My old dog Kramer is dying, been dying all of 2016, cancer, and failing heart. She has several tumors on her right side, just before the back leg. Nothing the vet can do, but as long as she shows no pain, keeps her appetite, I consider each day a form of grace. I reach down every once in a while and feel them. They used to be marble size, just as hard. It\u2019s a powerless feeling, and so I stay away from that spot for a while, then the shock, when I touch there again, at how fast tumors grow, all in a hurry to die, and take you with them\u2026 The biggest one is pushing tennis ball size. It decided to rupture, so Sunday the 17th begins at 3AM with blood on the floor, blood in her hair, blood everywhere. Two hours and some change east Baton Rouge policemen are unaware of me and Kramer, and unaware of a 29 year old black male from Missouri who will be shooting at them any given hour from now.<\/p>\n
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _<\/p>\n
The Name Means \u201cRed Stick\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n I was all set to pre-mourn Kramer going to the vet on Monday morning, but it was still Sunday morning, and the world had other plans for my mourning. Baton Rouge. Louisiana. America. I have to type those words to remind me of where I am, but also to remind myself of how it used to be\u2026 They\u2019re killing cops now. This is where we\u2019re going? Like some kind of religion twisting jihad for black Americans? Born too late to march with Martin Luther King on the Edmund Pettus Bridge\u2026this is how you get a claim to The Struggle? You just go murder police? You don\u2019t want to be judged by the color of your skin but you have no problem murdering strangers for the color of their uniform? Martin Luther King would be ashamed of you.<\/p>\n _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _<\/p>\n This Cancer Thing <\/strong><\/p>\n Cancer got my great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my father, but curiously, I\u2019m learning more about it as it claims my dog. The tumors are right there near the surface. One sick cell becomes two, becomes four, becomes eight, becomes and becomes until it kills itself, by killing the host. My father was a preacher, and he used cancer in his sermons, as an analogy for sin. It didn\u2019t mean much when I was a kid. Maybe I\u2019m finally old enough for dot connection. Violence is a form of social cancer, never more naked malignant than when it\u2019s done dirty, public, ambush style, where the killer and killee are strangers. It\u2019s always been a violent world, but for most of us, for most of our lives, the violence was always Way Over There. We were Americans, and had some sense. We all know how America used to be. TV Sheriff Andy Taylor never carried a gun\u2026and in my actual real high school life, our school parking lot was filled with student and teacher vehicles, rifles and shotguns in unlocked vehicles and never a Columbine. We\u2019re going another direction, aren\u2019t we\u2026<\/p>\n _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _<\/p>\n It\u2019s 15 Minutes of Fame Done With Infamy <\/strong><\/p>\n I felt a thick sadness today. For those of us who grew up with a tangible fear of a nuclear war, this time in history should be one of great relief. If you\u2019re gonna have one super power, who better than the United States? But look at us, we\u2019re Americans afraid of Americans. And with good reason. We grew up with The Three Stooges poking each other in the eyes and Daffy Duck getting his bill blown backwards; they don\u2019t \u201cexpose\u201d children to those forms of \u201cviolence\u201d anymore, and yet we\u2019re more violent than ever.. Our citizens are suicidal, but even worse \u2013 they want a body count to take with them to meet their Maker. It\u2019s a sick soul-ed way to get your 15 Minutes of Fame before you meet St. Peter\u2019s frown at the Pearly Gates and find that Hell is hot, eternity is long…and all your thinking was wrong, wrong, wrong\u2026<\/p>\n _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _<\/p>\n Meanwhile Life Goes On <\/strong><\/p>\n My Kramer dog deserves my attention tonight. She\u2019s lying on a rug near me, a Depends diaper wrapped around her torso. For all I know tomorrow is the tomorrow I dread. But at least I got today. That\u2019s more than the families of the Baton Rouge cops got. Lot of Chicken Little out there, folks yelling \u201cThe sky is falling!\u201d but I hold to something that I cannot prove, that there is one God, and He can be trusted. That sadness I felt this morning, that is a grain of sand in the ocean-full of what God must endure Every Single Day. Imagine His newsfeed\u2026rapes and molesting, tortures, murders, massacres, all over the globe, and He knows about each one, knows each person, and loves each soul, both do-wronger and victim. Being God is a God-only job. I guess that\u2019s why there\u2019s only one qualified to be the One. How we got here, where we are, where we\u2019re going, we\u2019re all just 3 Blind Mice in a big giant America inside a big giant planet, so it seems common sense to give praying a try, do a reach-out to the Creator of the Whole Shebang. I know it sounds all fluffy and puffy, but on a just-me level, I believe God cannot ignore or un-hear a prayer, and if you\u2019re gonna call the cavalry, He\u2019s about as cavalry as cavalry gets. And as for my behavior, I aspire to do no harm, to be a nice neighbor, an honorable citizen and God willing, a peacemaker.<\/p>\n _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ <\/em><\/p>\n This edition of Uncle P\u2019s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where we know it isn\u2019t the America we had planned, but neither does it have to be the America we\u2019re stuck with\u2026 \u2026and a Big Giant P.S\u2026 I\u2019ve never been one to parade when everyone is parading, or patriotic when everyone is being patriotic. I flinch when people no-thinkingly throw out \u201chero\u201d as a cover-all for anything wearing a uniform. When I feel something I want it to be clean and specific and sincere\u2026 …so hear me now, in complete sincerity \u2013 we Need police. You\u2019re either the blood in our civic veins or the air in our national lungs. No police, no America worth calling America. Don\u2019t give up on us. We need you. You matter.<\/em><\/p>\n _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ <\/em><\/p>\n Uncle P\u2019s Bedtime Stories can be found on the Eighty-one Facebook page. He can be reached at 81creativity@gmail.com. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My old dog Kramer is dying, been dying all of 2016, cancer, and failing heart. She has several tumors on her right side, just before the back leg. Nothing the vet can do, but as long as she shows no pain, keeps her appetite, I consider each day a form of grace. I reach down [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[59,894],"yoast_head":"\n