Letter Number One to Those Who Do Not Stand for The U.S Pledge

    From a concerned parent, spouse, patriot, sports fan, friend, and oath-taking servant of the country.    

    I am glad that I get to freely write this letter to you; I am really glad that your educators can share it with you. We are blessed and fortunate that you have the chance to listen to, think about, reflect, and perhaps act on what this message is about. It is about the freedoms belonging to you, to me, and to everyone you know. Freedom. It is the best thing ever created, but it takes some heavy costs to maintain.

    This summer I have heard from multiple trusted sources that many students at the high school where I have my loved ones do not stand to participate in the pledge of allegiance to our flag. That is too bad. I will explain why.

    I can think of three reasons why a student, teacher, or any employee at the high school would not stand for the pledge of allegiance.

    1. You physically cannot stand. You are wheel-chair bound, your legs are broken, you are experiencing severe vertigo or nausea, or a harsh illness. No one wants a person incapable of standing to stand. However, you can put your hand over your heart. Unless you have no hands or arms. But even then, you can stand in your heart and mind with the rest of us. God bless you if this is the case!

    2. You may have religious convictions that inform you to not salute or pay respect to any earthly or man-made flag. I understand strong moral and religious beliefs that may prevent you from participating with the majority of others in ceremonies and socials events. We respect that. We, the United States, sacrifice and toil to the point of life and death to protect your rights to abstain from that which is contrary to your conscience and beliefs. Long live the differences that we enjoy and celebrate!

    3. You may not be happy or approve of some policies of the United States. Perhaps you disagree with military actions that the government is conducting, or the way that law enforcement or other officials are behaving, or the ways taxes are levied and applied to the people. You may be upset with the U.S. and what it represents in the flag and the pledge. If that is the case, you know you have the freedom, the right, to protest by sitting.

    Other than those three reasons, you should not be sitting. I will explain why. Apathy and laziness are not good excuses at all. Ignorance might be the reason, but now you are becoming informed. This is growing up time. You need to be aware of what the flag represents-- the millions of people who make our country what it is. Those who came before you, those around you now and into the future. There are so many of us! You are a part of all. We need you to stand and commit. You need to know that the freedoms that we enjoy are not free. Many of us, including you and your families, are paying high costs for those freedoms all the time.

    Without exagerrating, there are at least two billion, maybe more, people all across the earth that would give anything to stand two or three times per day to utter the pledge to our flag and be where we are now. Those hundreds and hundreds of millions cannot, because they were not born here, and they would love to move here but they cannot. Many of them go to bed hungry, wake up hungry, with little or no water, little or no medicine or health care, little or no schools or work. So many people would give up everything to be here! And millions, including many of our own families and ancestors, have done just this.

    I lived in a country for a year where currently, 2026, women and girls are not allowed to attend school. Period. No formal education for half the population. The options for the men and boys are limited too. I know people who went to that country to help all the locals learn and prosper. Some spent many years of their lives trying to make a better life for those of less opportunity in the middle of Asia. Some of them, my friends and collegues, died trying. I was with Germans, Finnish, Norwegians, Dutch, Mongolians, Afghans, Italians, French, Spaniards, Danish, Estonians, Croations, Montenegrans, Bosnians, Canadians, and more international citizens who were dedicated to helping the local populace day and night to have some of the freedoms that we enjoy here. Two U.S. presidents in a row, of different political parties, decided we had to leave, so we left. 

    By the way, the flag and the country are bigger than one Commander-in-Chief, bigger than two, or three, or four presidents, or one hundred senators, or hundreds of congress people. We--all of us--are the flag. It is all of us, big and small, famous and unknown. We all count as part of what our great union is.

    I will keep this letter to something digestable; I will end it soon. But in case I have not explained enough of why you should stand for the pledge, dedicate yourself in humilty and dedication for those national ideals and symbols that we Americans or U.S citizens share, commiting to its high principles and aspiring hopes, then I will re-visit you in another letter.

    Thank you for your attention to this matter.

    Sincerely,

    Your neighbor and concerned parent, hopeful for a better present and future

    

    

 Mariners Seem to Be Done - Mid August 2026

    We have discussed the the five baseball never-wons. The Rockies were done with this season's quest a couple months ago. Now, the erstwhile mighty Seattle Mariners are done, too. Eight below .500. Done. Okay, only 5 games back of the Astros, who are a mere two above .500. And the Rangers in between. There are chances, if they get hot. Who knows? Cal Raleigh needs to hit like he can, as he did last year.

    Who else? The San Diego Padres seem good enough: tied with Philly, right by Arizona. The Cubs are ahead of them.

    The two greatest hopes to break the decades of World Series Fall Classic futility? The Milwaukee Brewers and the Tampa Bay Rays. Both playing excellent.

    If the Nats could rebound, then I had hopes for them. But they are not quite good enough. Losing series, sinking below the needed margins. The White Sox have chance... Wild card contenders hanging in there are the Cards and the Diamondbacks. Or even the Pirates...

    The order of who I would like to win the World Series this fall.

    1. Washington Nats (unrealistic since their recent swoons).

    2. Chicago White Sox. Vargas, Murakami et al have some talent. The pitching works a lot, too.

    3. San Diego Padres. Break the years of no championships!

    4. Tampa Bay Rays. Why not a new guy? Is there attendance still awful? What gives?

    5.  Milwaukee Brewers. Unfortunate name, product that they advertise. Feel for them and their fans.

    Say no to: Dodgers, Braves, Yankees, Red Sox. They all win too much.

    But to the eventual winners go the honor and the spoils.

    Baseball. It's a thing. Ask people from Venezuela.

For Decades I Thought Hitler's Germany Made the Most Irrational Decisions to Lead to their Defeat

    The two huge mistakes, as I though of them, were invading the Soviet Union (Russia), and killing their concentration camp workers rather than making them work more for the state.

    Based on some reading lately, like Peter Frankopan and the Silk Road, or even Yuval Harari with Nexus. The latter had less of this.

    The problem of Germany's Third Reich nationalist movement leading them to break the detente with Moscow and gassing the Jewish prisoners and the others?

    Food. Hunger.

    The Germans were hungry. They needed thrich wheat and sustenance of the Ukrainian and Russian steppes. When they failed to acquire enough food to survive, so the Germans under their Fuhrer did very extreme and irrational things.

    Invade a giant that had allowed to swallow up vast amounts of Europe and Africa, and then attempt to eliminate the forced labor that they had been inhumanely exploiting and subjugating.

    Food, glorious food. As the Oliver musical says, as my sisters used to sing back in the Elm Heights 1970s.

    Memories, glorious memories. And some of my friends' parents survived the Holocaust while others' survived the Germans or Japanese forces themseleves.

Geo-Politics Affect Us All the Time: Like Gravity, Biology, even Love

    We can pretend it away, act like it does not exist. Some people spend so much time on it that it obsesses them. Does that phrase make sense? Do things obsess us. We are obsessed by things, but do they obsess us. Is that a transitive verb. Not intransitve as I understand it.

    Anyway, the quasi or pseudo or even qualified social science of geo-politics is a real thing that can be harder to understand. Certain television channels ...

    Think that they are capturing the most important parts of it.

    Fox, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, Al-Jazeera, Bloomberg, PBS. ABC, CBS, Yahoo, Reuters...

Premise of Terror Film Like Jaws, Sort Of

 About AI robot computers that kill off or control/manipulate people and even plants or animals, or machines to rule the planet.

And then the universe.

AI will send robots to explore and exploit outer space .

Dystopian beyond Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong

Brigham Young and Indiana Football: Messages Being Sent

    I have been following these programs for decades. Go back through my blogs, (the Foxports ones wiped out, that were produced by me from 2006 to 2009, then deleted), or this one since 2014. I love them both, I pay attention and at times chronicle them. It has been rich, at times thrilling, satisfying, and frustrating and even heartbreaking. Alas, the loves of these teams and players.

    This past year, or two now, Curt Cignetti has brought a mythic or epic chapter to the Indiana football and national lore. Wow.

    Whether he defends the crown by reloading and re-conquering the college football world this coming season, the now legendary coach has immortalized himself within the pantheons of college football leaders and gurus. LaVell Edwards, included. More on him and them later, the Cougars of the Inter-Mountain west.

    Indiana! Our Indiana. The largest alumni base in the world and perhaps one of he longest suffering ones. Ah, so many hard years, difficult decades of losing and defeat. To Purdue, to Michigan, to Ohio State, to Penn State, to Iowa, to Illinois.  To Kentucky!

    Cignetti has done it. He is who he said he was. He is a winner. Google it. Purdue sucks! And so does Michigan. Fighting words. He backs it up.

    He has done it, and proved that a smaller, weaker, historically outside of the power brokers school can do the unseemingly and the erstwhile impossible: the whole enchilada, a perfect 16-0. Never been done before. Will it ever be done again? Maybe later this season. Maybe in another 100 years. Maybe never.

    Indiana, the little school gone big, has done it for an also ran. Wonderful. Love it. I grew up there.

    But, there are certain football schools where there are greater messages than sheer greatness in victories and accolades, the rugged strength and poetry ran on the grid iron. There are the messages and meanings behind the specialty schools, if you will. There are deeper waves than this, narratives that go beyond and above mere secular superioruty.

    Which are they? Notre Dame. A Roman Catholic school, representing Christianity and the priesthood, the authority or grace of God ensconced in the halls of its institution and the higher powers of grace and sublime, divine beauty. Embodied in a gold helmet and the magical luck of the Leprechauns. The Irish. Not named by accident or happenstance.

    Boston College. The lesser known private Catholic school, that largely respresents greater New England. The Hail Mary of Doug Flutie meant more. That is a Hail Mary, in its truest sense. Rosary beads and ave marias were answered in upsetting the mighty powerful and Satanic, worldly, crass, swaggering Miami Hurricanes. Praise the Good Lord and death to the blashphemous heathens.

    Texas Christian University. Evangelicals of Texas. Hummana hummana. (Maybe the first time I have spelled this?) They have had some good teams. I will always remember the huge Horned Frog enthusiast at a far off military base who swore like a sailor, especially in reference to his team. He was Army, but the curse words were robust and replete. Praise You Know Who, Dad gummit.

    All right, you see I am being farcical, right? Although, admittedly, within all humor and most jokes there is some or much truth. Yes. BYU calls these guys a rivalry, since the Mountain West days. Or even the expanded WAC?

    Southern Methodist University. Another Protestant school. Once upon a time a great program, and not too bad the last few years. The number one plurality religion in my home state of Indiana. We like the United Methodists better, but these Methodists have their causes. The Great Commission of Christ, and run that ball into the end zone.  Mustangs have some punch.

    Baylor University. Perhaps not as Baptist as they once were. But they provide some talent and punch. Come to think of it, maybe everything in Texas is tinged with Christianity. Even the Longhorns (hand signs may symbolize deeper meanings), Tech and Rice. But not Texas A & M. Then again, they have the Twelth Apostle and the military connection, which is totally about Onward Christian soldiers.

    Liberty University. The Flames. They are the new evangelicals on the block, southern and east coast style. Growing bigger. Next up: Grand Canyon out in Arizona. Nothing yet, but now with Kennesaw State and a dozen other schools making Division I in the last decade... 

    Before the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its sponsored football franchise (which is the main point of this post), I must pay deference and respect to these speciality colleges. Not just state, not just private, but our sacrosanct military academies.

    Army. The Knights. They play much more than football. They stand to for the flag and will lead us into defense of our great nation.

    Navy. The Midshipmen. I loved them more when they had Coach Ken Niamatolo as their head. Moves these guys most times in Annapolis. Except when they have hurt my Hoosiers.

    Air Force. The Cadets? Hmmmm... No, the Falcons. I have always rooted for them when I did not see them playing and at times upsetting my BYU Cougars.

    I have to say, all honor and tributes to our servicemen who play the sport. They have special duties and privileges, They cannot compete as they used to, back after World War II when winning national championships. The Army had a few decades of dominance. No more. But we love them and wish them the best.

    And lastly, my soldiers. The Cougars of Provo, Utah.

    We have my favorite of all: the Brigham Young University Cougars. They have special rules and regulations, and a special mission. To represent the Church, the school, and in the end, Jesus the Savior Himself. Sound pretentious? Well, that is the ultimate goal. Serve Him, work hard for God, and follow His rules. Some of those objectives and guidelines are anathema to today's modern secular and other nominal religious lives: no pre-marital sex. No drugs or drinking or even caffeinated coffee or tea. No cursing. No playing or working (when possible to avoid) on the Sabbath. Sundays are not for college football or BYU.

    We have the priesthood of God. We have the restored Gospel of Jesus, the Son of God. Lost for years and needed righting. We proclaim the Book of Mormon and additional holy write beyond the Bible, which is for our moder day. The last days. 

    As much as Brigham Young, the historic figure of the 1800s, can be reviled or frowned up, us members revere his name as a pioneer and an prophet of God in the last times. He helped prepare the way for our faith to be established and succeed. The Church he eventually led after the death of Joseph Smith in 1844 is still going strong in 2026, perhaps better than ever?

    We shall see the destiny of this faith and people. The religious folks with their temples, their missionaries, their sometimes ridiculed or so-called antiquated ideas and ideals.

    The BYU football team embodies and exemplifies these virtues and hopes.

    They try. We try.

    The last three years have been pretty good.

    Could this be their year?

    If they play Indiana in the College Football playoffs at the end of this season, 2026 or 2027?

    Sorry, my homestate resurged Hoosiers. I love you to death, but I want my private school Cougs to do it. No one picks BYU to go all the way.

    But who knows? Kilani Sitake and the God above, and foremost its players, may have something else in mind.

    Go Cougars! Go Hoosiers!

    Go Army, Navy, and Air Force!

    Long live the brave and the true.

    

    

 Smart People and My Town

    Where I grew up we had a lot of smart people, and a lot of talented folks, and many of the people in public schools were less than stellar, less than what would be many of our paradigms as to what we aspired to be. But I would say most of us would have examples near and far, close by and off in the distance throughout the world, that we would wish to emulate or be like.

    We had each other to bounce off of, and books and television, magazines and articles to glean from. Music, theatre. Our parents were sources of some culture, of course. Our religious communities and sports. We in Bloomington were free and had access to so much. Like much of the rest of the world, I would say especially in the Western dynamic of capitalism and limited democracy, republican federalism or whatever we call it.

    Freedom to learn, carouse, sing, dance, compete, work.

    Robert Bosch and Roy Wroth, (Roth?) were some smart guys, I knew only in smaller contexts, in neighborhoods farther than mine.

    My neighborhood fellows and friends were all pretty smart, too. Mant children of academics, some of whom would be academic literati in their own rights. Some of us joined the military, which worked for benefits and early job opportunities that later flourished into good or perhhaps great careers.

    Bloomington, and Indiana, and the United States has proven a place of accomplished dreams and hopes.

    Most of us went on to success. Were we good enough then or now?That can be debated. Some of died in the past years. That tragically defines some of our outcomes.

    Jason in doing well. That of the Elm Heights area, but after we had letf the elementary school. His name ends with a V. Thanks to one of my sisters, I have spoken with him off and on the last seven or so years.

    Pete and Jake have done well. Seth and Paul, I imagine so.

    What about me? I married well. I have good kids. I have some savings.

    I have written some things. Who knows?

    I will continue working, writing, living.

    And think of some smarties in my home town.

    I think James Marsh was one, a year of me. Died in 1998.

    My boss considered him a dear friend.