by Jesse Mullins, Jr. - "The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid." G. K. Chesterton
Book Review: REBEL: The Last American Novel
Rebel: The Last American Novel; by T.L. Davis; 12 Round Publishing, Montrose, Colo., 275 pages, trade paperback. Life never affords enough comfort or security to youth that they can pass through their nonage without some acquaintance with the sterner side of human existence. For some, that acquaintance can come even in the tenderest of years. […] The post Book Review: REBEL: The Last American Novel appeared first on Something Solid.
Rebel: The Last American Novel; by T.L. Davis; 12 Round Publishing, Montrose, Colo., 275 pages, trade paperback. Life never affords enough comfort or security to youth that they can pass through their nonage without some acquaintance with the sterner side of human existence. For some, that acquaintance can come even in the tenderest of years. But for anyone, even the sheltered and mostly grown, life shows its rougher edges soon enough. And so by our teens we are all awakened to the insensitivities that life can visit upon us. How we respond to that awakening defines our character. “You’re a tough one, aren’t you?” “No,” Nick answered. “All you kids are tough.” “You got to be tough,” Nick said. “That’s what I said.” The Nick Adams figure of Hemingway’s early short fiction is a character study in American youth coming of age in a world that is amply ready to test them. Sometimes the tests are grim. Sometimes they are sobering. Or the tests can be interludes of uncertainty or banality or boredom or unfairness or loneliness. In Rebel: The Last American Novel, by T.L. Davis, the story follows the ups and downs—and tests—of Lane Daniels, a protagonist who, in the prototypical mold of Nick Adams, finds himself in an unsettled standoff with life. Maybe here there is a tincture of Holden Caulfield as well. Or Huck Finn. Or Harvey Cheyne. A disaffected teen, Daniels breaks from his family, friends, and school to venture into the world in a quest to assert his own self-sufficiency and independence—qualities he likens to freedom. Set in the 1970s, in northern Colorado and parts thereabout, Rebel tracks Daniels’ trajectory, beginning with his disillusionment with school, continuing through his conflict with authorities, following his peregrinations in Colorado and Kansas, and culminating with his reuniting with friends and family, while yet on the verge of a fresh goodbye. In the end, Daniels, who typifies his region’s lingering frontier ethic, seems to strike what might be thought of as a frontiersman’s standoff with civilization. We get the sense that he will live in it, but not fully be of it. Such could be said for much of the American West, yet today. Rebel could be viewed as an extended metaphor for the West, a once-hallowed hinterland now wrenched headlong into contemporary times, dismissed as irrelevant, treated as passe’, ignored as “flyover country,” and, worst of all, derided for values that are now deemed archaic. The book begins with a line that is evocative of Hemingway’s “Snows of Kilimanjaro,” but with Longs Peak standing in as the landmark that will, like Kilimanjaro, brood over its author’s narrative, just as the past of the American West broods over a present that never lives up to that glorious past. Daniels’ family history is shared as prologue for the tale, and Daniels himself is introduced as a product and a progeny of that family’s deep regional roots. Change doesn’t come easily to the West, nor does conformity, and so we soon are confronted with Daniels’ conflicts, both internal and external. Here is what he thinks of school: “It was an atmosphere designed to stifle and smother freedom. It was prison: dehumanizing, degrading and every minute controlled by a strict schedule. Was it my ancestry of pioneers and individualists or the history of the area populated by the same demand for freedom that made me jealous of my time and how it was spent?” (p. 13) Another year into his development, he is, if anything, more entrenched in his outlook: “I love to work, especially outside, away from offices and halls. I’ve had enough of that already and it feels like prison. Going to college would only ensure that I remained there for the rest of my life, chained to a desk, pale from fluorescent lights, trapped by happy-speak to avoid resentment and anger from other inmates of that insane future.” (p. 160) This book is more than just another exploration of teenage angst. Daniels is in the grip of it, yes, but his struggle is more than just the typical coming-of-age saga. It’s also in some ways about us. On another level, as a statement of alienation and reaction against the machinery of modern life, the attitudes of Lane Daniels are oddly evocative of the kind of anarchy embodied in a figure such as Tyler Durden, of Fight Club, though on a milder scale of course. Meanwhile, while it is fairly easy for us to grasp what Daniels is against, it is harder to grasp what he is for. Yet Davis pulls off the nifty conceit of getting us to identify with, even sympathize with, this brash, self-absorbed, stoic, sometimes truculent young man. Because he chooses a late-teens protagonist, and because the story sticks with teenage life dynamics, politics are never overt. Yet, in the end, the book is more political than it lets on. There are undercurrents. Its theme proves to be timely. We live in tumultuous times. All that the nascent 2020s have done is tear off the veneer that covered the sentiments that have boiled beneath. Too few people today grasp the real political stakes. Too few understand how the political world divides. It’s a case of the collective versus the individual, men versus the man, the state versus the citizen, society versus privacy. I think Davis understands the stakes and that that’s what he’s writing about. Consider these passages: “I didn’t have time to ask when I got hired, I assumed we would be paid weekly, so I could stay in my car for a week, easy. With the thought that I would tough it out, I was met with a sudden realization that I had finally achieved my ultimate goal of freedom, complete and whole as at no other time in my life. In my poverty, with no place to live other than my car I inhaled the greatest and most valuable air, free air, as valuable as oxygen itself to a man who is being held down and smothered by a dominating and controlling society. The car became a world unto itself, supportive and protective in many ways, but also mobile, free to leave and to return, move from one place of inhospitality to another of gentle welcome, flowing as the Marmaton River.” (p. 187) And, even more pointedly, there is this passage where the narrator, Daniels, rejects “the soul-sucking experience of being indoctrinated”: “‘You don’t want that,’ I said, knowing that had I not spent time with Chrissy and Alice in the cafe, that I would not have my opinions galvanized, would not have even yet consolidated the ideas that I had concerning school and teachers, that it would be some cloudy, half-formed opinions of school, rather than the teachers themselves, the curriculum and the means of delivering groupthink to the rest of us, using a form of democracy as a bludgeon that I had often recognized, but hadn’t been able to distill as the reason I hated school. I thought it was just a waste of time, but I had come to recognize that I detested being forced to accept the social messaging that was being inserted into every class. It was much more pronounced in oral communications than any other class and why I could not tolerate the message much more than the insult of wasting my time.” (p. 257) Davis’s first-person narrative moves along compellingly and keeps a reader on the hook. The dialogue is crisp, the exposition is efficient, and the story itself commands attention. And the book is authentic. I grew up in the world Davis describes. He knows this world his characters inhabit. And so the book has this virtue also: it defines a subculture that otherwise is invisible to much of society. In the end, this book is about people. And about the conflict between their better natures and the conformity that a consumer-driven, high-tech, lever-pulling world would impose on them. The better natures of American society, in my opinion and I would think in the author’s opinion also, are expressed in the individualistic traits wrought by the frontier. It is these traits that are in the crucible here. Will they survive? That’s a question that awaits more exploration. But T.L. Davis has moved the discussion forward for the time being. –Jesse Mullins The post Book Review: REBEL: The Last American Novel appeared first on Something Solid.
People who live in the United States ought—all of them—to be about the business of doing good. But the government of the United States has no business going about doing good. Serving justice, yes—when justice needs to be served. But for the government to actively do good? That’s going beyond its function. Humanitarian organizations and […] The post When a Government “Does Good” appeared first on Something Solid.
People who live in the United States ought—all of them—to be about the business of doing good. But the government of the United States has no business going about doing good. Serving justice, yes—when justice needs to be served. But for the government to actively do good? That’s going beyond its function. Humanitarian organizations and churches ought to be about doing good. The private citizenry ought to be moved to do good. But no entity that gets its resources by force of law has any business doing good. Such action by a government is a usurpation of the rights of the individual. Whatever resources, assets, and/or funds such a government is expending and dispensing in such ventures ought to be restored to the individual members of the public who surrendered those funds under penalty of law. Let the individual do good. The collective has no mind of its own, no conscience of its own—no matter how much one might want to posit that voting and representation give the government a “mind” or a “heart.” None exist there. Such qualities exist only at the level of the individual. C.S. Lewis rightly challenged the idea that the “collective” exists at all. It is an abstraction only—it is nothing concrete, has no “will” of its own, and its deeds bring glory not to God nor even, necessarily, to the electorate or to “constituencies,” for at the grassroots level those individuals were passive in any given act of “government do-good-ism,” and the elected officials who appropriated the funds deserve no credit for spending others’ sacrifices—all such sacrifices themselves having been taken by force of law. It is not a good system, this business of nations behaving as though they have, or that they represent, a conscience. It weakens a people, by taking their own conscience away from them, constantly sapping their own resources that would otherwise make them able to exercise fuller virtue in their own lives, exercise greater free will, and enlarge their own souls by making uncoerced sacrifices as opposed to forced ones undeserving of personal credit. And, too, they could bring glory to something greater than themselves—thus performing an act of which government is intrinsically incapable. The post When a Government “Does Good” appeared first on Something Solid.
Yesterday I received this photo from my longtime friend Robert Guernsey, who is a cameraman on the Netflix sitcom The Ranch. That’s Sam Elliott, star of the series, in the center. Robert is on the right and his first assistant cameraman, Vito De Palma, is on the left. This was taken during the last week […] The post On the Set with Sam Elliott appeared first on Something Solid.
From left: Vito De Palma, Sam Elliott, Robert Guernsey on the set of The Ranch. Yesterday I received this photo from my longtime friend Robert Guernsey, who is a cameraman on the Netflix sitcom The Ranch. That’s Sam Elliott, star of the series, in the center. Robert is on the right and his first assistant cameraman, Vito De Palma, is on the left. This was taken during the last week of shooting before summer hiatus was to begin (in May). Robert showed Sam a back issue of American Cowboy magazine that I had sent him. The issue (JA99) had Sam as its cover story. Sam wasn’t aware that Robert and I had any connections, but as soon as Robert mentioned to Sam that Jesse Mullins had written the article (I interviewed Sam in Palm Springs – this was many years ago), Sam replied, “I know Jesse. In fact, I’ve seen him two other times since this article was done.” That’s true – I visited with Sam on at the Western Heritage Awards in Oklahoma City on two different occasions. Sam autographed the magazine cover for Robert, and that’s why Robert is displaying it in this shot. Thanks, Robert, for sharing this. Fun stuff. The post On the Set with Sam Elliott appeared first on Something Solid.
My wife Kit and I were disappointed when, after installing a rain gauge just 8 feet outside our kitchen window, we couldn’t discern the rainfall amounts on the gauge from that distance. Each reading required a trip outside. We decided to add some kind of dry substance that could add color – for us it […] The post Koolaid Powder in Rain Gauge appeared first on Something Solid.
My wife Kit and I were disappointed when, after installing a rain gauge just 8 feet outside our kitchen window, we couldn’t discern the rainfall amounts on the gauge from that distance. Each reading required a trip outside. We decided to add some kind of dry substance that could add color – for us it was a pinch of Grape Koolaid powder – to the bottom of the gauge when the gauge was dry. Some days later (this was a month ago) we got a two-inch rain and you can see the results – this photo was taken from our kitchen window. Works wonderfully. That red blob in the photo is the neighbor’s wheelbarrow. Reminded me of that poem by William Carlos Williams: So much depends upon A red wheel barrow Glazed with rain water Beside the white chickens. Well, no chickens. But a nice image. Here’s a shot of another rain gauge reading – smaller rainfall – with squirrel. <img decoding="async" class="wp-image-3183 size-full" src="https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SSpostPicKoolaidRainGaugeWithSquirrel.jpg" alt="Squirrel beside our rain gauge that held a tiny pinch of grape Koolaid powder to make the rainfall reading show up better. Try it - it works!" width="426" height="640" srcset="https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SSpostPicKoolaidRainGaugeWithSquirrel.jpg 426w, https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SSpostPicKoolaidRainGaugeWithSquirrel-199x300.jpg 199w" sizes="(max-width: 426px) 100vw, 426px" /> Squirrel beside our rain gauge that held a tiny pinch of grape Koolaid powder to make the rainfall reading show up better. Try it – it works! The post Koolaid Powder in Rain Gauge appeared first on Something Solid.
Review: Wichita State Baseball Comes Back
Wichita State Baseball Comes Back: Gene Stephenson and the Making of a Shocker Championship Tradition (The History Press, historypress.net, Charleston, S.C., 2014, 140 pp., 31 black-and-white photos, $19.99 paperback). No one needs to be a fan of Wichita State University baseball, nor—I’m tempted to say—even a fan of college baseball or even baseball itself, to […] The post Review: Wichita State Baseball Comes Back appeared first on Something Solid.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-3167 size-medium" src="https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/WichitaStateBaseballComesBackBookCover2Smaller-200x300.jpg" alt="Book cover for Wichita State Baseball Comes Back" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/WichitaStateBaseballComesBackBookCover2Smaller-200x300.jpg 200w, https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/WichitaStateBaseballComesBackBookCover2Smaller-682x1024.jpg 682w, https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/WichitaStateBaseballComesBackBookCover2Smaller.jpg 750w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />Wichita State Baseball Comes Back: Gene Stephenson and the Making of a Shocker Championship Tradition (The History Press, historypress.net, Charleston, S.C., 2014, 140 pp., 31 black-and-white photos, $19.99 paperback). No one needs to be a fan of Wichita State University baseball, nor—I’m tempted to say—even a fan of college baseball or even baseball itself, to find pleasure in the consistently entertaining narrative that is Wichita State Baseball Comes Back: Gene Stephenson and the Making of a Shocker Championship Tradition (historypress.net). No, this is just good storytelling—fit fare for any reader who likes against-the-odds tales, and especially those told with the kind of irrepressible energy and wryness that is the hallmark of author John E. Brown. Brown tells the story of a coach’s mission to bring back the sport of baseball to a university that had abandoned the game some seven years prior. And not just bring it back, but make of it a winner, and not just a winner, but a perennial national powerhouse—which is exactly what coach Gene Stephenson did, starting in 1977. And to do it all on a shoestring. By 1982, his Shockers had played themselves into the title game of the College World Series. By 1989, they’d won the title itself. Along the way, they rewrote college baseball record books and they revitalized and in fact changed the sport in ways that can still be seen today. This is a story, too, of academic hubris, of behind-the-scenes maneuverings, of promises kept and unkept. And this is a story, too, of resourcefulness, of belief in oneself and one’s goals. I lived in Wichita for 11 years (1984-1995), during a time when more than one motorist would drive 21st Street past the University during gametime only to see a baseball ping off the pavement, having been swatted from the batter’s box some 400-feet-and-more to the south. I watched a time or two from the stands myself as those Stephenson Wheatshocker stalwarts put a whipping on my own beloved—and then highly ranked—OSU Cowboys. They were good, the Shockers. To give a little added perspective… this from a 2013 article in the Daily Oklahoman that tried to sum up Stephenson’s career at WSU: “Gene Stephenson spent 36 springs in the Wichita wind, building the greatest baseball story ever told.” The greatest baseball story ever told. College baseball aficianados know that story well. What John Brown has done is taken the facts of that story and fleshed them out with the color and the drama and the richness they deserve. His good-natured irreverence, his eye for irony, and his ingrained joie de vivre infuse the book with a liveliness and a buy-in that is infectious. Full disclosure here: for about a dozen years, those years falling in a time while I was still editor-in-chief of American Cowboy magazine, I commissioned and published scores of articles by John, and he was consistently one of the most popular writers in our stable—arguably the most popular. Brown, an accomplished, versatile, and award-winning nonfiction scribe who has published nearly 5,000 articles altogether, shows himself to be especially adept here at what might be termed baseball prose, writing with the flair of one who knows the game and its nuances. In fact, this book might be thought of as a paean to baseball. It is, in a way, a celebration of “baseball’s innocence, its naïve belief that all things are possible in an eternal springtime.” (p. 132) Consider these bits: “Southern Cal’s lineup was packed with big left-handed hitters, who watched [pitcher] Matt Yeager’s right-handed motion all the way to the plate, where they stepped into the pitch, hitting tape-measure shots to right. Over the scoreboard in right. Over the scoreboard into a thirty-mile-per-hour wind in right.” (p. 57) “The outfield… was replete with speed, glued gloves and throwing arms capable of stopping any base runner in mid-stride. In a set of choices not theretofore available to Gene, he could on any given day pick and choose among Joe Carter [yes, that Joe Carter], the bullet Keith Jones, hard-hitting Tim Tolin and Kurt Bradbury and a new arrival out of Nebraska, a superb athlete named Kevin Penner. In the dying days of a Kansas winter, baseball was about to bloom again in a season full of hope and potential—a season that an already crusty young coach was forced to admit that this, this right here, might be the Shockers’ time.” (p. 90) “’Let youngsters have fun while they develop their natural abilities.’ The coach, aging now, his last years in his profession upon him, says again, ‘Let them develop. Let them enjoy their youth and their growth.’ And then, his own coaching come round at last to a final inning or two, he rolls the game he loves into a ball, a ragged old Rawlings, its stitches pinked after a thousand flights into a late afternoon sun. He makes baseball life, and life this nation’s game, and he says again to others who’d do as he has done. ‘Teach them to play fearlessly,’ he says. ‘Teach them to play fearlessly.’” (p. 138) Again, this is not just a book for WSU fans, nor just a book for college baseball fans. This is a book for readers who like great storytelling. John Brown has hurled a jewel. —Jesse Mullins The post Review: Wichita State Baseball Comes Back appeared first on Something Solid.
The photo that accompanies this blog post is a shot I snapped moments ago of part of an article that appears on page 22 of the current (June) issue of American Cowboy magazine. That issue commemorates the 20th anniversary of the magazine for which I was founding editor (and for which I was editor-in-chief for […] The post Twenty Years Ago… AC Gets Its Start appeared first on Something Solid.
The photo that accompanies this blog post is a shot I snapped moments ago of part of an article that appears on page 22 of the current (June) issue of American Cowboy magazine. That issue commemorates the 20th anniversary of the magazine for which I was founding editor (and for which I was editor-in-chief for 15 years). The photo shows publisher Bill Bales (seated) and myself during the year (1994) of the startup. American Cowboy published a profile of Bill in this issue (that’s where this photo appears) and in the same issue I contributed a three-page guest editorial in which I looked back over the beginnings of the magazine and most of its history – through my tenure, anyway. I also wrote about the values that we instilled in the magazine. In another blog post on this site (“American Cowboy’s Backtrail: A Great Ride”) I add some details about the beginnings of the magazine and some insights into what it meant to those of us most involved in the enterprise. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-3161" src="https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/MeAndBillBalesPicInACmag.jpg" alt="MeAndBillBalesPicInACmag" width="478" height="640" srcset="https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/MeAndBillBalesPicInACmag.jpg 478w, https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/MeAndBillBalesPicInACmag-224x300.jpg 224w" sizes="(max-width: 478px) 100vw, 478px" />This occasion marked the first time I’ve written anything for American Cowboy in the five years since I’ve been away. I was invited to participate in the 20th anniversary project by the magazine’s new editor-in-chief, Bob Welch, and I thank Bob for his graciousness and for the fine job the magazine did on the issue, including the profile of Bill that was written by AC‘s former deputy editor, Tom Wilmes. Look for the issue on newsstands now. Better get it – milestone editions like this are worth having and preserving. Bill and Sandy Bales are coming to the Abilene home of Kit and myself in about another week for a visit – first time I’ll have seen them face to face in almost five years… should be a fun reunion! The post Twenty Years Ago… AC Gets Its Start appeared first on Something Solid.
American Cowboy Magazine’s Backtrail: A Great Ride
Howdy, neighbor! If you’ve arrived here after having read the material in the 20th Anniversary Edition (June/July 2014) of American Cowboy magazine, then know that this is the article you’re seeking. I said I’d be sharing “further reminiscences” here, and that’s exactly what’s going on. I’ll try not to repeat too much of what […] The post American Cowboy Magazine’s Backtrail: A Great Ride appeared first on Something Solid.
Howdy, neighbor! If you’ve arrived here after having read the material in the 20th Anniversary Edition (June/July 2014) of American Cowboy magazine, then know that this is the article you’re seeking. I said I’d be sharing “further reminiscences” here, and that’s exactly what’s going on. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-3151 size-medium" src="https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/MullinsJesseWithJPSbrown2013-300x225.jpg" alt="JFM with JPS Brown" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/MullinsJesseWithJPSbrown2013-300x225.jpg 300w, https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/MullinsJesseWithJPSbrown2013.jpg 640w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> J.P.S. Brown (left) and myself (snapping a selfie) on the porch of Brown’s ranch house outside Patagonia, Ariz., in April 2013. I was in Tucson that month for the Tucson Book Festival and I wanted to see Joe, so I rented a car and drove the two hours down into that beautiful country. I’ll try not to repeat too much of what I said in the commentary I wrote (“Taking the Long View,” p. 68) for that issue. The essential milestones: AC was launched in 1994 in Wichita, Kan. In 1995 we took the outfit to Sheridan, Wyo. I was there in Sheridan with my family until the summer of 1999, when I had to move to Texas, for family reasons. The rest of the crew stayed in Sheridan for a few years before relocating about 35 miles down the road to Buffalo, Wyo. AC was sold to AIM Media in May 2006, whereupon AIM moved the publication to downtown Boulder, Colo. (fall 2006). I remained with the magazine until June 2009, still working from Texas. So, all told, I was with the magazine through its startup (which actually began in 1993, some months before its debut) and for its first 15 years. That’s what I’m writing about here – that decade and a half that established the direction, scope, and significance of the magazine. I know this may be a bit disjointed but that is sort of the nature of reminiscences – they tend to ramble. But I want to thank those who have been past readers of AC. It’s because of you that the magazine has accomplished what it has. While I’m at it, I’ll point you to a couple of other articles on this website that also hold some details about AC’s past. One is my own bio, which appears here. Another is this collection of brief remarks I penned in past issues. Prior to the launch of American Cowboy, our company was known as WEB Publications, Inc., and we published three magazines: Collector’s Mart, which covered limited edition figurines, plates, prints, and other such products, Art Today, which was a fine art magazine, and Antique Market Report, which was a slim periodical that followed the trading action in the nation’s auction houses, reporting on stellar sale items. I was editor of all three titles. In Collector’s Mart and Art Today, we often featured contemporary Western art, and in the early-to-middle 1990s, Western art was hot. In Antique Market Report, we often covered vintage Western art. So in each of the magazines, we were active in the field of Western art, and we were advantageously positioned to see how Western culture, and interest in the American West, was on the rise. American Cowboy staffers holding the first anniversary edition of American Cowboy in 1995. From left: Scott Richards, Kim Hetzel, Jesse Mullins (holding cake for the occasion), Bill Bales, Debbie Cruz, Angela Howell, and Lori Bales. All of which was just fine by us. We liked that sort of thing even more than the other material we covered in our pubs. So (if you read the article about publisher Bill Bales that appeared in the same June/July issue [see page 22], you’ll know that we [[[[[ Okay, you’re getting a peek behind the curtain now. I’m writing this page today, 5/2/2014] and I want to get something up on my home page because visitors are already showing up to read what I promised. I’ve got to run an errand – see what I mean about “behind the curtain?” – and I’ll be back in an hour and knock out more, if not the rest, of this. Sorry for the delay. Please come back quick. – Jesse ]]]]] The post American Cowboy Magazine’s Backtrail: A Great Ride appeared first on Something Solid.
I had been growing them for, oh, three years or so before it struck me just how early the fruit appears. Yes, if you are “playing along,” the answer to my question, “Can you guess what this is,” is… grapes. The accompanying photo shows a grape cluster as it looks only a few weeks after […] The post Can You Guess What This Is? appeared first on Something Solid.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-3133 alignright" title="GrapesInApril" alt="SSpicGrapesSmallApril10Tweet" src="https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SSpicGrapesSmallApril10Tweet.jpg" width="448" height="448" srcset="https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SSpicGrapesSmallApril10Tweet.jpg 640w, https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SSpicGrapesSmallApril10Tweet-150x150.jpg 150w, https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SSpicGrapesSmallApril10Tweet-300x300.jpg 300w, https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SSpicGrapesSmallApril10Tweet-184x184.jpg 184w, https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SSpicGrapesSmallApril10Tweet-175x175.jpg 175w, https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SSpicGrapesSmallApril10Tweet-60x60.jpg 60w, https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SSpicGrapesSmallApril10Tweet-70x70.jpg 70w, https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SSpicGrapesSmallApril10Tweet-120x120.jpg 120w, https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SSpicGrapesSmallApril10Tweet-185x185.jpg 185w" sizes="(max-width: 448px) 100vw, 448px" />I had been growing them for, oh, three years or so before it struck me just how early the fruit appears. Yes, if you are “playing along,” the answer to my question, “Can you guess what this is,” is… grapes. The accompanying photo shows a grape cluster as it looks only a few weeks after the first leaves appeared on the vine. I shot this image today, April 10, 2014. Ten days or two weeks ago the individual grapes were super-tiny–like about the size of sesame seeds or something like that. They seem to come out just days after the leaves appear. When I first started growing grapes, I would look for some kind of little flowers or something like that to appear first, before the clusters, but I’ve given that up… if there are any signs earlier than the little clusters themselves, I don’t know what they are. Grapes will not grow on just any branch of the vine. They only appear on branches that appeared last year. These branches – this “wood” – is called the “fruiting wood.” If a branch is in its third season, it is no longer “fruiting wood” and it will no longer produce grapes. And certainly the main vine or trunk will not. The vine nourishes the branches, and hence in an indirect sense the vine “grows” not just the branches but the fruit that is on the branches, but only indirectly and only through the branches. So it should be seen that the vine does not “initiate” the fruit that appears on the branches. Only the branches themselves initiate this phase. There’s an interesting passage in the Bible that parallels this kind of trait that grape vines have. Jesus said, “Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing….” (John 15: 4-5). Jesus decided, very deliberately and purposefully, to leave the task of “bearing fruit” to those who are His own. Today, the only ones who will produce fruit (and by “producing fruit” we are talking about bringing people to the truth, and saving souls for eternity) are human beings. Not angels, not the Holy Spirit, not even Jesus Himself. Yes, Jesus enters into a life when a person becomes a child of God through baptism. And Jesus “nourishes” that individual. But the task of reaching out to other individuals and sharing the truth with them, and pointing them toward becoming a child of God–that task has been assigned and relegated to those individuals who have become children of God, and no one else carries this obligation nor even can carry this obligation. This principle is known as the “doctrine of earthen vessels,” and it is best understood if we examine chapters 8, 9, and 10 of the Book of Acts. I have a study I have posted elsewhere on this site, and it will explain to anyone, in just a very few pages, how the “doctrine of earthen vessels” is to be understood and why it is a directive from Christ Himself. You’ll find it here. There’s more to this business of Jesus taking Himself and His heavenly hosts out of the activity of spreading His life to the world, and these understandings are badly lacking in the Christian world, the church world, today. My book Rightly Divided covers much of this ground, and I also recommend it to those who might be interested. You can get a good taste of what the book is about at this page. Thanks for reading! Feel free to share this post via the sharebar that tracks along on the side of this post, or via sharing my URL as a link. May we all be better fruit-bearers for the true vine, Jesus Christ. The post Can You Guess What This Is? appeared first on Something Solid.
What’s with the new anti-“religion” sentiment? Maybe you’ve noticed it yourself. There has appeared—in conversations and statements on the web—an oddly pejorative treatment of the words “religious” or “religion.” I’ve started collecting them and I’ll share my first four (first that I’ve saved) here: From a person’s tagline on Twitter: “Christian, husband, father, friend, author, […] The post Love Jesus, Hate Religion? appeared first on Something Solid.
What’s with the new anti-“religion” sentiment? Maybe you’ve noticed it yourself. There has appeared—in conversations and statements on the web—an oddly pejorative treatment of the words “religious” or “religion.” I’ve started collecting them and I’ll share my first four (first that I’ve saved) here: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-3120" alt="SSloveJesusHateReligionPic" src="https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SSloveJesusHateReligionPic.jpg" width="275" height="183" srcset="https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SSloveJesusHateReligionPic.jpg 275w, https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SSloveJesusHateReligionPic-140x94.jpg 140w" sizes="(max-width: 275px) 100vw, 275px" />From a person’s tagline on Twitter: “Christian, husband, father, friend, author, pastor, indulging Starbucks, eluding religion… selling out, daily, to Jesus.” And another: “A non-religious Jesus follower, a husband, a father, a pastor, a horseman, a cattleman, and an advocate for agriculture.” This one’s a tweet, not a tagline: “When you let Jesus truly come in, religion goes out the window…” Same for this one: “Love people! [all people] and love God! Not religious, free!” Plus there was this [following] sentiment, found in the title of a painting I saw while I was editing American Cowboy. The painting was a scene of a cowboy, horseback, looking out upon a vast panoramic canyonland. The title was: I don’t go to church. This is my church. I’m at a loss to understand how the idea of religion, or even “religion,” interferes with or subverts or diminishes a faith such as Christianity. And I do assume that these individuals who are quoted are directing their remarks at Christianity, not at Islam or the Hindu faith. I realize that that is an assumption, but I notice that the figure whom they contrast against “religion” is Jesus or God, and so Christianity would seem to be the “religion” in question. So why is religion bad while God or Jesus or God’s handiwork remains good? I can agree that there is much in organized Christianity—taking the field as a whole—that is less than ideal. But can we truly remove the “religion” from Christianity? Didn’t Jesus found the religion that bears His name? There’s more to following Christ than just the part that Christ has and the part that I have as His follower. There’s that little business about all the other people He loves. Sure, there’s a one-to-one relationship that I can have with Christ. But he also insists on something He calls a “body.” It’s a family—His family—and it is also His presence here on earth. He calls it the church, and it is the church to whom he is joined. That’s a relationship He treats as a marriage. His marriage is not to me, individually, nor to anyone else, individually. So I cannot help but wonder about the wisdom of treating “religion” as something bad and “Jesus” as purely good, apart from religion. But I might be reading something into those (earlier) remarks that wasn’t there. I’m curious what others think. Care to comment on this? I’d like to get some feedback and then perhaps write further on this topic. Thanks. Copyright 2014 Jesse Mullins The post Love Jesus, Hate Religion? appeared first on Something Solid.
Will the latest massacre at Fort Hood again be labeled simply “workplace violence”? Given the intense criticism that the White House received for the way it blocked any attempts of officials to label Nidal Hasan’s actions at Fort Hood in 2009 as terrorism, one would think that the White House would be a little slower […] The post We Need a New Word for “Terrorism” appeared first on Something Solid.
Will the latest massacre at Fort Hood again be labeled simply “workplace violence”? Given the intense criticism that the White House received for the way it blocked any attempts of officials to label Nidal Hasan’s actions at Fort Hood in 2009 as terrorism, one would think that the White House would be a little slower to inform us all that there is no terroristic intent behind this so-similar shooting. How can they know? Does anyone really know anything about this incident? Is propaganda more important than facts and details? But we’re told, almost as soon as the news breaks, that there’s no terroristic motive associated with the Ivan Lopez incident that took place hours earlier today (April 2). We’ll not know anything related to motives until the investigators have had some time to sort out the details and probe into the circumstances. It’s absurd for any government to discount terrorism in an action such as this – and to do so in knee-jerk fashion. Absurd, that is, unless that government is led by an individual or individuals who have a desire to suppress any news that points to Islamic-related terror strikes. We’re supposed to believe that Benghazi was strictly a non-terroristic action as well. Meanwhile, as the world ponders the possible implications behind the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, with all the accompanying worry about the possibility of terroristic intent behind that act, we again find ourselves assailed with that presumptuous word “terrorism.” I won’t try to suggest that the word is inadequate in denoting what a perpetrator of “terrorism” hopes he has perpetrated. It does succeed in expressing that. But therein lies the problem. “Terrorism” is an apt term for the act only insofar as we grant some credence, and some power, to the intent of the terrorist. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft wp-image-3106" alt="Photo of opened dictionary" src="https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/TerrorismDictionaryPic.jpg" width="396" height="239" srcset="https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/TerrorismDictionaryPic.jpg 660w, https://jessemullins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/TerrorismDictionaryPic-300x180.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 396px) 100vw, 396px" />If we are not so worried about what the terrorist hopes to achieve among us, then “terrorism,” as a word, begins to show itself to be merely a hopeful term. And it’s time we hurled that inadequacy back at the world’s would-be terrorists. That begins when we change the word that we’ll permit to be applied to these acts that now go by the name “terrorism.” I’ll suggest a replacement word shortly. First let’s consider some more reasons for a change. The schoolyard act of “bullying” gives us a helpful parallel. The bully wants his victim to know fear and dismay. To cower and to capitulate. The “terrorist” wants his victims to acknowledge terror. That’s the point for him. That’s the objective. To oblige him is to be in accordance with his aims. Children who are bullied are often urged to go right at the bully. To fight. To set fear aside. To not show fear—and, rather, to instill some fear (insofar as they are able) in the bully. In short, to be fearless. The victims of terrorism ought confront their bully by doing everything in their power and in their own minds and psyche to be fearless. To be un-terrorized, un-terrified. To think themselves, not the “terrorist,” as the terror to be feared. That starts with semantics. “Terrorism” is terrorism only insofar as we grant it that power. It can be malevolence, yes. We can acknowledge that. That’s a quality that resides in the malefactor. But terror—that’s a quality that we succumb to, or not, in our own selves. That’s for us to decide, not some “terrorist.” Let’s stop helping them gain that advantage. If the intention behind the act is, from the perpetrator’s perspective, to “strike terror,” then the name “terrorism” is precisely the term that the perpetrator would like for us to apply to instances of the violent act in question. Conversely, if the act does not “strike terror,” then, from the perpetrator’s own point-of-view, the whole thing would have to be deemed a failure. Simply bestowing the term “terrorism” upon a specific malevolent act is, in a sense, giving the perpetrator precisely what he wants. Let’s consider, in passing, that word “malevolent” and its derivatives. If it’s a replacement word we seek, “malevolence” might be a candidate, though I’ll grant it’s not perfect. “Malevolence” does call attention to “terrorism’s” ill will, but only to that much of the act’s defining characteristics—not to all of them. Besides, calling the act “malevolence” puts every other past act of malevolence (of any kind) into the category of so-called “terrorism.” That won’t do. I submit that no word that currently exists in our vernacular or even our full vocabulary will be exactly right. Not “hostilities,” not “brutality,” not “retaliation,” not “anarchy.” Not “anarchical violence.” Not “violent insurrection.” The problem with borrowing any of these words is that they already have well established denotative meanings and connotative associations. They have jobs to do elsewhere. It’s ineffectual for us to conscript one of these terms into our service. So I propose that we coin a word to do the job for us. And yet not purely make up a word out of thin air, because that has its own drawbacks—strangeness being foremost among these. I propose that we take a word that evokes some of terrorism’s meaning and then we alter the word with a slight change, to make it distinct, and to free the “root” word to stay on its own course. Let’s consider that word “malevolence.” If we added an “i” to it, we could have this neologism: “maleviolence.” But that sounds like “male violence,” and there is evoked a gender-specific dimension that carries connotations that were never intended here. So maybe we just insert the “i” but remove the first “e.” That gives us “malviolence.” Bad violence. A word which doesn’t carry with it old, deep-rooted connotations. “Malviolence” covers two essentials of what needs covering. Badness and violence. As suggested earlier, we want to call out those traits, but nothing beyond that. Why imbue the word with political or religious implications? It deserves none. Nor does it deserve an “ism,” as though it is a school of thought. It is not a school of thought. It is not politics, though its practitioners fancy themselves as being politically relevant or politically minded. That needs to be stripped away. No one—not even a so-called terrorist—seeks a violent society. The “terrorist” might be confused, might even be fooling himself, but if he could honestly examine his own motives he would realize he does not want a society in which his fellow man is ready to lift a hand against him. The “terrorist,” in practicing violence for purportedly political ends, or for “religio-political” ends, or even purely for religion, is inflicting violence to advance some vision he has of a “better” society, and that better society is presumably better for all, and hence happier for all, in the long run, than the current society. The “terrorist” blasts people apart that people might be happier. Let the people who commit these acts be excluded from recognition as being “terrorists,” and let this be so for this reason: because we henceforth know them instead as criminals—malviolent criminals—and we are not struck with terror by criminals, no matter how agenda-driven they may think themselves to be. No, they are just vicious thugs who strike no terror into us. They belong to no party when they commit violence for violence’s sake. That ought automatically, to our minds, remove them from the world of politics and put them into the world of the deranged criminal fringe—where “politics” is, insofar as it exists for them, something that exists only in their deranged minds. We ought disassociate them from all of that. They are mad dogs, to be rounded up and taken out of circulation. They’re malviolent, and we grant that much, but that designation simply marks their entry or furtherance into crime, and into all that crime entails for the criminal. That’s all. If the recommendation made here is to become a reality, more people must hear about this idea, but more people will not hear unless readers take the step of sharing this page. I don’t normally ask that an article of mine be shared, but this feels like an instance when the public itself would be the prime beneficiary. So, to that end, I ask that you share a link to this page, either through email or, if you have favorite social media platforms, by utilizing the sliding “share bar” that appears alongside this article. Thanks much. Together we can make a difference. Copyright 2014 Jesse Mullins Jesse Mullins is editor and e-publisher of Something Solid. He can be reached at jfm (at) jessemullins.com. The post We Need a New Word for “Terrorism” appeared first on Something Solid.