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?
Friday, March 21, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
Recognizable Background
I note this week a letter in the Times from a Ms. Carlisle taking exception to Ms. Seltzer, who "by pretending to have led a life she has not, and by passing off that lie as a memoir, has betrayed those of us who have stories to tell and who attempt to write them honestly and faithfully."
I'm taking exception to the exception.
An alarming letter in the local rag a few weeks ago complained our town has "gone downhill this past year because of a chronic problem with intoxicated individuals, unruly gangs wandering in the streets, and drifters who lurk on the Parkway." Intrigued by 'lurk,' I looked it up. There was lie-in-ambush, sneak, conceal - hardly words which come to mind looking at the poor souls who sit forlornly on a guardrail in plain view holding an "I'm hungry," sign. This letter writer, who's clearly annoyed just by the sight of their passing presence through a windshield, employs lurk instead of sit to tell a better story.
Another writer this past week takes exception to a prior letter writer taking exception at those not wishing to help African refugees who settle in our small town in lieu of assisting the lurkers described above. She contends no one should worry Africans take jobs intended for the native-born since our own lurking homeless 'wouldn't hit a lick at a snake.' I don't know what that means, exactly, but I think I get the point.
AP writer Douglas Birch warns, though "Tomorrow's presidential election (in Russia) marks a symbolic end to a tortured post-Soviet odyssey from poverty to economic might, the country has embraced a rigid political orthodoxy - call it Putinism - that the Kremlin has used to crush the independence of political parties, civil society and the media."
First off, putin, which sounds something my two-year old godson is more wont to do than a world leader, is an invitingly funny word, like pickle, or, coincidentally, seltzer. Another AP writer, Mansur Mirovalev, informs us, 'anekdoty,' indeed, "have long been a litmus test of public opinion and individual liberties in a country where in the past, people faced exile, prison, or worse for expressing their opinions directly."
Putin, barred by law from another term, ran Medvedev for president, to appoint himself Prime Minister, to still exercise power behind the scenes. What follows is an example of Russian anekdoty: "Putin and Medvedev wake up with hangovers. Putin says, "which of us is president and which of us is prime minister today? Medvedev says, "I don't remember." Putin says, "then go fetch some beer."
I have to say as someone who tries from time to time to write with some small degree of wit, if 'attempted joke' was a felony offense in the U.S, and I could be shot or exiled to Alaska, the joke has to be funny, if not, downright hysterical. I'm not saying I wouldn't still try, but to take that risk, the punchline needs to be more humorous than 'fetch a beer.'
A theme in this blog since it began is to convey what it means to be Southern. In times when it seems reality itself is more bizarre than fiction, it's not surprising memoirs are king, since the public demands a truth that leaves little room for a good-natured exaggeration which always formed the foundation of the best stories.
Speaking of South, could anyone ever surpass F. Scott, who fashioned the following speech for a Southern woman out of place in New York City:
"These were just men, unimportant evidently or they wouldn't have been unknown; but they died for the most beautiful thing in the world - the dead South. You see, she continued, her voice still husky, her eyes glistening with tears, people have these dreams they fasten onto things, and I've always grown up with that dream. It was so easy because it was all dead and there weren't any disillusions comin' to me. I've tried in a way to live up to those past standards of noblesse oblige - there's just the last remnants of if, you know, like the roses of an old garden lying all around us."
Truth, sublime, submerged, the hallmark of genius, the envy of hacks. Perhaps, though, in order for honesty to hit home, there must first be recognizable background. I instinctively understand Fitzgerald, because I live and speak Southern.
Farther afield, desiring to enjoy Shakespeare, lacking ability to translate its foreign language, I discovered the key - buying the essential DK Shakespeare Handbook. Just to solitarily read its plot summaries and character descriptions drives the life out of the drama - but if you read first, then attend a play, you've got it - you need not struggle to catch the drift; you enjoy the experience, no longer a challenge, still not necessarily grasping all, mind you, but enough to make the difference.
The recognizable background of two letters hit my desk, these past few weeks, that promise stories far beyond the surface of the paper upon which they were written.
The first was from a police department in California. On Christmas eve, someone left a check in a manger on a church altar. With no leads towards its rightful owner, it was returned to sender. What gripping story lays beyond the facts of the case? Enough, certainly, for a gripping movie of the week, no doubt, starring Valerie Bertinelli and Tom Bosley.
The second was simple enough in itself. In an old bureau, a fella found a World War I savings certificate, purchased by his great grandfather, and wanted to know if it was redeemable, and of course, with the interest due. The grander story involves the building in which I work that was constructed in 1919 to process correspondence such as this relative to the issuance of World War I bonds. What epic journey must have transpired for this letter to find its way home?
Whether stories are real, or not, matters less than the imagination they stir which beckons us from the margins to enjoin the page.
I'm taking exception to the exception.
An alarming letter in the local rag a few weeks ago complained our town has "gone downhill this past year because of a chronic problem with intoxicated individuals, unruly gangs wandering in the streets, and drifters who lurk on the Parkway." Intrigued by 'lurk,' I looked it up. There was lie-in-ambush, sneak, conceal - hardly words which come to mind looking at the poor souls who sit forlornly on a guardrail in plain view holding an "I'm hungry," sign. This letter writer, who's clearly annoyed just by the sight of their passing presence through a windshield, employs lurk instead of sit to tell a better story.
Another writer this past week takes exception to a prior letter writer taking exception at those not wishing to help African refugees who settle in our small town in lieu of assisting the lurkers described above. She contends no one should worry Africans take jobs intended for the native-born since our own lurking homeless 'wouldn't hit a lick at a snake.' I don't know what that means, exactly, but I think I get the point.
AP writer Douglas Birch warns, though "Tomorrow's presidential election (in Russia) marks a symbolic end to a tortured post-Soviet odyssey from poverty to economic might, the country has embraced a rigid political orthodoxy - call it Putinism - that the Kremlin has used to crush the independence of political parties, civil society and the media."
First off, putin, which sounds something my two-year old godson is more wont to do than a world leader, is an invitingly funny word, like pickle, or, coincidentally, seltzer. Another AP writer, Mansur Mirovalev, informs us, 'anekdoty,' indeed, "have long been a litmus test of public opinion and individual liberties in a country where in the past, people faced exile, prison, or worse for expressing their opinions directly."
Putin, barred by law from another term, ran Medvedev for president, to appoint himself Prime Minister, to still exercise power behind the scenes. What follows is an example of Russian anekdoty: "Putin and Medvedev wake up with hangovers. Putin says, "which of us is president and which of us is prime minister today? Medvedev says, "I don't remember." Putin says, "then go fetch some beer."
I have to say as someone who tries from time to time to write with some small degree of wit, if 'attempted joke' was a felony offense in the U.S, and I could be shot or exiled to Alaska, the joke has to be funny, if not, downright hysterical. I'm not saying I wouldn't still try, but to take that risk, the punchline needs to be more humorous than 'fetch a beer.'
A theme in this blog since it began is to convey what it means to be Southern. In times when it seems reality itself is more bizarre than fiction, it's not surprising memoirs are king, since the public demands a truth that leaves little room for a good-natured exaggeration which always formed the foundation of the best stories.
Speaking of South, could anyone ever surpass F. Scott, who fashioned the following speech for a Southern woman out of place in New York City:
"These were just men, unimportant evidently or they wouldn't have been unknown; but they died for the most beautiful thing in the world - the dead South. You see, she continued, her voice still husky, her eyes glistening with tears, people have these dreams they fasten onto things, and I've always grown up with that dream. It was so easy because it was all dead and there weren't any disillusions comin' to me. I've tried in a way to live up to those past standards of noblesse oblige - there's just the last remnants of if, you know, like the roses of an old garden lying all around us."
Truth, sublime, submerged, the hallmark of genius, the envy of hacks. Perhaps, though, in order for honesty to hit home, there must first be recognizable background. I instinctively understand Fitzgerald, because I live and speak Southern.
Farther afield, desiring to enjoy Shakespeare, lacking ability to translate its foreign language, I discovered the key - buying the essential DK Shakespeare Handbook. Just to solitarily read its plot summaries and character descriptions drives the life out of the drama - but if you read first, then attend a play, you've got it - you need not struggle to catch the drift; you enjoy the experience, no longer a challenge, still not necessarily grasping all, mind you, but enough to make the difference.
The recognizable background of two letters hit my desk, these past few weeks, that promise stories far beyond the surface of the paper upon which they were written.
The first was from a police department in California. On Christmas eve, someone left a check in a manger on a church altar. With no leads towards its rightful owner, it was returned to sender. What gripping story lays beyond the facts of the case? Enough, certainly, for a gripping movie of the week, no doubt, starring Valerie Bertinelli and Tom Bosley.
The second was simple enough in itself. In an old bureau, a fella found a World War I savings certificate, purchased by his great grandfather, and wanted to know if it was redeemable, and of course, with the interest due. The grander story involves the building in which I work that was constructed in 1919 to process correspondence such as this relative to the issuance of World War I bonds. What epic journey must have transpired for this letter to find its way home?
Whether stories are real, or not, matters less than the imagination they stir which beckons us from the margins to enjoin the page.
Friday, March 7, 2008
The DNA of Original Sin
I note this week a new weather phenomenon unfamiliar to most of us around these parts - a 90 mph 'straight wind.' Roofs on 18th century farm houses, torn off; empty silos blown to the ground. Frankly, I slept through it. There would have been no impact at all in our household except for lost power, which brought us through the night, unhindered as we slept, to dawn, when I could neither shave, shower, or go to work.
That's when the trouble started.
Acting last summer upon a mother-in-law suggestion, I'd hammered a three foot tall piece of sheet metal around the trunk of a tree to frustrate the squirrels who plundered the bird feeder above. It didn't work, leaving a beautiful maple wearing an ugly metallic girdle for no good reason. Determined to restore nature to its primeval state, I tackled the chore with optimism, forgetting about the chain saw chain embedded in the similar soft wood of a downed maple, from last year, which still rests on the lower forty today.
The nails held fast. I banged, thumped, cursed and yanked, accomplishing nothing but a deep gash in my thumb. I must confess, as we stood at the sink to dress the wound, blood pooling in the palm of my hand, to feeling so woozy I had to sit down. Why must a minor disfigurement produce such an arresting reaction?
The Chicago Trib's William Mullen says blame may be deflected for this unmanly behavior onto my inner fish. According to Mullen, and Chicago scientist Neil Shubin, "even before they are born, all people carry genetic baggage, genes that were useful to distant, nonhuman ancestors but are hopelessly outdated, even harmful, to humans as they live today." Just as Shubin says we hiccup due to a breathing malfunction passed down to us from tadpoles, I reckon a man faints at the sink, after a steel girdle mishap, because it was useful for his ancestors to play dead while a sabre-tooth tiger gnawed off his hand.
One more scientist in the news this past week, Judy DeLoache, of the University of Virginia, says she has a snake phobia "because snakes would have posed a significant threat to our ancestors, so a fear of snakes remains hardwired into human beings today." This explains, in the case of married men, a fear of the mother-in-law.
I can't quell queasy reactions to public events any better than revulsion over a slightly dismembered thumb. Still banking on the harbingers of Spring to raise spirits above winter doldrums, I watched a series of ESPN classic baseball programs whose theme is 'Five Reasons' to either keep believing a controversy was settled fairly, or not. When it comes to Pete Rose's chances of getting into the Hall of Fame after denying for 15 years he didn't bet on baseball, before admitting it, Jim Palmer, an HoF voter, summed it up nicely, saying, if he ever believes Pete is thinking more of the game, than himself, he might consider it. The sought after change of heart wasn't much in evidence during the show as Pete assessed the importance of baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti's tragic death by heart attack only in terms of how it damaged his Hall of Fame prospects.
The science of economics oft merges with the personal in ways to make them indistinguishable. The NY Times reports "only 37 percent of eligible high school students citywide in San Francisco take advantage of subsidized meal programs because of the stigma of accepting a government lunch while others are paying for food." One student said, "lunchtime is the best time to impress your peers; being seen with a subsidized meal lowers your status." It's not hard to calculate how the short evolutionary odds of any man around a prehistoric campfire who couldn't slay his own dinner are hardwired within our survival instincts today.
After tens of thousands of years, it's broadcast by imnumerable tragedy, like the case of the 15-year old Oxnard, California, middle school student, who shortly after coming out last month, was murdered by a 14-year old member of a pack of classmates who'd harrassed what they'd perceived as an external threat to their tribal identity of adolesent masculinity.
It's one thing to know these deadly instincts linger; how they comprise the dna of our original sin. Does anything suggest they can be overcome?
Just as I search for small signs of Spring to restore a winter-ravaged mind and body, there are ever present small omens, drawing upon finer instincts, balancing darker aspects of our personalities. The local rag recently carried an obit, "it is with broken heart I announce the passing of my lover and best friend, aged 63 -survivors include his companion of 24 years." Here are lives well lived, two joined as one, despite a small town non-comformity, where it was possible none the less, to surmount the instincts which surfaced in Oxnard with deadly effect.
Editorialst, Michael Gerson, reports he's 'seen the future of evangelical Christianity,' as displayed at a college convention where "there were booths promoting causes from women's rights to the fight against modern slavery to environmental protection." Gerson says, "judging from the questions I was pounded with, the students are generally pro-life - but also concerned about poverty and deeply opposed to capital punishment and torture."
I cotton to 'generally,' which leaves little room for other words like zealously or fanatically. I'm generally pro-choice but respectful of a youthful idealism that concerns itself to run the other way. 'Generally' overcomes the dna of original sin.
Our General Store in the center town is where we meet to take cover from straight-winds, around the hospitality of a worn pot-bellied stove, instead of huddling furtively around the glow of an ancient flickering campfire to ward off the terrors that fly by unceasing night.
That's when the trouble started.
Acting last summer upon a mother-in-law suggestion, I'd hammered a three foot tall piece of sheet metal around the trunk of a tree to frustrate the squirrels who plundered the bird feeder above. It didn't work, leaving a beautiful maple wearing an ugly metallic girdle for no good reason. Determined to restore nature to its primeval state, I tackled the chore with optimism, forgetting about the chain saw chain embedded in the similar soft wood of a downed maple, from last year, which still rests on the lower forty today.
The nails held fast. I banged, thumped, cursed and yanked, accomplishing nothing but a deep gash in my thumb. I must confess, as we stood at the sink to dress the wound, blood pooling in the palm of my hand, to feeling so woozy I had to sit down. Why must a minor disfigurement produce such an arresting reaction?
The Chicago Trib's William Mullen says blame may be deflected for this unmanly behavior onto my inner fish. According to Mullen, and Chicago scientist Neil Shubin, "even before they are born, all people carry genetic baggage, genes that were useful to distant, nonhuman ancestors but are hopelessly outdated, even harmful, to humans as they live today." Just as Shubin says we hiccup due to a breathing malfunction passed down to us from tadpoles, I reckon a man faints at the sink, after a steel girdle mishap, because it was useful for his ancestors to play dead while a sabre-tooth tiger gnawed off his hand.
One more scientist in the news this past week, Judy DeLoache, of the University of Virginia, says she has a snake phobia "because snakes would have posed a significant threat to our ancestors, so a fear of snakes remains hardwired into human beings today." This explains, in the case of married men, a fear of the mother-in-law.
I can't quell queasy reactions to public events any better than revulsion over a slightly dismembered thumb. Still banking on the harbingers of Spring to raise spirits above winter doldrums, I watched a series of ESPN classic baseball programs whose theme is 'Five Reasons' to either keep believing a controversy was settled fairly, or not. When it comes to Pete Rose's chances of getting into the Hall of Fame after denying for 15 years he didn't bet on baseball, before admitting it, Jim Palmer, an HoF voter, summed it up nicely, saying, if he ever believes Pete is thinking more of the game, than himself, he might consider it. The sought after change of heart wasn't much in evidence during the show as Pete assessed the importance of baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti's tragic death by heart attack only in terms of how it damaged his Hall of Fame prospects.
The science of economics oft merges with the personal in ways to make them indistinguishable. The NY Times reports "only 37 percent of eligible high school students citywide in San Francisco take advantage of subsidized meal programs because of the stigma of accepting a government lunch while others are paying for food." One student said, "lunchtime is the best time to impress your peers; being seen with a subsidized meal lowers your status." It's not hard to calculate how the short evolutionary odds of any man around a prehistoric campfire who couldn't slay his own dinner are hardwired within our survival instincts today.
After tens of thousands of years, it's broadcast by imnumerable tragedy, like the case of the 15-year old Oxnard, California, middle school student, who shortly after coming out last month, was murdered by a 14-year old member of a pack of classmates who'd harrassed what they'd perceived as an external threat to their tribal identity of adolesent masculinity.
It's one thing to know these deadly instincts linger; how they comprise the dna of our original sin. Does anything suggest they can be overcome?
Just as I search for small signs of Spring to restore a winter-ravaged mind and body, there are ever present small omens, drawing upon finer instincts, balancing darker aspects of our personalities. The local rag recently carried an obit, "it is with broken heart I announce the passing of my lover and best friend, aged 63 -survivors include his companion of 24 years." Here are lives well lived, two joined as one, despite a small town non-comformity, where it was possible none the less, to surmount the instincts which surfaced in Oxnard with deadly effect.
Editorialst, Michael Gerson, reports he's 'seen the future of evangelical Christianity,' as displayed at a college convention where "there were booths promoting causes from women's rights to the fight against modern slavery to environmental protection." Gerson says, "judging from the questions I was pounded with, the students are generally pro-life - but also concerned about poverty and deeply opposed to capital punishment and torture."
I cotton to 'generally,' which leaves little room for other words like zealously or fanatically. I'm generally pro-choice but respectful of a youthful idealism that concerns itself to run the other way. 'Generally' overcomes the dna of original sin.
Our General Store in the center town is where we meet to take cover from straight-winds, around the hospitality of a worn pot-bellied stove, instead of huddling furtively around the glow of an ancient flickering campfire to ward off the terrors that fly by unceasing night.
Friday, February 29, 2008
The Grey Months
I note a call from friend Mark concerned over my welfare after reading last week's gloomy post. He needn't have been worried. Once the cherry blossoms bloom around the Tidal Basin, the melancholy will dissipate -- somewhat.
January through March are optimal for expending effort which bogs down in slush. I may rise sluggishly at lunch, treking next door to the Holocaust Museum, enquiring once more, about the fate of lost relatives, to no avail. Or make an appointment at St. Francis of Assissi to apply, to join, only to be stood up by the membership chairwoman. Shopping trips for a perfect pair of warm shoes prove fruitless upon discovering the next day, upon the train platform at 4:45 a.m., that my feet are still freezing.
What leads from this darkness?
Seven books from the University and another seven from the public library lie atop the shelves. Short books, mind you, since concentration is hard to maintain during the grey months. A perfect conversation, in keeping with the situation, within one, occured amongst two men deciding it would have been better for Gertrude Stein to have committed suicide in the ocean, clutching a knapsack of books, rather than weighing her pockets with rocks, in case there's time to fill in the heavenly waiting room.
On top of the pile, in easy reach, is a collection of columns by Red Smith, the classic baseball reporter. He writes of young rookies like Sam Mele, Alvin Dark and Bill Rigney, who in my time, I knew only by their grizzled faces on baseball cards, staring wistfully into the distance, as managers of mostly failed or one-hit wonder championship teams.
Friend Larry and I exchanged emails this past week describing ultimate baseball thrills. I offered hearing Mel Allen's broadcast when Mickey Mantle won game three of the 1964 World Series against the Cardinals with a home run in the bottom of the ninth, and then rushing madly into the library to tell mom, who would have been searching tranquilly amongst the shelves for her usual Tudor historical fiction.
Larry writes, "My mother let me stay home for game 7 of the 1960 World Series under the pretext of some minor Jewish holiday. However when Maz hit the homer I ran toward the school to let everyone else know."
In yet one more of an endless series of editorials by many writers attacking baby boomers, Rod Dreher says, "the culture warrior's of the previous generation were not wrong to question conformity but they went too far. They have deprived their sons of authoritative tradition, both in word and example, and with it the ability to transcend the adolescent state."
Transcend? I've never cottoned much to adulthood. As I looked around the room at a
birthday party for a 75-year old friend last weekend, I saw the old men who've transcended. They in their suits; me in jeans and what my wife contends is the shirt of the 16-year old skateboarder.
The hell with adolescent transcendence. What markedly distinguishes the grey months, and ressurects body and soul, is the traditional purchase of the first pack of baseball cards for the season (and let me tell you, the 2008 Upper Deck set, is magnificent.)
The local rag carried an article last week entitled 'Funeral Fare >> Food is Big Part of Healing,' listing easy recipes for funeral potatoes, a 'cheesy hash-brown casserole;' funeral Raisin Pie; and funeral beans with bacon bits. Marcia Armstrong writes, "For the congregants, comfort means ham biscuits and little sandwiches, brownies and tortes. Instead of just going through the motions of serving the food, we have to make sure we serve the family with compassion and a caring spirit. We are there to comfort."
There's no need for comfort minus loss. No Spring, without first enduring the grey months, in which I grasp desperately for small comforts wherever they may be found. It's invariably in small places, in the concern of friends over my well being, in possibilities of thrills to come, in a wife who adorns our home with the aroma of baking bread, and in living a life where you never grow old. Don't worry. I'll be better soon. On opening day.
January through March are optimal for expending effort which bogs down in slush. I may rise sluggishly at lunch, treking next door to the Holocaust Museum, enquiring once more, about the fate of lost relatives, to no avail. Or make an appointment at St. Francis of Assissi to apply, to join, only to be stood up by the membership chairwoman. Shopping trips for a perfect pair of warm shoes prove fruitless upon discovering the next day, upon the train platform at 4:45 a.m., that my feet are still freezing.
What leads from this darkness?
Seven books from the University and another seven from the public library lie atop the shelves. Short books, mind you, since concentration is hard to maintain during the grey months. A perfect conversation, in keeping with the situation, within one, occured amongst two men deciding it would have been better for Gertrude Stein to have committed suicide in the ocean, clutching a knapsack of books, rather than weighing her pockets with rocks, in case there's time to fill in the heavenly waiting room.
On top of the pile, in easy reach, is a collection of columns by Red Smith, the classic baseball reporter. He writes of young rookies like Sam Mele, Alvin Dark and Bill Rigney, who in my time, I knew only by their grizzled faces on baseball cards, staring wistfully into the distance, as managers of mostly failed or one-hit wonder championship teams.
Friend Larry and I exchanged emails this past week describing ultimate baseball thrills. I offered hearing Mel Allen's broadcast when Mickey Mantle won game three of the 1964 World Series against the Cardinals with a home run in the bottom of the ninth, and then rushing madly into the library to tell mom, who would have been searching tranquilly amongst the shelves for her usual Tudor historical fiction.
Larry writes, "My mother let me stay home for game 7 of the 1960 World Series under the pretext of some minor Jewish holiday. However when Maz hit the homer I ran toward the school to let everyone else know."
In yet one more of an endless series of editorials by many writers attacking baby boomers, Rod Dreher says, "the culture warrior's of the previous generation were not wrong to question conformity but they went too far. They have deprived their sons of authoritative tradition, both in word and example, and with it the ability to transcend the adolescent state."
Transcend? I've never cottoned much to adulthood. As I looked around the room at a
birthday party for a 75-year old friend last weekend, I saw the old men who've transcended. They in their suits; me in jeans and what my wife contends is the shirt of the 16-year old skateboarder.
The hell with adolescent transcendence. What markedly distinguishes the grey months, and ressurects body and soul, is the traditional purchase of the first pack of baseball cards for the season (and let me tell you, the 2008 Upper Deck set, is magnificent.)
The local rag carried an article last week entitled 'Funeral Fare >> Food is Big Part of Healing,' listing easy recipes for funeral potatoes, a 'cheesy hash-brown casserole;' funeral Raisin Pie; and funeral beans with bacon bits. Marcia Armstrong writes, "For the congregants, comfort means ham biscuits and little sandwiches, brownies and tortes. Instead of just going through the motions of serving the food, we have to make sure we serve the family with compassion and a caring spirit. We are there to comfort."
There's no need for comfort minus loss. No Spring, without first enduring the grey months, in which I grasp desperately for small comforts wherever they may be found. It's invariably in small places, in the concern of friends over my well being, in possibilities of thrills to come, in a wife who adorns our home with the aroma of baking bread, and in living a life where you never grow old. Don't worry. I'll be better soon. On opening day.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Death Warmed Over
I note this week an unending winter of icy rain. I'm reminded of Ronnie, a man I knew who froze to death. In his life, he'd withstood worse than a sleeping demise in the dark woods.
Attacks on the homeless are so high, the NY Times reports legislation incorporating them as a class protected by hate-crime law has been introduced in several states and Congress. What does it connotate when abject poverty is classified the same as race or gender?
The fella in Florida, the focus of that article, incarcertated for jumping off a log onto a homeless man's ribs while he and his 15-year old friends casually beat him to death, says, "I'm not a killer, I know that. A lot of people, they see this story and call us killers. I'm not a killer. I regret what I did. I wish I could take it back." When a killer fails to recognize he's killed someone, relegating hypothermia a preferable way to die, hate-crimes protection is warranted.
Death is rarely death, in itself, by itself. Scale, for one, matters, but only sometimes. According to our local rag, this week the State Department "advised American diplomats to refer to Nuremberg if asked about the legality of capital punishment in 9/11 cases. The cable makes no link between the scale of the crimes, perpetrated by the Nazi's, which included the Holocaust that killed some 6 million European Jews, and those allegedly committed by the Guantanamo detainees, who are accused of murder and war crimes in connection with 9/11, in which nearly 3,000 died."
Elie Wiesel rejects branding all Holocaustian murder by one label, insisting otherwise, on a unique crime of Jewish genocide, not only by scale, but upon the inherent terribleness of the crime itself.
What about this? The AP reports, "when twin blasts ravaged crowded pet markets earlier this month, Iraqi authorities offered a chilling account: Mentally disabled women carried the hidden explosives perhaps as unwitting bombers for al-Qaida." Here, the perpetators murdered both unwitting bomb-carriers and victims. What charge, scale, or classification best captures the outrage?
There are ways to distance one's self from questions of this nature. 60 Minutes broadcast a piece last week where no one, execept one lonely anti-corporate crusader, pronounced it murder, after a drug company continued to manufacture pharmeceuticals which even their own suppressed studies disclosed killed thousands. The chairman of the Government commission responsible for licensing the drug recused his conscience by identifying himself as just a scientist.
Bureaucrats, like supply clerks who worked in concentration camps, are able to routinely compartmentalize responsbility. Here's a study released last week which provides five neat exculpatory reasons why no one was at fault for not purchasing bomb-proof vehicles for soldiers in Iraq, an inaction costing thousands of lives: 1) "budget and procurement managers failed to recognize the damage; 2) an urgent request got lost in the bureaucracy; 3) acquisitions staff didn't give top leaders correct information; 4) the purchase was treated as an expensive obstacle to long-range plans; 5) some managers are retired Marines who lack adequate technical credentials."
Churches, whose primary business it is to theologize on death, aren't immune to confusion. The AP reports "The beatification cause of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the outspoken Salvadoran church leader who was killed in 1980 as he celebrated Mass, remains at a standstill while officials study whether his death made him a martyr for the faith, a senior Vatican official said Monday. To be a martyr, the Catholic Church must first determine if the Archbishop of San Salvador was killed for religious reasons or other motives."
The Archbishop of San Salvador was murdered in his cathedral as he preached upon the responsibility of the Church to act upon a preferential option for the poor. If that option is not considered religious, then, indeed, the Archbishop was not killed for religious reasons.
Naming eight martyrs, every Sunday during the Prayers of the People, commemorating the souls of Kevin and Mike who were murdered, Bobby and Ronnie who froze, Terry who overdosed, and Lescek, Agnes and Randy who were run over by cars, absolves no one of collective responsibility.
Attacks on the homeless are so high, the NY Times reports legislation incorporating them as a class protected by hate-crime law has been introduced in several states and Congress. What does it connotate when abject poverty is classified the same as race or gender?
The fella in Florida, the focus of that article, incarcertated for jumping off a log onto a homeless man's ribs while he and his 15-year old friends casually beat him to death, says, "I'm not a killer, I know that. A lot of people, they see this story and call us killers. I'm not a killer. I regret what I did. I wish I could take it back." When a killer fails to recognize he's killed someone, relegating hypothermia a preferable way to die, hate-crimes protection is warranted.
Death is rarely death, in itself, by itself. Scale, for one, matters, but only sometimes. According to our local rag, this week the State Department "advised American diplomats to refer to Nuremberg if asked about the legality of capital punishment in 9/11 cases. The cable makes no link between the scale of the crimes, perpetrated by the Nazi's, which included the Holocaust that killed some 6 million European Jews, and those allegedly committed by the Guantanamo detainees, who are accused of murder and war crimes in connection with 9/11, in which nearly 3,000 died."
Elie Wiesel rejects branding all Holocaustian murder by one label, insisting otherwise, on a unique crime of Jewish genocide, not only by scale, but upon the inherent terribleness of the crime itself.
What about this? The AP reports, "when twin blasts ravaged crowded pet markets earlier this month, Iraqi authorities offered a chilling account: Mentally disabled women carried the hidden explosives perhaps as unwitting bombers for al-Qaida." Here, the perpetators murdered both unwitting bomb-carriers and victims. What charge, scale, or classification best captures the outrage?
There are ways to distance one's self from questions of this nature. 60 Minutes broadcast a piece last week where no one, execept one lonely anti-corporate crusader, pronounced it murder, after a drug company continued to manufacture pharmeceuticals which even their own suppressed studies disclosed killed thousands. The chairman of the Government commission responsible for licensing the drug recused his conscience by identifying himself as just a scientist.
Bureaucrats, like supply clerks who worked in concentration camps, are able to routinely compartmentalize responsbility. Here's a study released last week which provides five neat exculpatory reasons why no one was at fault for not purchasing bomb-proof vehicles for soldiers in Iraq, an inaction costing thousands of lives: 1) "budget and procurement managers failed to recognize the damage; 2) an urgent request got lost in the bureaucracy; 3) acquisitions staff didn't give top leaders correct information; 4) the purchase was treated as an expensive obstacle to long-range plans; 5) some managers are retired Marines who lack adequate technical credentials."
Churches, whose primary business it is to theologize on death, aren't immune to confusion. The AP reports "The beatification cause of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the outspoken Salvadoran church leader who was killed in 1980 as he celebrated Mass, remains at a standstill while officials study whether his death made him a martyr for the faith, a senior Vatican official said Monday. To be a martyr, the Catholic Church must first determine if the Archbishop of San Salvador was killed for religious reasons or other motives."
The Archbishop of San Salvador was murdered in his cathedral as he preached upon the responsibility of the Church to act upon a preferential option for the poor. If that option is not considered religious, then, indeed, the Archbishop was not killed for religious reasons.
Naming eight martyrs, every Sunday during the Prayers of the People, commemorating the souls of Kevin and Mike who were murdered, Bobby and Ronnie who froze, Terry who overdosed, and Lescek, Agnes and Randy who were run over by cars, absolves no one of collective responsibility.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Afraid of the Dark
I note this week a trip to the mall, after dinner, by the wife and I, to buy a birthday present for her sister. I don't venture out much after dark. I'd read in the local rag of numerous muggings in this very parking lot. Half way to the car, after Mrs. heard a startling noise, we raced to gain safety behind locked car doors and sped away into the night upon screeching tires.
There's something about the darkness which stimulates a primal hightened awareness beyond being frightened outside Sears. The ancients wrote Psalms of the terrors of night. In Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, Gregor Von Razzori writes "In the middle of an uncanny procession, in blocks that in their disciplined compactness seemed made of cast iron, people marched by the thousands, men only, in total silence, the morbid rhythmic stamping of their feet hung like a gigantic cord in the silence that had fallen on Vienna."
I'll admit I wouldn't have been surprised to hear the rhythmic marching footsteps of such a mob rounding the corner of Dick's Sporting Goods bearing down upon us in the mall parking lot. Yet it's not always easy to imagine the difference between light and darkness.
According to the NY Times, Turkish lawyer Fatma Benli devotes her profession to fighting domestic violence, honor killings and gender discrimination while simultaneously insisting "on wearing an Islamic head scarf which goes against enforcement of official Government secularism." She says, not "wearing the scarf seems like a denial of freedom; medical students can get diplomas, housewives can't take driving lessons, a civil servant takes another woman, uncovered, to official ceremonies as his wife." When that which we in the West consider an ultimate symbol of the denial of freedom - headscarves - is itself prohibited by law, the right to wear a scarf transforms into a struggle for freedom.
Neil Young was quoted recently, "I know that the time when music could change the world is past. I really doubt that a single song can make a difference. It is a reality."
Good old sour Neil Young always can be counted upon to ruin the party. I must respectfully disagree with the man who creates music which stirs the pot even if he denies it. Perhaps what he writes today doesn't carry the magnitude of impact his curmudgeonly ego demands, but let me play 'Ohio,' off the well-worn, ash-smudged, scratchy LP, on the rickety faithful record player, and I'll still sally forth to change the world.
There's light, yet, in darkness, even death, framed in the obituaries of lives played out in the surrounding countryside - "she grew up on a farm in Dogue; she attended a one-room schoolhouse, riding a horse; she graduated from Mary Washington Teacher's college; she was a member of the Altar Guild, taught Sunday School, a member of the Historical Society; she was preceded in death by her husband of 66 years.
It's harder to see light now; it's dim these days, yet still glows stubbornly, perhaps, less dramatically, in simpler things, than rock festivals or protest marches. Rather than an unthinkable incandescence of books burning in the night on the cobblestone streets of an ancient city like old Vienna, we have a bookmobile. Once in a long while a hooligan breaks a window as it sits parked behind the library downtown but it's back on the road every day, carrying the lights of literature and history, to 7000 people a year, three dozen stops, at senior citizen homes, post offices, along the rural routes of small towns, and at preschools, serving children "who are checking out a book for the first time."
There are always those in positions of authority, who intentionally, or with reckless disregard, choose to play upon the darkness. A consequence of the recent restoration of the beautiful Latin Mass, is the re-promulgation of Good Friday language, which beckons the faithful to "pray for the Jews. May the Lord Our God enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men."
Prior to Vatican II, Good Friday prayers were even more blatant, calling for outright conversion, to lift the veil of blindess from Jewish hearts. The new-old version, however, isn't any more pleasing or considerate to contemporary Jewish sensibilities. One Vatican spokesman, seeks to mitigate the offense by offering most Catholics will still worship employing the vernacular, not Latin Mass, anyway. I think he's missing the point.
The finest notion of darkness, cast as sin, I've come across, is St. Augustine's simple definition of sin as falling back into bad habits. It's why the dark is so appealing, comforting and painful at the same time. We want to be good; it's just too hard, or as Augustine originally wrote, 'we want to be good, not just yet.'
We can draw upon community and books to try and move to higher consistent levels of conduct while still believing there is a grace abound that allows for an occasional falling back into bad habits. If you respect the original sin that lies within, aware of its dark compelling power, and counter by striving towards the light of good intentions, I'm hopeful that what counts in the end, salvation-wise, is the desire, and the attempt, not any self-proclaimed attainment, or posting of rules for same, intended for others presumed less enlightened than self.
There's something about the darkness which stimulates a primal hightened awareness beyond being frightened outside Sears. The ancients wrote Psalms of the terrors of night. In Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, Gregor Von Razzori writes "In the middle of an uncanny procession, in blocks that in their disciplined compactness seemed made of cast iron, people marched by the thousands, men only, in total silence, the morbid rhythmic stamping of their feet hung like a gigantic cord in the silence that had fallen on Vienna."
I'll admit I wouldn't have been surprised to hear the rhythmic marching footsteps of such a mob rounding the corner of Dick's Sporting Goods bearing down upon us in the mall parking lot. Yet it's not always easy to imagine the difference between light and darkness.
According to the NY Times, Turkish lawyer Fatma Benli devotes her profession to fighting domestic violence, honor killings and gender discrimination while simultaneously insisting "on wearing an Islamic head scarf which goes against enforcement of official Government secularism." She says, not "wearing the scarf seems like a denial of freedom; medical students can get diplomas, housewives can't take driving lessons, a civil servant takes another woman, uncovered, to official ceremonies as his wife." When that which we in the West consider an ultimate symbol of the denial of freedom - headscarves - is itself prohibited by law, the right to wear a scarf transforms into a struggle for freedom.
Neil Young was quoted recently, "I know that the time when music could change the world is past. I really doubt that a single song can make a difference. It is a reality."
Good old sour Neil Young always can be counted upon to ruin the party. I must respectfully disagree with the man who creates music which stirs the pot even if he denies it. Perhaps what he writes today doesn't carry the magnitude of impact his curmudgeonly ego demands, but let me play 'Ohio,' off the well-worn, ash-smudged, scratchy LP, on the rickety faithful record player, and I'll still sally forth to change the world.
There's light, yet, in darkness, even death, framed in the obituaries of lives played out in the surrounding countryside - "she grew up on a farm in Dogue; she attended a one-room schoolhouse, riding a horse; she graduated from Mary Washington Teacher's college; she was a member of the Altar Guild, taught Sunday School, a member of the Historical Society; she was preceded in death by her husband of 66 years.
It's harder to see light now; it's dim these days, yet still glows stubbornly, perhaps, less dramatically, in simpler things, than rock festivals or protest marches. Rather than an unthinkable incandescence of books burning in the night on the cobblestone streets of an ancient city like old Vienna, we have a bookmobile. Once in a long while a hooligan breaks a window as it sits parked behind the library downtown but it's back on the road every day, carrying the lights of literature and history, to 7000 people a year, three dozen stops, at senior citizen homes, post offices, along the rural routes of small towns, and at preschools, serving children "who are checking out a book for the first time."
There are always those in positions of authority, who intentionally, or with reckless disregard, choose to play upon the darkness. A consequence of the recent restoration of the beautiful Latin Mass, is the re-promulgation of Good Friday language, which beckons the faithful to "pray for the Jews. May the Lord Our God enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men."
Prior to Vatican II, Good Friday prayers were even more blatant, calling for outright conversion, to lift the veil of blindess from Jewish hearts. The new-old version, however, isn't any more pleasing or considerate to contemporary Jewish sensibilities. One Vatican spokesman, seeks to mitigate the offense by offering most Catholics will still worship employing the vernacular, not Latin Mass, anyway. I think he's missing the point.
The finest notion of darkness, cast as sin, I've come across, is St. Augustine's simple definition of sin as falling back into bad habits. It's why the dark is so appealing, comforting and painful at the same time. We want to be good; it's just too hard, or as Augustine originally wrote, 'we want to be good, not just yet.'
We can draw upon community and books to try and move to higher consistent levels of conduct while still believing there is a grace abound that allows for an occasional falling back into bad habits. If you respect the original sin that lies within, aware of its dark compelling power, and counter by striving towards the light of good intentions, I'm hopeful that what counts in the end, salvation-wise, is the desire, and the attempt, not any self-proclaimed attainment, or posting of rules for same, intended for others presumed less enlightened than self.
Friday, February 8, 2008
How PDO Correlates to RM-DUI
I note this week a drawing in the local rag portraying the future development of 3.5 million square feet of military-industrial office, residential and commercial space. The problem from my perspective is it appears the 3 acres constituting the boundaries of my living space are subsumed underneath the eastern edge.
It's a tradition within our household, the morning my blood is drawn at the lab, to take breakfast at a cafe across the street from a Confederate cemetery. It's a smoke-ful establishment frequented mostly by good-ole-boys and a few bewildered tourists. As the wife and I searched for markers of our home on the sketch, the fella at the next table allowed he owned 12 acres in the path of the proposed progress. After pontificating upon the potential for millions to be made, he said, "I've lived here all my life, but I'm not wedded to it."
I've been here before. I'm of PDO (Pre-Disney Orlando) lineage. As David Brooks writes in On Paradise Drive - How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense, "what happens when people accumulated in these sprawling suburban zones are given the power through the firms they are now starting admist the Fudruckers to re-make human nature? What values will guide them?"
A mid-1960's PDO could still glimpse, here and there, faded painted letters of 'White and Colored,' on exterior walls of recreational lakeside restrooms. My dad, a classic Hubert Humphrey liberal by nature, yet ever on the hunt for a $7 haircut, patronized a barber shop that transformed itself into greater Orlando George Wallace for President headquarters during the 1972 primary. Even as post-P.O.D. loomed large on the horizon, George won the precinct and state handily.
In a recent editorial entitled, If there's really a 'South,' Lee is the Key to It, Paul Greenberg wrote "It's not clear just when the general left history and entered myth, but it is clear that he represents something more than the sum total of his battles or even his life - it is what he was, and still is - at least to some of us, the few of us left. You know who you are."
Let's take that a step further. Over the land on which I'm writing now, another Southern general mightily strode the earth, upon Sorrel, his gallant steed. His headquarters for the battle of Fredericksburg was 5 miles to the southeast, the battle, 10 miles to the northwest. He died eight miles south at a place called the Stonewall Jackson Shrine minus the arm that's buried 20 miles to the west at a smaller shrine of its own.
In a January 5th book review of Still Standing: The Stonewall Jackson Story, also published in the local rag, Michael Aubrecht writes, "Most often neglected are his charitable efforts on behalf of local blacks, including the rarely discussed establishment of the first black Sunday school in Lexington. Truly Jackson was more than just a military commander. He was a paternal deliverer of black literacy and was instrumental in aiding those seeking the teachings of the Christian doctrine."
The word 'paternal,' is rather pregnant, don't you think? How is it that a man could lend his brilliant tactical leadership to a cause devoted to enslaving a people to whom he was simultaneously delivering the precious gift of literacy?
That very point was discussed last month at the annual Council of the Episcopal Church of Mississippi. According to Charles Reagan Wilson, Professor of History at the Univesity of Mississippi, while the Bishop of the day, William Mercer Green, "was glad to educate slaves and bring them into the church believing that faith in Christ would ultimately save them from their savage ways - his work blurs the line between hero and villian," since, "it was not (the slaves) choice what religion they were converted to," and the "work lent an air of legitmacy to slavery."
The NY Times reported an incident in January where vandals broke in and trashed Robert Frost's farmhouse in Vermont. A few days ago, it was reported in Massachusetts that two men are accused of burining down the birthplace of 'Mary had a Little Lamb' nursery rhyme author, Mary Elizabeth Sawyer. While no one in Virginia is about to dig up Stonewall's arm, we might find in another five years, it's buried under a 7-11. The South where I live blurs lines between a dedication to the preservation of a mythic symbolism and a willingness to be swamped by riches generated from the relentless march of development.
Spurred on by this paradox, I've researched other enduring symbols of Southern culture. One such is the frequency of Riding Lawnmower DUI (RL-DUI), a sub-culture where country singer George Jones is both pioneer and gold standard, and against whom all subsequent contenders must be measured. Recent RL-DUI stat's, I've exhaustively unearthed, and verified, utilizing a painstakingly scholarly methodology, reveal, of 38 incidents, reported over the past year, 34.21%, or fully one third of all RL-DUI, still occur in the South. The two highest competitors, the Midwest, and multiple countries overseas (mostly European), tie at precisely 21.05%; the North comes in at 13.16%; the West trailing, at 10.53%.
The only two Horse-borne RL-DUI, reminiscent of glory days past, are exclusive to the South, as well as being the home of more Golf Cart DUI's then anywhere else. (Surpisingly, none of the three slower-paced electric scooter RL-DUI were Southern, where as you might have expected post-PDO Floridians to contribute at least one case.)
Thus, the South lives on, in our hearts and minds, as exemplified by the gentleman I spotted the other day wearing post-operative hospital booties as sandals. There's a spirit here which can never be extinguished even while our landscape undergoes massive upheaveal.
When I drive the beloved backroads of the Virginia countryside, I often wonder if I could have fought compartmentally, in terms of naming it a 'home-state invasion, to preserve this beautiful landscape which enriches my soul, knowing I was also contributing to the preservation of that Southern 'peculiar' institution. Looking back, upon the past few weeks, when we discussed Vichy; examining the photographs of the leading French generals, even in their grandest uniformed finery; they look sheepish, as if they knew all along what they were doing was wrong even as they justified doing it in the name of national post-country preservation. They couldn't evade the rotten smell as much as they endeavored to disguise it.
If we skate on the surface, without noticing what lies under the ice, try as we might, the smell of fish will always rise.
It's a tradition within our household, the morning my blood is drawn at the lab, to take breakfast at a cafe across the street from a Confederate cemetery. It's a smoke-ful establishment frequented mostly by good-ole-boys and a few bewildered tourists. As the wife and I searched for markers of our home on the sketch, the fella at the next table allowed he owned 12 acres in the path of the proposed progress. After pontificating upon the potential for millions to be made, he said, "I've lived here all my life, but I'm not wedded to it."
I've been here before. I'm of PDO (Pre-Disney Orlando) lineage. As David Brooks writes in On Paradise Drive - How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense, "what happens when people accumulated in these sprawling suburban zones are given the power through the firms they are now starting admist the Fudruckers to re-make human nature? What values will guide them?"
A mid-1960's PDO could still glimpse, here and there, faded painted letters of 'White and Colored,' on exterior walls of recreational lakeside restrooms. My dad, a classic Hubert Humphrey liberal by nature, yet ever on the hunt for a $7 haircut, patronized a barber shop that transformed itself into greater Orlando George Wallace for President headquarters during the 1972 primary. Even as post-P.O.D. loomed large on the horizon, George won the precinct and state handily.
In a recent editorial entitled, If there's really a 'South,' Lee is the Key to It, Paul Greenberg wrote "It's not clear just when the general left history and entered myth, but it is clear that he represents something more than the sum total of his battles or even his life - it is what he was, and still is - at least to some of us, the few of us left. You know who you are."
Let's take that a step further. Over the land on which I'm writing now, another Southern general mightily strode the earth, upon Sorrel, his gallant steed. His headquarters for the battle of Fredericksburg was 5 miles to the southeast, the battle, 10 miles to the northwest. He died eight miles south at a place called the Stonewall Jackson Shrine minus the arm that's buried 20 miles to the west at a smaller shrine of its own.
In a January 5th book review of Still Standing: The Stonewall Jackson Story, also published in the local rag, Michael Aubrecht writes, "Most often neglected are his charitable efforts on behalf of local blacks, including the rarely discussed establishment of the first black Sunday school in Lexington. Truly Jackson was more than just a military commander. He was a paternal deliverer of black literacy and was instrumental in aiding those seeking the teachings of the Christian doctrine."
The word 'paternal,' is rather pregnant, don't you think? How is it that a man could lend his brilliant tactical leadership to a cause devoted to enslaving a people to whom he was simultaneously delivering the precious gift of literacy?
That very point was discussed last month at the annual Council of the Episcopal Church of Mississippi. According to Charles Reagan Wilson, Professor of History at the Univesity of Mississippi, while the Bishop of the day, William Mercer Green, "was glad to educate slaves and bring them into the church believing that faith in Christ would ultimately save them from their savage ways - his work blurs the line between hero and villian," since, "it was not (the slaves) choice what religion they were converted to," and the "work lent an air of legitmacy to slavery."
The NY Times reported an incident in January where vandals broke in and trashed Robert Frost's farmhouse in Vermont. A few days ago, it was reported in Massachusetts that two men are accused of burining down the birthplace of 'Mary had a Little Lamb' nursery rhyme author, Mary Elizabeth Sawyer. While no one in Virginia is about to dig up Stonewall's arm, we might find in another five years, it's buried under a 7-11. The South where I live blurs lines between a dedication to the preservation of a mythic symbolism and a willingness to be swamped by riches generated from the relentless march of development.
Spurred on by this paradox, I've researched other enduring symbols of Southern culture. One such is the frequency of Riding Lawnmower DUI (RL-DUI), a sub-culture where country singer George Jones is both pioneer and gold standard, and against whom all subsequent contenders must be measured. Recent RL-DUI stat's, I've exhaustively unearthed, and verified, utilizing a painstakingly scholarly methodology, reveal, of 38 incidents, reported over the past year, 34.21%, or fully one third of all RL-DUI, still occur in the South. The two highest competitors, the Midwest, and multiple countries overseas (mostly European), tie at precisely 21.05%; the North comes in at 13.16%; the West trailing, at 10.53%.
The only two Horse-borne RL-DUI, reminiscent of glory days past, are exclusive to the South, as well as being the home of more Golf Cart DUI's then anywhere else. (Surpisingly, none of the three slower-paced electric scooter RL-DUI were Southern, where as you might have expected post-PDO Floridians to contribute at least one case.)
Thus, the South lives on, in our hearts and minds, as exemplified by the gentleman I spotted the other day wearing post-operative hospital booties as sandals. There's a spirit here which can never be extinguished even while our landscape undergoes massive upheaveal.
When I drive the beloved backroads of the Virginia countryside, I often wonder if I could have fought compartmentally, in terms of naming it a 'home-state invasion, to preserve this beautiful landscape which enriches my soul, knowing I was also contributing to the preservation of that Southern 'peculiar' institution. Looking back, upon the past few weeks, when we discussed Vichy; examining the photographs of the leading French generals, even in their grandest uniformed finery; they look sheepish, as if they knew all along what they were doing was wrong even as they justified doing it in the name of national post-country preservation. They couldn't evade the rotten smell as much as they endeavored to disguise it.
If we skate on the surface, without noticing what lies under the ice, try as we might, the smell of fish will always rise.
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