Geauga County

 

Postcards - Chardon, Ohio

 Chardon Square

 

Chardon House

Opera House

Courthouse

Potential Sticker Designs

“The Pragmatist”

c. 2020 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(4-20)

Overnight.

My favorite time for creative work comes when the sun has vanished, and most of my neighbors are lost to slumbering away daily fatigue. Cloaked and comforted with this pause, I feel revived. Safe to approach the ideas that have percolated in my subconscious mind during regular hours.

I was at my desk in the home office. Coffee and my Black Lab offering companionship. The morning had been quiet so far, except for a light rain that teased at our windows. I was reviewing material for the local newspaper-of-record, the Geauga Independent. A task faithfully executed each day, as editor and publisher. Puzzlement stalled my dedication, however. I fretted over choosing an appropriate story for the front page. The Maple Festival, in Chardon? Spring awakening thoughts of leisure activities on the horizon? No… not now. These things had vanished.

In our current age of challenges and changes, they did not exist.

My company phone rang while I pondered. Its screen announced an anonymous number from Burton, Ohio. This made me sit upright, and take a deep breath. The device sounded three times in succession. Finally, I accepted the call.

“You have reached the Independent. May I help you?”

A cough and static filled my ear. “Rodney! This is Zeb!”

I rubbed my eyes. “Who?”

There was more static on the line. “Zebulon Byler-Gregg! Brother of Ezekiel and Lemuel! Have you forgotten me, young man?”

I laughed out loud. The caller was a trusted friend, brother of a fellow newspaper editor and also of a vagabond journalist who had moved from the Midwest to the Virgin Islands.

“Zeb! Zeb!” I laughed. “It is five o’clock in the morning!”

He growled like a bear. “So, you’re an understudy for the rooster now?”

“Wait,” I complained. “You called me, sir. Despite the early hour...”

“Rodney, I know your habits,” he said.

I nodded silently. “Yes, they haven’t changed. I made coffee almost two hours ago. Are you working on a feature for the Burton Daily Bugle?”

Zebulon huffed with indifference. “Brother Zeke hasn’t run any of my features in over a month. He’s obsessed with our pancake breakfasts being canceled because of the Coronavirus.”

“Right,” I reflected. “We’ve all experienced a shift of epic proportions. I wonder when we will find our way home to normalcy...”

He lowered the tone of his voice. “That’s what I wanted to discuss, Rodney. Being normal. As in me thinking that you haven’t been very normal, lately.”

I was unprepared for his comment. “What??”

Zebulon sharpened his thoughts. “You used to be a good Libertarian. An independent thinker, an arbiter of truth and justice in print. I liked that, liked reading your work. You were a good kid.”

I had no response. It seemed better to let him ramble.

“Governor DeWine and Dr. Acton have thrown down a gauntlet for citizens from Cincinnati to Cleveland,” he said forcefully. “A violation of liberty like we’ve never seen before. Not in our generation. Not in many generations. Not since the days when the Confederacy challenged our national unity.”

I took a deep breath. But still said nothing.

“It’s time,” he declared. “Time for citizens in Ohio to stand up for freedom. To stand up for our state and our nation. To stand up for our way of life!”

I slumped in my chair. “Zeb, get down off the soapbox.”

“You’ve sold out, brother!” he shouted. “What happened to the man who idolized Lysander Spooner? And William Godwin, Josiah Warren, or Max Stirner? And could quote them all, including Henry David Thoreau? Who voted for Dr. Ron Paul? Who used to have a porcupine bumper sticker on his pickup truck?”

“Zeb,” I laughed. “You are getting carried away. I’m not a scholar. Just a small-town writer. Though I did have the porcupine sticker, until it faded.”

“I’ve read your material in the newspaper,” he continued. “It isn’t the same. Urging people to follow CDC guidelines. The worst of big-government edicts!”

I sighed heavily. “Zeb, we are fighting a worldwide pandemic...”

“Horseshit!” he shouted more loudly. “This is opportunism. A political move!”

I leaned over my desk. “It’s a response to danger. An effort to rescue our society.”

“Traitor!” he yowled. “You’ve gone over to the other side! To socialism, to partisanship, to thought-control and submission of the masses. We might as well live in North Korea now!”

I couldn’t take any more of the rant. “ZEBULON! STOP IT!!”

He groaned as if in pain. “Rodney, you disappoint me.”

“Sorry Zeb,” I apologized. “This is pragmatism at work. Platitudes won’t help fight a virus. They won’t protect us from an invader like COVID-19. We need scientific analysis, and perhaps, a bit of luck...”

My friend went silent for a moment.

“Intellectual sparring is fun,” I added. “In normal times. An academic exercise, entertainment for political geeks like you and me. But not now, not today. Not when thousands have died and more are slipping toward oblivion. Gagging on their ventilators.”

Zebulon had grown angry. “You’re a turncoat!”

I shook my head. “I’m a pragmatist. Like my father. Conservative? Yes. An iconoclast? Maybe. Even a dedicated Libertarian? Yes, yes. My heartstrings reverberate with those tones. But I want to live. I want you to live and our neighbors to live. I want our world to live.”

“HYPOCRITE!” he bellowed.

I stiffened in my chair. “Sorry, brother. I won’t simply be a mouthpiece for the protesters. Though I defend their right to speak. I defend their right to be ignorant. But I won’t help them to wallow in darkness. I won’t will them to be uninformed.”

My cohort grumbled audibly.

“This is our creed and our mission,” I concluded. “To present the evidence. Then readers can decide. Freely and fortified with information. That is our tradition. To educate. To cast light where it is needed. To inspire analysis and debate...”

Zebulon wheezed like a door being shut. He hung up without another word.

Daybreak filled the window above my desk with brightening blue. The coffee had vanished from my cup. My dog was snoring.

Now, it was time to finish my writing project, and return to bed.

Comments about ‘Words on the Loose’ may be sent to: icewritesforyou@gmail.com

Write us at: P. O. Box 365 Chardon, OH 44024

“Impeachment Trial”

c. 2020 Rod Ice 

All rights reserved 

(1-20) 

Impeachment trial 

Longer run by a mile 

Drinking beer in early morning 

No siren for warning 

I sit in my chair 

Beholding the beasts 

Of these I am the least 

A conflict of politics 

Run to the light 

Long into this good night 

America is sleeping 

On this decision of champions 

Locked in battle to be won 

By the best of our tribe 

Above the muck, we rise 

To educate 

To pontificate 

Timeless, enduring 

Long-suffering all 

Let the gavel fall 

Build no wall 

Chief Justice 

Sits as the arbiter 

Of wrath incurred 

By factions set 

An experience we won’t forget 

Let me catch my breath 

And begin again 

Hear me, friends 

Wee hours begin 

In tradition we trust 

This republic 

We are us 

Names called from the roll 

Johnson, Nixon Clinton 

And the spray-tan troll 

Anti-heroes 

Anti-matter 

in the chamber reactive 

Stray bits of matter 

Stained in their existence 

A lean across the fence 

Rewarded with electric shock 

The senators in their socks 

Creeping into darkness 

The exercise is a success 

A trip for the mind 

Leaving history behind 

Keening over hope lost 

Over the cost 

An acrid flow 

For those in the know 

Impeachment 

An action of government 

A trial on TV 

Ratings to read 

To the victor goes reward 

A mini-series on board 

Plugged in for broadcast 

This won’t be the last 

High drama in D.C. 

Like Max Headroom 

Jitterbugging on the screen 

Im-peach 

Sweet tea 

Overreached 

Peachy I feel peachy 

The House has spoken 

For you and me 

Voices raised in judgment 

Articles to the Senate 

The constitution to defend 

Believe me, friend 

This is what democracy looks like 

Going long into the night 

No sailor’s delight 

Steering a partisan ship 

Into waves that flip 

One side to the other 

Believe me, brother 

This is the best 

We have to give, the acid test 

The strike for gain 

Overrules motions of the brain 

Studious foes 

Battle in their Sunday clothes 

Ritualistic procedure prancing 

Like they are dancing 

Twist and spin 

Schumer has an objection 

McConnell shakes his head 

We watch in his stead 

With Doritos and beer 

America 

America, we fear 

The sunset of a grand community 

The fade of those 

Who believe 

Where do we go, then At 1:30 a.m.? 

To our beds, with gratitude 

Respite 

Rest 

A recharge for the cellphone 

Coming home 

For weary bones 

The state of our nation is sound 

We’ll march to midnight 

High-step on hallowed ground 

And repeat the fete 

Tomorrow on Main Street 

Who cares? Who is aware? 

The nation draws a deep breath 

As we navigate our fate 

Sailing on to the dawn 

The antidote to endless night 

Schiff and Schumer 

Shaken, not stirred 

The final word 

A blot on the ballot 

Opinion, undeterred 

This process will go on 

A diva dance 

With Amazons 

For prizes to be won 

Rancor, are you done? 

Yet in the end 

The nation-state 

We defend 

With votes in November 

A mission bell 

Sounded in alarm 

To keep us from harm 

Kick kick kick 

In the air 

Listen to the souls that care 

This impeachment ride 

This surf at high tide 

Is a grand gesture given 

For democracy’s friends 

Yet we have reached the end 

Say it again 

End this fight 

Fatigue yields delight 

Turn off the light 

Good night!