Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

When the music’s over…

Posted: September 26, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

Two longtime friends—who helped me in my celebrated but short career as a rock ‘n’ roll singer—died this past week, causing me to recall the fine times we had with the band.

Ken Mills, who died at 75 in Minneapolis, served as the manager and booker of my band, The Trippers. Steve Ettles, who died at 72 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was the first roadie for the band.

Based in Sioux Falls, the Trippers played gigs throughout the Midwest, first as a cover band for rhythm and blues and later as an emerging acid rock group in the 1960s. We weren’t good enough to make it beyond the Midwest, but we earned spots in the Rock Halls of Fame in South Dakota and Iowa. Our one hit reached No. 99 on the Billboard’s Top Tunes.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh2r3G7a1Tg&list=PL48ywZUEnrB7ZhkJPP5VfwPw3nHIze2Kb

I’d kept in touch with Ken and Steve over the past 50-odd years and seen them both a few years ago.

In the 1960s, Ken fell in love with rock ‘n’ roll. He began managing, booking, and promoting bands as a junior in high school. After promoting bands, Ken started working in radio as a disc jockey and worked at KISD, KLOH, KELO, KXRB, and KLYX in the Sioux Falls area, as well as developing and launching his own station, KSKY, in the Black Hills. Ken was inducted into the South Dakota Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009. As he got older, Ken developed a problem with his vision and became an advocate for those with severe eye disorders and blindness, using his voice to communicate with his audience.

Steve had a tougher life. His engaging smile earned him friends throughout his life. Unfortunately, his smile also got him entangled in a savings and loan association scandal. He spent a year in federal prison for doing what he thought was a favor for a friend. It turned out the friend was embezzling money unbeknownst to Steve. I told his story and those of others in a book I wrote a few years ago, Flyover Country. The book focuses on the 1969 high school graduating class from Lincoln High School in Sioux Falls.

As the introduction states: “Flyover Country focuses on a group of baby boomers who graduated from high school in 1969 in the Midwest before setting off into the world in a time of turbulence to fight in Vietnam, to protest against that war, to find jobs, to have families, and to live lives throughout the United States and overseas. Many of these people have made significant contributions to their communities as business owners, doctors, lawyers, ministers, politicians, and teachers. Many have suffered through tough times, losing their way due to alcohol or drugs or facing family crises from divorce to the death of a spouse or a child.”

Steve’s story was one of those lessons. Over time, he managed to regroup and rebrand, never losing that smile. See https://www.amazon.com/Flyover-Country-Boomers-Their-Stories/dp/0761853324

Already, two band members are gone: Mike Ward, a prominent news executive, and Terry Park, a psychiatrist. Only four of us remain.

Together, we played until the music was over. Long live rock ‘n’ roll!

ICYMI, here is my swan song at the Iowa Rock ‘n’ Roll Music Association Hall of Fame. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6xwsQzygtA&list=PL48ywZUEnrB7ZhkJPP5VfwPw3nHIze2Kb

Shock Revelation, Men Don’t Buy the Cow When the Milk is Free and other things my parents & grandparents knew

Posted: September 25, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized

The lack of shock I get when read this piece about “successful” women freezing their eggs because they can’t find the “right” mate is palatable:

why and how some people wind up partnered and others remain relentlessly single is an impossible question to answer with either data or anecdotes. Nevertheless, certain patterns emerge. Take Kayla, a professional with an Ivy League MBA, who had frozen her eggs at 38 while dating Matt, until she finally realized after a year and a half that he was “never going to commit.” Or Lily, a curator whose long-term partner Jack ran down her reproductive clock over nearly a decade, dangling the prospect of marriage and children but never following through, leading her to freeze her eggs at the late age of 43. Or Tiffany, a woman with engineering and MBA degrees living in Washington, D.C., who, after dating men from all educational backgrounds, still hadn’t found a partner and put two egg-freezing cycles on a zero-interest credit card.

When I read this I keep going back to an informal class reunion I attended with DaWife (who I went to high school & college with but we never dated during that time). We sat with three women who in school would have been considered “out of my league” and still looked good but all were alone and never seemed to find the “right” guy and where horrified when one of our successful classmates entered with a woman 20 years younger than us.

I’m wondering if they followed the rules that Glenn Reynolds talks about here:

I hear single women talking about the “three sixes” — at least six feet tall, a six figure income, and a six-inch penis. The Venn diagram where those characteristics overlap doesn’t offer much hope.

I must confess that I fail in all three of those data points yet DaWife said “yes” when I asked and it’s now been 35 years. But when you’re in your 20’s or late 30’s and full of yourself and the promises of modern feminism those data points are more important that the prospect of realizing that being unmarried and childless in your 40’s means no mate or children when you hit your 50’s and nobody cares if you live or die particularly if you have only one sibling because who wants a big family anyways. And thus in the original article they hit on the revelation that people knew for centuries before feminism came along:

Are these fewer educated men realizing that the numbers are in their favor, and with a limitless supply of women served up on dating apps, they don’t feel the need to commit? 

Let me give women in their 30’s a piece of advice. You want a good man who will marry you and be a father to your children so that in your 60’s or 70’s you aren’t alone in a nursing home without even your degree on the wall? Find a catholic church, start attending it and look for a man there. A man who is faithful to God, doesn’t believe in divorce (that’s why I specified “catholic” and works for a living. Those are the men you are going have a long happy life with.

Your feminist friends won’t respect you but friends like that are why you are alone today.

Celebrating Constitution Day by busting some Progressive myths about the Constitution

Posted: September 21, 2023 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

This past Sunday marked the 236th anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution.  Most unfortunately for everyone living in the United States, the Federal Government has not followed the original meaning of the Constitution for many decades.  This has caused tremendous harm to the freedom and prosperity of every American. 

Few Americans understand just how far the Federal Government has strayed from the original understanding of the Constitution because they have been inundated with a mountain of misinformation about that particular document.  This is quite dangerous because the American people are the ultimate final barrier that is supposed to ensure that the Federal Government lives under the restraints placed on it by the Constitution.  The only way to reestablish the restraints is to bust the progressives myths that have kept the American people ignorant of true meaning and purpose of the Constitution.

Myth number 1 – The Constitution is a living document who’s meaning changes with the political and cultural climate.

This myth is very much false.  These three quotes are proof of just how wrong that point of view really is.

The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered by me (as President) according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States at the time of its adoption – a meaning to be found in the explanations of those who advocated, not those who opposed it, and who opposed it merely lest the construction should be applied which they denounced as possible.” – Thomas Jefferson Letter to Messrs. Eddy, Russel, Thurber, Wheaton and Smith, March 27, 1801

On every question of construction let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, let us recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.    From Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 12 June 1823

I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful exercise of its powers. If the meaning of the text be sought in the changeable meaning of the words composing it, it is evident that the shape and attributes of the Government must partake of the changes to which the words and phrases of all living languages are constantly subject. What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense.     From James Madison to Henry Lee, 25 June 1824

Myth 2 and 3– The Federal Government was granted complete control over the States and The Supreme Court is the only and final absolute arbiter of all things constitutional.

Thomas Jefferson set the record straight on both of these myths when he wrote the Kentucky Resolutions in 1798

Resolved_, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

Myth 4—The Constitution granted the Federal Government unlimited powers to regulate all aspects of life inside the borders of the States.

As you can see from this quote from Federalist 45 by James Madison, that myth is false.

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negociation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

Small towns face a serious shortage of cops

Posted: September 19, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized

By Christopher Harper

Just a few miles west of my home in Muncy, Pennsylvania, the town of Montgomery had to shut down its police force.

The decision for the town of just under 2,000 people wasn’t because of anti-police riots; it happened because Montgomery couldn’t afford a full-time force anymore.

What happened in Montgomery is unfortunate but not uncommon to what’s unfolding in smaller municipalities nationwide.

“A lot of municipalities are going to face this as tax bases decline and costs increase exponentially,” Montgomery Mayor Rocky Sanguedolce said. “Nobody wanted to do this.”

America also faces a police officer shortage. From Minnesota to Maine, Ohio to Texas, small towns unable to fill jobs are eliminating their police departments and turning over crime fighting to their county sheriff, a neighboring town, or state police.

Officer resignations were up 47% last year compared to 2019 — the year before the pandemic and George Floyd’s killing — and retirements are up 19%. That’s all according to a survey of nearly 200 police agencies by the Police Executive Research Forum. Though the survey represents only agencies affiliated with the think tank, a fraction of the more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide, it’s one of the few efforts to examine police hiring and retention and compare it with the time before Floyd’s killing.

“Fewer people are applying to be police officers, and more officers are retiring or resigning at a tremendous rate,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. “There’s a shortage of police officers across the country.” Compounding the exodus of veteran officers, young people are increasingly unwilling to undergo the months of training to become a police officer, Wexler added.

More than 500 U.S. towns and cities with populations of 1,000 to 200,000 disbanded policing between 1972 and 2017, according to a study by Rice University economics professor Richard Boylan.

With the massive amounts of money spent at the state and national levels on fighting crime, it would seem essential that governments come up with some way to provide funds to communities that cannot afford a police department.

With a dependence on the Pennsylvania Highway Patrol in the case of Montgomery, it’s unlikely that the response time to any serious crime would be good.

Fortunately, my home in Muncy has amassed enough funds to keep its police force and raised money to build a new fire and emergency services facility. I wish other communities could say the same.

Older Entries
Newer Entries