EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 VIOLENCE

The first time I ever saw a dead body that wasn’t a victim of old age, it made an impression on me. It was that of a Vietnamese man of maybe his late thirties. He had been found by a Marine patrol on a routine mission. He hung from a tree on Monkey Mountain in Vietnam on the South China sea. It was an area which I, myself, had covered on patrol.

The noose still hung around his neck as his body rested in a pickup truck bed on our Navy base. It was located next to an enlisted men’s club, so the drunks had a good time commenting as they passed it by.

Our leaders used it as a lesson for caution and strict obedience.

The village next to our base was especially quiet for the next few days.

What caused this death? Who knows?

Was it a warning as to who controlled this barren spot of real estate outside the City of Da Nang?

Was it punishment for a failure of courage?

Was it a warning to other villagers whose loyalties might waver?

Or was it, as I tend to think, simply the remains of a poor being who tired of living in a country that had been at war off and on for over 300 years?

Violence has its collateral costs.

It also always has its adherents.

Today in America, we read of violence again.

Political parties will “make hay” of it.

Special interest groups will frolic in unilateral explanations.

The media will know it has fuel for another week.

All of this will occur, though, while families mourn and America bows her head in shame.

Confession Time

I’ve never physically assaulted anyone. Never intended to. Don’t intend to now. I’m always amazed at reports of men abusing their wives. Oh my. If I even thought of it, “Mr. Louisville” would come out from under the bed and I’d be heading for the nearest “hidey-hole.” Even if I intimidated my way out of it, there wouldn’t be a spot in the most desolate place on the planet where I could ever get a night’s sleep. That’s all there is to that.

Anyway, I’ve never thought in terms of violence to settle affairs. That’s what communication is for. I have this deep-seated belief—you don’t have to agree—that people who are prone to violence are those who lack skills in communications. I always wanted to talk them into setting up public speaking courses for prison inmates and warmongers, but that’s another story for another day.

Today … it’s confession time.

Yes, dear reader, there was once in my life when I contemplated violence against one of my human brothers. Please don’t tell the Galilean. I only think about it today because of yesterday’s news. A man pretty much devoid of admirable qualities died. Oh, you should have seen the vitriol heaped upon him in social media. Wow.

I subscribe to the Latin homily, De mortuis nil nisi bonum. It has been translated as:
- Speak only good of the dead
- Speak nothing but good of the dead
- Of the dead speak kindly or not at all

According to the tradition, the author of this sentence is Chilon of Sparta, one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. Its quoted source now includes about every philosopher produced by ancient Greece or Rome. Nonetheless, I found myself also thinking, yesterday, of the Clarence Darrow quote (usually attributed to Mark Twain): "I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction."

Getting back to the topic of exacting violence on another human being, I have sinned, dear reader, at least in thought, and the Galilean did say that’s as bad as doing it.

It happened this way.

In the spring of 1966, the Draft Board caught up with me. I was living, quite by accident, in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco and working for Babcock and Wilcox on Mission Street at the foot of the Oakland Bay Bridge. No problem with the draft. I’d suffered from, and been treated for, asthma as a child. I’d simply contact the clinic wherein I was treated and have the records sent to that obnoxious board. Alas … the son of my original physician was now running the clinic. He let me know that my records had been destroyed and that I should feel honored to serve my country.

Well, crap.

Acquainted as I was with the news, I ran, I think literally, down to the recruiting station and joined the Navy on a six-month delay. Something was bound to happen in that length of time.

It didn’t, and in December I found myself on a plane headed for San Diego and Navy Boot camp. I had this hangover, see, generated by well-meaning but thoughtless friends. It was not your regular hangover, but one where you would sell your mother to Joe Stalin if he would only make it go away. We got there, and they took us in. They put me with 60 of the sorriest looking misfits I had ever seen. As someone said yesterday, compared to them, I was the Messiah, despite my condition.

Next morning, I still had the hangover at breakfast. I had the hangover and piled atop it were tons of regrets. What had I done? I tried to look at my meal but only saw sorrow and despair heaped high in front of me. Oh, did I mention we hadn’t bathed?

That’s when it happened.

A bright-eyed and freckled-faced recruit from somewhere in Texas looked up from the table, and announced to us all, as if it were a message from God, “One thing I can say about this here Navy, they give you all the sweetmilk you want for breakfast.” With that, and I'm not making this up, he raised his glass as in a toast.

My mind filled with images of torn limbs, spouting arteries, and coffins. I’ve always believed that only the physical limitations created by the lingering hangover prevented my violent thoughts from taking action.

I’ve thought often that I would still be in Leavenworth had I followed my inclinations. But, since I later reconciled with my (now) beloved United States Navy, I also think about the fact that, had I followed my alternative and sought OCS in the Army, I’d probably now just be remembered as a name on a wall somewhere. So, I’m glad I didn’t murder anyone, however justified it might have been.

There. Now how many “Hail Mary’s” do I need to say?

I even "friended" some
of my shipmates.

It wouldn’t be seemly not to write about new years and new beginnings today. Everyone else is doing it, so why not? It’s colder than a pimp’s heart outside so there’s not much else to do. Here goes.

Two New Year’s Days stand out with me.

I have to start with January 1, 1940. That’s the day George and Mabel von Tungeln quit picking cotton and became grocers. They had been sharecropping and caring for a year-old daughter near the community of Ladd, Arkansas when Daddy went to town in their ancient panel truck one day and came back with a hog. There may have been a beer or two involved. They never said.

Long story short, they sharpened table knives that night, butchered the hog next day, and he began “peddling” meat in Pine Bluff to delighted customers who had bought from his father. One hog led to another and they saved enough to buy a small grocery on “The New Warren Road” leading south out of the city. They operated it until January 1, 1980.

As for me, I’ve tried to count, and I think I’ve been to three New Year’s celebrations in my life. Been up a few times, some by choice, some by orders from the military or greater authority. The most alarming must have been January 1, 1968 when I was pulling guard duty in a tower at Camp Tien Sha near Da Nang, Vietnam. It overlooked Tien Sha village where all was quiet then save the periodic scream of a baby. Guys said rats would bite them, but I don’t know. Behind me stretched row after row of barracks.

I carried an assault rifle. Security forces received one. I hadn’t been in-country long so I think I was still carrying an M-14. It was heavy, but I preferred it to the early M-16s for it would actually shoot if you pulled the trigger. Anyway, it was a support base, and very few others qualified to carry weapons. No problem for them. A person could hitchhike to a dismal settlement near the Da Nang Air Force Base, a dark and dangerous place nicknamed “Dogpatch” by the GIs. There, a serviceman could purchase near anything he wanted. Though not the hottest selling product therein, guns were available, courtesy of a holy triad consisting of the United States military, supply officers, and the Black Market.

If you didn’t want to make the trip, there was a guy in our company who would get you one.

Back to Camp Tien Sha. I had just come on the “mid-watch,” a miserable assignment designed to protect the base from midnight until 0600. That’s it: 0600. The Navy didn’t add “hours” like the lesser services do.

I relieved the post early for some reason. Maybe so the other guys could sneak a beer of two before “hitting the rack.” Maybe so I could get settled down for the transition. I expected some racket, but the combined imaginations of Jules Vern, Stan Lee, and J. K. Rowling couldn’t have prepared me for what came next.

Remembering back, I’m sure that every sailor on that base suddenly had a weapon in his hand firing away, some on full automatic. They were aiming at the village and not at me, but the bullets didn't know that, or care. The racket was awful, but not so awful that I couldn’t hear rounds zipping by me. That's when I detected an anomaly. Guard towers are designed to protect from frontal assault. The rears are open to provide access. Oh my.

What to do? A combination of alcohol, nostalgia, black-market weapons, pent-up anger, and an American serviceman’s natural penchant for irresponsibility had me trapped. I dropped to the floor of the tower and assumed a fetal position. To hell with heroic death postures.

There had been inklings of some sort of trouble in January, nothing to worry about we were assured. We had been issued flak jackets, though, and I positioned mine toward the tower’s opening. I thought about climbing over the front wall and clinging against the sandbags until the “celebration” was over. Then I thought about what a marvelous time this would have been for a surprise attack. Hundreds of drunk sailors firing at random, and at anything, would have done “the heavy lifting” and a few dozen VC could have simply strolled in past the bodies and rounded up the survivors.

It lasted a good while. The perpetrators didn’t have to account for their ammo. It had evaporated in the impenetrable dungeons of military accountability long ago. There were roving security guards, but they were bunched up at Headquarters and would have charged an NVA regiment rather than deal with the merry makers outside. Some of the old-timers later said it scared them as much as a mortar attack. Who knows?

I lived. To tell the truth, however, I’ve never been much of a gun nut since. It's fine if you are. But pardon me if I don’t care to hear about the latest addition to your semi-automatic rifle collection. Forgive me if I don’t appreciate the fact that your wife now has her own Glock, or that it is pink. Excuse me if I don’t care that your ten-year-old son just killed his first deer, or that you load your own shells. And I don’t particularly care how worried you are that somehow the federal government is going to take away your assault rifle.

They took away mine in 1968 and it was the happiest … no, the second happiest, day in my life.

Happier times: post Da Nang.

Morning Thoughts: November 6, 2017

Once again, we are numb. As a Charlie Chaplin character, a certain Monsieur Verdoux, said, "One murder makes a villain. Millions a hero. Numbers sanctify.”

He was talking of war, but the boundaries between outright war and everyday life blur more each day.

It takes more than one murder to transfix the news for us now. We are that inured to the insanity. We learn of the act. We become transfixed and attentive, not for the threat to the soul of America, but for a sign that our side is right. We then look at the numbers. Are there any new records set?

Then we look for the location and assure ourselves that the dangers lies nowhere near us.

For a tragic and alarming percentage of us, we await the identification of today’s monster. Will that person’s background fit some position they hold? Can they profit politically?

Perhaps, as we stand closer than ever in our planet’s history, to the final planetary war, or environmental implosion, these minor warmups, no matter how transfixing they are on the micro scale, serve to divert or prepare us for the macro disaster.

It seems as, in the words of Matthew Arnold, “I, on men’s impious uproar hurled, think only as I hear them rave, that peace has left the upper world, and now sleeps only in the grave.” And of all our nation’s populace, I’m the only person who has no idea of a solution.

One group demands a cure that will never happen. Their demands only strengthen and further enrich those who don’t agree with them. The barriers grow more strongly constructed. Where leaders once spoke, following tragedies, to heal, comfort, and provide hope, they now speak—or in more cowardly fashion, tweet—for political gain.

We insert the insipid phrase “thoughts and prayers” as a universal balm that replaces reason, analysis, and action. One can only wonder at the result, had FDR simply offered thoughts and prayers to those who lay at the bottom of Honolulu Bay, and their families, or to the farmers starving to death on the plains comprising the Dust Bowl.

I’m left, once again, with the pure and sanctified knowledge of one sure thing, following yesterday’s tragedy. There is one certainty on which we may count in the near future:

Nothing will happen except that we will receive more mind-deadening facts. We will do nothing, learn nothing, agree on nothing. Our addictions to violence and the tools of violence are simply too great. The desire for political and monetary benefits profound in our culture now, and they demand profound disagreements.

Which of these great philosophers is right?

“Das ist die Dämmerung der Götter.” - Richard Wagner

“So long, it’s been good to know you.” – Woody Guthrie

“Wherever human beings are concerned, trend is not destiny.” - René Dubos

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.” – William Faulkner

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” – Helen Keller

“I have a dream …” Marin Luther King, Jr.

“… choose you this day whom ye will serve …” – The writer of Joshua 24:14-15 KJV

Is in up to each of us" So be it. As for my family and me, we choose peace, hope, and compassion.

.

Sailing To Oblivion: October 2, 2017

Some mornings I feel downright ashamed of myself. This was one. I'll explain.

You see, sometimes I can’t sleep about three in the morning. I tend to worry.

What do I worry about? Oh, real important stuff like whether I’ll get around to mowing a strip of pasture on the farm before first frost. Yeah, and about the patch of roofing that needs repair, and a door latch that needs replacing. Then there is this magazine deadline due soon and I haven’t thought of a topic. And don’t forget the couch we need to move. Did the autopay work for the credit card this month? Gosh, I need to order some tractor parts. Should we economize to protect our retirement savings or splurge a bit? Neither of us has ever experienced bad health. What if it came now? We live pretty well, but what if suddenly we couldn’t, for some unknown reason?

I’ve even been known to imagine that I hear “the eternal footman snicker.”

Sometimes, with these heavy, yea almost epochal, concerns weighing on me, I simply get up and listen to music while I read or catch up with the news on the internet. After all, who could sleep with such cosmic concerns worming around in his mind? I must be carrying far, far more than my fair share of the weight of the world on my shoulders.

First, let’s get some Schubert playing on YouTube, just the thing for my beleaguered psyche.

Then I turn to the news, like this morning. The headlines flashed. I gasped, read more, and wept for my country. In short, I was ashamed.

Will it ever stop?

Growing Up Southern: August 22, 2017

There once was this lonely tombstone in the middle of a cotton field not far from where Brenda’s parents lived. It’s gone now, physically gone. The memory of it disappears as well, nibbled away by the relentless and uncaring apathy of time. Too bad, it makes an interesting story.

It seems there was a stranger that came to the vicinity of Lonoke, Arkansas sometime after the Civil War. People knew very little about him, except for the fact that he evidently “got into a scrape” with someone in town.

They fought a duel with knives, supposedly, at a place still called the “Doc Eagle Bridge,” although the original bridge disappeared years ago. The local man killed the stranger. I don’t know what happened after that except that they buried him a few miles away and erected a tombstone. I’m not even sure it had a name on it.

Over the years, they began raising cotton around the site of the grave, but left a small area around the gravesite unplowed.

When we were first married, Brenda and I, cheap dates were the only ones that fit our budget. A favorite, cheap date that is, involved walking plowed fields looking for Indian artifacts that would rise to the surface after a spring rain. Our first dog, a mutt named Jeremiah would help us look if we promised to buy him an ice-cream cone later. They only cost a dime back then and he was a big help.

Yeah, well, it passed for fun in those days: pre-social media, cell phones, internet and all.

A favorite spot to look was along a wetland called “Baker’s Bayou.” It had apparently provided a popular camping area for the original inhabitants of our country. Later, a state archeologist would point out on a map for us several known encampment sites. Thereafter, we would classify the artifacts we found by the various locations.

One lay near the grave of the unknown duelist. I can still recall the quiet, peaceful spot standing out among the small stalks of cotton like the remnant of some ancient vegetation ritual. But, as each year passed, the unplowed spot marking the gravesite grew smaller. I’m sure it was troubling to have to plow around the grave.

Then one late spring it disappeared completely. The entire site was plowed and the tombstone was gone. I’ve often wondered what happened to it. I like to think that it sits in a corner of some dusty old barn somewhere, and new generations of grandchildren still hear the story about the stranger who came to the area to lose his life, a story perhaps accompanied by a warning concerning the non-efficacy of violence.

I don’t know. It just seems interesting that beneath a stretch of lonely farmland lies a rich history of the earliest inhabitants of the land, and those who came along later. It’s just something to think about.

The Happy Artifact Hunters Three

Reconciliation: 23

Old sayings are just that, but some are true, like “The chickens will come home to roost.” I’m afraid we are due for some arrivals in this country. These comings home may not be pretty.

For example, I fear we will pay a price for our present obsession with violence. I often udpdate the lessons from Europe in the 1930s and 40s with my own status. To wit:

First, they came for people of color, but I’m white.

Then they came for the poor, but I’m white and male, meaning I was born with enough advantages that poverty was easy to avoid.

Then they came for the women who dared speak out, or take control of both their destinies and their bodies.

Now they are coming for news reporters. I’m not one, but my courage will be tested for I have friends who are, and I respect the profession. Will I stand tall when the time comes? I wonder. I even made up this little bit of doggerel to express my concern:

I can’t but wonder how brave I’ll be.

When they come for my friends, but not for me.

Oh, they’ll come for me eventually. They’ll even come for my friends who don’t share my political beliefs. You see, they are all good people who simply have a different view of governance, and good people will surely be on the list. Goodness and decency are so rare as to make headlines lately.

Another returning “chicken” will be the price we will pay for the coming annihilation of public education in our country. My darkest nightmare is a world like that described in The Time Machine, the 1895 novel written by H.G. Wells. In his imagined world, there exist, above ground, the gentle but clueless and helpless Eloi, food for the underground monsters, the Morlocks. It is a world reduced to ignorance and violence.

Why one of the richest families in our state, along with the owners of our only statewide newspaper and our present Secretary of Education, would seek a future of this sort is a mystery. Perhaps it would leave just enough room for computer operators and worker drones, along with the very rich and the mercenary warriors necessary to guard the belongings of the rich. Who knows?

I’m just glad I won’t be part of it.

In religion, I fear that, in this country, we will pay a price for the abandonment, by so many, of the Social Gospel in favor of the Prosperity Gospel. The life and words of the Gentle Galilean can be twisted into a powerful and destructive tool by the greedy and uncaring.

We are seeing now the beginnings of the chickens of “hate media” coming home to roost. Those with any knowledge of history are increasingly horrified.

But why worry? The planet is going, by all current indications, to get us first. That chicken isn’t coming home to roost. It is coming home to exact the Sixth Extinction.

Oh, and have a nice Sunday.