YES!
Dave
Picture – Solon OH 1 October 2021 – R Minwell
Category: 2010 and Beyond
A Lack Of Respect
Oh the joy of Caller ID. I could feel the beginning of a knot forming in my stomach as I picked up the phone. It was University Hospital. The caller was advising me of the need to reschedule an appointment I had made a month ago. This first appointment had been made with the doctor’s office. This call was from the scheduling office. It isn’t the scheduling clerk’s fault that you need to rework your calendar or that you now need to wait another couple of weeks. The scheduling clerk is just a voice over the phone. You can make a new appointment or not, express your frustrations or remain silent, or you may choose to fight or just roll over. The scheduling clerk doesn’t care. She gets paid no matter what you do. You made the mistake of believing that either you or your time would be respected. They aren’t.
I have had two of these calls so far this month. One of the appointments was for a dietitian. The new appointment may/may not be virtual. The scheduling clerk said that it had to be virtual but the email confirmation shows it to be in office. There is no reason to worry about this today. University Hospital may be calling me any day now to reschedule this again. We have until October 8th.
The other rescheduled appointment is more serious, a second opinion. You contact a specialist, whether it is an oncologist, a cardiologist, or for example, a pulmonologist, at the behest of your medical team, your family, or both. You do not schedule an appointment with a nephrologist for three weeks from this Wednesday because you have nothing better to do. And once you schedule that appointment, You Wait. Rescheduling that appointment, bouncing it back another couple of weeks, ignores your health issues and concerns. It is as if no one cares. I am always surprised by this lack of respect. I wouldn’t operate my business this way, even if I could.
Yesterday’s appointment was with the eye doctor. OK, he is an O.D. with an office in the mall, but I have been going to him for years and he does a good job. I responded to his email reminder last month and scheduled my annual visit. I’ve received numerous reminders about this appointment including THREE this week. I was there on time. He wasn’t. Turns out he doesn’t work on Thursdays. With all of those emails you might have thought that he might have mentioned that I would be seeing his associate. I guess I didn’t need/deserve to know that. The associate performed the exam and after flipping lenses to ask whether Option 1 or Option 2 was clearer, changed my eyeglass prescription. I don’t know if I am going to get new glasses or wait until I can get another eye exam. Either way, I won’t be going back.
# # # # #
The client had a secret. She had not been vaccinated. She didn’t actually say that she had been, but she intentionally gave the impression that she had. And now she was sitting, less than three feet from me, without a mask. I am, of course, fully vaccinated. I plan to get my booster next month. The good news is that her indifference and lack of respect for others could make me sick, but probably won’t result in a hospital stay or worse. What’s funny is that though I am at risk from COVID due to my age and health history, she is actually at a much higher risk than me due to her multiple comorbidities. There is no reason to confront her. She’s done “research”. I’m OK having unvaccinated people in my office. We maintain a safe distance of about six feet and we stay masked. No big deal. It is the selfishness and lack of honesty that irks me. All future contact with her will be strictly by phone.
I used to believe that respect was a given. Now I realize that in certain areas we must demand it.
DAVE
Picture – I Respect The Webster Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary – David L Cunix
The High Cost Of Convenience
Time for a quick math question:
You are at the grocery store. The Vidalia onions are 99 cents a pound. The Cremini mushrooms are $2.99 per pound. How much is one pound of Vidalia onions and one pound of Cremini mushrooms?
The answer: It depends.
If you go through the self-checkout at the store I frequent, the total is $3.98. If you have their cashier ring up your groceries and don’t watch closely, there is a very good chance that you will spend $9.98! The cashier will accidently ring the onion at $1.99 per pound, the higher price for yellow onions. And the mushrooms? They will transform, right before your eyes, to Shitakes.
Going to the grocery store shouldn’t be this difficult. I would avoid this particular grocery store if it wasn’t so damn convenient. My attorney prefers that I don’t mention the store by name, but you know the chain. They have lots of locations in my area and their stores are large enough to carry almost all of the stuff I need. If I stop shopping with them I will need to go to two or three stores to buy our groceries. And yes, I still visit specialty stores like the Kosher meat market and Trader Joes as needed, but I find myself at the big store a couple of times per week. And that means that I have the opportunity to get aggravated or ripped off a couple of times every week. Some days it is only $1 or $2. Sometimes, if I’m not paying close attention, it can be a lot more.
Take today. I needed to grab some stuff to make tonight’s dinner. I noticed that I was being charged $3.99 per pound for bulk garlic. That would be OK if I was buying garlic. I wasn’t. The item in question was a bag of white mushrooms. I had stayed quiet up to that point. I had already noticed that she had overcharged me for a bag of onions and the orange pepper. This was too much. I pointed out the problem and the cashier started to argue with me. First she had to inspect the mushrooms. She didn’t understand how to read her screen and didn’t know which price referred to which item. She was surprised when the incorrect price came off. Then she asked me if these were special, Garlic Mushrooms. I can’t make this stuff up.
I have come to the point where I just have them keep anything that rings up incorrectly, like the bag of Goldfish last week. I may be ready to give up. Can that many cashiers be that poorly trained? Can that many items be incorrectly entered into their scanning system? At what point does this cross from incompetence to intentional?
The high cost of convenience isn’t just money. It can also be measured in aggravation. And it may just be too much.
David
Picture – A Couple Bucks Here, A Couple Bucks There – David L Cunix
Beware Of Darkness
The new normal may be new, but it certainly isn’t normal. We are over a year and a half into this pandemic. Friends have gotten sick. Friends have died. Sally and I are very lucky. We have worked throughout this stretch. Our lives have hardly been disrupted, yet we have been impacted.
Sally works in the mall. She has had a lot of interaction with customers and coworkers. I am used to having 90% of my business conducted in-person in my office. COVID has reduced that to about 40% last fall before returning, post vaccine, to closer to 75%. But our home has been altogether different. In the last eighteen months we have had three friends, two workmen, and one of the kids step foot in our condo. Six people. That’s it.
We had a friend over last month. It could not have been more awkward. It wasn’t our fault. It certainly wasn’t hers. It just seemed odd to have someone here.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked out the door and wondered what was missing once we allowed to keep our masks at home. I don’t want to wear a mask again, ever, but I find myself reaching for one before I enter a store. The moment it was posted that the fully vaccinated didn’t have to wear a mask, no one, not the vaccinated and certainly not the unvaccinated, bothered to cover their faces. It is hard to walk through the grocery store and not wonder who is vaccinated and who just doesn’t give a damn about his fellow human beings. And that is the start down a very negative path.
Beware of darkness. There is so much negativity. The news is painfully negative, regardless of your preferred station. One side is pushing the dangers of inflation as if no one remembers Jerry Ford mailing out Whip Inflation Now buttons or how the last five years may have gotten us to this point. The other side was so focused on the previous administration that they seem confused now that he is gone. They don’t want him back, really, January 6th was the last straw, but they seem at times lost. And COVID, specifically the Delta variant, looms over all of us. It can all be quite depressing. Don’t let it bring you down.
You can’t ignore COVID anymore than you can ignore the hurricane about to strike New England or the inevitable disaster that is Afghanistan. Pretending tragedies, natural or man-made, don’t exist doesn’t make them go away. The answer is to do what you can do to alleviate the impact of these problems and to not make things worse. Per COVID, wear a mask when asked and get fully vaccinated. And for all of the rest, we just have to stay in the present tense.
Dave
Picture – Find The Light – David L Cunix
It’s My Own Damn Fault
I have a special place in my heart for retail. I grew up in retail and my first real job was in my father’s jewelry store. Sally still works part-time in a jewelry store. I have friends who own furniture and jewelry stores. And when possible I try to go to a store to make my purchases. But it gets harder and harder each day.
The bathroom sinks need to be replaced. The handyman said that it wouldn’t be a big deal. All I needed to do was purchase the sinks and faucets. He suggested that I look online.
I started with the company that made the sinks, Briggs. They were the original sinks in my 35 year old condo. How bad could they be? It turns out that the company no longer makes sinks and I may have been lucky that they lasted as long as they did. Next stop, Amazon.
As expected, Amazon had lots of choices. I had measured the sinks in advance. 19 “ rounds. They are off—white which is called either beige or biscuit by the manufacturers. These are pretty standard. There were sinks priced under $50 and others at $125 and more. Why? What was the difference and did it matter? I read every review and the questions. Now I was really confused.
It was time to fall back on local retail. Having owned homes in the past, I have visited Home Depot and Lowes numerous times. My questions would get answered and I would leave with the tool or equipment needed to solve the problem. Even if my sinks and faucets were a little cheaper online, it would be worth the extra cost if I knew that I was getting the right stuff.
There is a Home Depot around the corner from my office. I found the aisle with the sinks. The displayed sinks, all in white, were high above and out of reach. They might as well have still been boxed. They seemed to have lots of boxes of Glazier Bay sinks, probably a house brand. There wasn’t any useful information on the boxes. I flagged down a guy and asked him if he worked this aisle. He assured me that he did.
I showed him the box for the Glazier Bay sink and asked him about it. He noted that I was correct, it was a 19” beige sink. I was underwhelmed. What was it made of? I asked him if it was vitreous china or enamel. He laughed at the idea that a sink was made of china. I walked him over to the Kohler sink box, 5 feet to his left, that noted that it was made of vitreous china. The Kohler, in white, was $20 more. I asked him what I was getting for the extra money. Since he had no idea, he shared with me that the Glazier Bay sinks were OK but were really used by the people who were flipping houses. He was trying to up-sell me based strictly on the price! Gosh he would have been shocked to learn that the same Kohlers would be almost two times more expensive in the biscuit finish. I told him I needed more information. He suggested that I go to a “better store” and named a specialty hardware store. I decided go to Lowes.
My helper at Lowes was a woman about twenty to thirty years younger than the guy at Home Depot. I knew I was in trouble from the moment that she thought the 19 inches on the box was the inside measurement of the bowl. I tried to correct her, but she was positive. She got a tape measure and found that their 19” sink, like mine at home, measured 19” on the outside. Seeing that all of their sinks were white, I asked about one in biscuit. She was dumbfounded by the thought that sinks came in other colors! She then insisted that I should go to their website and special order the sinks. Delivery could be in only a week or so. I laughed at the thought. She then went to their website and got totally lost. I gave up and showed the salesgirl, someone young enough to be my granddaughter, how to navigate their website and get pricing.
Retail can survive, but it will take better management. Neither of these sales people had a clue about their products. I wasted an hour and a half driving to these stores and wandering through the aisles. And it was my own damn fault.
DAVE
Picture – Yes, Biscuit – David L Cunix
Senior Questions
Every seventeen and eighteen year old has heard them. “Where are you going to college?” “What are you going to do when you grow up?” Their parents, their teachers, their friends’ parents, their parents’ friends, and even strangers ask them to stop whatever they are doing and to answer these questions.
The questions return four or five years later. “Are you planning to attend grad school?” “Do you have a job lined up?” “What are your plans?”
These senior questions end until you turn 65. Then they begin again. “So, when do you plan to retire?” This is the ultimate senior question.
I had heard these questions before, but they began in earnest after I turned 65 last year. “How long are you going to be doing this?” The questioner is usually (but not always) someone I have just saved money or had a difficult issue that I was able to solve. Now that I have justified my existence as an insurance agent, they don’t want to find someone new. In truth, my wellbeing is the often the least of their concerns.
My stock answer has always been that I need to be dead three years before I can retire. The question have become so frequent that I have started to number them. “Gosh John, you are the third person to ask me that today!”
The time may come that I retire. It may be voluntary. It may be involuntary. Either way, it is not today.
DAVE
www.againreally.com
Picture – An Empty Park At 5 PM – David L Cunix
Say The Secret Word
Old movies filled many a winter Saturday afternoon when I was a child in the mid-1960s. That was when I was introduced to the Marx Brothers. I didn’t know that Groucho Marx had been a movie star. Until then I had only seen him on his TV show, “You Bet Your Life”. The show would consist of Groucho talking with people selected from his audience. They would win $100 if they said the secret word. That’s all it took. If they happened to say the right word they won a prize. This is a link to some of his most amusing comments.
We recently celebrated July 4th, the commemoration of one of the most innovative and daring political documents of all time. The sheer audacity of the crafting of the Declaration of Independence is celebrated in the movie 1776. Sadly, if you talk as I do with the men and women who serve us in Washington and Columbus, it is hard to believe that such a thoughtful, high-minded document could ever again be created.
Instead of a thoughtful articulation of political positions, our elected representatives are searching for the secret words that will win the two prizes they crave, campaign donations and our votes. And yes, I put those in the apparent order of importance.
When is a politician most honest? Is it when he/she is interviewed on a Sunday morning TV show, speaking to the constituents at a town hall, or are their fundraising letters the clearest insight to their innermost thoughts? I don’t recall the last open forum town hall in our area. I wonder how many of us would recognize our Congressman, State Representative, or State Senator if they were picking out apples at the grocery store. So I will rely on the one thing I have in abundance, fundraising letters. I believe that their solicitation letters accurately reflect their true beliefs.
Below is a list of politicians and a selection of excerpts from their fundraising letters. The challenge is to match the politician to the quote. The letters are all from Republicans. I get as many unsolicited and unwanted solicitations from Republicans as senior citizens get from AARP. This is partially because I live in the gerrymandered 14th District and partly because they have the mistaken belief that insurance agents are all Republican gun enthusiasts.
Politicians:
- Congressman Dave Joyce (OH-14) – a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus
- Senator Rob Portman (OH) – his letters only stopped days before he announced his decision to not seek reelection
- Jane Timken – formerly Chair of the Ohio Republican Party now running to replace Rob Portman
- Steve Stivers – a far right Congressman from Central Ohio who recently resigned to serve as the CEO of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce
- Ronna McDaniel – National Chairwoman of the Republican National Party
Here are the quotes:
- In the closing days of the campaign, I’ll be attacked by multiple liberal groups from every angle. But we won’t give in. We have a conservative agenda to advance and with you by my side, we will win.
- But if the Democrats win the presidency and retake the U.S. Senate, America’s shining future will go up in smoke.
- Joe Biden, Kamal Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer make good on their promise to take the country we love to the farthest left extreme of the political spectrum.
- Just like President Trump warned us, our rivals are pandering to their radical base and endangering our nation by espousing open borders, full amnesty, extra benefits for illegal immigrants and an all-out effort to defund the police.
- The contrast between Republicans and Democrats today couldn’t be clearer. While Republicans are working to bring safety and security to our communities, defeat the coronavirus, rebuild our economy and resort our way of life, Democrats appease and accept violent riots, call for the police to be defunded, embrace socialism, and erase our nation’s history.
- Mr. Cunix, as a registered participant in our 2021 Canvass project, you are on the frontlines of our efforts to shape Republican priorities as we work to better target our message and devise a winning Republican strategy in Mayfield Hts. Today, I am counting on your involvement to ensure that Joe Biden and the Democrats do not turn our nation into a socialist welfare state.
- Our campaign message is sharp, clear and compelling. We will build on President Trump’s accomplishments and stop the Biden Socialist Democrats dead in their tracks. Our rivals believe in the beauty of the Washington Swamp and the brilliance of Big Government. Some of them hate America and all of them hate Donald Trump!
- Democrat’s liberal instinct is to grow government, increase spending, raise taxes, bust the budget, drive national debt deeper, socialize medicine, open the border, enact a radical environmental agenda and obliterate our Second Amendment rights.
- Which candidate or solicitation specifically asked for a donation of $150 or $200?
Did you spot the secret words? I find these letters depressing. And yes, I’m sure that some/most of the elected Democrats are just as complimentary of their fellow lawmakers. The questions remains – do they really believe this stuff or is it just what they need to say to raise money for their campaigns. These letters motivated me to post this blog. No checks were written, at least not to them.
Dave
Picture – Tell Me What You Really Think – David L Cunix
Answers:
- Dave Joyce – October 2020
- Rob Portman – October 2020
- Steve Stivers – February 2021
- Jane Timken – February 2021
- Dave Joyce – October 2020
- Ronna McDaniel – March 2021
- Jane Timken – February 2021
- Dave Joyce – February 2021
- All of them. It seems that $150 and $200 are the perfect requests to Republican donors.
The Next Step
I spent time this week with two of my favorite clients, and yes, I do have a few favorite clients.
Perry (name changed) has been a client for over twenty years. He owns and operates a small business. He is a true professional, dedicated to serving his customers, and a tough but generous boss. I have referred many of my clients to him over the years. He and his staff always get excellent reviews. We spent over two hours on Monday talking about politics and the current state of our country. We don’t agree on some issues, but we listen and learn from each other. We only talk about his insurance needs After a long talk and time for him to take a couple of cigarette breaks.
My friend Perry is turning 65. He could stay at the helm of his business for another decade or more. But should he? We discussed his succession plan and even had a quick visit with the employee who may buy the business. Most advisors focus on money when confronted by this issue. I don’t. My first questions are “Do you want to leave and what will you do once you aren’t going to your office each day?” Since this wasn’t the first time we’ve talked about this, he was somewhat prepared. We also discussed whether he would make a clean break or “pull back”. Six months ago he was leaning towards slowing down and gradually phasing out of the business. On Monday he was clear that slowing down wasn’t realistic. As long as he was part of the business he would be the boss and he would insert himself into every aspect of the business he created. That was huge. The next step is to get an independent evaluation of the business to determine the price. He turns 65 soon. My guess is that he will hand in his keys on December 31, 2022. There is a lot to do till then.
* * * * *
Bob and Janet (yes, names changed) have been clients since 2010. Janet has had a number of health issues. Bob had his fair share of aches and pains but was always the healthy one. My staff has always loved Bob. He had been in the military as a young man, worked hard his entire life, and had lots of stories. We all looked forward to their visits.
Janet’s issues impact her mobility. She currently walks with the aid of two canes. She wasn’t moving well this week, but I’ve seen her on worse days. No, the surprise was Bob. He looked me in the eye and introduced himself. Bob didn’t know me. I knew that he was suffering from early stages of dementia when I saw them in November. Now, now he didn’t remember me. I snuck a peak at Janet and asked her how she was doing. She just said that she is taking this all one day at a time.
Bob is totally unaware that he is taking the next step in his life. There will be decisions to be made, but not by him. It is all a sobering reminder of how lucky Perry and I, and possibly you, really are.
Dave
Picture – A Day At The Beach – David L Cunix
A Positive Commandment
I try to spend each Saturday morning in Shabbos services at my synagogue. You may or may not have ever attended a Jewish prayer service, let alone a Saturday morning. One thing you won’t find is anything that looks like, “G-d, please give me ____”. The Jewish prayer book focuses on our relationship with G-d, our place in this world, and most importantly, our responsibilities to our G-d, our fellow man, and to the world in general.
We are all familiar with the Ten Commandments. The first five deal with our relationship with G-d. The second specifically deal with our relationships with our fellow man. But there are actually 613 Mitzvot, the dos and don’ts of Judaism. The daily Jewish prayer service touches on many of them. Though most of the prayer service at my synagogue, Chabad of Solon, is principally in Hebrew, our prayer book includes English translation.
I was reading part of the opening daily Blessings yesterday. This is a section that one is supposed to read at the start of each day. I was struck by this paragraph:
“These are the precepts for which no fixed measure is prescribed: leaving the crops at the edge of the field for the poor, the gift of the first fruits, the pilgrimage offerings when appearing before the L-rd, on the three festivals, deeds of kindness, and the study of Torah.”
In other parts of the service, whether daily or on the Sabbath, there are numerous mentions of our responsibility to provide “food for the wayfarers and charity for the needy”. How we treat our fellow human beings is an integral part of the practice of Judaism. Can we / I do better? Of course, but our failings are no excuse to not attempting to do better.
Today is the Yahrzeit of Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson. It is our custom to do a Mitzvah in honor/memory for someone who is no longer with us. It is an even greater Mitzvah if one can motivate others to participate. I will be donating to our local Kosher Food Bank in his memory. I invite you to find a food bank in your area, it doesn’t need to be Kosher, to help feed those in need.
Together we will perform the positive law of providing food. And we will make the world a better place for everyone.
Dave
Picture – A Good Read – David L Cunix
What Is Important To You? Part 2
1290, 1394, 1492, 1496, and 1619. These are not random numbers. We’ll get back to them in a few minutes.
It is hard to say which was worse, the last act of vengeance of an alcoholic doctor selling his house in a previously restricted neighborhood to a Jewish family or the unscrupulous real estate agent who knowingly guided my trusting father to a house on the “wrong side” of town. We had no idea. The house was beautiful and sat on four city lots a few blocks from the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It had a circular drive! We had been living in a tract house in a Columbus suburb. My father took a job as the manager of a large, downtown jewelry store and moved us to Canton. Technically, we moved to Plain Township, literally a couple of blocks outside of the city.
In September of 1967 I became the first Jewish boy to attend Avondale Elementary. Our previous school, Pinecrest, was so close that we walked home for lunch each day except when the weather was particularly bad. Sometimes your teacher even came with you. Our new adventure began with most of the students transported to school by bus. Lunch was at school and prior to our first day we received a menu for the first month. I begged my parents for the opportunity to buy lunch. One of the first lunches included a bologna sandwich. We didn’t keep Kosher outside out of the house, so that seemed like a good place to start. I was dumbfounded by my first school lunch. Two pieces of white bread, with butter, and a thin piece of meat(?) that could have been anything, anything but baloney. I asked for rye. Nope. I asked for mustard. Nope. I realized that I now lived in a very different place. I ate the buttered bread and brought my lunch from home most days after that.
My biggest shock came in a Social Studies class a few months later. Somehow the text book and curriculum touched on other peoples of the world. And here we made a cameo appearance. The Jewish people were mentioned in passing as nomads, wandering indiscriminately from country to country. I raised my hand. I noted that forty years in the desert hardly qualified us as nomads. Now it was the teacher’s turn to be shocked. I don’t know if I was the first Jew she had ever met but I was certainly the first to question her lesson plan. She pointed out that Jews had migrated from a number of countries. Well, yes, I told her, that was true because we had been kicked out of England (1290), France (1394), Spain (1492), and Portugal (1496). I think I even knew the years of our expulsion from England and Spain. Now she was really off balance. In an effort to get back on track she decided to tell the class a little bit about Jewish culture. Falling back on to her notes she cited an example of Jewish food, the Reuben Sandwich. I had never heard of a Reuben Sandwich and with nothing to lose, I asked her to describe it. When she detailed a corned beef sandwich with Thousand Island Dressing and Swiss Cheese, I stopped her and explained how a food mixing milk with meat could not be considered a “Jewish” food.
It has been over 50 years and I am still surprised by both the teacher’s ignorance and my bravery. Let me put this into perspective for my Irish Catholic friends. Could you imagine a public school teacher talking about the hearty corned beef and cabbage dinners Catholics eat every Friday night in the spring? How about great Hindu brisket recipes? You get the idea.
I don’t expect non-Jews to be experts on either my religion or culture, but dismissing either as irrelevant, or worse, ignorantly teaching and spreading disinformation is offensive. I was lucky. I was sent to a separate Hebrew School three times a week to teach me the Hebrew language, religious practice, and culture. I knew who I was and how I got there. I knew why my grandparents had fled the pogroms of their Eastern European villages to find freedom in the United States.I recently engaged in a little thought experiment. I asked Sally to tell me the first thing she thought of when I said “Egypt”. She said pyramids. Jeff said Cairo. My daughter also said pyramids. I then asked Jennifer what she thought my answer was. Without hesitation she said “Passover”. Of course she was right. Specifically, the first thing I think of is the beginning of the Answer at the Passover Seder, “We were slaves of Pharaoh in the land of Egypt”. It has been over 3000 years and we are still talking about our enslavement. We are told to remember and to understand that had our ancestors not been freed we might still be there. Our freedom, and the fact that we had to take action to be free, is important to me.
And that brings me to another number, 1619, a time when human beings began to be sold as slaves in Jamestown. Technically indentured servants, many of our Black neighbors view this as the start of slavery in the colonies. Others may point to Christopher Columbus, but his focus seems to have been in taking people away from the Western Hemisphere. Many of our neighbors and friends can trace their heritage to a plantation, a slave auction, a slave ship, or even to Western Africa. What they know is that their ancestors didn’t come here by choice. And when they think of American history, many of them see their history as a central part of how the United Sates was formed, the laws that guide us, and the officers that enforce them. It isn’t necessary for you to agree. We haven’t been taught enough about the lives and struggles of the African-American community to have an educated opinion. Need proof? There are documentaries airing this week about the 100 year anniversary of the massacre of Black Wall Street. We weren’t taught about any of this in school. That wasn’t an accident.
A great effort has been made to sanitize the Civil War (white-washing it seems redundant). Why would anyone take offense at the flying of the Confederate Army battle flag? Alexander Hamilton Stephens, the Vice-president of the Confederacy, clearly stated the purpose of the breakaway country in this excerpt from “The Cornerstone Speech” he delivered in Savannah, Georgia on March 21, 1861, weeks before the start of the Civil War.
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.
This could not have been clearer to Mr. Stephens. There was no reference to this in our textbooks.
It is surprising how my school had time to tell me about Thousand Island Dressing but never had a chance to teach me about the pain and suffering of others. We needed a more comprehensive examination of our country’s history. That’s what is important to me.
DAVE
Picture – Important – David L Cunix