Oh Brothers, Where Art Thou?

My brothers, John and Frank, have neither email nor Internet connections in their homes. Can you believe it?
by Charlie Leck

I want to tell my brothers that I went visiting today. I got on Google Maps and zipped back to Leland Avenue in the Bronx – exactly to the spot where I used to play stickball in the street when I was a little kid who had been shipped into the city to spend some time with his grandparents. This seemed to happen with some regularity and makes me wonder if someone wasn’t getting me out of his or her or their hair.

Well, anyway, I wanted to tell my brothers that I selected “street view” on Google Maps and I found myself standing on the corner of Leland Avenue and Gleason Avenue, peering up the street toward Westchester Avenue. I could see the 5 story apartment building in which my grandparents lived. There was the little corner grocery where Grandma frequently sent me to buy ice cream for her and to pick up “a number” in hopes that it would be a big money winner on that day.

And there was the street in which I played stick ball with the city kids, who regarded me as somewhat of a freak – a hick from the country who could hit a ball harder and further than any of the other kids my age. I was bigger than they were, too. I guess it was the country air. Maybe, truer, it was all cases of Coca Cola I lifted and moved around in the old store in Chester. There was great competition among the neighborhood kids to get me on their particular team.

I had no regrets about being sent into the city. I loved the atmosphere and I loved being with my grandparents. I would fall asleep at night on their sofa bed and, in the distance, I could hear the rumbling sounds of the elevated train that ran above Westchester Avenue. Sometimes my grandma and I would board that train and go to some extraordinary places – the Bronx Zoo, or Jones Beach, or to Battery Park and the Statue of Liberty, or to Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s amazing and huge department stores. I was astounded that we could go anywhere in the city by boarding one of these marvelous trains. I was determined to learn how to navigate around on them and I did. It gave me an enormous feeling of freedom and adventure. The 125th Street Station seemed to be the hub of the world! From it you could go anywhere.

The little rural town in which I lived out in New Jersey seemed so dull and abnormal after a week or two in the spectacular Bronx.

More than once, my grandpa took us to dinner at an Italian restaurant a few blocks down Westchester Avenue and each time explained to me, in a whisper, that it was owned by the mob and that the guys having dinner together in the corner were “made men.” The food was like nothing I’d ever tasted and I left nothing of the big plate of pasta and crusty bread that was served to me.

One time, a big, burly, dark-haired man rose up from the corner table and came over to our table. He had a huge laugh and he slapped my grandpa on his back and leaned over to kiss my grandma’s cheek.

“Hey, Frank – Paisano! How you been?”

My grandpa pointed at me and introduced me to Uncle Carmine. His hand engulfed mine and he gripped it hard and shook it vigorously. With his other hand he slapped my cheek so hard that I felt the sting. He laughed very hard and shook all over as he did.

“Another Bohemian, no? Un bel ragazzo, si?” Uncle Carmine said. “Egli assomiglia a sua madre. How is Milly?”

He pulled up a chair and joined us at our little table.

My friends in Chester didn’t have the foggiest idea what it meant that my Uncle Carmine was a made man. I didn’t either, but I couldn’t wait to tell my buddies at home.

“I had dinner with my Uncle Carmine DeLeggio. He’s a made guy! Big and tough! And he carries a gun underneath his jacket.”

“Oh, go on! You ain’t got no Italian uncle!” They weren’t so impressed.

I thought about that and realized it didn’t make sense. We had not a single Italian in the family. My grandpa had to explain to me that we just called Carmine an uncle as a matter of respect for his lofty position in the gang. “It’s the thing to do.”

My grandpa could take me to the ball park from that same train station up on 176th Street and Westchester Avenue. They were wonderful trips. We’d go see a ball game in Brooklyn, in the day time, with the sun shining on green, green grass, and then we’d stop for ice cream at a special Italian place he knew.

“The Waps make the best ice cream,” he’d tell me. “I think if I had to do it again, I’d be an Eye-talian,” he’d laugh at himself. “They’re the best. Except, the Germans make the best beer and the Irish make the best whiskey. We Bohunks, we got the best women, though!”

So, my brothers, today I went back in time. I returned to the corner in that neighborhood and looked it over and faintly heard the sound of the broom stick connecting with a rubber ball and I saw the ball soaring way out over the row houses on the west side of the street. My teammates were screaming and hollering as I jauntily rounded all the bases. A train was clacking along on the elevated rails up on Westchester Avenue. Uncle Carmine was walking down the avenue, on his way to visit Grandpa, and he cheered loudly for me.

"Ehi, guarda il bambino!"

Oh brothers, where art thou?

Had you the right connections you could have gone with me – for just those few magical moments I spent there today, in my youth again and happy as a clam as I ended the day in the arms of my grandma!

The Recount in Minnesota for the U.S. Senate

You can call it dead-even right now and we won’t know more ‘til January!
by Charlie Leck

Every state in the nation has two U.S. Senators, EXCEPT, of course, Minnesota. Right now Amy Klobuchar is our only U.S. Senator for the 111th U.S. Congress, which begins at noon on 3 January 2009. She’s a mighty fine legislator, but we need another one in the Senate.

It is likely that we will not know, even at the beginning of the session, who our second U.S. Senator is (or will be) because the recount of the November 4th election will still be going on. It’s getting close to the end, but those involved don’t feel it can be finalized and accomplished and certified by the time the Congress goes into session. As a matter of fact, it is quite possible that the upcoming U.S. Senate may have to decide this issue.

There are a number of contested ballots to be checked over. These are ballots challenged by the Senator Coleman team and so it is likely that they are basically cast for challenger, Al Franken. He’ll get most of those votes. The ballots that the Franken organization challenged are already counted.

Then there are a number of absentee ballots that were originally incorrectly disqualified. Both sides are in agreement that they should not have been disqualified. For whom did they vote? We won’t know until they are carefully opened and inspected by the recounters.

With the count essentially dead-even, the election could go either way, but there are whispers from friends pretty deep in the Party that “Al is gonna win!”

Then, when a winner is declared by the Secretary of State, you can bet there will be legal challenges that will go on for a long time.

In the meantime, Minnesota is the only state in the nation represented by only one Senator.

Oh, forgive me, someone just reminded me about Illinois, New York and Alaska. Those states, however, will likely have Senators appointed by the opening of the session. Minnesota probably will not.

Andrew Sullivan wrote on his blog, the Daily Dish, for The Atlantic:

“What’s taking so long in Minnesota? They are having 10 minute conversations about the existence of Lizard People. As of last night Coleman was citing a 2 vote lead. Now Frankin appears to be up for the first time.”

And, on the same blog, Nate Silver guessed:

“I’m now projecting a Franken lead of more like 70 votes, which would bring my numbers closely in line with the Star Tribune’s estimate.”

Jeff Fecke, on the Blog of the Moderate Left, tries to answer the question about what happens if nobody wins by the opening of the session.

Joel Stein in the December 13th Time Magazine sang the praises of Minnesota’s steady determination to count every ballot and of its blatant honesty.

“What if the 2000 presidential election had hinged not on a diverse, messy, weird and slightly creepy hick state like Florida but on the most organized, practical and cordial one in the Union: Minnesota? What if, instead of going to court after court over hanging chads and butterfly ballots and whether a recount should happen, election officials had just calmly looked at each ballot and tried to figure out what the voter wanted?”

He wasn’t so kind to voters, but pretty clever, and probably correct, when he wrote:

“If it had been Minnesota instead of Florida in 2000, this is what we would have found out: Voters are idiots. You make a clear, statewide ballot with neat little ovals to fill in? Some voters will put in check marks and X's. They'll fill out two ovals. They'll mark one candidate's oval in ink, try to erase that mark and then put their initials next to their correction, even though there's a law on the books forbidding voters to sign their ballots, to prevent voter bribing. They'll scrawl something about taxes in that oval, or about lizard people. You spend enough time trying to figure out the intentions of some voters, and you'll learn their real intention is to be put into special care.

“This is what democracy comes to. It's sloppy and human…”

If you really don’t have a life, you can actually watch the state canvassing board doing their work live! That’s right! You did not hear me incorrectly. You can watch the recount live. That seems whacky! Yet, there actually are people who are doing it, as excitedly as if it were a Packers/Vikings game, and keeping their own tallies in their living rooms. You people in Colorado, North Carolina and Georgia have got to realize it gets really cold up here in the winter.

To further prove to you how cold it gets up here and what that chill get do to the human brain, I’ll conclude with one more quotation from Stein’s article:

“All the sensible, civic-minded spirit doesn't guarantee the losing camp won't sue when it's all over. But Minnesota law, which was perfected after a gubernatorial recount in 1962, has a plan in case of a dead tie: a coin flip. The state already did one this year for a school-board seat in Farmington. Ritchie has been looking around for a good coin for the Coleman-Franken race; he says the quarter with Minnesota on the back is the way to go. 'I was watching Leatherheads, the football movie, and you realize there are angles on coin-tossing as well. Who flips it? Who calls it?' By next year, rest assured, Minnesota will have the best coin-flipping law anywhere.”

It got down to 13 below two nights ago. Today they’re calling for at least six inches of snow. It’ll be a white Christmas. What a strange year!

Should we kiss the newspapers goodbye?

Not on your life! A ‘news day’ is dawning and we’ll love our newspapers again!
by Charlie Leck

My wife cringes on those mornings when my newspaper doesn’t show up. I get so violently involved in trying to call the paper to tell them my paper didn’t arrive that she runs and hides.

What do I get when I call? A recording! It asks me to touch this number and then that and it never grants me the satisfaction and psychological release of screaming at someone about my paper not showing up in my box at the appointed hour.

I am a newspaper lover. I like to see the ink on my fingers after spending an hour with the morning paper.

“Careful,” my wife shouts at me as I push back from the kitchen dining counter, “don’t touch anything. Wash your hands!”

Yes, newspaper ink is awful. It is supposed to be better than it was in the “old days,” but it is still pretty bad.

Newspapers are folding left and right. A few dailies on the east coast have announced that they’ll home deliver only 3 times a week now.

This is crazy! I love the internet. I adore the blogs I read, but no newspaper? Has the world gone stark, raving mad?

During this financial crisis it is very possible that we will see a half dozen major newspapers around the United States just announce they are closing up.

I keep thinking that we’ll never let it happen. What are the guys who ride the train from Hastings-on-Hudson into Manhattan going to do without their newspapers? Or the women for that matter? What am I going to do with my Sunday morning breakfast? Will I instead need to read again The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James, as I chomp on my English muffin? No sports column by Sid Hartman? That’s outlandish!

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune let a couple of its best news people go last week. Katherine Kersten and Nick Coleman were the class of the paper – la crème de la crème. They were simply making too much money and the paper unabashedly announced that it couldn’t afford them. Scott Johnson on the Powerline blog writes about this move as if it has something to do with ideology and an improvement of the paper’s balance. That’s crazy Scott. This is an economic move. It’s a Hail Mary pass with only seconds left in the fourth quarter.

I harbor this fantasy that the newspaper will become king again – King of the news industry and that the public will long again for the days of printer’s ink on its fingers and significant stories that run on for column after column, giving us not only the news but an analysis of it.

I have a Long and Personal History with the Newspaper

The Newspaper and I
by Charlie Leck

My old man sold newspapers. I never saw the numbers laid out before me, but it was a big part of his livelihood. Of course, we didn’t have Excel spreadsheets back in those days either.

Selling the Sunday morning newspapers was quite a process that began sometime on Saturday afternoon. I was deeply involved in that process from early on in childhood. It was something I could count on every single weekend. Other activities, like the Saturday matinee movie at the Borough Hall or the high school football game, had to be fitted around the preparation of the Sunday newspapers.

I’m talking about a lot of newspapers. Sixty years ago, the newspaper was a really big deal. To understand, you need to imagine a world without CNN, MSNBC and FOX News. As a matter of fact, for that period at the beginning of my history with the Sunday newspapers, you need to imagine a world without TV. Really!

We sold a lot of different newspapers on Sunday morning – the New York Daily News, the New York Herald Tribune, the New York Daily Mirror, the New York Times and the Newark Star Ledger. Mountainous piles of each were waiting for our customers on Sunday morning, when we opened the doors at 8:00 A.M..

I’ve tried my best to describe my old man’s store in the past. It’s not an easy thing to do. A friend of mine, in an email to another friend, did his best in trying to describe it.

“The Leck general store [was] on the square with the Chester House Hotel and Post Office. The store was a kind of Norman Rockwell building with a broad wood porch and one big room with a long counter on one side and an ice cream fountain on another. The front and the other side were windows so you could see the traffic, if it ever came by. Then there were tables and chairs for the fountain customers and a big stove in winter. Charlie’s mother and father served customers from behind the long counter, taking down the cans from the tall shelves against the wall as they asked for them. It was our favorite place for ice cream and candy if we could get some. In fact, the only place! There were always kids you knew there when you went in or hung out on the porch….” [John Hopper]

That’s not a bad description, but the old place looked very different on a Sunday morning because the newspapers were stacked in tall piles in front of that long counter. As a small boy I wondered at how all those newspapers could possibly be sold. Even more, I wondered at how anyone could possibly read any newspaper as thick as the New York Times; yet, some customers would come in and purchase three different papers for their Sunday reading.

The pre-printed sections of all the papers began arriving on Saturday afternoon. Big bundles of the advertising sections, and the magazine sections, and ‘the comics’ were all dropped off by big trucks that pulled up to the long porch in front of the store. We had to haul the big bundles inside and tuck them out of sight.

On Saturday evening, when business slowed to a trickle, we began pulling out the big bundles of the advanced sections of each of the papers. Piles were created on all the dining tables around the store with each table representing a different paper. My old man was always in charge of the NY Times table. The advance sections were all slid together so that there would be only one compiled section to fold into the “hot” news sections that would arrive in the early morning. These were left sitting on the table or on the chairs next to each of the tables.

Early on Sunday morning, long before the rising of the sun, from my bedroom above the store, I could hear the big, heavy bundles of the newspapers landing on the porch down below. The whole building seemed to shake as each bundle crash on the old, wooden landing area. One truck would arrive with some of the papers and another would arrive with the others.

“All hands on deck!”

My father would pop in and alert my brothers and sister. In those early years, before my sister and brothers moved away, there was always plenty of help. Even in the later years of the store’s history, though my brothers lived in their own homes with their own wives, they would show up faithfully on Sunday morning for the massive assembly line.

Each of us had our assigned duties. In the early years, when I was but a little tike, my main job was taking finished papers in small piles and stacking them in front of the counter as high as I was able. When they reached the height of my eyes, one of my brothers would take over my task.

As I grew older and taller, I migrated into the assembly line and had my own table and my own papers to assemble. Three, four or five sections, depending on the newspaper, had to be assembled and then Saturday’s advance section needed to be folded into each of Sunday’s packet to make a final Sunday newspaper.

It all had to be completed by eight o’clock when there would be a dozen or more people standing out on the porch waiting for my old man to unlock the door and allow them in. Often, someone who thought he was a special friend would signal that he would like early entrance. Some people even tapped on the glass windows from the porch. My father pretended not to see or hear a thing and instructed us to do the same. To interrupt the assembly process would mean we wouldn’t be ready for the opening at eight o’clock.

The dining tables were nearly black with printer’s ink when the last paper was assembled. My mother was on the job by this time and she went from table to table, scrubbing each of them and wiping down their chairs as well.

I watched in amazed wonder when the doors were finally opened. People strode in rapidly and grabbed their favorite newspaper, or even a couple of them, and then asked for a quart of milk, bacon and a dozen eggs to take along home. Some fellows took their paper to a table and spread out, telling my mother they’d like a hot cup of coffee and, perhaps, an English muffin with marmalade. All the tables would be taken within 10 minutes and, sometimes, one old-timer would join another local at his table.

The big piles of newspapers began to diminish. For some of the papers there were reserves that had been stacked in the store room in the back of the store and my job was to refresh the piles when they began to get near the bottom.

“Come on! Make it snappy,” my old man would call out to me.

There were other commands as well.

“Fetch me a pound of Maxwell House!”

“Bring a pint of heavy cream!”

“Get me down a box of Corn Flakes!”

“Gotta have four bottles of cold Coke!”

Things seemed to fly off the shelves, out of the big refrigerator box and from the soda cooler.

Every customer seemed to know my old man personally. They’d call him Hank, or Hennie or Henry, depending on how personally they knew him.

I remember making judgments about the sophistication of our townspeople depending on which newspapers they purchased. Of course, those who picked up the NY Times were the learned, reading folks in town. The guy who picked up the Daily Mirror was tagged as a less complex person.

All kinds of items moved off the shelves on a Sunday morning. No one seemed to purchase just the paper. Work gloves sold like crazy during the gardening months. Magazines could be chosen from a long, low counter in the front of the store, and there were dozens and dozens from which to choose – all the way from Popular Mechanics to Look Magazine. Candy bars, in the display cases right above the stacks of newspapers, sold swiftly too. So did chewing gum and packs of Chesterfields and Lucky Strike cigarettes.

Things would calm down after an hour or so, but then the pre-church and after-church rushes would begin. By one o’clock, nearly all the papers were gone. We’d shut the store down for an hour and my old man would hang out a sign, telling folks we were having our Sunday dinner and would open again at two.

My mom would have something special for us all to eat. The dining room table, pulled out into the middle of our living room, would have her best china all set out on it. We’d enjoy Yankee Pot Roast, or leg of lamb, or Virginia Baked Ham. Sundays were never fish days. That was Friday.

The old man would finish dinner and have time for a half-hour nap before he had to open up again. He’d lie down on the sofa that paralleled the dining room table and drift off, snoring loudly. Most times we’d try to let him sleep and my brothers and I, or Blanche, the neighbor lady who worked for us on Sunday afternoons, would open the place up.

My mother might offer specials to luncheonette customers, depending on what was left over from our Sunday dinner. A nice Virginia baked ham sandwich on a home-made dinner roll was always popular. So, was a hot, Yankee pot roast sandwich smothered in thick gravy, with mashed potatoes on the side. Top it off with a chocolate milk shake and our customers would have a spectacular Sunday afternoon meal with no reason to worry about dinner on that night.

The last few, scattered newspapers would be gone by evening. If there were any left, they’d be bundled and marked for return to the truckers on the following Saturday. We’d never have anything more than a small bundle to put out for return.

I’ve known the feel and smell of printer’s ink for nearly all my life. When I’ve worked my way through the paper on a Sunday morning, I look down at the blackness on my fingers and I’m reminded of those days in that little town and in that general store where we mixed assembling the newspapers with jerking behind the soda fountain.

Late in the summer of 1959, I left New Jersey and ventured west. Mother had left for the stars. My brothers and sister had their own homes. It was difficult to leave Pop alone, but I had some of my own hillocks to climb and I needed to sit with someone sweet beneath the stars, examining them. I came home in the summer of 1960 and worked a few jobs to earn tuition money for college. I also helped out in the store and assembled Sunday papers for the last time. That autumn, I left for good and never again put together a newspaper or waited on another customer in Leck’s Confectionary.

The old store was played out. The old man’s heart wasn’t in it anymore. I knew that. He wouldn’t hang on much longer.

TV had arrived. Walter Cronkite talked the news nearly every evening of the week. Newspapers consolidated and changed their emphasis.

It would take another 50 years, but the newspaper industry had begun its slow decline toward extinction. As certain as death is, I still refuse to believe in it!

I close my eyes and see those towering stacks of newspapers, standing taller than I, lined up in front of the candy counter.

Minnesota Charities and Nonprofits are in Trouble

Nonprofits must change their approach to fundraising!
They could be saved with an Obama type effort!
by Charlie Leck

When it comes to charitable giving, my wife and I have tried to be cautious, informed and wise in our donations. We consider the Charities Review Council (CRC) here in Minnesota one of the important tools we use in educating ourselves about organizations that ask for money. We turn to CRC to get reports on how wisely organizations use the money that they are given. And, we make sure we give a little support money to the CRC each year for the work they do. You can get a lesson on how to be a smart giver at the CRC web site.

The economy is hitting your favorite charities very hard right now. Many of them have had to cut staff and cut programming. The stories about this matter have been abundant in the newspapers over the last couple of weeks. About 50 percent of Minnesota’s nonprofits have had more than a 50 percent decline in revenue. And, about 50 percent of all our nonprofits have had nearly a 50 percent increase in expenses. At the same time, these nonprofits have had nearly a 50 percent decline in individual contributions. It gets more staggering when you understand that most of these organizations have had a 40 percent increase in the demand for their services. On top of all this, about 10 percent of these worthy organizations have seen about an 8 percent drop off in volunteers. [Source: Star-Tribune report of 17 December 2008]

Big time givers (I’m talking about people who give hundreds of thousands of dollars) are cutting back their giving by up to 50 percent. When you are a non-profit that is accustomed to getting $200,000 annually from an individual giver and that donation gets cut in half, you are in big trouble. It means a cut back in staff and/or programming.

The criminal case against Tom Petters here in Minnesota, and against Bernard Madoff, in New York City, has really hurt a number of significant nonprofits. Hundreds of thousands of dollars – more likely millions of dollars – are at stake. A couple of those big nonprofits who had invested in Madoff’s funds are Minnesota organizations.

Hundreds of fine organizations are feeling the pinch because of this very tight economy. I have never seen anything like it in my lifetime.

Nonprofits must change their approach to fundraising
Nonprofits must change their approach to fundraising and they could learn a lot from the way Barack Obama financed his campaign for the Presidency. To really raise dough, Obama turned to the little guys – to small donors – looking for gifts of a few hundred dollars or more, rather than thousands of dollars; however, there were thousands and thousands and thousands of those small donors and the amounts that came in each time Obama made an appeal for help were astonishing.

I’m told by someone within the apparatus of Obama’s fund raising operation that they didn’t even push the gas pedal completely down. They had a contingency plan, had they needed more money, to really put out a call to thousands and thousands more of the ordinary people in America. They never had to engage the plan.

The Obama organization used email and the Internet as creatively as it can be done. In a single 24 hour period they could restock their treasuries with millions of dollars. The money came mostly from people who had never heard of hedge funds and/or derivatives.

I’m currently watching a little non-profit, cooperative food market try to get going in our region. They’ve plodded along so slowly, at a snail’s pace or worse. They haven’t tapped one little bit into the Internet or into email fund raising and membership growth. I’m astonished at their lack of sophistication in this important arena.

The nonprofits that will survive, and even thrive, in our current atmosphere will be those that learn how to harness the power of the World Wide Web. Snail mail is a thing of the past. I don’t believe I ever got a letter in the mail from the Obama organization; yet I found myself making $100 contributions about a dozen times during the course of the campaign. And I was only one of millions who did that. Play with the numbers! And remember, the Obama organization barely used a piece of paper or a penny for postage.

The Red Cross is using the Internet and email wisely. So are a lot of political and lobbying organizations. Beyond that, I haven’t seen any of the nonprofits I favor using the power of email. Even the CRC hasn’t used email as wisely as it should or could.

The case against Arkansas!

Among telephone solicitors for charitable organizations and nonprofits, those from Arkansas dominate on our telephone. I can’t tell you the number of calls I get from that state, soliciting money for every type of charitable organization. I always beg-off and decline to give. Why? Because Arkansas has very loose regulations for fundraisers in that state. The calling company can actually peel away more than 50 percent of the funds given to a particular charity. It’s another instance about how we can be smarter in the way we give.

If I give, for instance, to the Special Olympics, I try to give to the Minnesota Chapter or directly to the national offices of the Special Olympics without going through an independent fundraiser. I don’t want a big chunk of the money I give going to a private, for-profit, fund raising organization.

Give more than you can afford this year!
I urge you to give until it hurts this year! Give wisely, but give more than you usually do even if it means you need to cut back on your own life style. And, if it's possible think about volunteering some of your time to one or more of these organizations. It’s time for Americans to show what they’re made of.

Meeting Eunice

Some people are just special, and you can see it and feel it in those who are!
by Charlie Leck

I went along to a Christmas gathering with my wife the other night.

I didn’t know the crowd, but my wife works with the hostess and was thrilled to be invited. It turned out that most of the people there were family members and I began to feel a little bit like a misplaced person. That is, until Eunice showed up.

Eunice brightened everything up. She made everyone smile and feel glad they were alive. Once we got her talking about herself and her own life, I was so wishing I had a tape recorder hidden in my pocket so I could capture some of the extraordinary stories and meanderings of this lovely woman.

It turned out that Eunice is the grand-dam of the family. She’s 94 years old but still filled with vim and vigor. (Geez, I’ve never used that – “vim and vigor” – in any of my writing before. What the heck is “vim” anyway?)

Eunice had 6 kids of her own and then was blessed with a dozen or so grandkids and a couple dozen great-grandkids.

Sitting next to Eunice all evening was her 64 year old son, Jimmy. He didn’t say anything much because he can’t. One might be inclined to call him a vegetable; however, you certainly won’t do that once you hear him humming “Jingle Bells” or see him looking over at you, smiling and working to point a finger as if trying to greet and welcome you to the family gathering.

Every few minutes, Eunice would reach over and lovingly pat Jimmy on the arm, letting him know she was there and that she loved him then and forever.

Jimmy lives at home, with Eunice, in the same house they owned when Jimmy came into their lives. Some birthing problems, which would be easily solved in today’s hospitals, caused severe and permanent damage to Jimmy and everyone soon learned that he’d be confined to a wheel chair for the rest of his life and wouldn’t be able to talk or do much to care for himself.

It was no big deal to Eunice. Jimmy was her boy and she’d just make sure she was always there for him. It’s clear that the brothers and sisters feel the same way. Watching each of them greet Jimmy, as they arrived, with hugs and kisses or a rough, boy-like rubbing of his hair and head, made the outsider’s heart just leap with happiness and delight. It’s wonderful to watch people loving each other right before your eyes.

If you express that wonder to any of them, they look at you as if you’re strange for saying it. What else? Of course we’ll love him forever and do everything we can to make his life meaningful! Of course! What else?

The siblings take their turns going to the old family house to make sure Jimmy gets bathed and tended to – stuff that is too heavy or awkward for Eunice to do anymore.

When Jimmy arrived at the party the other night, I watched Mary, one of his sisters, so expertly lift him from his wheel chair and set him comfortably on one of the soft, cushy chairs in the living room. Jimmy is not a little man. Mary understood weight and leverage so perfectly and used them to her advantage. I guess a life time helping to care for the boy, grown into a man, would do that. Yet, it was more than just the physical routine of lifting him and moving him. There was such love and tenderness in the act that I was pretty overwhelmed as I witnessed it.

And, I was spellbound listening to Eunice talk about her life. I kept encouraging her with questions. I wondered how a 94 year old could be so young, alert, strong and vigorous. It was as if she knew she had no choice. She had to stay that way because there was always Jimmy in her life. He needed her to be tough and active. He needed her love and he deserved it, too.

Lordsy, every once in a while you meet someone who confirms for you your hope that people are really good and confident and loving.

My, oh my! Eunice made my Christmas for me! She made me hear the angels singing; and she made the great star, leading us toward the birth place of a little child, grow brighter and brighter.

I looked at Jimmy and I saw the little lord who was born in a manger. I looked over at Eunice and I saw the purity and wonder of the woman who gave life to him and loved him with a never fading intensity.

The Lord once promised us that we would meet him in the strangest places, when we were unprepared for the encounter, and when we would least suspect that it was he.

Could it be?

Have a joyous Christmas filled with love and loyalty!

Texan in Arkansas prison for 30 years is innocent

Harold Davey Cassell, known as Dinker, will file his last appeal...
by Danny Lyon

John Gibson, the head of the Arkansas Delta Truth & Justice Center, who I got to know this summer while I was down in Mississippi at a reunion of civil rights workers from the 1964 Voter Registration Project, asked me to publish this story, by Danny Lyon, on my blog. John Gibson is a good man, devoted to the principles behind the name of his non-profit organization. I gladly place the story here. Danny Lyon is an American filmmaker and photographer who received his BA from the University of Chicago in 1963. He began publishing his photographs in that same year while he worked as a volunteer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

My name is Danny Lyon. I am a well known photographer and filmmaker. In 1962, when I was twenty, I was in jail in Georgia with Dr. Martin Luther King. When I was twenty six I did a major photo documentary inside the Texas Prison system, published as Conversations with the Dead. At the time there were 12,500 inmates in the Texas Department of Corrections. Today there are 200,000. Inside the prison I met an inmate named James Renton.

Early in the morning of Dec. 21st, 1975, in the woods outside of Fayetteville, a young police officer from Springdale, named John Hussey was murdered. Kidnapped, handcuffed and shot four times in the head with his own gun, it was clear from the beginning that his abduction and murder were connected to a burglary that had happened a few hours earlier, in Rogers, Arkansas. The FBI believed that four men were present that night at the burglary, and all four were present at the murder, and that all four fired a shot into Officer Hussey.

One of these men, Don McLaughlin, committed suicide. Another, Larry Wallace, vanished into the Texas prison system. The third was Renton, who was convicted and sentenced to Life. Renton died in prison in 1995. The fourth man was Harold Davey Cassell. Cassell, who would not testify at his own trial and refused to “help put Renton in the electric chair” was also found guilty of capital murder and was sentenced to life in prison. Cassell, whom most people call Dinker, is still in prison.

During the process of writing “Like a Thief’s Dream” (PowerHouse Books) a book about Renton, I visited Fayetteville and went through thousands of pages of documents and evidence that has been preserved in Springdale. I also interviewed all the major figures still alive in the police department and the FBI that were active in the case. I interviewed Cassell many times for many hours and collected other documentation from inmates that knew both Cassell and Renton in prison.

There is absolutely no question that Cassell was not present during the burglary at Rogers that proceeded the crime and was not present during the abduction of Officer Hussey. He and another burglar, who had been in Fayetteville the previous night, were 100 miles away in Oklahoma when the officer was murdered by two people (McLaughlin and Renton), not four, in the woods west of Fayetteville.

Cassell, who is today at 58, an extremely likable and educated inmate, has been in prison for thirty years. He is innocent. He is also one of over one thousand men doing life sentences in Arkansas who will almost certainly die in prison. In the United States there are at least 100,000 inmates also serving life sentences. Most of these men will almost certainly never be released.

Cassell has unsuccessfully used up all but one of his Federal and State appeals. His wife, Colleen McGrath, who still awaits him in the free world, says “Dinker should be released for time served.” She is right. Whatever his role in this horrendous crime, and it was zero, he has done enough prison time. Father Louis Franz of Arizona has hired the West Memphis Lawyer, Gerald Coleman to file what is Dinker’s last chance to leave the Arkansas prison alive. Dinker is a teacher in the Cummins Unit. His address is...
Harold Davey Cassell #73885
PO Box 500, Blk #2
Grady Arkansas, 71644 – 0500.

Media interested in this story may contact me at info@bleakbeauty.com.

Father Lou Franz can be reached at f273157@msn.com
Arkansas Churches for Life
PO Box 1208
Flagstaff, Arizona…..

Thank you for reading this.
Danny Lyon