Bible Lesson

March 2, 2005

In the book of Genesis, Isaac has two sons, Esau and Jacob. Esau is his favorite, “a cunning hunter, a man of the field,” while Jacob is “a quiet man, dwelling in tents” who is the apple of his mom’s eye.
One day after a long hard hunting trip, Esau returns home, famished. He asks his brother Jacob to share a mash of lentils. Jacob says, “Sure bro’, but first sell me your birthright -- your inheritance.” And without giving it much thought, Esau sells his birthright for a bowl of lentils.
There’s further trickery in the story, where Jacob pretends to be his brother to secure his dying father’s blessing. He even covers his hands with a hairy old hide to fool his half-blind dad into thinking he’s the rough-and-tumble favorite son Esau. The upshot is that Esau ends up with diddlysquat, even though he’s the odds-on favorite to succeed.
You can see that same story unfolding here in America, and even in Northern Michigan. We are the Esau’s who’ve let our birthright slip away for a bowl of lentils to the global economy, with local manufacturing gone off everywhere from Tennessee to Mexico and China.
That fact is increasingly evident in the news as Governor Granholm tries to maintain the services we’ve come to take for granted, despite the fact that there’s not enough tax revenue in the State’s kitty to pay for them.
Gaylord’s school district for instance, is considering closing a promising new Montessori school it opened a year-and-a-half ago because of a $1.2 million budget deficit. And Traverse City parents were dismayed recently by news that Sabin Elementary School will be closing, again because there’s not enough money to foot the bill. Lake and Manistee counties are in an uproar over a suggestion that the State could close the Youth Correctional Facility in Baldwin (a “boot camp” prison for teen offenders which has apparently been a failed social experiment) and Camp Sauble in Freesoil. Then there was last week’s controversy on cutting back on MEAP scholarships for kids looking forward to college; the governor has apparently switched gears on this idea in the face of a public uproar.
Meanwhile, a resident of Benzie County tells us that half the homes in Frankfort and Beulah are vacant because residents have fled the area for lack of jobs. That surely is a bit of hyperbole, but let’s face it, about the only economic sunshine dawning on some of our rural counties is catering to the many retirees moving here, and the tourists passing through.
This has got to be a rough time for Gov. Granholm, because it’s a rule of thumb in America that when the going gets tough, folks look for a scapegoat. Yet no matter who is in the governor’s seat, now or in the next election, the fact is going to remain that there’s just not enough tax revenue available to pay for all of the services we’d like to continue.
I supported John Kerry in the recent election, but as the campaign wore on, I became dismayed with his endless promises to fund one $100 billion program after another for whatever special interest group that might provide him with more votes. I would have liked Kerry much better (and President Bush for that matter) if the message of the last election had been, let’s tighten our belts, people.
Nowhere is that need for belt-tightening more evident than here in Michigan, which now has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. We need less bickering between parties in Lansing and more hands at the oars, rowing the boat in the same
direction.

Hunter S. Thompson

No one seemed particularly surprised that gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson took his own life recently. After all, he billed himself as a tortured soul with serious drug and alcohol problems, and apparently was haunted by suicidal tendencies from an early age.
But, that sort of resumé often seems to be part of the job description for artists and writers who live closest to the bone in order to bring back portraits of our new selves that we barely recognize at first. Kurt Cobain, Artur Rimbaud, Dylan Thomas, Ernest Hemingway and Jim Morrison come to mind in the Tortured Artistic Soul Department where Hunter S. Thompson also spent his life.
Like any great artist, Thompson had a great insight into the art of writing that made him a genius for our time. His idea was to write without restraint -- just let it rip. Everything Thompson wrote was rippingly free of restraint, like a NASCAR rig going around the track on two wheels at 300 mph.
That same sense of will -- to be creative without restraint -- is something that anyone might take to heart, assuming your sense of creativity doesn‘t extend to turning your brain into a chemical cocktail, á la Mr. Thompson. Acting on their dreams without restraint is how folks ranging from Madonna to Martha Stewart “make it,” and no doubt the same principle can be applied to more mundane activities -- gardening or ice fishing -- it‘s all a matter of how far you wish to take your passions.
Thompson‘s other great gift to us was his subject matter. No matter what he was writing about, be it a trip to Las Vegas to cover a motorcycle race or discovering the savagery of America‘s dark side at President Nixon‘s convention in Florida, his underlying theme was always that of freedom.
Specifically, Thompson wrote about what freedom means when there are absolutely no no rules, no responsibility.
He wrote about what freedom means when you fill your head with hallucinogenic drugs and drive down the Vegas Strip, or take a boat up a jungle river in Colombia into dangerous waters with no money and no protection. He wrote about the dark side of freedom, and if you read close, you learn that these are cautionary tales.
He wrote about the freedom to get yourself in a world of trouble. And reading between the lines, it was often evident that freedom of that sort didn‘t make Hunter S. Thompson a happy man. But it did make him a legend.