Published by atthecampusshop
profile: definition ....
meaning: 1. a short description of someone's life, work, character, and information about the person's interests and beliefs.
meaning: 2. an outline of that same person's face as it is seen when someone is looking at them from the side. If you see someone in profile, you only see them from one side.
From these two definitions I can only conclude one thing: profiles as such and offered by job seekers, politicians, and aspiring writers, risk falling into very obvious categorical traps ..... they will be hopelessly self-edifying and boldly "two faced"!
To avoid these pitfalls I intend to state an illusion and immediately counter it with the fact. If the latter is too candid or disturbing, just disregard it! This will allow me to come off (in your estimation) as the fine upstanding, clean cut, like-minded, and adventurous elderly gentleman you were hoping for.
Illusion: I'm an accomplished "sailor" and have spent over 50 years routinely putting out to sea, first under canvas and in my latter years with only the diesel iron wind at my back.
Fact: In all of my voyages I've never spent more than eight or nine full nights underway and that was only because, over open water, Walker's Cay was too far from Palm City or Havana from Key West. In reality, as the sun begins to set I'm usually tucked into some snug little cove, the hook set, and an icy drink in my hand. I'm not an accomplished sailor, I'm a fantastic "anchorer"!
Illusion: I'm a semi-talented "writer" that creates interesting characters in situations and settings that, sometimes, move a story along.
Fact: In most cases, I am the "character" and I've already lived the story. Then all I need to do is figure out how to just pretend I'm sitting in some sleazy dive in the Keys after a few beers and start to tell my story to ........ (only problem is: .......... is it “i” before “e” except at sea?)
Illusion: Because I am openly conservative and speak with a Southern drawl, I'm looked upon as a right-wing good-ole-boy that picnics under Confederate monuments, lives and breathes Fox News, drives a gun-racked Ford 150, and wears his "Make America Great Again" hat to bed every night.
Fact: I'm very discouraged with what is going on in Washington in general and at the White House in particular. I supported its current occupant and, seeing what options are shaping up on the horizon, I may be forced to continue doing so but he(and we) could do so much better. Do I have to surrender my judgment and intellect to remain a Republican?
I won't dwell on the President's Smoot-Hawley like policies on trade and tariffs ... time and the markets will be the final arbiters and greed on my part forces me to hope for the best. Needless to say, I endorse his impact on the Judicial Branch of Government and I could care less what next week's "horndog rumor" and accompanying hush-money payoff have in store .... I'll leave that to his poor wife and "Morning Joe"! But I do have one pet peeve: we don't need a $5,000,000,000.00 wall to keep out Guatemalans and their Central American neighbors. They only constitute the latest installment in 4 centuries of migration to our shores and may be the hardest working bunch yet assembled. The hardships they are fleeing are not unlike the pogroms against Jews in the Middle East or the 19th century Irish potato famine. The seemingly demeaning statement of: "how would the roof ever get patched or the grass cut without them?" or a variation thereof has been directed at virtually every American's fore-bearers. Unless you stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock or the swampy landing at Jamestown, there was always somebody "better than you" waiting to curse your arrival ……… or put you in chains.
On the flip side of all of this, and without inserting its own Illusion, we don't need porn starlets and their attorneys being featured on Sunday morning talk shows answering pointed questions from wax haired "contributors" about our Presidents libido! What we do desperately need is a media culture that will demand the resurrection and employment of an old concept ...... news REPORTING! On my home cable TV hookup; Fox News is on channel 44 and MSNBC resides on 42. The Guide tells me that the channel between them ...43 ... is dedicated to financial news but that can't be true. The call letters may be CNBC but, judging from the disparity in the adjacent editorializing, it must be Star Wars! ..... the distance between the adjoining galaxies is so "far, far, away"?
Over the past few months I've become a reluctant, almost incarcerated, soccer fan. The game is played, not with a pitch .... but on one, lasts an hour and a half, and often ends with a score of nil-nil. I endure all this because my sole source of, even remotely, unbiased television news and happenings in the good old USA can be found only on the British Broadcasting Corp ..... go Cardiff City!
Jim Powell
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Jim Powell along with his family, friends, and classmates 
As a progressive, liberal, feminist bleeding heart Democrat, i have to say that I am–more or less–on your ‘side’. Definitely on the side that knows the war was wrong and that it’s good and right that the south lost. And mostly on the side of, “calm down and let’s talk about this.” I think we should cool off and let decision makers try to make rational choices about which symbols of racism we want erased and which ones we need to keep as a history lesson.and maybe as a reminder of less enlightened times. Museums come to mind. I’m pretty sure that most of those living and breathing southern boys who went off to fight for wealthy landowners’ right to own human beings as farm animals didn’t want to, so lynching a statue of a fallen soldier on a lamppost seems extreme to me. But here’s where it gets sticky for me: What about the statues of generals reared back on their horses with swords raised defending a way of like that was indefensible? Do we leave those statues in public parks where descendants of slaves have to walk by them every day? I can’t imagine being black, but if I could, wouldn’t I want them to come down? If, in my not-so-distant past a descendant of mine had been lynched for real, how would I feel about that statue of a confederate soldier? Would I be happy to find more worthy heroes–male and female–black and white–to take the places of the Confederate heroes? Probably. Taking a breath and looking at the whole picture, I believe that whatever happens, the ocean will keep rolling onto the shore long after we’re all gone, maybe even after the hatred and fear are gone, and the names that are arbitrarily assigned to counties (whose borders were also arbitrarily drawn up) won’t really matter all that much twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now, will it? Anyway, Mr. Powell, your words were profound, as always, and your apology–multiple apologies–have been heard, And are mirrored by me, a fan.
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Maybe you are not the target of BLM messaging. Maybe it’s the woman from Ft. Lauderdale who posted on a thread I follow that Southern slaves were happy to be here because African slave owners were so brutal, totally ignoring the money paid by White slave traders to capture those slaves. Maybe it’s the man who posted that an Army buddy from the south told him the Confederate Battle Flag represented ‘Southern hospitality”. Maybe it’s the miscreants who left a noose in the race garage of Bubba Wallace at Talldega. Maybe it’s the idea that Black men can still be murdered for the crime of sleeping in a drive-through while drunk or passing a counterfeit $20 bill that he may not have even known he had. Maybe it’s the idea that Black families still have to teach their children to behave differently than you taught yours, so as not to be shot by police for a busted tail light. So, yes, you can stop apologizing for the statues and for the Slave-owning ancestors, which I have a ton of. Instead, try to muster up the feeling inside you knowing your mother’s grandmother had her child sold away from her, that your own mother wasn’t allowed to vote until she could deconstruct passages in the Constitution, that you couldn’t own a house because banks refused to lend to Blacks, even if you had the job to supports the mortgage. If you can’t do that, then try for the feeling in 1958 that your textbooks in your rundown high school had been given to you only because PBHS students had worn them out and they were out of date. Not to mention that your teachers weren’t even required to have a college education. How about we erect a statue in a park near you of Hitler, to commemorate WWII. Just, to teach a little history, you know. It’s not about you, Jimmy. It’s not about you. And, just to be clear, it’s insulting and unworthy of you to presume to know how we Democrats feel, as Progressives, Moderates or Nothing. We are not a monolith of thought. We slide along a gradient, depending on the topic. We don’t take our beliefs or actions from one autocrat or one news source. Patty and I, for example, disagree a lot over topics, but we still remain great friends because we have the ability to not demonize each other with words that wound. FYI.
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