Governor Wallace Appoints Espy

Major Espy was appointed Lieutenant Colonel Aide-de-Camp in the Alabama State Militia by Governor George C. Wallace.

The Dothan Eagle

January 27, 1963

Good Communion with Parents

In Atlanta for 2010 SEC Championship Game.  Dad bought me that shirt!  Not the best picture in the world!  But unique!



Here's a short e-mail I had with a close cousin in 2008 about communicating well with parents, and how as children, feeling really connected with parents is vital.  I was lucky I had that with mine.

Me:  I did have a very nice talk with pops (Dad) last night.  Talked some about his childhood and about Major and the fertilizer plant....learned lots.  You know, when I hang up the phone with him after a good conversation, I feel alive and happy.  Let me say, more alive and happier.  I think we should never underestimate the power parents have over the kids and the power we will have over ours.  And, I would suspect, that parents also feel better when they are experiencing good vibes with their offspring.  It makes sense.  Along the way, unfortunately, people become hardened and there's lots of baggage.  It takes being humble and vulnerable to reach back to the mindset where you can tap into love again.  Does that make sense?

Cousin:  That's good...great conversation.  Think about how uplifting that is for your pops to talk and remember his childhood.  Brings back happy memories, makes him feel that you're interested, etc..  I do think the most important thing we can do in conversations with others is listen to them,  esp. when it comes to those older, and even more so with our parents...we stir up a lot of good vibrations.  It must be very healthy for them.  and it's good for us too.  But I know I feel good when my kids ask me about my life growing up and such.  And they do that a great deal, probably more than I did.  Do you remember that time in high school when we both interviewed Deedee?  I remember she seemed very happy, almost giddy, talking about her earlier years.


And from one of my favorite philosophers and authors, Osho:

It is always good to come to an understanding with your parents.  Gurdjieff used to say, “Unless you are in good communion with your parents, you have missed your life.” If some anger persists between you and your parents, you will never feel at ease. Wherever you are, you will feel a little guilty. You will never be able to forgive and forget…Parents are not just a social relationship. It is out of them that you have come. You are part of them, a branch of their tree. You are still rooted in them.

When parents die, something very deep-rooted dies within you.  When parents die, for the first time you feel alone, uprooted. So while they are alive, do everything that you can so that an understanding can arise and you can communicate with them and they can communicate with you. Then things settle and the accounts are closed. Then when they leave the world-and they will leave someday-you will not feel guilty, you will not repent; you will know that things have settled. They have been happy with you; you have been happy with them.

Should I Stay or Should I go?

A few years ago, a cousin shared this intriguing article about an experiment in a New York subway station:

Below is a link to a fascinating article based on a social experiment performed by the Washington Post.

Here's the scenario: have one of the world's most acclaimed violinists give a 44-minute solo concert on a Stradivarius, playing some of the most beautiful music ever written – BUT, have him dressed casually, in a rush-hour Washington DC subway station, with an open violin case, asking for dollars.

Before you read the article, think about these questions:

- Of the 1,000-odd people who walked by, how many noticed him at all?
- How many stopped to watch and listen, and for how long?
- Did a crowd form at any point?
- How many people recognized who he was?
- How much money did he have in his violin case at the end of his performance?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

My response:

 

Very intriguing experiment.  For the record, I hadn't heard of the violinist's name before, and if he knocked on the door for a morning coffee, I wouldn't recognize him.  If I had been walking through the metro that morning and had had someone with me, I think I would have at least paused and said something like, "Damn, that guy's too good to be playing down here."  However, my frontal lobes would have been screaming, "Reach your destination, Allen!"  And off I would have gone!

 

I found these two parts of the article to be most telling:

 

We're busy. Americans have been busy, as a people, since at least 1831, when a young French sociologist named Alexis de Tocqueville visited the States and found himself impressed, bemused and slightly dismayed at the degree to which people were driven, to the exclusion of everything else, by hard work and the accumulation of wealth.

 

If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?

 

Also, the passage about kids, of all shapes, sizes, backgrounds and colors wanting to listen or slow down a bit also confirms of a lot of what's mentioned over and over again in every self-help book:  Children are naturally curious, and it's a sign of intelligence.  Only as they age do they learn that adults around them do their earnest to stifle that creative spark.  Pretty sad.

 

Now, if that had been in a Bronx metro station and 50 Cent (not in disguise) had been rapping in the corner, droves of people wearing huge gold chains would have been dancing.  Or if it had been in Nashville and Charlie Daniels had been working that violin to The Devil Went Down to Georgia, cowboy boots would have been stomping the floor and old confederate flags would have been unfurled.  People are funny in that way.  Celebrity appeals.  

Espy Elected To Board

 

The Montgomery Advertiser

January 2, 1966

A Sunday in Asheville

On Sunday, Amy and I went out by ourselves for a full day of hiking in the mountains.  Hard to beat that!  For weeks I had been thinking about which waterfalls to show her.  I ultimately decided on these, up on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  One was incredibly powerful; the other was beautifully seductive.  Once we got back to town and freshened up, Kade joined us, and the three of us went out for Indian at Chai Pani.  After that, we closed out the evening with futuristic desserts and playful cocktails at the speakeasy bar, Nightbell.

When in Asheville........

          An Atlanta cousin and her friend came up for a weekend visit.  We did a little of this, and a little of that.

   

   

On Saturday, after hiking to Catawba Falls, and before making it back to The Grove Park Inn in time for the sunset, where we shared a terrace table with a happy couple from Chicago, we stopped off at Asheville's historic downtown.  Our aim was to find something to eat.  After sizing up a micro-brewery and a handful of restaurants, Cúrate eventually won us over.  The meatballs were "less than awesome" but everything else was quite delish.  And let's not forget the wine - perfect.

Walking up Reynolds Mountain

All photos are the property of Mark Schmidt 

historic tower on Reynolds Mountain

That's me way down there on the right.

Grove Park Inn

Beaver Lake

Legend

Watt Espy in Headland, AL home office, circa early '90s

"M. Watt Espy is a legend among historians and sociologists of the death penalty in America." source

 

Howard Allen reaches out to Watt Espy.

Race, Class, and the Death Penalty: Capital Punishment in American History. By Howard W. Allen and Jerome M. Clubb. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008. xiv, 239 pp. $65.00, ISBN 978-0-7914-7437-2.)

M. Watt Espy is a legend among historians and sociologists of the death penalty in America. Since 1970, he has endeavored to collect information on all legal executions in the United States and the respective European colonies before 1776. In their book, Howard D. Allen and Jerome M. Clubb use Espy's work as their main source to define and analyze long-term trends and variations in the use of capital punishment in America from colonial times to World War II, focusing specifically on social biases based on race and class. Allen and Clubb also include lynching, stressing that …

http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/1/184.1.extract

Easter

Marilyn, Mark and Mila

Headland, Alabama

likely Easter Sunday - circa late fifties

 

my dad, Mark Espy

Cove Creek Falls

This was about a 5 mile hike.

Easter Prayer

I sent this message out to about dozen folks - a few friends and family - several years ago.  Was thinking this would be better than anything they'd hear that morning.  In the end, I got one response, and it was a dance-around, questioning the individual's character (in this case Trump's)  rather than addressing the issue.  That's called an ad hominem.   

My Easter prayer is that everyone in every church this Sunday will be shown this video and will take time to reflect on what's being said.  - Allen

 

Ways Worldviews Are Shaped

 

From THE HEADLAND OBSERVER, 1983

 

 

In what ways could this open our minds to the broader world and present some facts we otherwise wouldn't know?  In what ways could information passed down this way limit our understanding of the events mentioned and leap to groupthink?

Why Few Revolutions Succeed

source

 

This was a fun, go-to motivational book I read in the '90s.  If you're wanting to think out of the box, this is a good one.  The  excerpt above is one I bookmarked!

 

Benjamin Franklin is also quoted a lot in Jump Start Your Brain.  Franklin had started a Junto club as a means to generate ideas and gain knowledge.  When I was living in Thailand, I thought a lot about starting a Junto group or a Men's group, where some of my expat friends and I could meet regularly for this purpose.  But it only remained an idea!

 

At age twenty-one, he formed a “club of mutual improvement” called the Junto. It was a grand scheme to gobble up knowledge. He invited working-class polymaths like him to have the chance to pool together their books and trade thoughts and knowledge of the world on a regular basis. They wrote and recited essays, held debates, and devised ways to acquire currency. Franklin used the Junto as a private consulting firm, a think tank, and he bounced ideas off the other members so he could write and print better pamphlets. Franklin eventually founded the first subscription library in America, writing that it would make “the common tradesman and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries,” not to mention give him access to whatever books he wanted to buy. - source

More excerpts I recorded from Jump Start Your Bain in the mid '90s:

The Courage to Face Fear 

Most everyone wants to live on the edge.  Maybe the feeling is deep down, but it’s there.  Most everyone would like to be out front, the very best.  But the only way to know for sure you’re on the edge is to slip over it.  You can’t itch your way to it and peek over.  You have to step out front and fall a few times.  Success doesn’t happen without failure. 

Do not labor under the assumption that the safe way is to do nothing.  Standing still is not a realistic option.  You can’t afford to maintain the status quo. 

It’s as risky to maintain the status quo as it is to reach for the new and bold.  In the first case, you can get run over.  In the second, you have a chance to swing for the fence. 

The only way to a get a significantly different result is to do something significantly different. 

High 5 of Fears 

1. FEAR of being laughed

The fear of ridicule causes us to build walls between ourselves and the world.  It prevents us from asking questions so won’t appear foolish.  It keeps us from taking on new and different pursuits because we might fall on our faces.  It discourages us from reaching out and revealing our true selves because we might be rejected.  It ties our hands, clamps our mouths shut, and closes our minds. 

Being laughed at is a sign of potential genius.  Think of Franklin in a thunderstorm, the Wright brothers on the beach at Kitty Hawk, Edison with his light bulbs, Ted Turner with his Cable News Network.

2. FEAR of losing what we have

The people in the middle are trying to coast.  They often play not to lose instead of playing to win.  They are the ostriches of the human race.  They create elaborate justifications for their lack of action and forward motion.  The result is disillusionment.  Which leads to twisting in the wind, which in turn leads to certain death.

 

3. Fear of rejection

The fear of rejection grows stronger as we become adults.  Instead of speaking our minds, we become conditioned to sit on them.  After a while, we stop trying. 

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. 

Finding the courage means you believe in what you’re doing and that you are secure in your ability to go do something else, that you’re not afraid to take it to the monster.  Finding the courage means you’re not afraid of getting kicked out, knowing you’d land on your feet if you did.

 

4. FEAR of the unknown 

Many of us lack initial courage because we think we need to have every step choreographed before we embark on the adventure.  We want a detailed road map with a clearly focused beginning, middle, and final destination, along with a synopsis of all the roadside tests and comfort stations.  Sorry.  It doesn’t work that way.  America’s westward migration is an example. 

If you want to be great, you must learn to live with uncertainty.  You have to have faith in your ability to adapt and react.  Ignorance of the future is not a sign of stupidity – it’s part of the human condition. 

5. FEAR of exposure

It’s is one of the most crippling forms of dread, the fear that a deep-seated insecurity will be dragged out into the light of day.  “I’m not (smart, creative, tall, good-looking, fill in the blank) enough.” 

Identifying your fears is the first step to freeing yourself from them.   

High 5 of Courage 

1. Look to teammates

Your spouse, for example.  If you don’t have a mutually supportive relationship, get the relationship fixed.  Never, ever set sail on a grand adventure without the support of your spouse.  This person must be a portrait of faith and support.  Anything short of it will deflate your oomph, drain your energy, and puncture your balloon. 

2. Taking action

Fear is often a mirage arising from your own uncertainties.  Take action.  Any action is better than standing still.  In most cases, if you challenge your fear through action, you’ll find it’s not nearly as formidable as you thought. 

3. Covering your bets

Entrepreneurs are not daredevils.  They don’t take long shots.  Rather, they reduce fear by covering their bets.   

Figure out fallback positions in the event the initial plan falls flat. 

Be the best.  When you take the high ground and create something of genuine value, you’ll be strengthened.  If an idea is true, if it’s not of dubious value, you’ll be more apt to have the courage to see it through.  The best ideas are those that bring out the idealist in you. 

4. Replaying Success

Visualize previous wins

Recall the Great Ones – Let a hero be your guide

5. Burst the Worst

What is the worst that could happen?  Think about it, write it down, articulate it.  How bad could it get?  Then deal with it.

Don’t fear fear.  Make it your friend.  It prevents complacency.  It will make you reach inside yourself and stretch your potential.

Hiking in Hot Springs

This was my third time hiking the Lover's Leap Trail.

photos by Mark Schmidt

look closely at upper left

A Trip Down Memory Lane

I intend to post photos showing the interior and exterior of the Major W. Espy home on Main Street in Headland, Alabama.  Not all the photos will be of the same day or time period.  I have started with the living room, and will continue adding each day (to this post) until the front den and exterior pictures of the house are added.  In the end, I want it to be like you're walking through the carport door and making your way through the house as it was laid out.  As of now, don't have the far back extension of the home.  Once, I approached Aunt Marilyn with the idea of walking through the home as I videoed it, and she expressed great interest, saying "it would be worth a trip down memory lane."  Unfortunately, never got the chance to go through the home with her, nor with Dad. 

Daddy got the design for the Main Street home while at The World’s Fair.  There was a section on housing and he brought back plans. - Watty Espy

 

 

 

 

 

 

2009

sunset photos by Marc Willis