A Chiel’s Amang ye Takin Notes –

I guess Jack should just make this the Thursday guest post – he’s late again – – –

I make every effort not to comment on whatever stramash is exercising the lave on FaceBook at the minnit – but –

It seems to me there’s no defense for a mature man making eyes at a fourteen year old girl. The argument that some fourteen year olds look ‘older’ takes no account of emotional maturity or experience of life. It’s just plain wrong!

This subject came up recently on a long running BBC political discussion program called ‘Question Time’ and one of the audience asked of the panel – “why do I, a normal young man, not engage in these kind of activities, while celebrities and politicians do?”. One of the panel (a Conservative Party MP) responded rather too quickly and truthfully – “because you don’t yet have power”. He quickly tried to backtrack but that comment has gone viral!

I think this gets right to the heart of matters. This isn’t really about sex or the attractiveness of a young girl. It’s simply about the exercise of power – I do this because I can, and have enough power to get away with it.

Which brings us to another matter. How do they get away with it?

The powerful look after each other and always circle the wagons when any attempt is made to confront them. There’s a long catalogue of these kind of things having gone on for decades in the UK and, almost every time, any investigation is dragged out until the culprit has died and can no longer be cross-examined.

Finally – the way that Mr. Moore’s behavior has been excused by some so-called Christians is chilling in the extreme. It amounts to a recruiting call for lecherous older men to head to their nearest evangelical Church and start eyeing up whatever young lassies are ‘available’!

I recommend watching this – http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-brightbill-roy-moore-evangelical-culture-20171110-story.html

 

The Monday Book: REQUIEM BY FIRE, a novel by Wayne Caldwell

requiemSorry so many Mondays have slipped past. I have started many books that didn’t make me want to finish them, this past month. And then came REQUIEM, a story so enticing it makes me go to bed early just so I can read.

The book is set in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and focuses on what the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park did to the people it bumped.

I know these people – Jim the local boy who wants to return home and work, the successful man; his wife Nell who wants to follow in the footsteps of her overbearing mother and get the hell outta there to a place with electricity and running water; Silas the contrarian who will be carried off the mountain feet-first, one way or another; the lawyer who turns on his own people and gets over his regret. They sound like stereotypes, but these folk walk, eat, and most definitely talk like real North Carolinians.

The tension between the people who live on (and off of) the land, and the government officials, some clueless, some very clued up indeed, flows under the rest of the action. Actually, this book is less action than scene by scene contacts between people, dialogue sent against lightly descriptive background. I am a sucker for well-drawn characters having pithy, realistic conversations, and this book is that in spades. Not a fan of a lot of description myself, I nevertheless was hooked by the opening scene of the novel, depicting an act of benevolent arson.

The ending will not be given away in a spoiler because I haven’t finished it yet. This is a book to savor. I’m so glad to have found something that restores my faith in Appalachian fiction!