyl, morphine, and Percocet, I called everyone in my contacts list. I have no recollection of what I said to them. All I know is that they won’t tell me, and that several of them have refused to take any more calls from me, ever.

The Youngest

Concordia students seeing me off at the train station, Taken with my Brownie camera. It didn’t have a focus feature. I don’t know how it sensed the residual alcohol in my system.

As the youngest child of four I was always referred to as “the baby” of the family. My older sister, Alison, would delight to introduce me as her “little brother” once I was at least five inches taller than she was. She is four years older. Tic, the oldest (six years older than me) went from beating me up regularly, to taking me along on his dates without warning them. This happened at least four times. All but once, the girls would spend the evening talking and dancing with me and ignoring him. I think that was his intention. These girls were ones that my mom had set him up with. I always had a good time. The one girl who was not put off by my presence was a farm girl in Wisconsin. We went to the drive-in movie to see Psycho. I was in the back seat, and kept leaning over the back of the front seat saying, “psycho!” Tic had a hard time deterring this girl, even with my assistance.

Sue Ann was short and I was tall. I surpassed her height when I was in 5th grade and she was in 7th. Many times people either thought we were twins or dating. At one ski resort, the man setting up the T-bars thought we were on our honeymoon! We set him straight in a hurry! We were 15 and 17. Of course, we were in snow gear. She took me to her jr. high dances at Carl Sandburg. I would dance with five or six girls at a time. The silly 7th and 8th grade boys were all lined up against the walls, afraid to make a move. I would help her and her friends with their math and algebra. I was a year ahead in class. They were a year ahead of that. It didn’t matter. I have a freakish thing for math. I had “Elementary Functions” in my junior year of high school. It was basically intro. to calculus. Mr. Kadieski was giving a notebook test to grade our homework. I never bothered with homework, but aced the regular tests. He said, “This next one is a gimme. It’s the quadratic equation.” I said out loud, “Oh oh!” The other students were incredulous. They asked me how I got this far without memorizing the quadratic equation. I said, “I don’t know. I just look at the problems and I solve.” My brain plotted them on the Cartesian graph. The answers were always right. They hated me.

How does this relate to my siblings?

When my parents took a vacation to Hawaii, they asked Jean Hosterman to watch us while they were gone. Jean was in graduate school for her psychology degree. She took the opportunity to give the four of us a battery of tests. She let it slip that on the intelligence tests, we tested equally on the raw scores. She was flabbergasted. Tic was slightly above average for his age, which meant that my eleven year old self tested as a slightly above average 17 year old. She gave me a whole bunch more tests with blocks and puzzles, etc. Thinking back, this, along with the Iowa test I had taken the year before, set me up to be my dad’s greatest disappointment.

Tic went to Concordia College in Moorehead, MN, for a couple of years after high school. One weekend, I took the train from Minneapolis to visit him. I was twelve or thirteen. Tic shared a two room suite in the attic of Brown Hall with Curt from Dent, MN. One night that I was there we went to an upper classman’s off-campus, basement apartment with a bunch of theology students. They started me off with a Singapore Sling. Then I had a Whiskey Sour followed by a Screwdriver. Now, I was all of 95 pounds and 5′ 9″, maybe. I still remember the discussion we had about Luther, Melancthon, etc. These guys and gals were amazed! I not only didn’t pass out. I kept up with them or bested them in theology and church history. When it was time to go, a couple of the guys were sympathizing with my brother, figuring I was going to be a mess the next day. We went up the basement steps to leave at about 2am. There was snow on the ground. I took a step straight off the back of the steps, falling headlong into the snow. I slept in a recliner they had bought at a yard sale, until 4pm. I was just fine when I got up. It’s the family curse: no hangovers.

Tic’s real name is Thomas Ingham Coulter. Our dad gave him the nickname, Tic, from his initials. I don’t know if he still uses it. Ali and Tic don’t talk to me. When Sue Ann killed herself, my dad was so ashamed he convinced her husband and kids not to tell anyone else. Tic knew, however. The funeral was creepy. Ali and I knew something was amiss. I sat with Ali and her husband. When we processed out of the church, Ali grasped my hand tightly and said, “What the fuck just happened, little brother?” My dad had invited the extended family to dinner at a restaurant near the church. Last minute, I was invited and seated with my step-sister, Kris, and her wife. My dad had figured I would be offended by this, since I had been a fundamentalist Baptist the last time he had paid any attention. I found out later that he was not going to invite me at all. My Uncle Pete (Cranford Arthur) suspected as much. When my dad invited him, Pete asked him if he had invited “young Cranford”. My dad told him no. Pete insisted I be invited and that he and Barb would not come if he did not invite me. My dad relented. Pete and Barb did not come. They were so upset. I had a great time with Kris and her wife.

Ali called me from Minnesota a couple days after I got home to Pennsylvania to discuss her suspicions regarding Sue Ann’s death. Death certificates are private in Minnesota. She and I started to investigate on our own. After a month and a half on the phone for an hour or so every night, we finally got in contact with Sue Ann’s friends who had discovered her body and suicide note.

Orthodox Christianity, Really?!

Orthodoxy was established when the pagan, Roman Emperor Constantine asked some of the Christian bishops to give him a definition of who was a Christian, so he would know who he was going to “tolerate” (not kill) under his edict of toleration. A number of bishops assembled at Nicea in 325 CE. He presided, a pagan emperor. Constantine had been in a battle and had supposedly seen a vision of a cross in the sky and received the message, “By this sign conquer.” He forcibly baptized all of his troops, all but their sword hands, so they could keep on using those to murder in war. You see, it was not permitted for a soldier to be a Christian, due to Jesus teaching of turning the other cheek, etc.

The bishops met and formulated the Nicene Creed and also determined the date for Pascha (Easter). This group of clerics had adopted the Johannine view of the deity of Christ and the resurrection, even though the earlier gospel writers and James had not included those myths. What is truly crazy about this whole scene is that we have a pagan emperor giving his imprimatur to the establishment of the Holy Roman Catholic Orthodox Church. He refused to be baptized until his deathbed since he wanted to have freedom to sin again, such was his total misunderstanding of grace.

For this act, the Church granted him sainthood! Ever since, the church has been entangled with states and arms and has been totally corrupt and apostate. The protestant churches have been no better. The Protestant Reformation was an internecine bloodbath. When I led The King’s Jubilee Monday Evening Bible Institute, students were hoping things were going to get better after the Dark Ages. Everyone quit after the Reformation; they were so depressed.

I have been abused and lied to by every denomination I have been a part of. They are all in it for the money and to control others. None of them serve the poor. None of them know where their authority comes from. That is because they have none! It is all bullshit!

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness vs. COVID-19

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the so-called, president Trump are leading an assault on the quarantine measures of wearing masks, staying home, and social distancing that can slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and save lives. Their followers are demonstrating and arguing on social media, and, in some cases, even killing security guards, to assert their “constitutional rights”.

Let’s consider this. There is always a problem when we discuss rights in society. No one person is absolutely autonomous. Only sociopaths, and two year olds, think that they are. Individual rights are always limited by the need to respect the needs and the rights of others. As Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., said: “Your right to swing your arm around ends where my nose begins.” The US Supreme Court has always considered the Declaration of Independence to be part and parcel with the Constitution, as it was truly the founding document of the nation. The most famous sentence is its second:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It should be noted that the war for independence was not fought for this, or any, noble cause, but was just one bunch of rich aristocrats who did not want to pay taxes to another bunch of rich aristocrats anymore. When the US constitution was written, the grand sentiment regarding rights had been forgotten altogether. There was no mention of guarantee of rights in the original document. In fact, it institutionalized black slavery and valued black men at 3/5 that of a white man, and women were not mentioned at all, as they were regarded as chattel. The constitution that these ‘common, middle class folk’ keep touting as some sacred document, was written to ensure that old, rich, white men continue in power.

It has succeeded.

The Bill of Rights had to be added as amendments. They were afterthoughts. Madison and the Virginia delegation would not ratify it without them. To this day, they are only as good as the money and the lawyers one has to fight for their enforcement. There were state churches until 1846. Now they are making a comeback with the government subsidizing churches along with businesses in the stimulus (CARES) act.

So even though the bulk of the constitution is a horribly flawed document, and every other nation which has used it (and there have been several) has fallen into tyranny within a decade, we do have the Bill of Rights. It has been eroded in recent years, however. One should notice that the Declaration says “all men are endowed by their creator”. When the US opened Gitmo to illegally detain prisoners who were not charged with any specific crime and used torture, etc., the Bush administration claimed that they did not have rights, since they were not on American soil. First of all, this is false. Gitmo is a US Army base, flying a US flag, making it de jure US soil! Secondly, if Guantanamo is not US soil, it must be Cuba and Cuba guarantees human rights, which the US violated. Thirdly, rights are not given by any state or nation! They are said to be god-given, meaning that even the government cannot revoke or ignore them.

OK. If you want to exercise your god-given, constitutional rights in the midst of the pandemic, please know that the first right that is mentioned is the right to life, not the right to be an asshole and spread a deadly disease. The right to life, as it relates to society, means that it is your responsibility to do your best to not do harm or to take anyone else’s life. It is the government’s responsibility to enforce rules and regulations to help you to do just that. When you flout those rules, you should expect the full force of the law and the shame of the community to fall on you.

Food Bank Gourmet

Yesterday evening, I was at Pennridge FISH, our local food bank. We wait in our cars with face masks on these days due to the coronavirus. I had just arrived. A man pulled up beside me in a truck. He asked me if I wanted some fish. I said, sure! We went to the back of his truck and he took out a plastic bag with two freshly caught, nice sized, rainbow trout. One had been gutted and head removed. The other was still flopping. Last week, in the bottom of one of the boxes from the food bank, we found this refrigerated bag of “lime curried glaze”. It had no instructions on it and it came with nothing appropriate to use it on.

This afternoon, I scaled both fish, cleaned the second one, then filleted them both, following the instructions from WikiHow. After I did this, I wondered why I had bothered to gut and behead the fish, since I was filleting it. I used to fillet sunfish by the dozens and just skipped those steps. I fired up the charcoal Weber Kettle grill, and put some green beans and some broccoli in pans. Then I put the fish on the grill and turned the stove on under the veggies. I squeezed some of the glaze on the trout. After 5 minutes, I flipped it, glazed the other side and cooked it another five minutes. It was very tasty! We microwaved leftover pierogies (that had come from FISH another week) for Bethann & Tony.

We truly appreciate all that Pennridge FISH does and provides. The people who serve there do so joyfully, without condescension.

Thank you, kind stranger, for sharing your catch of the day!

“Did your mother drink?”

On Saturday, I was taking a break from wrestling with the lazy Susan. I was sitting on the Jimmy Hoffa bin on the front porch with our good friend and co-quarantiner, Tony. He is one of the many people who has encouraged me to write my life story in a book. So I shared with him a few more chapters. This is one of them. Oh yes, the “Jimmy Hoffa bin” is what we call the plastic poolside storage bin that we use to store our recycling and our garden tools, etc., on our entry porch. We nicknamed it that, because it is large enough to hide a body in.

As I mentioned previously, my dad built the house in Golden Valley in the summer of 1961, where I lived from first grade until Bethann and I got married in July, 1975, after my second year in college. Until we bought our first house, just after Thanksgiving, we lived in a tiny, one bedroom apartment on 19th and Upton in Minneapolis. I was going to grad school full time in the mornings. We were both working full time, 3pm to 11:30pm in housekeeping at North Memorial Medical Center. I am the youngest of my parents’ four children. The other three were already out of the house and had houses and kids of their own (or at least on the way). So my parents decided to sell the big house with the big yard, and move into a condo on the other side of Golden Valley.

One large house with six people for fourteen years can accumulate a lot of stuff. One Friday afternoon in October, between school and work, B.J. called. (B.J. is my mom. It’s short for Betty Jane.) She said, “We’re having a garage sale tomorrow. If you want any of your things, come early, so you can buy them. The sale starts at nine.”

Now my other siblings are all older than I am and had been out of the house for years. They had been living in their own houses, with real closets and attics and garages. So they had room to put things and opportunity to retrieve things that they may have wanted to keep. I had been out of the house for three and a half months. During that time, I had gotten married in Pennsylvania, started seminary full time, taking Greek and Hebrew and a senior theology elective, and was working full time.

My car wasn’t nearly this nice. It was about 18″ long, went straight forward and turned left in reverse.

I arrived at B.J.’s garage sale at 8:30am. I helped bring up the last of the stuff from the storage closets in the basement. I said good-bye to my childhood toys and games. I thought twice about buying my large “remote control” red sports car, but decided I had been too old for it when I bought it the first time. (Remote control is in quotes, because it had a 6′ cord from the controller to the car.) I think that all I went away with was a few books, some brass bells, and the chalk painting of my grandpa Ingham’s horse, Lady, which Wathena, his wife and my godmother, had given me when I was 10.

When I was done telling Tony the story, he looked at me and asked, “Did your mother drink?”