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Friday, November 13, 2020
Art Break: Grandpa and Grandma's house in Briceville Tennessee
by Rod Williams- These two pictures were painted by my mother Ouida Williams. She passed away in April of this year at the age of 89. She was always an artist impressing her children with spur of the moment compositions using a kids sets of water colors or crayons or just pencil. She did not take up painting until she was in her late forties or maybe later. She remained an amateur artist but her work was displayed at county fairs and street festivals such as the Knoxville Dogwood Arts Festival. She painted a baptistery once at a church in Florida and she did several commissioned painting of people's homes. All of her children and some of her grandchildren and other relatives have works of art by mom.
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| The Front Gate by Ouida Williams |
Briceville had once been a thriving coal mining community but by the time I knew the place, many of the people had moved away to the industrial cities of the north, especially Ohio, or they had scattered elsewhere. Many of the people remaining were retired or living in poverty. It was considerably different in several ways from the larger culture of East Tennessee. People used some archaic words and phrases, more people chewed tobacco, many raised hogs, and you saw many more people wearing bib overalls and they had a slightly different accent.
My dad travelled in his career as a gospel singer, so he was often gone on weekends and a trip to Briceville was an all day affair but it seems like about once a mouth or so we visited.
These pictures capture my memories. I can still see grandpa and grandma standing at the gate waving bye as we would leave. The pictures are not dated but I believe that must have both been painted sometime in the 60's or 70's.
My dad travelled in his career as a gospel singer, so he was often gone on weekends and a trip to Briceville was an all day affair but it seems like about once a mouth or so we visited.
These pictures capture my memories. I can still see grandpa and grandma standing at the gate waving bye as we would leave. The pictures are not dated but I believe that must have both been painted sometime in the 60's or 70's.
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| The Coal House by Ouida Williams |
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Wednesday, November 11, 2020
"F**k Off" Council member Ginny Welsch tells Council member Robert Swope in mass email posting.
by Rod Williams - Council member Ginny Welsch, the most radical member of the Metro Council, dropped the F-bomb on Councilman Robert Swope, a conservative member of the body. She was chastised for doing so by Vice Mayor Jim Shulman who said: 
Ginny Welsch
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| Robert Swope |
"At the beginning of our last Council meeting (less than 48 hours ago) I started the meeting by requesting that all members of the Council show professional courtesy and respect towards each other and to the people that we serve. With this country divided, we need to step up and help lead the way towards bringing people together. Some of the emails on this chain do not reflect that request. I believe you can disagree with others without using inappropriate language and without being disrespectful. I expect the members of the Metropolitan Council to carry out their duties in a professional and appropriate way."
Welch defending herself and refused to back down. She dropped another F-word commonly used by liberals to describe viewpoints with which they do no agree: "Fascism." She said those who don't see things the way she does do not deserve respect or civility.
For more on this story see, Metro Council member to Trump-backing colleague: ‘(Expletive) off’ by Nate Rau, published in Nashville Lookout.
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Scott Golden to seek re-election as GOP Chair. Mary Mancini will not seek reelection as Dem Chair.
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| Scott Golden |
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| Mary Mancini |
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TN Senate Republicans support Trump’s effort to contest election
I fully support this position. So far Senator Biden is not President-elect. The media cannot confer a status and does not decide the outcome of elections. Until all allegations of voter fraud have been investigated and legal challenges exhausted, the election outcome is still too close to call. What is the rush?
Massive use of mail-in ballots is an open invitation to fraud. I don't know if enough fraud occurred to change the outcome of an election or not and if it did occur, it may not be detectable or provable, yet we should not rush to call this election. This is the first election we have had that basically relied on the honor system. We should count every legitimate vote but not allow this election to be stolen, if we can prevent it.
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Monday, November 09, 2020
November 9th marked the end of an era. It should be world-wide day of celebration.
anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is a shame. November 9th should be a National holiday. Or better yet, it should be a worldwide holiday. It should rival a combination of New Years’ Eve and the 4th of July. There should be concerts, parades, dancing in the street, Champagne toast, ringing of church bells, and fire works.
On November 9, 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and the world changed forever. As the world watched, we did not know if Russia would send in troops to put down the rebellion or not. We did not know if East German guards would fire on their fellow citizens. In 1958 an uprising in Hungary was crushed. In 1968 the Czech rebellion was likewise suppressed.
As we watched in 1989 it was hard to believe that the East German rebellion would end differently, but there was reason to hope.
There was reason to believe that there were few true believers in Communism left behind the Iron curtain. Gorbachev, to save Communism, had launched Perestroika and Glasnost, which had not saved Communism but sealed its fate. The Soviets had been forced to realize that they could not outspend the west in the arms race. The Solidarity union movement had sprung up in Poland and not been crushed and Catholicism had a Polish pope who was encouraging the Catholics behind the Iron Curtain to keep the faith, and America had a president who said his goal was not to co-exist with Communism but to defeat it. The West was more confident and the East seemed exhausted.
With modern communications and contact between the captive peoples of the East and the free people of the West, Communist governments could no longer convince their people that Communism was a superior way to organize society. And, for the first time, attempts to spread Communism had failed. From the tiny island of Granada, to Nicaragua, to Afghanistan, attempts at expansion had met with failure.
When the demonstrators in East Germany began chipping away at the wall, the guards did not fire, the Soviets did not send in tanks and the walls came tumbling down.
It would still be a couple more years before the other Communist dominoes fell, but one by one they did, except for the two dysfunctional states of North Korea and Cuba. China did not fall, but morphed into a state that Marx or Mao would not recognize. It is only nominally communist. China became a mixed economy with an repressive authoritarian one-party government and it is now flexing its muscle and threatening its neighbors, but it is not spreading an ideology to change the world.
From the time of the establishment of the first Communist state in Russia in 1917, Communism had steadily grown taking root in country after county until by the time of the fall of the Berlin wall 34% of the worlds populations lived under Communist domination. And by peaceful means, Communism was gaining ground in much of the west with “Euro-communism” gaining acceptance and becoming parties in coalition governments.
For more than seventy years, freedom had been on the defensive and Communism had been ascending. During that time, approximately 100 million people were killed with a brutal efficiency. Approximately 65 million were killed in China under Mao Zedong, 25 million in Leninist and Stalinist Russia, 2 million in Cambodia, and millions more in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America. This was accomplished by mass murders, planned famines, working people to death in labor camps, and other ruthless methods. From the thousands of Cossacks slaughtered on the orders of Lenin to the victims of Mao’s “land reform” the totals mounted. In addition to the millions of deaths, many more millions spend part of their lives in prison in the Gulag of Russia and the reeducation camps of Vietnam and China. Those who never spend part of their life in real prisons, lived in societies with secret police, enforced conformity, thought control, fear, scarcity, and everyone spying on everyone else.
While the world looks with horror on the approximate 11 million victims of Hitler’s Europe, for some reason less attentions has been paid to the 100 million victims of Communist tyranny. While the Nazi era lasted for only 11 years, the Communist terror began in 1917 and continues to this day. The story would be complete if the last Communist regime fell, but the fall of the Berlin Wall is a landmark event. By the fall of the wall, it was clear that Communism was not the wave of the future and that freedom would survive in the world.
Not only would freedom survive in the world, but the world itself would survive. It is easy to forget what a dangerous place the world was on the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The world's nuclear stockpiles had grown to 70,000 warheads, with an average destructive power about 20 times that of the weapons that were dropped on Japan. One deranged colonel, one failure of a radar system, or one misreading of intentions could have led to events that destroyed the world. We were one blink away from destruction of life on earth.
If there is any event in the history of world worthy of celebrating, it should be the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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Senator Lamar Alexander: "After counting every valid vote and allowing courts to resolve disputes, ....
Senator Lamar Alexander: "After counting every valid vote and allowing courts to resolve disputes, it is important to respect and promptly accept the result. The orderly transfer or reaffirming of immense power after a presidential election is the most enduring symbol of our democracy." (link)
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