Lloyd Bowers was born in Columbus, Georgia in 1952, graduated from Furman University in 1976, and has lived in Charleston, South Carolina since 2002.
The Results of Polar Bear Research is Lloyd's first novel and was published in 2007. Lloyd's next book, Keep These in the Family, is a collection of twelve stories and was published in 2010.
"I grew up in the South," says Lloyd. "The Southern Appalachians is a sort of fixed foot in my life, and the summer-time is a great time to gravitate unpredictably in social settings."
"Freedom is a Public Utility, published 2014, developed from the discovery of a stash of old family letters, dated 1812 to 1857, mailed to my great-great-grandfather John Siegling, who emigrated from Erfurt, Germany, and settled in Charleston in 1820. That he was en route, or 'unterwegs,' for five years impressed me.
"Divide the Country! was published February, 2020. It reflects my concern about the disunity, and even partisan hatred, that plagues the U.S."
Patrick Henry had his fifteen minutes of fame when he said, "Give me liberty, or give me death!" Many people since his day have made similar statements in support of political or ethnic causes. Military leaders have uttered a variation of his ultimatum: "Victory or death!" The succession of ultimata have eclipsed Patrick Henry's. He is too generic to carry weight in the world of competing causes.
Abraham Lincoln more or less lucked into the Presidency—or unlucked into it, depending on how you view his career as President. His rugged looks and rural, ax-wielding background lent more to his reputation than it should have. The level of destruction caused by the Civil War suggests that he did not have the right credentials to help the nation avoid the catastrophe—enough education, basic diplomatic or social skills enable him to jaw instead of war. Lincoln was too much a creature of his political party—in debt to the political bosses—rather than the leader of it.
When I think of the important persons who helped found our nation, who did the fighting to free the nation from the British, who studied the lessons of history in order to build a hugely successful land of opportunity, and undergird it with first-rate foundational documents, I do not think right away of fFrancis Scott Key. He played an important role aguing cases, including many before the Supreme Court, and functioned as a sort of attorney general in the government of the young nation.
Benjamin Franklin's credo sounds like a generic, laid-back aphorism, spoken from a rocking-chair by someone's retired, church-minister uncle. Numerous academics try to paint Franklin as a sort of hippie-prototype, and he wasn't like that at all. You get a better idea of his personal convictions in Poor Richard's Almanack, published in 1733.
George Washington spent much of his life commanding the Continental Army against the British and keeping the fight alive, and then leading the young United States as its civilian President; but the quote attributed to him, selected for the Credo stamp series—"Observe good faith and justice toward all nations."—fails to sum up the man, his beliefs, or gravitas. The quote is too generic, too laid back. Any moralizer could talk about "good faith and justice." We hear stuff like that everyday. I prefer this quote from Washington, from a letter to James Madison:
I collected stamps through most of my childhood. The variety and utility of stamps amazed me. People use postage stamps for mail. Until the middle of the twentieth-century, the Post Office Department printed a "Postage Due" stamp for their use, if a letter or parcel did not have enough stamps on it. In addition to that, the Post Office Department issued "Documentary Stamps," or "Revenue Stamps," affixed to official documents, like contracts, deeds, treaties, hunting licenses, and so on. The variety, design, and importance of stamps did a lot to mature my little mind.
In the last couple of years, I have run into old friends whom I haven't seen in a while. Invariably, I tell them we could keep in touch better if they open a page on Facebook. So far, not a single one has followed my suggestion. They said they opened a page on Facebook when it first came out, but lost interest in it, over time, and closed it.
The Beatles, that rock n' roll landmark-band that disbanded almost 54 years ago, keeps popping up in the news for various reasons, not least because their music continues to draw people, but also for the charm and sex-appeal they exuded--four working-class boys who had to teach themselves everything.
Politics in America has developed a moralistic, punitive fervor, loudly proclaimed by bloggers on Facebook and other places. Many politicians see this fervor as their ticket up the career-ladder, getting a foothold by finding an issue to champion, or by coaxing a constituency to regard them as their champion. They call on people to protest racism, sexism, and homophobia, who do a lot of marching and shaking angry fists. The politicians never miss a chance at more publicity.
America is like a pair of stranded sailors who have escaped a sinking ship by means of a life-raft. They have only one bottle of water between them and a sandwich. A single person can survive on this, but if two hungry sailors have to share it, both will perish.
I saw this article in Die Welt am Sonntag, from 10th March of this year. Most Germans know Elke Büdenbender because she is married to the Bundespräsident of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeyer. She also studied law at the Justus-LIebig University of Siegen, Germany. In her practice, Büdenbender concentrates on "Sozialrecht," the effort to create a more egalitarian German society--not surprising since both Büdenbender and Steinmeyer are Socialists.
This article appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, 17th March. Its title, "Help the Nation!", took me by surprise. The under-title reads: "Germany's economy is not moving forward enough, and the politicians can't fix it by themselves. Every German must ask himself if he has an idea about what to do."
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