Time and Place

I note this week in the New Yorker an extraordinary photograph from an ordinary photo album. A picture all of us might have lying around: the gang, relaxing casually, at the office picnic. A man plays an accordian. One person in the front row, smiling, looks familiar. It is the Angel of Death: Joseph Mengele. This is a retreat for the staff of Auschwitz.

I don't recall the exact phrase but remember the idea put forth by William Shawcross, where, an event occurs, such as the Holocaust, while in another place, at the same time, a family attends a Fourth of July parade in Idaho. It's only incomprehensible to us in this time and place that the breadwinner of a household at such a parade might earn a paycheck by gassing children.

On the fortieth anniversary of the My Lai massacre, Seymour Hersh makes a similar point, in reverse. He writes, "it's stunning how much impact My Lai had and how little impact Abu Ghraib had - we'll have to leave it to historians to figure out why."

An article last week in the local rag describes a third grade class who admirably pooled their pennies to send care packages to a hometown unit stationed in Iraq. When the Marine Colonel, on leave, visits the class, the school girls squeal as if at a Hannah Montana concert.

Amongst the scraps, now lost, I'd kept for years, was a letter to my third grade class from another Marine Colonel, John Glenn, after he'd circled the globe three times. I know we were thrilled.

I wonder if any third grade class ever hosts a poet whose presence creates hysteria?

Can you imagine a place and time when schoolchildren were required to memorize poetry, so much so, as Clive James reports in Cultural amnesia, you held a poem in your head all your life 'as an infinite source of ready reference?' Sadly, poems, in the time and place of my life, are like David Halberstam books. I know I should like them; I try; but never finish a one.

A fella from South Carolina led a "Resolve to Win,' march through our town last week. He said he was generally pleased with the turnout though there should have been more flags strewn along his path. Well, maybe so, when they are troops in the field, in harm's way. Yet I also feel akin to the sentiments in another article in the same New Yorker, a 'Life and Letters' sketch piece on author Pat Barker, who "resists any sort of glorification of war by those at home or on the sidelines. War, she says, is a single bullying voice shouting all the other voices down."

The national Boy Scout jamorbee is held down our country road every few years in a campground on an Army base. Recruiters conducting business freely mingle amongst the boys. This attracts no attention, no concern. It wouldn't have been so forty years ago when ROTC programs were being driven from campuses. In a review of the current play Chicago 10, "At a moment when a youth movement has gathered behind a candidate capable of seizing power the old-fashioned way, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin's nonsense about revolution just looks lame."

What's normal, at this time and place, up North, is an anti-war rally with David Byrne, Norah Jones and Lou Reed, proceeds going to 'United for Peace and Justice,' and Veterans Against the War. What's normal, at this time in place, in my Southern town, is a 'Resolve to Win,' march - neither event, in its own time and place, creates dissension, or for that matter, great support, yet hold the same event, at the same time, switching places, New York for Virginia, and all hell is sure to break loose.

In Washington's time and place, through Viet Nam, the ideal American was a more humble civillian. He was there when his country needed him, returning home when crisis was past and war was won. Professional soliders are a rare breed throughout history; draftees are far more the norm, as Minute Men, and GI Joe dog faces, univerally bemoaning, enduring, a decidely unglamorous fate. No school girl hysetria in store for them.

Perhaps if you merely live long enough, like Pete Seeger, blacklisted 1950; Kennedy Center medal recipient 2007, or Muhammed Ali, reviled draft resister 1968; universal hero 2008, you may also transform, if necessary, in the same place, different time.

Invite a poet to school. What's the worst that could happen?