* * Congratulating Oak Hill Acadamy and coach Steve Smith!

The Warriors of Oak Hill Academy in Mouth of Wilson, Virginia, have just completed a perfect 44-0 season and achieved the #1 ranking IN THE NATION!  I met the coach, Steve Smith, and wrote about him and his school in my book Harmonic Highways.  Here is the interview:

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ONE OF THE TRULY LEGENDARY PEOPLE of Grayson County is Steve Smith, who for 25 years has been basketball coach at tiny Oak Hill Academy. During 13 of his years, his basketball team has been the #1 or #2 team in the nation!
The school has actually been in existence since 1878. It is a private boarding school, affiliated with the Southern Baptist Church.
For a man with such a sterling reputation and status, Steve was surprisingly unhurried and generous with his time. Sitting in his office surrounded by trophies, awards, and memorabilia, he said, “The school’s mission is to attract underachieving kids, often kids who are capable but who are not doing as well as they should be, academically. It costs about $26,000 per year which is similar to what a private college might cost. We have roughly 150 students. Of those, perhaps 100 are male and 50 are female. My basketball team has 10 to 12 players and our second team has another 10 to 12. We also have a junior varsity team. Bottom line is that 35 percent to 40 percent of the boys who attend school here play basketball. Then, we also have a girls’ team. So roughly half the school is affiliated with basketball.
“Robert Isner was president of the school from 1965 until 1986. When enrollment was beginning to wane in the early to mid-1970s, his son, Chuck, who coached the basketball team said to him, ‘I believe we can get additional exposure by specifically recruiting basketball players.’ At the time, they already had a team, but they were only playing against local competition, like Galax, Independence, Marion, etc. So the son hopped in his car and drove to New York, DC, and Philadelphia, and returned with four or five players for the fall semester. The kids he brought back could not afford to go to school here but they were given financial aid. Even today, the neediest kids on campus are the basketball players. Even kids on scholarship must pay $3000 to attend. For some of my kids, even that is a lot of money. I have lost kids that I wanted here because they couldn’t pay anything.
“Our teams have continued to improve over the years. When I took over in 1985, the team had been good for perhaps eight to ten years. Each year, we probably had three or four good players.
“Nowadays, we have eight to ten good players every year. Even the guys who come off the bench are good players. We have players who will not start for my team but will still get scholarships to Division I basketball programs. This year, every graduating senior signed with a Division I college program. One of our juniors has already committed.
“Obviously, we are no longer playing local competition. Occasionally, we will play one of the better schools in Roanoke, Richmond, or Northern Virginia. We are not in the Virginia High School League which is only for public schools. We use the same rules that they have established on semesters, grades, and age. The teams we play can be anywhere in the country. We often travel to California and every other year lately we have been going to Hawaii. We have a bus that will take us to the appropriate airport, likely Charlotte. It takes two hours to drive to Charlotte. The team we are playing against, or the event sponsor, will pay our travel expenses. We usually carry about 18 people on the road, including players, coaches, and managers. In addition to having all of our expenses covered, we usually get a game guarantee.
“We have been blessed with some astonishing players here. We have more than a dozen players who now are in the NBA. I have coached 26 McDonald’s All-Americans. Most high schools in the state of Virginia have never had one, and we average one per year. I don’t think most states in this country have had 25 McDonald’s All-Americans in the last 25 years. Sometimes I pinch myself; I am so lucky to have coached these kids.
“As you might expect, the makeup of our team is largely African-American. And over the years, we have also had several kids from Africa. But we also have kids from Europe. Many of our black kids are from metropolitan areas. As you can imagine, living here at Oak Hill is quite an adjustment for them.
“We have had such standout players as Jerry Stackhouse, Josh Smith, Rod Strickland and Sagana Diop, and then Carmelo Anthony, Rajon Rondo, and Steve Blake, Ty Lawson, Kevin Durant, Michael Beasley, Stephen Jackson, and Brandon Jennings. Ten of our former players were in the 2009-10 NBA playoffs.”
Steve’s cell phone buzzed. Not answering it, he said to me, “My phone rings constantly from players who want to come to school here. I never do any recruiting.
“I have the developmental responsibility for a number of kids who will become multimillionaires. I really enjoy being here and doing what I am doing.”
The cell phone buzzed again.
“That could be the parent of a player calling me. Sometimes a coach will call and tell me that for whatever reason, a kid he is working with needs to be in an environment more like Oak Hill Academy. ‘He needs to be away from bad influences.’ ‘He needs to get his grades in order.’ ‘He needs to play a schedule like you play.’ I have talked to two people already this morning and it is only 10:20 a.m.
“We are selective about the kids we take. I am looking for the kind of kid who will fit in here. Nobody fits in here the way they fit in at home because this is not like home for anybody. When a kid comes here, he gives up his social life. He gives up his cell phone. I have had two or three kids in my 25 years who have walked in that door and told me that they can’t do it. One kid had only been here for a week. I told him that he needed to give this place some time. He was from New York City. I said, ‘I know it is different here. If you stay here and you stick it out, come May you will be grateful and you will be thanking me.’ I remember vividly at graduation he came to me and he said, ‘Coach, do you remember that conversation we had after my first week here?’ ‘Yep.’ ‘Coach, you were right.’
“We have social events on campus. We have dances, sports, and other activities. But it is not like home. For most of these kids, for 24 hours a day and 7 days a week all they have is school and basketball. These kids can’t even go into town for a soda without a faculty member or some other adult escort. The nearest McDonald’s or movie theater is 20 miles away.
“Our student body is comprised of students from typically about 25 states and at least eight foreign countries. We have kids from Korea, Sweden, Nigeria, Canada, Latvia, Bahamas, Japan, China, Senegal, and Spain. The kids who come from foreign countries who do not play basketball are looking for a path to an American college or a better life. We have students at every level, academically. We have some terrifically bright students and then we have some that are challenged. The curriculum is set up to meet everybody’s needs. We have English as a second language classes for the foreign kids. I have 4.0 students on my basketball team, and I have students who are trying to qualify with a 2.5 core (GPA).
“All of my players live together in one dormitory. I have an assistant coach who lives in a dormitory with them. Leading up to our season, we work out or practice for two hours every day. We travel quite a bit for our games. We also have home games. Our opponents are typically from out of state. We play against some public schools but primarily private schools.
“Typically our opponent arrives early for the game. They will walk into the gymnasium and they will look around. We automatically have an advantage because they see all of the trophies, banners and jerseys.”
The cell phone buzzed again.
“We have many local fans, but we also have fans from a greater region, including Roanoke, Charlotte, Bristol, and Greensboro. When Jerry Stackhouse and Jeff McGinnis played, that gymnasium was standing room only with Carolina blue supporters.
“Our gymnasium is about 55 years old. It will only hold 350 to 400 people. We only have bleachers on one side of the court. Within reason – we don’t want our spectators to get hurt – we will put seats on the floor in the end zones and just pack the place. It is a terrific atmosphere.
“We are trying to raise money to build a new gym. Even when we do, we will probably not tear down the building because it has become a bit of a shrine around here. On Friday, a man who was just driving through this area saw our sign and recognized Oak Hill Academy. He drove up the hill and came inside simply to take pictures and to say he had been here.
“Unless someone is a basketball fan they have never heard of us. On the other hand, basketball fans know exactly who we are and where we are. We have people who drive in here all the time, particularly during the summer, just wanting to see the place and to buy a T-shirt or some other memorabilia from our store. When we are on the road, we will draw thousands of people into the larger city arenas.
“My style of coaching is decidedly up-tempo. Typically, our team will score in the 80s in a game. This is quite a bit for a high school team. I preach defense and rebounding because you cannot be up-tempo with your offense if you don’t get the ball. We typically play man-to-man defense. If we have the right personnel, we will do full-court pressing during most of the game. We will play eight to ten players in a normal rotation. If we play a team with a level of talent equivalent to what we have here, I probably cannot play quite as many players. Even my 10th guy is typically a pretty good player and was typically the best player on the team he left behind. Some of these kids give up quite a bit of playing time and local notoriety to play for us.
“This past year, we had a record of 29 (wins) and 4 (losses). The year before, we were 40 and 1. We were 34 and 4 the year before that. Since I have been here we have averaged 30 wins and 2 losses each year. We are used to winning. It is very difficult for any basketball team to win every game, especially considering the intense travel schedule we keep and level of competition we play.
“I can often tell even before the season when we will have a difficult game because of where it falls in the schedule. I know that with the type of players we get, we will have a winning season every year. We may go 29 and 4. We may go 31 and 1. I don’t feel pressure to achieve the latter. I recognize that both records are successful. It is hard to be the best team every year. The difference between being first and second in the nation is typically one game. It is more about the players than it is about me. I have been coaching for 30 years, and I think I am a good coach. But I don’t think I am the best coach in America every year.”
“What do your players tell you when they come back for a visit after five years playing at the next level?” I asked.
“They all talk about their teammates and which teams were better. We had an alumni game in 2007. The biggest argument all weekend was which was the best team ever. They kept trying to get me to say which was the best team. I was not going to swallow that bait! Whenever we lose a game, my phone rings constantly the next day with former players wondering what went wrong. They follow the school, and they keep up with how we are doing. The guys who are playing in the NBA know when they are playing against another Oak Hill player. They are all buddies. They all talk before the games. Some are closer than others. Some have played on NBA teams with each other. We had 77 players come back for the alumni game. We played it in Charlotte at the Bobcat arena. Anyone who played college basketball at the time was allowed to play as were the players who played overseas. The NBA players were not allowed to play so they did the coaching. It was fun. The players and the coaches all took this pretty seriously. These are highly competitive people and they wanted to win.
“I don’t think I ever coached a kid who would tell you that this was not a great experience. Because of our isolation and because this is a boarding school, we have a close relationship with each other. I am probably closer to them than most coaches get to their players. I am also a disciplinarian and a father figure for many of them. There are around 20 people on our faculty. They are closer to the students than most high school teachers are to their students.
“The basketball program is obviously terrific here, but we are not just a basketball school. We have a good mix of academics, student life, and athletics. We are affiliated with the Southern Baptist church, but not everyone here is Baptist; not the faculty, not the staff, not the students. We have Muslims and Buddhists. Church on Sunday morning is mandatory. Everyone attends a community church nearby. The chaplain of the school is the pastor there. His job here is to teach a couple of bible classes. But they don’t force religious beliefs on anybody. The Muslim kid from Senegal must go to church, but there is no religious ideology forced on him. I think those kids are just as comfortable here as anybody else. Our church is probably a lot different than what most of our kids are used to.
“All the kids have rules they must follow. The kids who play basketball represent the school, and they are more visible than the other students. They travel around the country. The people there will make impressions about Oak Hill Academy and Mouth of Wilson, Virginia, by what they see in these students. A lot is expected of them. Many schools seem to have a double standard for athletes. It is the opposite here. We expect more out of our basketball players than we expect out of our other students, not less.
“We have a player here from Senegal named Baye Keita. He’s 6’ 11” tall. He has been here for two years. He is the senior class president and is one of the most popular kids on campus. He is a big-time player and he has a scholarship to Syracuse.
“We really feel we have a special situation here and we are looking for special players. Allen Iverson wanted to play here. I knew that he was not going to work out. I missed out on some guys I probably should have taken. On two occasions, Kevin Garnett sat in that chair right next to you expressing his interest to play for me. I never took him. I just didn’t think this was the right place for Kevin. He was larger than life even in high school. This was probably a mistake on my part. He is probably the best player in 25 years that I didn’t take.
“I think perhaps the best coaching job I ever did was with Rajon Rondo. When he started here he was not in the top 100 players in the nation. The first time I saw him play, I didn’t even think of him as a point guard. He is a very quiet kid. He was a teammate here with Josh Smith. Everybody more or less recognized that Josh was not going to go to college. Lots of (NBA) people were coming here to watch Josh play. By the end of the year, all of these coaches were telling me that Josh was not the best player on the team but instead it was Rajon. Rajon went from relative obscurity to making the McDonald’s All-American team in one season. He had over 400 assists here. He is only now becoming vocal as a star player for the Boston Celtics. They have three superstars in Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, and Paul Pierce, but many people consider Rajon to be the best player on the team. If Rajon does not have a good game, Boston is not going to win. In one game he played for me, he had 31 assists. They say records are made to be broken but I don’t think that one ever will be broken.
“When Josh Smith played for me, he had 199 dunks in a single season. This was almost six dunks per game. That was the most athletic team I ever had. They probably averaged 10 dunks per game. Some high school teams don’t have any dunks in a game and we average between 7 and 10. We have had some games where we had between 15 and 20 dunks per game.
“I once talked to Coach Greenberg at Virginia Tech and told him that I was considering turning down a McDonald’s All-American. Seth said, ‘I don’t know how you can do that. I have never coached one.’ He is a head coach at an ACC school that has had a winning record in the conference for the last several years and has never coached one. I have had college coaches tell me that my teams would have won enough games to reach the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament. I feel confident that if I were able to hang onto these kids until they were 20 or 21 years old we could probably play competitively against any college team in the country.
“Teams like the one Stackhouse played on and the one Rajon played on don’t come along every year, even at Oak Hill Academy.
“I would like to coach for another eight or ten years. I don’t think I have lost touch with high school players. I have coached high school kids my whole life. I play a lot of golf and I try to stay fit. These guys make me feel old, but they also keep me young. I don’t want to put a timeline on it. If I am feeling good and I want to continue, I hope I will be allowed to continue. I don’t know what else I would do. This is really all I have ever done.”

* * Not going to any more college basketball games

Here's an open letter I'm sending to Virginia Tech Athletic Director Jim Weaver.

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Dear Mr. Weaver,
 
I am a basketball fan and a Virginia Tech graduate. I have had season tickets to Hokie games for several years. I love the athleticism and intensity.
However, I plan to never buy another ticket. Here’s why.
Being from SWVA, I’m not much of a hockey fan. But in 2004, I was in Alberta, Canada, on a motorcycle tour. The home team Calgary Flames were playing game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals versus the Tampa Bay Lightning. If Calgary won, it was over. If Tampa Bay won, it would go to game seven back in Florida. Seemingly, everyone in the province was watching, either in person or on TV. The game was nearing the end and it was a one-point game. With three minutes left in the game – you won’t believe this – the game ended in three minutes. It was amazingly exciting.
The night before last, I watched Tech lose to UVA at Cassell Coliseum. It isn’t the loss that bothered me. Every game has one winner and one loser. The effort on both sides was tremendous and the play was intense. 
The problem is that monied interests have overwhelmed the game and the flow of excitement is constantly interrupted.
First of all, the game started at 9:00 p.m. and lasted past 11:00 p.m., on a school night. This was clearly done because the television folks had another game to televise first.
Second, there are multiple “media” time-outs, giving the TV and radio networks a chance to sell Dodge Ram 4 X 4s and Budweiser to home audiences.
Third, there are way too many team time outs. As you know, in televised games each team gets one 60-second and four 30-second timeouts and in non-televised games each team gets four 75-second and two 30-second timeouts per game. What the heck do the coaches need to talk about? Towards the end of close games, coaches literally call every play. These are college student athletes. Shouldn’t they be taught to make decisions for themselves? 
If this weren’t enough, whenever a player fouls out, his team gets another time out so the coaches can huddle together, scratch their heads, and make the apparently mind-wracking decision who to substitute.
It’s interminable! The last three minutes of close games take 20 minutes or longer.
While this is going on, we in the stands are treated to a constant barrage of flying female cheerleaders, mindless games (“Identify this face!” “Yes, it’s Mister Rogers!!!” “You win a T-shirt!!!!”), and blasting noise from the loudspeakers. 
I pay $35 per ticket – almost a dollar per minute of play – to watch my team play basketball… and I’m treated as an afterthought!

I understand this is not about Tech or the Cassell specifically, but about how the tail (big money) wags the dog (college sports) to the detriment of the sport and the fans. (Although the reported attendance to the game was 9,656 in a building which seats 9,847, which is absurd. There were thousands of unoccupied seats including most of the row I sit in.) I would be very surprised if attendance nationally wasn’t dropping year-by-year.
It’s time for the game to dominate the spectacle and the fan to be treated with more respect. I won’t be back until this happens.

Sincerely,

Michael Abraham
BS Mechanical Engineering, ‘76

* * My books go to a new level, or not

There’s an old saying that everybody has a novel in them. Certainly we all have a life story, and others have shared their life stories with us. And many of us have imagined other stories. But I know from personal experience that getting those stories onto paper is no mean feat.

When I began writing seriously three years ago, I quickly learned that ‘professional’ writing is a completely free-form activity; there are few rules and they are always changing. So I’m always in search of ways to learn how to do it better. Two recent events are illustrative of my status.

Last week, I was a featured speaker at a meeting of the Virginia Tech Faculty Women’s Reading Club to talk about my three books and the processes I’ve used in researching and writing them. I’ve had the opportunity to do many presentations, but this was unusual in that most in my audience of around 30 had already read my first book, The Spine of the Virginias. It’s about the formation of West Virginia from Virginia during the Civil War and of the people and culture on the contemporary border. Many in my audience were already familiar with my work.

I enjoy public speaking and I feel like I do a good job of conveying the enthusiasm I have for my topics. Afterwards, I was able to sell several of my other two books, and they gave me a nice gift.  It was a totally pleasurable way to spend an hour.

Then on Friday and Saturday, I attended the Fifth Annual Roanoke Regional Writers Conference at Hollins University. I’ve been to every one of them, and its always a great way to learn more about the craft, see old friends and meet new ones, and trade ideas. What I’ve come to increasingly conclude is that writing and writers come in all shapes and sizes. It is a completely free-form craft.

First, there are several major groupings: fiction, non-fiction, essays, blogs, plays, and more. Then there are subsets. For example, in fiction there are short stories and full length novels. There is young adult fiction, children’s fiction, science fiction, and fantasy. Non-fiction has a similar diversity of genres, from history, to travel, biography, science, inspirational, how-to, and more. There are conventional books (softcover and hardcover), e-books and audio books.

Second, this is the best of times and the worst of times to be a writer. Computers are ubiquitous and the Internet gives anybody that has one the ability to produce and widely disseminate the written word. The good news is that anybody can reach a wide audience. The bad news is that some people aren’t skilled at it and can produce lots of inferior work. The other bad news is that the folks who are good at it are often not compensated well for it.

In bygone days, the primary avenue for young writers to cut their teeth on writing, so to speak, was newspapers, where under the tutelage of peers and editors, an emerging writer could be schooled in the craft. Nowadays, many newspapers are hurting financially and opportunities are diminishing.

What this all boils down to is that it is exceedingly difficult to make much money, not to mention a decent or exceptional income, from writing.

My most recent book is Harmonic Highways, about traveling Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail, The Crooked Road. I interviewed a number of musicians. One told me that making real money in music was almost unheard of, especially in Bluegrass. “We play for the fun. If we can sell some CDs and make enough money to pay for our strings and some gas, we’re happy.” He said a few people made lots of money, but “they are really talented, have worked really hard, and have gotten really lucky.” I realized it is much the same with writers.

I’m closing in on the first draft of my fourth book, a novel set in the area around Galax and Fries. My first three books were published by Pocahontas Press, a 25-year old Blacksburg publisher that my wife and I purchased from the heirs of the founder, Mary Holliman, when she died a year and a half ago. I’ve been thinking that it would be grand to get an agent for the next book and shop it with the big publishing houses with national distribution. I heard something at the Convention that is causing me to re-evaluate.

One speaker is a reasonably accomplished writer with several books on the market. She works feverishly full-time on her books, yet admitted that she makes half the money she formerly made nursing. Plus, the publisher’s editors are intensely demanding, often insisting she almost completely re-write her manuscripts before they’ll print them.

Right now, I have great rapport with my readers. They often say nice things about the places my books take them and the things they learn. I’m selling in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands. But I have control of my books. I do most of my own graphic design. I have editors who work for almost nothing, simply for the pleasure of the work and the recognition I give them in the Acknowledgements. Because there are fewer middle-men, I can keep more of the selling cost. Fortunately, I have another source of income, so I’m not dependent upon sales of books to put food on the table.

More sales would be nice, especially for the implied legitimacy. But I’m beginning to conclude that perhaps my current situation is the best of most, if not all, worlds

* * Walking an icy trail

If I had advertised for a companion on this hike, it would have gone something like this: “Inveterate hiker looking for accompaniment on a cold, wet, icy, dismal trail. Expect no views, slippery walking conditions, dense fog. Eleven miles. Strenuous.” I wonder who would have responded.

And yet I did have a companion last weekend on a hike on the loop trail into Rock Castle Gorge at Rocky Knob on the Blue Ridge Parkway on the border of Floyd and Patrick Counties. Jonathan, a new friend who lives not far from me in Blacksburg came along.

We drove to Floyd, then Tuggles Gap, then down the other side, parking at the trailhead at the bottom. I’ve done this hike before and it is always easier to get the hard stuff out of the way first. One other car arrived shortly after we did and a lone woman hit the trail first. We never saw her (or anyone else) after that.

The weather, as I mentioned, was thick in fog and just above freezing. The trail enters a thick Appalachian temperate hardwood forest and begins climbing almost immediately. The climbing becomes increasingly steep and I was glad Jonathan had talked me into carrying trekking poles. A sheen of sleet covered the fallen leaves masking the trail. Just keeping my balance and moving forward required considerable effort, and I wore only a single long-sleeved shirt because of the exertion.

Jonathan is 25 years my junior. Like me, he majored in Mechanical Engineering. But I struggled mightily to earn my bachelors degree. He earned a doctorate. We were introduced by a classmate of mine who also earned a doctorate.

The climbing became quite intense, with some hand-over-hand scrambling over wet, slippery rocks. Eventually, the incline moderated, a brief respite in a dense forest, before the ascending continued. We broke into the open, wind-swept field that Parkway drivers see on their way up the mountain from Tuggles. Rather than the typical expansive views, we were enveloped by fog. Plus, rime ice grew from every twig of every tree or bush. These “rime-sicles” grew 1-1/2” long, thin, like the fin of a fish, away from the direction of the wind. Being in the wind and at high elevation, it was dramatically colder, and Jonathan and I donned all our weather gear.

We walked past the parking lot at “The Saddle” seeing no cars whatsoever. Then we ascended to the little stone and log hut that normally offers an outstanding view to the south. We saw nothing but white. We took a lunch break inside the hut, but there was a layer of rime ice on everything and it was wicked freezing cold. He tried to heat some water for tea over a small backpacker’s stove, but it never heated enough to steep the tea. After fifteen minutes or so, I insisted we leave as my hands were uncomfortably cold and I was beginning to shiver. Walking again, my body heat worked to my extremities and I was fine again. 

The trail stays near the top of the ridge for several miles before breaking sharply downhill. There is normally a good view of the FloydFest site, but we could still see no more than 50 feet in the fog. As we descended, we abruptly left the frozen zone, making it easy to see exactly where it was 32F.

I always learn a lot about my companions when hiking with them, because there is much time to chat. Jonathan is from Tennessee. While I was hiking and backpacking for as long as I can remember, Jonathan is a newcomer to the outdoor world. He was happy to be living in the New River Valley because of all the outdoor opportunities.

We talked about college and families and pastimes. In my advanced years, I had traveled to several places he expressed interest in going. What I had in experience he had in youthful enthusiasm. There would be more places to visit together.

The trail ends with a long walk beside Rock Castle Creek, gently downhill, where the Park Service has thoughtfully provided bridges where necessary.

We ended the trip with me still feeling good, with fewer of the aches and pains I expected. Driving home, we decided it was the type of hike only a hiker could enjoy. But we certainly did!

* * Talking politics on Facebook

One of the interesting aspects of social media is the opportunity it provides to re-connect with long-lost friends and acquaintances. Facebook has brought me back in touch with people I knew way back in college, when, as I joke, dinosaurs still roamed Tech’s Drillfield.

One of those individuals is a man who now lives in Pennsylvania. He has baited me into a detailed conversation about politics. It started innocently enough in November and it has gone on irregularly since then, limited mostly by the amount of time either of us is willing to devote on futile attempts to convert each other. I will say that in making these exchanges, I have had a chance to critically examine my own positions and find logical and hopefully compelling ways of justifying and proffering them.

He first wrote, “I guess I wanted you to be aware there's a bunch of Christians who are trying to figure out a way to get beyond the current stand-off in America and gridlock in Congress. It would be nice to find a way to cooperate, but I don't know what that would look like, given the contempt on both sides.”

No fault in that statement!

Then he asked me about the pending Senate bill to imprison US terrorist suspects without due process. It quickly became a point/counterpoint exchange, with him generally taking the conservative bent and me generally the liberal.

He asked, “What's underneath your political energy? My political energy is driven by an underlying ideology (Christian) and my family of origin (not so-much Republican, but strongly conservative).”

Too deep a question for me! I’m just motivated to ensure that everyone has equal access to health, welfare, happiness and prosperity. So I asked him what he thought was the greatest threat to that.

“Big Government.” And, “Some conservatives believe the only fix is for Obama to win a second term so that America will fall apart completely… the ‘falling apart’ being the only ‘truth’ that will convince enough Americans to turn things around from their current left-ward spiral.”

Whether our nation is in a left-ward spiral, a right-ward spiral, or no spiral at all, is, I suppose, in the eyes of the beholder. And how big should Government be? I think it should be big enough to provide the things the people ask of it, which these days is principally defense, social welfare (e.g. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and prescription drug programs), infrastructure, pensions, health care, education, foreign aid, and debt payment. I’m sure many of these programs were fought tooth-and-nail at the time they were instituted, as many of them are now. But the irony of signs seen at Tea Party rallies saying things like, “Keep your big government hands off my Social Security,” shouldn’t be lost on any of us.

He is definitely of the opinion that governments traditionally do more harm than free markets. He wrote, “However, free markets do evil. Free markets have limited ability to fix societal evils. I know this. I agree with you. However, historically and currently, more evils come from big governments than free markets.” He thinks our government has too much control over corporations and I think corporations have too much control over our government. He thinks if government had its way, we’d all be impoverished slaves. I think if corporations had their way, they’d eliminate all worker, consumer, and environmental protections and we’d live in a polluted wasteland.

We did find some agreement in that there is way too much waste, fraud, and abuse in government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. But this is not a political issue and neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have fashioned a lasting solution.

On and on it has gone. He deserves the final word in this most astute observation, “You and I are intelligent, high-functioning guys and yet we are at opposite poles on politics. We are well-read and moral people, yet we violently disagree.” That we can have these disagreements is surely one of the most positive things we can say about this great country that both of us love.