June 21

36 years ago I was working in Holland. Every day Keith and I commuted south  from Vorshoten near The Hague  through Roterdam to Moerjidk. It took one hour. He had an MGB with a right hand drive and I had an Alpha Romeo with left hand drive. Because of this It was funny that no matter who drove I was always sitting on the sunny side of the car.

We did this for several years and witnessed the changes of the seasons from very long summer days to short winter days. The sun set at 4 pm in Holland. We observed and commented on many equinoxes.

Our conversations covered every subject known to man from wines to cars,  philosophers to female attributes. He tried to explain cricket to me and I tried to explain American football.

For a time we actually took the train to a station near the plant. There was a bar at the station and we got to know the manager who lived  upstairs with his wife and sister. He had many  complaints but he let us keep a car in his garage so we cold drive to work and return it in the evening.

Years later he was working In Houston and we spent time together. He later went to Indonesia and eventually got married to a young girl and they had a baby.

He is back in England and I haven't seen him in a long time

Cigar

I went to the PO to mail my son a Father's Day present. There was a long line so I went to the automated postage machine. Instead of printing a stamp it chewed it up and spit out a handful of confetti.

I then got in line and was wedged between two huge redneck cowboys. The one in front was smoking a cigar. At one point the line moved a little and I was not prompt in filing the gap.

The guy behind me said "Are you in line? if not I am going to go around you" In a rude manner.

I said "yes I am in line I just didn't want to get too close to that cigar", which was true.

Unfortunately the guy with the cigar heard me and he stuck it in my face and said "You want some of this?"

I didn't know what to say being naturally shy in terms of fighting in public places.

I said "Is it a Cuban"?

He said "You are Goddamn right"!

The other one said "I wouldn't smoke no Mexican cigars anyhow."

The first one said "And those Japs had it coming to them (The tsunami)

My dad fought at Okinawa an two other islands and we ain't buying any Jap or German cars.

By this time our line go to the counter and he bought a 44 cent stamp.

The End

Father's Day Memory

Johnny Learns To Drive

Father’s Day 1998

There are many, many stories I could tell about Daddy. He died young enough for me to still call him that.  One cold and sunny day we were visiting my grandmother in the small country town near Bunkie where he grew up.  The afternoon was sort of slow and lazy so he said, “You need to learn how to drive, Let’s go!” I think we had something like a 38 Chevy Pick Up with a toothy grill that looked like a flesh-eating dinosaur.  We also had a squashed-faced, snorting gasping, asthmatic Boston terrier, Snotty, who for the life of me I had never figured out what his function in our family was.

We climbed into the truck with Snotty in the back.  I noticed the familiar faint aroma of Four Roses Bourbon, which always hovered around Daddy.  I thought it was some sort of cologne because I had smelled it all my life.  It blended nicely with the Three Flowers Brilliantene hair oil which he used faithfully in his coal black hair (which never turned gray; mine isn’t turning either).  We headed immediately to the levee where we started driving along the crest.

He said, “OK now get behind the wheel.” (I was 12).  This was a pick up truck with stick shift on the floor, (before automatic transmissions had even been conceived in Detroit).  He said “ I always believe when you teach someone something you should always start with the hardest possible situation then work on the easy ones later.  This develops your confidence and speeds things up.”

I was petrified. There were swamps on either side, the levee was quite steep and the crest was narrow. He said, ”Now just turn around. I want you to do the bank robber’s turn in case you ever need to escape from the police or something.”

I pressed on the clutch and he put it in reverse.  He said, “OK, now back up and turn the wheel, then go forwards turning the wheel in the opposite direction.”  This way you only have two changes in direction instead of three if you start by going forward first, which is a sissy or girly way to turn”

The car lurched and started down the levee backwards.  He reached over and slammed on the brake with his left foot.  He said, “OK, all you have to do is put it in first and manipulate the accelerator, brake and clutch with two feet and ease it back up onto the levee.”  Having never touched either of these petals before in my life, much less a stick shift I was having some difficulty.  After about 5 minutes of our 4 legs becoming hopelessly entangled he started yelling. "In! Out! Now! Stop! Start! What are you doing? Watch out! Suddenly the truck lurched again and took off, becoming almost airborne and landed on the opposite side of the levee with the front bumper in the water.  Snotty was hysterical, lying on his back with a huge erection, barking, gasping and wheezing like a mad dog.

He said, “OK that’s enough, you get the general idea.”  He put the parking brake on until he could get behind the wheel and manhandled the truck back onto the levee. Before we got to my grandmother’s we had a flat. We always had a flat when we went anywhere, but fortunately we kept a huge inventory of semi-inflated bald tires in the back of the truck.  Also fortuitously it was in front of a bar.  We went in and three hours later after many games of pool and stories with his cronies, (he seemed to have friends in every bar in the parish) we emerged and he said, “We better get home, Momma’s going to have a fit, but first I am going to show you how to fix a flat.”

The next day I want down to the drivers license department, which was Fatty Candella’s barbershop.  Fatty said, “Do you want a haircut or driver’s license”?  I said "driver’s license" and he said, “Can you drive?” I thought flying over a levee while crying, screaming, getting yelled at with the chorus of Snotty’s snorting probably qualified me and said "Yes, Daddy taught me yesterday on the levee in Plaucheville.”  He said, "I wish I could have seen that.”  Gentle laughter and eye rolling circulated throughout the room.   He said, "Go over to that drawer and get out an application.” He put the scissors down and signed a little card, which he handed me. He said, “Today you get a free haircut because you are a man now.”

I have been driving 50 years, have had a few fender benders and still remember all the lessons my Daddy taught me.

Growing up is hard

My grandaughter was supposed to visit kindergarden for a preview for next year. She wouldn't stay and went back to her old room. The next day her mother, father and grandpa went with her to offer her reassurance in the new room. She sat there for a while and we were going to leave her for the rest of the day. We asked  her if she was going to be OK and she said "yes for a minute but who is going to take me back to my real room?"

Who has the Best God? Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor Conroe Courier April 14 2011

On April 13 you printed one installment of an ongoing public debate between to Montgomery  county  citizens over who has the best God and Holy book. This debate is so silly it is beyond further comment.

If Abraham had taken 50 milligrams of Thorazine when he was hearing those voices in his head  there wouldn't be a single Jew, Muslim or Christian in the world.

Just  imagine how peaceful  this world would be.

John Haydel

12437 Longmire Cove

Conroe Texas 77304

936 756 6941

Lip

I bought a hamburger today. I noticed something on the lip of the girl behind the counter. I looked closely and it was a huge pus dripping scab and it had a piercing through it.  I asked her about it and she said she was getting some stronger antibiotics for it.  I asked her why didn't she remove the piercing and she looked at  me like I was crazy. She said it is for kissing her boy friend. He likes it.

American Humanist Conference

American Humanist Conference

April 7 - 11 , 2011

Cambridge Mass

John Haydel

I decided to go the American Humanist Conference this year because Richard Dawkins, Stephen Pinker, Greg Epstein, Steve Wozniak and Jeff Scharlet were going to be featured. There were 61 speakers in total.  It was fun meeting and talking to them in elevators and the coffee shop. The conference was held at the Hyatt midway between MIT and Harvard.

The weather was fantastic and my view of the Charles River and the sculling crews  was wonderful. The food was remarkable for the banquets, which was an unexpected treat.

I met some really remarkable people. The average IQ there was intimidating and stimulating. One woman has been  a major writer for Star Trek.

At one of the banquets Chuck Colson was quoted as having said like "We have to stop these Humanists from spreading realism."

Richard Dawkins'  foundation www.RichardDawkins.net, receives 1.5 million hits per month.  They are promoting something called "OUT"  They want to help closet atheists  come out thereby making atheism an acceptable word and non threatening to our culture. His talk "Christianity is a Metaphor." was about the use  and misuse of metaphors in religion and communication.

Steve Wozniak. "Woz"  received the Isaac Asimov Science Award. Noted for designing the first Apple computers, was awarded the National Medal of Technology by the president in 1985. His talk was funny, modest and inspirational.

Jeff Sharlet. The Keynote Speaker, wrote "C street" and "The Family", a classic in the genre of religious and social history.

Greg Epstein, a cultural Jew and an atheist is Chaplin of Harvard, who wrote "Good Without God." He did not deliver a speech but was ubiquitous at the conference.

Stephen Pinker. author of "The Blank Slate," spoke at one of the banquets. Time magazine honored him as one of the top 100 scientists and he was a previous Humanist of the year. He is married to Rebecca Goldstein, 2011 Humanist of the year.

Rebecca Goldstein. 2011 Humanist of the Year, wrote "Thirty-Six Arguments for the Existence of God. A work of Fiction" and "Betraying Spinoza."

Andrew Copson. is Chief Executive of British Humanist Association. He delivered a captivating speech comparing religion in UK and US.  The UK has a state religion that is pretty benign, except they have Anglican bishops in Parliament, and government funding of religious schools. The UK is way ahead of us in social issues, like legal suicide abortion, drugs, divorce, etc.. There are 190 humanists in Parliament. By contrast we have one admitted atheist in Congress, Pete Stark.

Cecil Bothwell. was a name I  had not heard before but he had a compelling story. He had been a successful investigative reporter in Ashville North Carolina, when he uncovered several government scandals. He felt compelled to run for city council as an atheist in a state he calls the diamond in the buckle of the bible belt. In N. C. it was against the law to hold office if you didn't believe in God. He won anyway.

He wrote the definitive biography of Billy Graham in which he described how Graham was a warmonger who influenced many presidents to involve us in wars in order to Christianize the world. At one book signing an elderly Baptist woman approached him and said "You said Graham admired Hitler! Where did you get that? He said "in Graham's autobiography." She said "Well, who wrote that?"

Bothwell is now running for congress. it would be great if he gets elected

Abby Hafer. Gave a fascinating talk entitled "Unintelligent Design".  She is an anatomy professor. She pointed out numerous design flaws in the human body. i.e.

·       Male testicles placed vulnerably outside the body because sperm cant live internally at body temperature.

·       Capillaries and nerves in the human eye lie on top of the retina not beneath like many other creatures

·       Women's pelvises, the opening is too small for babies' heads resulting in many deaths of mothers and babies

·       Men's nipples ( !?)

·       tail bones

·       The appendix

·       many other examples

Hafer says these flaws prove that we evolved, but not perfectly. Creationists believe that God created us perfectly all at once. She uses there issues to challenge them.

At this session Dawkins reported that worldwide that over of 50% of pregnancies result in miscarriages -- not a good design.

Sean Faircloth. Executive director of the Secular Coalition of America. which lobbies in Washington on behalf of Humanists Atheists and Freethinkers.

Secular Students Alliance  was a well represented group with whom I spent some time. They applied a (temporary "A") tattoo to my bald spot.  They were enthusiastic and fun.  I will approach Lone Star college about starting a chapter there

The Humanist Institute. Three year part time Humanist training in NYC and Washington. I asked them if I was too old  and they said people my age had enrolled and graduated. This is where Ross Henry got his degree. Very tempting!

Jefferson Society. provides resources for growing and strengthening Humanist groups

To Do

·       Get Asimov group to sign up for Facebook for announcements and communication

·       Go to north star college and see about setting up Secular Student Alliance Chapter

·       Check out Sam Houston Secular Student Alliance Chapter  

·       Investigate Secular Coalition of America

·       Find out more about Humanist institute

·       Sites to check

o   www.secularstudents.org

o   The  friendly Atheist blog

o   www.RichardDawkins.net

o   www.Jefferson-society.com

o   google Cecil Bothwell atheist

Life is a great adventure or nothing at all - Helen Keller