What the hell, I'll put it on her anyway. What are they going to do, kick me off?
Closer to God
Hakuna Matata
III
The reinforced double-steel door of the underground parking lot slowly retracted sideways across our view. It was too impossibly heavy to rise vertically. We sat waiting in the Pajero, DCM next to me in the passenger seat and Burt just behind her. Staff Sergeant Stevens pushed another button and rock barriers at the top of the drive began to sink into pre-formed slots. He held up one hand, watching the stones, until they were gone, replaced by metal grates that snapped loudly into place. His hand moved and became a salute. The kind only a Marine is capable of making. I nodded at the man, putting the Nissan into gear. Mrs. Haggerty waved to him, as well, but I knew the salute was intended for me. I smiled my appreciation. His arm came down. He pointed at the windshield as I drove by. I looked at the small white card under the wiper, then reached my hand around through the open window and claimed it.
Bright afternoon sun had replaced the rain, and a cooling wind blew through the Pajero’s open windows, as we waited to take a left onto Limuru Road. Traffic was heavy, and Kenyan’s gave no quarter when it came to driving. We plunged into the melee but didn’t have far to go. Muthaig’s crowning feature was the Safari Park, Kenya’s only real five star hotel with any local flavor.
We waited to take the turn into the hotel.
“May I call you Joyce?” I asked.
“No, you may not,” the DCM shot back, not looking at me, instead examining the wedding band still located on the appropriate finger of her left hand. “You can call me Joan,” she relented. “I hate the name Joyce.”
“You look terrific, Joan,” I said, quite truthfully.
“Fuck off,” Joan stated, her voice evidencing disgust, “don’t try your smooth, urbane, man-of-the-world crap on me.”
I checked the rear view mirror, to see Burt trying to cover his smile with one hand. He avoided my eyes.
“Thank you,” she followed up, unaccountably. The woman was confounding me. I was afraid to speak, but felt somehow, that she wanted me to say something.
I was in a verbal minefield.
“How long have you been divorced?” I tried, figuring that almost every divorced person I had ever met loved to talk about the divorce, and how rotten the other person was.
“None of your God damned business,” she hissed, massaging her wedding band hand, but looking out the side window. I waited for more, but nothing came.
“Two years?” I offered.
“Two years?” she turned on me, speaking the words loud enough to make me raise my right shoulder and wince. “Two years? What kind of idiot are you? Oh, I almost forgot, you’re a spook. One of those Southern-Fried-Chicken-University types who populate Langley. What’d you major in, Bo Weevil Mating? If I’d been divorced for two years, do you think I’d still be the DCM for that idiot?” Spittle hit my cheek.
I heard a barely audible giggle from behind me, but I didn’t look in the mirror. I finally hustled the Pajero through the broken ‘tiger-teeth’ jam of the opposing traffic.
“Ah, no,” I blurted out to her series of questions, driving as fast as I could manage to get to the hotel as quickly as possible.
“No, what?” she yelled. “No, you have a degree is something else, like maybe Burro Husbandry, or ‘Poor-White-Trash’ farming?” I shook my head, in agony.
The huge pyramidal structure of the Safari Park main building appeared and I headed the car for it like it was a laser-guided smart bomb. Supposedly the willow reed thatched buildings had been designed with clues taken from native Kenyan hovels, but in truth, there was nothing in the country that looked like the place.
Without meaning to, I skidded the Pajero to a halt directly in front of the lobby, and jumped out. I moved around the vehicle to get Joan’s door, but one of the bellmen had already attended to that. She stood waiting. Burt was out and leaning against the back fender, as if ready to enjoy more of the show. The show being my complete humiliation.
Joan headed straight for the lobby. I followed closely behind her, noting how powerfully she strode, her black pumps clicking loudly across the tiled floor of the entrance. Burt ran into me, because I had run into Joan. She had stopped too suddenly for me to avoid her. The three of us grabbed one another and swayed.
“Oh great, slimed by a Halloween spook,” she exclaimed, pushing herself from my fumbling grasp.
“Would you stop that?” I said, as quietly as I could to her retreating back.
“Look what happened to the last guy who got outed on your watch?” I followed up. She flinched, but kept walking.
“Good one,” Burt whispered behind me, which made me frown.
We trailed behind the fast moving woman through the lobby and out the back, around a great blue pool surrounded with palm trees of all sizes, and on past the cascading series of wonderful waterfalls that gave all the interior rooms of the establishment a special serenity. The Hilton, and the Sarova hotels have better rooms than the Safari, but none can come close to matching its ambiance. I knew where we were headed. The Nyama Choma Ranch Restaurant was the only thing left between us and the Muthaiga jungle forest. It was simply the finest African food restaurant in Kenya. Nothing else was close. I yearned for an Ostrich steak covered in Monkey-brain gravy. No monkeys involved, of course. Its only a name.
Under one side branch of the falls I caught a flash of movement. Then it was gone. It had been part of a head, sticking out of the bushes, viewing our arrival. I slowed. Burt stumbled into me. I was a little shaken, as I came to a stop, while Joan disappeared into the opening of the restaurant.
“What?” Burt inquired, backing up a step.
“I wouldn’t take an oath on it, but I think the Lebanese just checked us out from beyond the falls.” The water pouring down upon the rocks made talking difficult, but Burt got my message. He turned automatically, putting a palm trunk between himself and the falls.
“You still got that hand cannon under your coat?” I asked, remaining in the open. If we had walked into an ambush no thin palm tree was going to save us.
Burt nodded, but did not make any moves to access it.
“Got anything else?” I asked, feeling a bit naked.
Burt showed me three fingers, held down at his side. Special Forces hand chatter. I always liked the one where the leader takes two fingers of one hand and aims them at his own eyes, so everyone will look at him. In practice, however, I’d found that the gesture, like so many, was all for show. Anybody who could see the gesture was already looking.
“Three?” I said, in amazement. “The Mau Mau’s were put down in 1960, for Christ’s sake. Give me anything small.”
Burt leaned down by genuflecting on right knee, hand sweeping back to flick the bottom of his pant leg upward. Quickly and smoothly, like an unfolding python, the thick muscular man rose up and delicately inserted a .45 Caliber AMT automatic into my open left hand. I stuck it immediately into my front trouser pocket. The five shot auto was small, yet as thick as a full blown Colt. The bulge was noticeable, but I had little choice. Klingon’s preferred to die fighting in combat, or so they said on Star Trek, and I was not going down unarmed.
“What does it mean?” Burt whispered, his eyes never leaving the area of the falls.
“I don’t know. Not good. What would he come here for? If Haggerty decided on Executive Action, then why would the man come where the man is? He’s a U.S. Ambassador, for God’s sake. And how would he know where he was? I haven’t been able to make sense out of anything since we were out there on the Serengeti.” Joan came back out of the restaurant, looking even more impatient then when she’d walked in.
“What the hell are you doing?” she hissed, clicking up to us.
“Admiring the falls,” I covered.
“Oh great, a gay spook and his cultured Troglodyte,” she complained, in exasperation. “Paul’s in there having lunch with one of his mysterious companions.
Should I announce you or do you want to make a grand entrance?”
“We’re coming. Please show us the way,” was all I could say. The woman did not elicit lengthy response, not without dealing out considerable pain.
“What’s a Troglodyte?” Burt asked, from behind. I was about to answer when I had another thought. I stopped again, this time with the four-top table, where the Ambassador sat with some unidentified white male, in sight. “Back out Burt, this could be a hit on Haggerty.” Why else would the Lebanese not take a taxi home, but instead head straight for his antagonist. Who was the Lebanese? He’d acted as prey, very convincingly, but he wasn’t acting that way anymore. Burt backed up to the restaurant entrance, and then disappeared into a hidden alcove. I moved to Joan’s side at the table.
“What’s this?” Paul said, slowly getting to his feet. He stared at me in surprise, and recognition. I stood stunned. The man could only have recognized me if he had a file photo. I relaxed a little as I realized that someone might have called him from the embassy. Cell phones worked amazingly well in Nairobi. I didn’t carry one but I was willing to bet that Burt had three or four under his “Q” designed safari rig.
“Sit,” I commanded the DCM, pulling out a chair for her. She hesitated.
“There’s danger here, sit and act like everyone else,” I continued. She took the chair. I sat at the one next to her, across from the two men. The Ambassador joined us.
“What,” he began, but I held up my right hand. I slid my left hand into the .45 pocket at the same time. The automatic was double action, I knew. In the silence over the table a distinct metallic click sounded. The automatic was off safety. All four of us sat frozen.
“You can worry about me later Paul,” I said, conversationally. “The same Lebanese, the subject of our attention a few hours ago, was out by the falls a few minutes ago. I let him off near the airport, where he was supposedly going to go into hiding. I might have erred and cost you your life, but I don’t want Joan here, or your friend, to go out with you. What do you think?” The waiter came over and placed water, without ice, in front of both Joan and I. We sat in silence.
“Ah, how sure are you,” Paul began to ask, but I cut him off.
“This is the Choma, and the waiter just brought us glasses of water, not bottled water like you have.” I smiled, wondering if the man would get it, as I prepared to go to the floor and attempt to crawl behind some nearby decorative rocks. If anybody opened up I could count on Burt to provide intense covering fire, but his ammo wouldn’t last long. The only safety might be found in staying less than a foot off the ground. An assassination at such a notable hotel and restaurant would have to be over in seconds. Surviving the first few seconds would be everything.
“The waiter’s not a waiter?” Joan said in a low tone, her voice shaking. “What have you done Paul? What are we in?”
“Alright,” the Ambassador said, ignoring his ex-wife and speaking directly to me. “Maybe I was wrong about you. I apologize. What do we do?”
I was amazed. The man was apologizing for attempting to kill me. I sighed.
Being an operational agent for the Agency could not be taught in schools or learned in books. It was too bizarre for that.
“We leave. Slowly, without fanfare, you move toward the kitchen over there Paul, while your friend heads for the washroom in back. Joan, you’re going out all the way to the street, where you’ll wait in the Pajero. You drive. I’m going to knock my silverware onto the floor, then lean down to pick it up. If there’s fire, then you all drop and stay where you are, without moving at all. If there’s fire, it‘ll probably be at me, here at the table, where they intended to shoot. The silverware hitting the floor is your cue. Got it?” Nobody said anything. “Tell me you got it?” I instructed.
Joan murmured something, while Paul and his companion said yes at the same time. I pushed my fork onto the floor. It hit with the sound of a ringing bell.
Everyone moved. I went to one knee, then leaned under the table and fell to my stomach, turning to bring the .45 out and up. I had no more time than that. The phony ‘waiter’ stepped out of the bushes holding an old-fashioned double barrel shotgun. The ends of the barrels looked huge, as he stood only two feet over me.
My AMT was only inches from his stomach. I laid there, looking up into his eyes while taking all the slack, and a little more, out of the .45’s trigger. Slowly, he moved the shotgun aside, cocking his head, as if in question. I gave him back the thinnest of smiles, wondering what Burt was thinking, since he wasn’t doing anything. The man stepped back into the bushes and was gone. I breathed for the first time since I’d hit the floor. I then crawled to the front of the restaurant, right past the host at the front desk. He looked down at me in amazement, until he saw the automatic in my hand. Then he dropped down and disappeared.
I got up and began loping back through the areas of the falls and pool. I saw nothing of anyone, save a few tourists laying near the water or taking pictures of everything around. At the main entrance I paused to observe some kind of film crew who were set up down near where cars circled to let people off. The Pajero idled near their large, tri-pod mounted, camera. Several large Caucasian men milled nearby, and one long-haired young woman. The passenger door snapped open. I saw Joan at the wheel and Burt’s hand sticking out from releasing the door. I jumped in.
“I think we’re gonna be famous,” I said, but nobody laughed.
Joan jerked the Pajero into gear and tore off back around the circle, headed for the traffic mess on Limuru Road. “What happened back there?” she asked.
I was about to answer her when Burt made a comment.
“The woman. I saw her. At the airport in Joburg. I think she was on my flight.”
I twisted around to face him, letting go of my seat belt.
“You flew direct from Johannesburg, and she was on the flight?”
Where where you flying to? You came down from Lake Victoria.”
I watched the big man closely. I had come to trust him, but I didn’t know just how far yet.
“Zurich. Then Zurich to down here. I met Walt up at the falls, to check it out. We had a couple days.”
“Shit,” I said, out loud, turning back to face Joan. “Pull down into the traffic, and then stop. Burt and I are getting out. You take the car to the embassy. You should be alright. I pulled Staff Sergeant Steven’s card from my shirt pocket.
Give me your cell phone number.” I took out my pen to write.
“Are you crazy? You’ll get killed out there. All this because somebody was on the same plane? And that whole restaurant thing? You’re looney and paranoid, and maybe dumb as a post.”
“The number,” I repeated, patiently. “There was a guy with a shotgun at the restaurant. I think he was there for your husband.”
“Double gun.” Burt added, from the back seat. I looked back to him in question.
“Looked like one of those Holland and Holland things. Big bore.
Elephant gun.”
I whistled. A gun like that would sell for a cool twenty-five thousand dollars, if not more. Whoever was involved in the mess we’d stepped into was very well heeled. And that was bad news indeed.
“He’s telling the truth?” Joan asked of Burt, her voice going up.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied. “Donner is the best there is. Not well liked, but the best there is.”
I would have commented but the back window of the Pajero blew out, along with the rear driver’s side glass. There had been no sound, except the whoosh and tinkle of breaking glass. Joan screamed, then drove recklessly right out into the middle of Limuru Road. Cars, vans and trucks careened and honked, but no contact was made. The SUV stalled out. I looked out the back, through the gaping hole, over the seat where Burt crouched down. The camera crew had scattered to cars and vans, now fighting one another to get out of the narrow driveway.
“The Railroad Station. We’ll wait there. When I call you, come get us.”
I flew between the seats and shot out the driver-side passenger door, Burt behind me.
“Like hell I will,” Joan yelled, “and you don’t have my number.”
I stood and put my hand up against the flow of traffic, which flowed around us like a thick school, of metallic fish. I liked the woman. She was tough as iron and she wouldn’t abandon us after we’d stood up for her. She’d figure it out.
A red mini-van, with a strange hand-painted poster of The Lion King splashed across its front, screeched to a halt, almost touching my hand. A gold stripe ran around the van’s body. I’d stopped a Matata, one of the thousands that constantly prowled the streets of Nairobi. They came in three kinds, regular, gospel and teeny. The regular one’s were for regular people, like most tourists. The gospel one’s blared reborn gospel music at impossibly volumes. The teeny ones were even worse, pumping out acid rock and rap. The latter two were mostly for locals.
Joan got the Pajero started. She joined the traffic flow. The side door of the Matata opened and a young hand waved. Burt and I crawled inside. There were already three teens inside, plus the driver and his ‘conductor,’ who collected the fare. Matatas had gotten their name from their original fare of three shillings. Now, the prices were variable, going all the way up to fifty shillings or more. Fifty shillings being about seventy-five cents American. The Matata didn’t move. Teeny conveyances were weird. They would carry people they liked, or thought were cool for free, or not let you in at all if they didn’t like your look. I could tell that the conductor didn’t like our look.
“You got any money?” I asked Burt. He shook his head. I stared at the evil looking teenager in front of me, trying to ignore the blast of horrid rap coming out of the Matata’s speakers. We had to get the hell out of there. I took off the Omega and held it up.
“Omega, Speedmaster, Astronauts took to the moon, four thousand U.S.” I said. The kid looked at the watch.
“Sare,” he said, then grabbed the watch. Sare, I knew, meant ‘free’ in the local street slang called Sheng. The kids spoke it, like pigeon in Hawaii.
“Sare, my ass,” I responded, angrily. “Railroad Station, right now.”
I tried to see out the windows of the mini van, to see if our new band of followers were there. They had to be. But I also knew they’d never be able to stay on us unless, somehow, they’d been able to attach a GPS unit to our specific Matata. Not likely. Not likely at all.
Matatas were the locusts of Nairobi streets, and they were nearly indistinguishable in outer appearance. We drove Limuru toward Mombasa Road in a veritable sea of them, our vast overpayment of fare overwhelming the driver’s natural tendency to stop for anyone else. Our teenage riders stayed with us to the station, without complaint or comment.
“Who were those guys, anyway?” Burt asked.
“Don’t know,” I answered. “They’re Caucasian, all of ‘em, and I don’t think they’re with the Lebanese. They look like Agency. And they fired on us.”
Ironically, a piece from the Lion King soundtrack blared out from the radio. Hakuna Matata played. I looked around at my fellow passengers. They didn’t seem to get the irony at all. Then the words of the song hit me. “Hakuna Matata! It’s a wonderful phrase. It means no worries for the rest of our days.”
July 16, 2009 The Honorable Charles B. Rangel Chairman, Committee on Ways and Means U.S. House of Representatives 1102 Longworth House Office Building Washington, DC 20515
Dear Chairman Rangel:
On behalf of the Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association, I am writing to express our appreciation and support for H.R. 3200, the "America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009." This legislation includes a broad range of provisions that are key to effective, comprehensive health system reform. We urge members of the House Education and Labor, Energy and Commerce, and Ways and Means Committees to favorably report H.R. 3200 for consideration by the full House.
In particular, we are pleased that the bill: • Promises to extend coverage to all Americans through health insurance market reforms; • Provides consumers with a choice of plans through a health insurance exchange; • Includes essential health insurance reforms such as eliminating coverage denials based on pre-existing conditions; • Recognizes that fundamental Medicare reforms, including repeal of the sustainable growth rate formula, are essential to the success of broader health system reforms; • Encourages chronic disease management and care coordination through additional funding for primary care services, without imposing offsetting payment reductions on specialty care; • Addresses growing physician workforce concerns; • Strengthens the Medicaid program; • Requires individuals to have health insurance, and provides premium assistance to those who cannot afford it; • Includes prevention and wellness initiatives designed to keep Americans healthy; • Makes needed improvements to the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative that will enable greater participation by physicians; and • Initiates significant payment and delivery reforms by encouraging participation in new models such as accountable care organizations and the patient-centered medical home.
The AMA looks forward to further constructive dialogue during the committee mark-up process. We pledge to work with the House committees and leadership to build support for passage of health reform legislation to expand access to high quality, affordable health care for all Americans.
This year, the AMA wants the debate in Washington to conclude with real, long overdue results that will improve the health of America's patients.
Sincerely, Michael D. Maves, MD, MBA
We have just had another of those strange flight travel incidents, which nobody seems to be able to explain or resolve in any way. It seems that a Continental plane pulled into Rochester, Minnesota because of bad weather, then sat on the tarmac, about fifty feet from a gate, for twelve hours. Everyone involved has diligently and rationally absolved themselves of fault in this situation. Again. The passengers suffered pretty badly, with just one bathroom. That bathroom was clogged up and inoperable. No food and no drinks were served by the one flight attendant, while all this went on. The Airport says that the terminal was open and available, but the crew of the aircraft would have had to request clearance to dock. The Airline says it knows nothing at all about any of what went on. The crew of the plane says that the terminal was closed and they had no place to dock. That someone's lying here is being totally ignored.
But it is vitally interesting to listen to interviews of the passengers after they were finally deplaned. The succession of lies that they were told by the crew of that plane is unbelievable. It is almost of daytime soap opera caliber stuff. They were told that the terminal was closed. They were told, time after time, that they would be flying out very soon, until they started to be told that a bus was coming to take them back to Minneapolis (60 miles away). Then they were told that the bus had broken down. They were served nothing by the lone flight attendant, but a pack of self-serving lies. There was no bus. There was no flight clearance. The crew never contacted the terminal to ask for docking privileges. There could be only one motivation for all the lying and misrepresentations. Money. Why else would anyone perform like that crew performed?
Flight crews start getting paid as soon as they pull away from the gate. That crew was well into overtime pay while that plane sat there on the tarmac. Not only that, but the crew was using up hours of 'air' time which would give them time off in the weeks ahead, because of the way flight rules are structured within the industry. The passengers were 'gamed' by that crew. The media allows this to continue by not letting the public know about the true motivation behind this kind of miserable flight violation.
And you might think that the passengers kind of deserved what they got because they did not get violent or complain to the point of intolerance? Think again. Post 9/11. Yes, think TSA. Think about the expressions you yourself observe on many of the near-moronic faces of airport security 'officers.' You cannot, as a passenger, encounter flight personnel, or security personnel, with an 'attitude' anymore. You will be charged with a felony, and our ridiculously skewed court system will find you guilty. It happens more than three thousand times a year in this country. The passengers had to do what they did. They had to stay quiet and take the lies. They probably even knew that they were being lied to. And there is the cell phone issue I heard brought up this morning. Once you pull away from the gate you are not allowed to use your cell phone on the aircraft. Only the crew could give you permission to do that, and guess what. Yes, you guessed it. The crew said no cell phones.
The crew will not be fired or punished for their behavior. Anymore than Officer Crowley will be punished for his illegal harassment, humiliation and arrest of Professor Gates. In fact, they will all be rewarded. The flight crew will get the off time and overtime pay, while Crowley will get promoted and have some badly written book published. Some injustices that occur in our culture are actually rewarded. I am not sure why, exactly. Maybe it is just that Jupiter is in transit, or Venus is trining Mars. But, if the airlines do not stop supporting outrageous behavior committed by their flight crews, there will be an occurance of violence at some point. One of these days, or nights, an overheated and fully stuffed aluminum tube is going to explode like a bratwurst left too long on the grill. That coming event is so easily preventable, but, sadly, I don't think anything will be done. Our whole culture is sitting on the dock of the bay, watching .....
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A few days ago the media was reporting in the news that our forces in Afghanistan had killed a Taliban leader by the name of Mehsud. The reports came with detailed descriptions of the actual terminal event. It seems that Mehsud was spotted on the top of a home, sitting next to his second wife, by one of our Predators, Reapers or White Doves. That last designation is my term for these robotic flyers who fire missiles from beneath their wings. Missiles were launched and the house, with Mehsud and wife, was obliterated.
Are we at war with the Taliban? I thought that we were at war with Al Qaeda. I thought that we went into Afghanistan to get the Al Qaeda cells who had launched 9/11, and, in particular, the cell which contained Osama Ben Ladin. I thought that we fought the elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan to get them out of our way, in order to allow us to reach the followers of Al Qaeda. But then I was also led to believe that, eventually, we were fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq, until we changed the name of the opponents there to "insurgents." Now I just don't know.
Let's assume that we have to be at war with the Taliban. That assumption safely put where we can get back to it, let's take a look at the morality of killing the woman that was with him. We can even marginally presume that the guy on the roof of that building (Mehsud) when the predator struck down with six missiles was the Taliban leader we sought (there are many conflicting reports about that). But I want to write about that woman. Whoever she was. Were we at war with her when we executed her with full, willing and aforeknowledged intent? Nobody seems to care about this poor woman, blown to smithereens. Why not? Why is it that we keep getting reports that our White Doves shower down these missiles on all manner of people living in Afghanistan, and it is okay that many are not combatants at all? Who will cry for this woman?
I went to a party the other night. High class party. Everyone was higher class than I. My attendance was based upon the fact that I can usually be depended upon to engage in interesting discourse. The hostess of the party, when I was at a table deep in discussion about the Iraq war, said these words: "It's a war. Kill them all. Men, women and children. That's what war is. Kill them all." I looked at her. I like her. I want to be invited back to her parties. But I could not help myself. Quite forcefully I encountered her verbally: "I can understand your feelings, but I would like you to understand that this war should then have your husband and children laying here, dead at your feet, for you to have any comprehension of the enormity of what you just said." Even the mildest intimation that violence might be considered to be visited upon her, there in her own home, stopped the place dead for a moment. I still like this woman. I know that she is so very proto-American, however. She has not lived in those cities out there, humped those jungles, slogged across those deserts and certainly not spent any time with any of those wondrous cultures out there all over this planet. Those people are not people to her. Not like her husband and children. They are not even existent enough in her consciousness to be human beings.
They are very human to me. That woman on that roof who was blown to smithereens. That woman probably had a husband and children too. Maybe the husband is dead. But the children? If they survived the huge blast are they not thinking about enrolling in flight officer training as I write this? Or will that come later? I am not sure about that, the survival part, but I am deadly certain about the 'flight school' device I use here to describe the awesome hurt and hatred which will out itself one year soon. Where do you suppose all that emotion is headed?
And now, today, we have Fox and CNN running the same video of a White Dove watching some insurgents somewhere planting a bomb on a highway. The White Dove does what American White Doves do. It blows the living crap out of the insurgent. And it is all so very justified. And it all attempts to cloak a little secret that leaked out earlier in the day. The secret that we have designated fifty drug dealers in Afghanistan to be destroyed by our White Doves, came out this morning. You see, it is the drug dealers who are the sole remaining financiers of the Taliban. This, we are told very forcefully, then shown the video of a I.E.D. placing insurgent being killed again.
And where did we get out list of Taliban-loving drug dealers? Well, from our intelligence. Which takes us right back to the Monterey language school in Monterey, California. That is the language school the military uses to train our people to speak the languages of other countries so we will understand them. Without speaking the language, and isolated in a guerilla environment, we must depend upon local translators to tell us what people are saying. And to tell us the truth about it. How many graduates of Monterey have we turned out over the past few years who speak the languages of Afghanistan? I am willing to bet that the classified number is around ten, maybe twenty. So what we end up with is intelligence based upon what the locals are telling us. Remember those clowns from Iraq who supposedly gave us all that intelligence before this latest Iraqi nightmare? They lied to us time and again, and got paid hundreds of millions for doing it. We didn't find out about the lying for quite some time though. Today, in spite of the payments and lying, the chief-liar-in-charge of that crew is the Oil Minister of the country.
So here we are, killing supposed drug dealers, from the Wings of our Snow White Doves, all over the place. Do those drug dealer's have wives and family living with them? Or traveling with them? And what is the basis for assigning someone to this terminal hit list? The word of some locals, and very probably locals who would like a bit of the power that the person they are reporting on might have. I experienced this in Vietnam, in the field as a combat commander. Only after I was in country long enough to acquire some of the local language was I able to figure out that my "Kit Carson" local scouts were lying to me. That was after, by the way, we had already 'taken out' my scout's political opponents in a nearby village. The interpreters had, of course, indicated that they were V.C. (Viet Cong enemy, for you young people).
Why are we at war with the 'insurgents' in Iraq? Why are we at war with the Taliban? Why are we now killing drug dealers without true accusation or trial? Why have we allowed our assassination teams (as reported by Hersh) to rend and kill people all over the world on the basis of information which is worse than suspect? Why, if America does not like you, do you get visited, then carried away on the wings of Snow White Dove? I damn well think so. The hostess who invited me to that party probably thinks that this result is just fine with her. And I do not expect to be invited back, no matter how witty my 'House-like' commentary might be. But I have a problem with killing people willy nilly across the face of the planet and then expecting that we are not gong to be hated, vilified, and eventually hunted down ourselves.
It is hard for a Marine to say these words: "We must retreat." But retreat we must. We need to get our head and act together again. We need to stop locking up our own homeless, believing our own lies, and blaming the world out there for the problems we have here. If we were mentally healthy, as a culture, we would merely have absorbed the hit we took on 9/11, then made sure we caught up with Osama and his small band. We'd have rebuilt the towers and thumbed our nose at Silverstein in New York, or anybody else who got in our way (but we would not have struck down upon them with one of our White Doves!). With just the two trillion the Iraq and Afghan wars have cost us, and the seven or so years we've wasted, we could have bases upon the Moon, Mars and be running back and forth almost without limit. Now how could would that have been? You think the world might just be going; "God, but those American's are something else!" instead of "Those Yanks are bunch of violent imperialist creeps." And, finally, we would not have a huge crop of our young people coming home to kill themselves, or live their lives homelessly, drunk, drug-addicted and unemployed.
A new war for a new year. Go for it Jews! Nobody else is hogging the spotlight right now so we need new news. Our press has given up on Iraq and abandoned Baghdad to itinerant bloggers. Bloggers, We all know how accurate their (our) reports are! But then, whom are we writing to out there anyway? I wrote, this morning, about the fact that it is Monday the Thirtieth. Well, it is Tuesday, but my readership either got the joke or simply did not notice, or care. My attempt at geek humor. Failed, most probably. Maybe I will do better at the party tonight. The Jews are busting heads and kicking butt over there to beat the Jesus out of the Arabs. This time it is Hamas on the Gaza strip. Because they shot rockets into Israel. Now when have any of those countries, over there, not to mention, regions, tribes, communes or whatever, ever shot rockets at each other? When have they not shot rockets at each other? The neighbors of Israel are never ever going to get along with the Israelis. You see, with our, and other's, help following WWII, we took a chunk of that region and gave it to the Jews. We, and other's including the Catholic Church, felt guilty because we knew what the German's were doing to the Jews during the war and we didn't do anything about it. After the war we hung few Germans, but then also accepted a lot of them into this country because they had secrets and skills we needed. Guilt. So we did the right thing. We gave them somebody else's property. Yeah, the land was not unowned or unoccupied. We gave them property that other's still claim, and will always claim until there is not another breathing soul of the respective owner families alive. And so we have rockets, and now another war. "All is going well on the Oceanic Front." Will the Jews ever give fair compensation to try to settle the situation? No. They don't have to. They have nuclear weapons, for all the good that has done them. You think the Palestinian's are ever going to get over the loss of their property? Consider the feelings of the Native American's here. Or the Irish over there in Ireland. The Afghans. Even the Iraqi people. They want their land. And they make no bones about it....or a lot of bones.
Isn't Governor Rod doing great? It is like he is following the advice on my blogs. His new appointment. Terrific. What can they do? Deny him a seat? A black guy? In this current environment? A laughing dancing Negro that the Republican's love to hate? You go governor! "Make my day," the hair-dropped whacked-out Blago whispers to himself. He is not even aware that he is fighting for state's rights. He is fighting for opposition to the overwhelming dominance that Federal Prosecutors have had in this country for the last fifty years. Fitzgerald is now trying to release some of the Governor Rod tapes to his political opponents so they can impeach. He has already released them to the media, back on the first day. Attack back, Governor Rod. Go after that righteous man, meddling in the politics of Illinois for his very own personal benefit. Yeah, he wants to be the only person of integrity left standing. The best way to be that man is to tear everyone else down who might hold the crown. And he is doing it all using this screwed up system of justice that has wormed it's way right into the heart of our culture. Being legal is not necessarily being right. Or honest. Or caring. Or any of it. The hard financial times are coming, however, and they are bringing change. Obama is not bringing change there, he is merely the leader who is going to make us feel better while we go through it. And these changes coming, a lot of them will reduce righteous people back into the schoolyard bullies they came out of being, and set us free.
Maybe I will wear all of one color tonight, and keep my mouth shut. Or fairly shut. I am trying to fit in here, really. I don't even give this blog address out to local people. They might read it. And believe me. What good could that possibly do? I mean, if the big astroid is really coming on 12/21/12, and it is, then what good does it do to know that? Someone once said to me "your predictions are uncannily accurate and it is amazing that you can find out so much, but, why do all of your predictions have to be bad?" They aren't. But readers really only remember bad ones. It is how we are conditioned to survive. Hyper-vigilance never lost a tribe to the nomadic raiders of old. But the warriors who were hyper-vigilant died from stress and worry at young ages. But then, that is the lot of the warrior. I sometimes wonder, being one that has grown older, whether we don't spend those waning years, months, weeks, and days thinking about how we should really be among the fallen too. What are we doing here, still? Getting dressed in a yellow outfit (I am told it is yellow), getting ready to go out and alienate a bunch more people who live right in my back yard. Oh Israel...oh me....oh bother....
from-the-chateau-dif.blogspot.com
I have a party tonight. I have not been to a New Year's Party in twenty-five years. That kinda happens to you, or so I believe, if you have been a rolling stone. During those years I lived in places for maybe two, orsometimes three, years. You do not get to know people well over such a short period of time. But then, I have only been out here in the abandoned back-country for two years and I have a social life of some proportion. Which means I am wrong in my basic hypothesis. Not uncommon. So I have this party. And there is always the 'what in the world shall I wear' thing that occurs. I picked up my best sweater at the dry cleaners yesterday, but then there is the color issue. Since I am color blind I have a hard time putting stuff together, without causing those little side glances or raised eyebrows of fellow party-goers. And I don't look good enough. I know that because I have a big mirror in the bathroom. I know I look better than I do in that mirror, because everything is reversed in the mirror. I don't really look like that at all. Still. The effect is not pleasing. Not to me, anyway. But then, I am not trying to attract anybody so why do I care? Genetics. It is buried deep inside me somewhere. Maybe the Catholic upbringing. Maybe the Marine Corps (I sure looked good back then, although, and this is so typical, I did not think so at the time). I will do my best. The host is this wonderful guy, with a really neat wife, who expects that I will add some life to the party. In fact, Chris' exact words were "I think you will be great. Just be yourself. We don't care if nobody comes back next year." Then he went on to some other subject. I thought for a while about what he said. Am I that much of a character? I don't see myself that way. I think I am quite carefully held together. Even a bit urbane, maybe. But that is not how I am seen by others. Which is okay. I am used to that, a bit. Maybe I should include a muzzle with the rest of my outfit.
Brett Favre. God, is he a trip, or what? The coach of his team, the New York Jets, got shown the door yesterday. This is right after the owners, the day before, swore that they were not going to fire him. Our culture. You know, the one where everyone tells the truth all the time. So Brett does it again. Devastation follows wherever he goes now. He absolutely bombs his last four games with the team and the coach gets the sack. He blows the super bowl bid last year for the Packers and look what happens over there. I'll bet the coaches get the sack there too. In leaving, he made himself into the Favre Titantic. Everyone goes down with the ship. Except for Brett, of course. He gets a small dingy to sail away in, well stocked of course. Each year I wait for this old saw of a horse to be put out to pasture. He is the George Bush of football. Dumb as a post, spoiled rotten, and flapping his mouth all the time. Oh, as usual, the owners of the Jets are just begging Favre to come back next year. And those guys have quite a solid reputation for telling the truth. Maybe the football 'hero' can finally be left to travel by private jet across this land. Another modern idiot who has been given everything in the world that one can imagine, and for doing what?He throws a leather ball well. Maybe the coming financial crisis will change the way we look at such things and at such people. I don't know though. The games of Rome became more popular as Rome went down, not less.
Bob Herbert. Today he was not writing about stupidity, although, on the same page Judith Warner was being stupid again. Bob went on and on about just what a disaster George Bush has been for this country and the world over the past eight years. Gee, no kidding. The only thing the article lacked was retribution and recovery. We need the stuff back George stole, or helped steal. We need the culprits to be put in stocks and paraded around so people will feel better. We need to know what really happened (like who got tortured and what was done to them). We need to feed our puritanical and Calvinistic roots with the moisture of the blood from all those evil people. I fear, without such retribution and recovery, we are doomed. We must set our course based upon ideas. It is our belief system that has been so badly damaged. "He who has no target, hits same," kinda thing. Look at our space program, as an example. You really can plan to go backwards and design yourself out of the very thing you claim to be headed towards. Our design for the future, given to us by NASA recently, is just such a design. We will build some old Saturn Fives and shoot them off in all directions, for awhile. Maybe we will go back to the moon or on to Mars. Maybe not. The George Bush Space Program. Might just as well get first class tickets aboard Brett Favre's ship. And we will be doing the same thing with our whole culture if Obama, and team, just let this whole thing go and attempt to 'get on with business.' This is not about business. This is about our culture. Our tribe. This is about the belief system of an entire culture.
Well, you didn't, but I am going to write about it anyway. I have AT&T because I use an iphone, and that is the only plan you can have, unless you are gifted at 'unlocking' or 'jailbreaking' an imphone, which I am not. I do not like Apples arrangement with AT&T. Apple I have liked for years, and use all of their equipment. But I have begun to wonder about them when they pull stuff like this bundling with AT&T. You see, I was on the phone for thirty-six minutes, earlier this afternoon. Not to complain. Not to do anything weird. I just wanted to buy one of those little plug-in cards that will allow me to access the internet from anywhere with my laptop. It is called Ultra Express, the card, I mean. I already pay 182.00 a month for my cell phone service. The new thing would be an extra sixty bucks a month and some charge to set up the new card. Okay. I am ready to pay. But I cannot. I cannot because of what has happened across this country. AT&T is typical example of the problem. I spoke to four call centers. One in middle America, one in Missouri, one in Colorado and one in Canada. I was transferred all about in attempts to put me in touch with somebody who could help me buy the product and service. Camilla, in Missouri, was the last and the best. She really was trying, but she is working inside a system that is moldy and wormy from hopelessly complex non-working systems. The last person I got transferred to was just about ready to do the deed, when she accidentally hung up on me. I called back, but it was starting all over again, this time in Manila, or some such, gauged from the accent alone. When I said, this time, that I wanted an internet access Ultra Express to make my Apple Power Book go online, this woman said "What is that? An Apple what?" After saying "Dah," I hung up. No Ultra Express. No extra sixty bucks a month. I will just have to bang along as I have been doing without that stuff. When they say that the phone calls may be recorded I am used to be a little nervous. Now, when they say that i have a shred of hope that maybe someone will, indeed, listen in. But I doubt that.
We cannot go on like this. Not as a country. We cannot take care of what we have and we cannot expect to sell our products with this type of infrastructure. I am willing to bet, right now, and a lot of money, that if any of the cell phone companies of today offered service by phone, in person, at their home office, in the United States, twenty-four hours a day, they would take over the wireless business overnight! We are going back. Yes, whether we want to or not. These bean-counters who have moved in and taken over all of our big companies, have to go. They swept in and started cutting services. You cannot got to an electric company, gas company, telephone company, cable company, or any of them, and talk to anybody. They closed all their offices which had contact with the public. Instead they went online or offering call center phone assistance. Online is even worse than the phone. The sites are hopelessly mired in stupidity. You can't find what button to push or what page to go to next. And the call centers have to go. Out. And they will only be moved out by competition. Somebody has to make the first step. Then it will be a cascade. Bring on the coming financial crisis. So much has to change. There is so much uncaring, cold and mean service out here, the situation just makes you want it all to fall down. After my thing with AT&T I do not want their junk. i want the company to fail and something to take over that has a heart. That has a care. Yeah, i like my iphone, even if coverage out here is anything but what they promise. i live with, and expect that. Our country is a moving dynamic sales engine. It always sells things that do not work as well as advertised. We are so used to it we expect it.
What if we just change our expectations? Think about it.
The dead of winter. Every morning Harvey, my cat, puts me through the same ritual. He gets up, has a bite for breakfast (wherein he demands a new Fancy Feast can each day, whether he has eaten the old one or not), and then attempts to slip past me while I am making my sally out to get the papers. That never works because I am always ready for his not-so-subtle attempt. However, just after I begin to read the papers, with a cup of hot coffee on my chair arm and ABC's morning program on the tele, he begins his blatant sales presentation. Meow this and meow that. Sitting on the top of the chair, above my head, and swishing his tail into my face and eyes. He thinks he is a groundhog. But a new groundhog every day. He just has to go out there for five to ten minutes to reassure himself that it is still horrid and unlivable winter. I hate it. If I let him go, he instantly disappears somewhere. Behind a snowbank, under the pines or around a corner. He does it on purpose. I just know it. So then, after yelling his name, I have to go get dressed and search the great outdoors. No bath, shower, or shave. Just rough clothes on, boots without socks, coat without hat or gloves....and I am out there in it. You see, I can't just sit there and let him wander. It is too cold and too miserable. He knows all this, of course, being a cat and all. This morning I have slipped up here to get away from him. Besides, after checking out the front pages and the editorials I threw the papers down in disgust. Crap. It is a day of news crap.
There was a long article on how we just are not covering Iraq anymore, and with good reason. You must understand that the press has to spend it's dwindling funds covering stuff where something is happening. Iraq is passe'. Comparatively, not many American kids are being killed there. So we have closed all three network bureaus in Baghdad. We were out of there long ago anyway. Bush and team terrorized the media and booted them out a few years ago, along with bringing in the phony 'surge.' Now the rage is Afghanistan. That is where the new 'surge' is going to take place. So they are staffing up. The media only staffs up now to support the administration. They report what the Pentagon wants reported. Or they get dead or blown to hell and gone. Remember Jim Webb? He lipped off to George Bush, with respect to his son's service in Iraq, when he was only a few days in office two years ago (basically, he told the Commander in Chief that he had no business inquiring after his son). Mistake. When your son is controlled by that same guy, his life on the line because of where or what he might be exposed to, it is wise not to piss that guy off. And we have heard what from Jim Webb since he was elected? Nothing. Not a damn thing. He trotted out a bill to get Iraqi veterans preferred treatment for education purposes (at the expense of all veterans who came before) and that was it. What do you suppose the 'behind closed doors conversation' was like between Webb and the president's men later on? Webb still has a sock stuffed in his mouth, and will have until the end of January. Just an example of the naked power those people have to do just about anything they want. Cheney signed off on torture. Who cares? Not the media. And not the public because the public does not hear about it. Cheney says that the president is above the law in 'time of war' and the same thing happens. Nothing. Bush does his Howdy Doody imitation, day after day, giving final life to Letterman's special segments, and little else. He is above it. He has made his billions. They all have. Now they just want to go quietly and keep the billions.
William Kristol, one my favorite sleaze pundits (not of the caliber of that slug Bill Bennett, but up there), writes this day of how neat it is that he will be out of the country for the presidential inauguration. It appears he is speaking up in Canada. Hopefully, he is engaged to speak about something he is really good at, like how old men can be successful with young women if they have enough power and money. Anyway, he writes of Rick Warren and how great that is. I mean that Warren is going to get to do the invocation. How the raging wild-eyed liberals will be chained back by his selection to fill that role. Out of that will come less abortion. Out of that will come real patriotism. Out of that will come recognition that these new Old Testament Christians have come into their own.
I am one of the few people who know how William Kristol is getting up there to his speaking engagement in Canada. He is driving up in a Gran Torino.
I have this meteor. It was given to me for Christmas by my astronomer friend. It weighs about a pound and a half and is shaped like a mangled potato. i particularly like the fact that it has three little 'tangs' jutting from the bottom so it sits firmly and flatly on a hard surface. I have ordered a chunk of that terrific Hawaiian wood (Koa) to work on and make a stand with. The 'Dreiser' meteor, as I term it, named after my friend, is not the only meteor I have. An astronaut (a really neat guy named Mitchell) gave me the other one. It came from the Moon, or so he said. Why would an astronaut, and one who had been to the moon, no less, lie about that? I believe him. But I also know that all the geologic stuff brought back from the moon was categorized, labeled, stored, displayed, gifted to other countries, and held to be quite valuable. So what am I doing with a two pound chunk of ejecta from the Moon, sitting over here next to the Dreiser object? The Mitchell and the Dreiser. They are both wonderfully weird ducks, objects and men, and they are both emblematic with respect to the interesting things in life. I like to sit and hold them, one in each hand, sometimes. Cold, but somehow comforting. Even the Mitchell. It used to scare me. The Mitchell weighs just over two pounds but does it is not right. If you move your hand with the object in it, well, your hand just keeps going. The two pound piece of silvery metal does not have the proper inertia. It has too much. And that can't be. Not in our universe. Not as we know it. I went back to MIT to study in Quantum Theory. I worked on Project Antares in Los Alamos. I know these things pretty well. The physical laws of the marcro world, the one we inhabit, are immutable. They always work the same way. Every time. The glass dropped from your hand always falls to the floor. It never starts on the floor and rises to your hand. Never. Inertia is the resistance of an object's mass to acceleration. The mass. So you weigh it. Then try to move it. The inertia has to be a function of that mass, which cannot be changed unless you modify the object in some way (like hollow it out or cut part of it off). So the inertia has to be directly tied to the weight. Balsa wood cannot have the same resistance to movement as lead. Never can that happen. But there sits the 'Mitchell' over there, an arm's length away. And it's not right. I have been waiting for years for somebody to come and collect the thing. Some agents in Brooks Brother's suits and cheap shoes. Not from the Agency. From some sci-fi kind of organization. My imagination runs wild. Mitchell must still be laughing over that 'gift.' I have not seen him since, and that was way back in the early nineties. I know he's alive because he surfaced a few months back, and said that "yes, there are aliens about," or some such, on T.V., and it was played all over. I don't believe that, however. But I also don't believe that the universe is quite the place we think it is either. The 'Mitchell' is reassuring, with respect to that. There is more 'out there' than we know. There are possibilities we have not even considered. I like that a lot.
It is Sunday night and the year is ending. Two Thousand and Eight. Wow. I always expected to make it this far, ever since laying there in Yokosuka Japan recovering from the bullets after Nam. I just knew that if that did not kill me than I was in for a long run. And here I am. Maybe it is that single event in my life that made me a keen observer. Writers are keen observers. The good ones, anyway. And I think I am a good one. I did not write that I was great, however. Only history can make such a determination as that. There have been some stupendously great writers, in my opinion, who have not fared that well. Try Ralph Waldo Emerson. Absolutely terrific. But, historically, barely a footnote. And, as far as the general, rather vapid, population is concerned, no footnote at all. Britney Spears gets more play, and probably will over the years ahead. But then, we have become products and control items of that visual device. We don't really get the words and ideas of philosophers put in front of us anymore. We get Letterman and Leno. We get Conan. They give us acid repartee, like I write for House. They don't give us meaning. They don't give us hope. They don't make us think, and in thinking....do. Act. Attempt. If we can't think it we can't do it.
I swing my meteors. The Dreiser, in my left hand, is real and reassuring in it's functional obedience to physics. The Mitchell is anything but that, yet still delightful in the brilliance of opportunity it portends. You can't really swing them in unison, as the Mitchell does not want to come back from the end of the arcs. Real life. Life as it may be. Real life. Life as it will be. I swing them without coordination, as life really is. A New Year beholds.
Ah, people, Caroline is going to be the Senator. it matters not what she says or does or even does not say or does not do. She is in. But we will have all the churning and roiling of waters until the appointment is made. If it was an election, she would still win. Does anyone remember the Conan clown from California? Yes, the guy who's name proves that Hollywood stars change their names because they don't want you to know who they are related to rather than because the names are inconvenient or don't sound right, Mr. Arnold Schwarzeneggar. He walked in from off stage, with a resume that was beyond laughable, an accent straight out of Transylvania and star power. He was in. From the night he stepped onto the stage with Mr. Lovely-Stripe-In-My Hair Leno, he was in. That is the power of the media today. Remember our recent debates? As much as I love Obama, I did not suspend my observation capabilities when he went onstage with John McCain. It did not matter what introduction McCain received or what he said. When Obama stepped onto the stage, that was it. He radiated what he has. Star power. And he was in. The rest was time and a lot, and I mean a lot, of talking about issues and problems and concerns. We are, essentially, still tribal. We follow the leader. If the leaders gets us killed by the million or truly miserable, then we take him or her out. And then appoint or elect his or her son or daughter! It is just the way things are. And yes, i hate that part of culture. All culture. Not just our's, but all of humanity responds the same way. We used to study this phenomenon when Sociology still existed (as the study of group relations). Before the powers that be became frightened by that science and did away with it. Now, just believe what they tell you on television. The War is going just fine out there on the Oceanic Front! Orwell be damned.
Back here, in the middle of my newspaper strewn living room, I reflect upon the homogenated news of the day. It seems that WaMu was all about the lousy mortgage loans they gave to unacceptable risks. Once again, the mantra. It is about the poor people. They sneaked in and destroyed everything with their poorness. They could not pay. Low lifes. These stories lately are being more subtle. They are kind of shifting some of the blame to the people who gave out the loans. One interviewed for the article in the Times was in jail for his fourth charge (theft) unrelated to his work as a mortgage counselor for the bank. So we have the criminals now, they, in league with those poor people, causing the downfall of WaMu. Almost seven billion in bad loans. Wow. Seems like a lot, until you look at the simple fact that it was a run on the bank that took it down. Yes, the simple old, we want our money, depression era, run on the bank. Over the course of three days, just before WaMu fell, people went in and took out nine billion of cash. Forget the loans. Those are long term and have all sorts of delays and things to keep them at a distance for awhile. But you can't avoid nine billion in withdrawals. The people lost confidence and that was it. Funny how that works.
I also read, here and there, about how communities are scaling back on programs for the poor because of their shrinking budgets. I am waiting. I am waiting until they just have no more money to take from the poor. And then they will have to cut law enforcement. Prosecutors. Judges. Probation Officers. Parole Officers. Court facilities. Jails. Prisons. Corrections Officers. All of that awful part of our society which is quietly consuming us. Not just the money, but our very morality. It has to go. We have to do something else, but it will have to be forced upon us. We Puritans are a punishing lot.
Finally, the gas thing. Friedman is at it again. He endorsed globalization and sending jobs offshore. Now he is into gasoline, with other conservatives. They see taxes coming. The worst kind of taxes. Those would be taxes on them. Income taxes. So what do they do? They lay it off. Let's get a huge tax on gasoline while the getting is good. We can then use that to pay for many many things. Oh, nothing that they say it will pay for if it gets done. No, the uses of the money will be changed later, like with social security and highway funds. But they want taxes on the gas because that shifts the burden of raising revenue from the rich to the people who have to drive to work. So here we go again. Note this kind of chicanery for what it is. We have to raise more revenue at some time in the future. You are going to see a lot of Friedman style squirming.
That song has been around for a long time. I think I first heard it while I was in grade school, and it was sung in French. I do not know it's origin. But I do know, outside of some later singing about the scouting camp grounds, that the song's impact came home to me when I watched the movie Star Trek V. I have those moments, and movies can bring them out with such surprise and in such depth. What struck me, during the beginning, and then the end, of that movie was the song sung by Captain Kirk, Bones and Spock. And it was not the words or the melody which really hit me. It was the loose but enormously strong bonding of the character's relationship which reeled me in. I wanted to be there, in Yosemite Valley, with those guys. I wanted the kind of bonding relationships they seemed to have so easily and casually. Spock did not even have to sing. He just sat there and was, well, Spock. Very much separate but intensely 'in' with the other two men.
I have thought of that sequence many times, and seen the movie a couple of times since. It was kind of a lousy Star Trek, and proved that Shatner was best as Captain Kirk, and almost nothing else in life. On the screen or off. Maybe be was 'type-cast' as Kirk, long before the possibility of there ever being any such character. I don't know, as I do not know him. I only know what I can glean from the character he played.
But I think in terms of this financial crisis and more. And the alienated sort of distant lives we have somehow come to choose for ourselves. Not all of us, but many of us. Anthropologically, I know that hardship brings a binding closeness like nothing else. United against the elements we stand. When our very survival is at stake, we bond. We tolerate. We accept. I have been in combat and found all of that there. But it was gone once I was gone. Everyone after combat blown to the far winds. Those that lived, anyway, and there were not many of them. I have some of the 'guys' from the Enterprise crew around me in life.
The professor down the way. The nearby astronomer. The artist out in Washington. An old running and coffee companion from California. I do have these guys, but we do not do Yellowstone. We have no 'Four Seasons' get togethers. In fact, the men don't even really know one another. And that is our life today. I stay in contact. Phones are great for that. But they are cold. Email is cold. Letters are better but so time intensive, and require literary people...and those are frightfully rare in this era. So I am planning a 'Trek.' I shall endeavor to get them all to the beach at Kahala. I will drag the Martin, which I wrote about earlier, out of the closet and across the sea. We'll rent a place and then build an evening fire. Around that fire we'll sit and ruminate over our adventures. Not together, but on our own, as life has caused us to be. And then I will get them to sing Row Row Row Your Boat.
Maybe I won't be able to pull this off. They won't be able to go. Things will get too bad too fast to allow them to leave their other obligations. They won't want to go. But I am an arcane little devil. If I just apply myself, and use some shifting of assets, just maybe I can pull it off. I wonder what you are thinking out there? Are you a product of existentialism too? When I was in college I read and studied the philosophers, and they were big on existentialism then. I didn't believe what I read, however. I did not know what they were talking about. I did not understand that technology, and wild population growth, and competition could lead to such loneliness. A loneliness among others. Working from day to day. Smiling and outwardly happy, but really running alone. What are you like? Does an evening campfire on Kahala Beach, singing Row Row Row Your Boat to my bad guitar strumming, sound like something that cries out to you? Deep down? Or is it just me? Wanna come?
Back in 1997 I was poking around a used car lot, looking for a medium quality, medium mileage and medium appearance used vehicle. I did find one. It was a Volvo, and is still running, just passing the two hundred thousand mark. I love that car, and, as unreasonable as I can be, I have put three times it's worth into maintaining it. It's name is Henry. I know that is not a truly sane thing to do, name a car, much less talk to it, but there we are. You are reading this blog, so you may now silently shake your head...either in disdain and superiority, or because you have read this far and, exasperating as it is, you just have to finish. I don't know. I have no clue as to who you, the reader, are, or what you might think. Most of you never say 'boo' when it comes to comments. So....'Boo'!
While I was homing in the Volvo 'R' car I ran into a homeless guy. He had been 'hired' to provide night security. In reality, the owner of the lot let him sleep off his drunken episodes in one of the 'deaders' in the back of the operational rows of automobiles. I liked that about the owner. He was a tall good looking guy who wore a Stetson and dark glasses all the time. He was lean and ropy, like what I imagined a real cowboy would look like, but he was from New Jersey, which became evident as soon as he took the piece of straw out of his mouth and spoke. I liked that about him too.
The homeless guy was named Thomas, and he lived off a seven hundred dollar a month veteran's check which came to the car lot mail box, because he had none of his own. The owner did not charge him to do that either. Thomas was 'lounging' on the ground near the front door, when I finished walking around the lot and was about to go in and confront Kevin, the owner and lone salesman. "You play guitar?" Thomas asked me. That stopped me on the first step. Unusual question to come from a drunk, anywhere, much less a down in the dumps used car lot. "A little," I said, truthfully. The drunk took a pull on a bottle he kept inside a brown paper bag, swallowed, then asked another question. "You wanna play?" He smiled with amazingly clear eyes, in a creature so damaged. I smiled down at him benevolently, "I don't have a guitar," I stated, then turned to enter the office. "I do," the drunk said, before I was through. I squinted back at him, but stopped with the door open. The drunk rose up and reached around the corner of the mobile home. He brought his arm back with a guitar case in it. "Here, give it a shot," he smiled, holding the case out by the strap. I took it, more by reflex than intent. I almost handed it back, but then I read the word 'Martin' in faded gold letters that were stamped into the top. Martin. Just about the best guitars in the world, I knew. I had never played one. I had never been good enough to actually buy a guitar for myself. Or so I believed. I sat on the step and opened the case. Inside was a different world from the one Thomas inhabited at the lot. A light wood top Martin guitar lay nestled inside the deep plush of the blue interior. I looked between the nylon strings through the hole in the guitar's center. D-28 was stamped there in small faded black letters. I was holding a Martin Dreadnought. One of the deep-bellied beasts that Martin had come out with many years earlier, and dominated the acoustic guitar industry with.
"Is it for sale?" I asked Thomas, not moving to take the instrument from it's case. "Can you play?" the drunk asked again. "If you can play good enough I'll sell you Virginia." He held up the hand not holding his bottle. "Had a accident a few years back." Three fingers on his hand were missing. "Play," he gestured with the broken hand. I took the guitar out of the case very carefully. It was pristine. The strap was of some Indian bead stuff sewn into soft leather. I threw it over my back. It fit. I tried a simply strum to check the sound. "It's tuned. I can still tune, just not play," Thomas gestured again as he spoke. I nodded. It was his guitar. I thought for a moment. I could sing, but not well. I could remember the chords to some songs but not any of the words I would need to sing them. I really only knew one piece without words. It had been the tune I played over and over again when I had been learning. I breathed in deeply and then began performing Greensleeves. The memory of the individual notes and then the chords to the chorus came on their own, as if never gone. And then I remembered the words to the chorus and sang along quietly; "Greensleeves was my only joy, Greensleeves was my delight...."
I finished without having made a single error and I was proud. Thomas smiled. "Virginia's your's for five hundred bucks cash. Take her." I nodded. I had twenty dollars on me but that Martin was not going to leave my hands. "Is there an ATM around here?" I asked the drunk. "What for?" a New Jersey accented voice spoke over my shoulder. I jumped, but held onto the guitar. "Ah, hello," I said. The tall hatted man smiled and nodded, waiting. I could not see his eyes and he was so far above me that my voice broke a bit when I spoke. "Ah, I want to buy this guitar from this...ah, fellow." The man's smile disappeared. He took the straw from his mouth and leaned past me, down towards the drunk. "You sure that you want to let go of Virginia, Thomas?" the man asked, gently. "He's the one," the man replied, taking another pull from the paper covered bottle. "I'll get the cash," the tall man said, twisting back and going through the door. He reappeared in seconds, leaned down again and counted over five one hundred dollar bills. Thomas disappeared them into his front pocket instantly. The man stood again on the ground next to Thomas, taller than I, and I was atop the bottom step. "You got a check or you want to go to an ATM?" he asked, his straw back in place.
I bought the Volvo that day, and the guitar. Kevin took my personal check and let me drive away in the car, and with the Martin. We had bonded. I recalled my last question to him. "Why did Thomas sell his beloved Virginia?" He had taken in a breath, then looked away. "He saw some hard times in that there Vietnam war, back a few years, and he isn't expecting to be around much longer. He wanted to give it a good home. And, but the way, that was the best Greensleeves I've ever heard in my life." I had nodded sheeplishly, then drove out.
I kept track of Kevin and Thomas, as I went back with the Volvo a few times to make believe I needed some advice. In truth, the car, like the guitar, was made of bullet proof cast iron. A few years went by and then I heard that Kevin had committed suicide. I was hurt. I found the obituary and then went out to the burial. I did not know his family so I didn't go to the service or the reception. I stood in the cemetery, well back of everyone. Then I saw Thomas, way off to the side, as well. I walked slowly and carefully among the stones to reach his side. "You brought Virginia," he whispered, pointing at the guitar case. I nodded. We both waited until the people down at the graveside went away. Then we went down to the mound of new earth. I took out the guitar and played Greensleeves. This time I knew all the lyrics. Some words of the last stanza applied so badly that I hesitated there: "Ah, Greensleeves, now farewell, adieu, To God I pray prosper thee...." But, I got through, and I thought about Kevin. He would have been happy. I know Thomas was.
It is upon us, the Christmas of two thousand and eight. I have sipped of the Don David and made my wish for the happiness of those who have fallen before me. That one sip of a fine Argentinian Malbec, a product from a valley where maybe God reigns over this night. Do you believe in God? I think of such things on this night. It is so cold out there, so blowing and white. My 'advent' trees shine up upon the hill and spokes of light and color radiate out over the sweep of the deep snow, with movement from the wind making them twinkle and play. Is there a God? I don't know. Do you sometimes fall upon your knees and tell your troubles to Him, then ask for His help? I do, and have over the years. Do you ever ask for a ''sign' of His existence? Any sign at all, no matter how subtle or marginal? Then look about for such? I do, and have over the years. In driving I sometimes think of Him as my co-pilot, and even look over at the empty seat, from time to time. Does that me make me totally whacked? If I confessed those acts to a shrink, would the shrink find me certifiable? I mean, more certifiable than I am from other stuff? Do you do any of this? Would you tell if you did? I tried to be a good Catholic, in my early years, then fell away. I tried to be a bad Catholic, but that did not work either. I read the Bible and argued with people who were supposed to know that work backwards and forwards. Reborn Christians. Maybe I fit with them best, simply because they do not mind if I say that "God did not give me the gift of faith." I have studied the Koran, as well, and found it to be strange, going from back to front, as it does. A lot like the Bible, but not. I once, long ago, went down on my knees, literally, and presented the 'Unseen Above' with a list I had written on a yellow note pad. I had written down nine items. The items were problems that I was experiencing, or was afraid of, which had no possiblity of solution whatsoever, outside of divine intervention. I asked for those problems to be taken away. The next day, over coffee with a good friend, who believed more than I, I told him of my act. He asked to see the list, so I produced it. He read the nine items slowly, then looked over the top of the paper at me, as if in wonder that a person such as I could have problems of that magnitude. He shook his head, then smiled. He tore up the list right there, in front of me. And he said, "Now, go out there and those problems will be gone. We spend most of our lives worrying about problems that never happen." We left. Over the next three months the problems, all nine, went away. My question, on this Chrismas Eve night is, did those problems go away because of what Bob said, or because I had put them forth to God and He acted? Or was it all bizarre coincidence? I can't remember the problems anymore, but I wish I could. And how life changes. When I ask God for help now, it is usually because I am asking for Him to help other people, or for Him to help me to help other people. Is it His work that I do not feel that I have to ask him to resolve my own problems anymore? I do not expect any answers from you, out there, on this night. I don't even really expect that anyone will read this, but it is okay if people do. Just for fun. And for their own introspection. We don't often really take the time to isolate ourselves and think such thoughts, or ask ourselves such questions. But I think it would be better if we did. Do you think so too?
I received a gift from a friend, just before he headed South for the holiday. Back when I was 'operational,' during Desert Shield (the operation to prepare us for Desert Storm) I ran a group of communications guys out in the Arabian desert. Our job was to move into Iraq from Saudi Arabia and test the communications capabilities of the Iraqi forces. We were looking for holes in their surveillance net. We found a lot of them, so the mission was a great success. But I lost eleven guys doing it. Back then, our control, back in the home office, used to give us Mont Blanc pens after the completion of a successful mission. The regular size black and gold one for team members and a maroon one for the mission commander. That was me. Some of the guys who passed over did not have surviving family (common to field personnel of that ilk) so I got their personal effects. And the Mont Blanc pens they had accumulated. So I had, and still have, quite a collection of those fine writing specimens. Once and awhile, I give one away to someone I find deserving. I gave a black and gold one to this man here, a friend of mine, just before he left on his trip. And I did not tell him the significance of the gift. Now, here is the amazing thing. He also gave me a gift. It was a small oblong box. I opened it to discover a Mont Blanc pen, just like the one I had given him, except brand spanking new. We laughed. Then he added something. He said that the pen he had given me at least had a full cartridge of ink! I realized that I had not checked the writing capability of the one I had given him. It was, of course, the original that had been in that pen since it was issued way back in the eighties. I nodded and smiled in mirth with him. But I did not tell him about the history of the instrument. Even though he is a noted historian, i was not sure he would like the sentiment and provenance of the gift. But it is Christmas, and those boys gone by, who fought and gave everything, believing it was for us, well, I think they would be okay with the gift. I always wondered why we were given such 'after-action awards.' Most of the guys were not even readers, much less writers. But life is strange, and you just don't get to know some things. Is there a God? Did those pens come from or through him? If they did, then what is their significance?
It is an interesting time to be alive, as this day closes, and Christmas, that single brief day, opens. We are in such dire straights, as a nation, a culture, a way of life. We have a new team at the helm. We have Obama and Clinton and Richardson, and more. We have hope and a shining dream of a grand trip back to a future steeped of the past. We are 'marching to Pretoria, so to speak, and we are doing so with a bit of hesitation and trepidation. We don't know who to trust or why we should trust them. But we have to trust somebody. No choice is a choice in of itself. Or is it as they used to say in early Marine Officer training: "Any decision is better than no decision at all." I don't know so many things. All I can do is celebrate certain things that just feel right. Hilary, who I can't be allowed in front of, particularly on this night, said that "the time of Cowboy diplomacy is over." And I stood up and cheered to hear that on CNN earlier. Some things are going right in this pocket of the universe.
I am going to make a list of nine problems. I am going to get on my knees and ask Him to take those problems away. Then I am going to go see Bob (he is a friend to this day!) and present my list to him over a morning cup of coffee. When Bob tears up the list, as I know he will, my smile will grow broader and my hope for the future warmer, and filled with blissful expectation. Merry Christmas to one and all.
I am fully awake, as I got the papers from under another layer of deep snow. And I found the envelope from the newspaper wraith. What do I put in it? No check because it is addressed to "Delivery Service." I feel like I am getting my papers directly from Langley (CIA) Headquarters. A twenty? Is that too little? Maybe a fifty. I don't have a fifty (this is Southern Outback Wisconsin and they don't know what a fifty is out here, unless is refers to a clothing size) so I would have to put in two twenties and a ten. But that wad seems excessive. But it is Christmas. But it is a tough financial time for all of us. But I am afraid of the Newspaper Delivery Service. I was once a very decisive person, but look at me now. I am still three presents 'short of a full deck' and it is Christmas Eve, and snowing to beat all get out. What do I do? Where do I go? Lake Geneva has a bunch of stores, each about the size of an airport kiosk. Will they even open in the middle of this, the most aggressive winter attack of recorded history out here? I don't know. The aging dinosaur of a Rover sits patiently in the garage, crying softly to be decked out in the chains that even Professor Machado, the smartest man any of us have ever known, can't fathom the directions to install. But they are back there, all shiny on the floor behind the front seats. And 'Bertram' my old wonderful troll of a beaten-up four-wheel-drive is ready for anything.
Oliver Morton. He wrote a column for the New York Times this morning. He slipped through, like Thomas L. Friedman. The editorial board of the Times must be on Christmas furlough. Both of the columns were pretty extraordinary, bright as they were accurate. Morton wrote of the earth, its condition and prospects, while Friedman wrote about the silly and destructive celebration of stupidity that has taken over this country and caused much of what we are experiencing now. Yes, Thomas stole some of my stuff, then wrote it better. Usually, I only celebrate Maureen Dowd's assumption of my blog material (I can't call it stealing as her fan club gets all upset, and besides, its not. We don't own this stuff out here anymore. What we bloggers write is like air. You just breathe it in and then it gets re-breathed again). So Thomas, you may have my stuff and I doff my non-existent hat at the elegant manner in which you chose to use it. But back to Morton's column. He writes about the earth as George Carlin used to describe it. If the earth ever figures out we (homo sapiens) are here, and causing trouble, then we are screwed. We have almost no power over this blue and white ball of water and ice. Even our limp-wristed influence over base temperature is a mere nothing to this planet. And the only one's to actually suffer from our excess are likely to be, well, us. The Earth turns and moves on inexorably and it is unaffected, really, in the scale of things, by even such events as large astroid strikes. That stuff merely impacts on the ecosystem. Life goes up and down and around stuff like that all the time. Way to go Morton. A scientist. A brain. No more of that Bush stuff. Okay, okay, I am not going there. I will even give that low-life scum bag of a drooling president a break today. It is Christmas Eve. And life is cold, snow-buried, but good. Christmas music plays, I have the wood for a fire to burn through this day, on into my own personal Eve, and I have a prime rib for the oven. Harvey is ever loyal and only mildly condescending. Cat bliss.
Now, I shall get cleaned up and go out there into the whiteness of day. It is Christmas Eve and there just have to be more people God wants to put in my way. Merry Christmas!
i get comments through email, much more than I get comments on this site. it seems that many people feel that I am a bit 'over the top' tough on some of our leaders, the pundits and even the media. Am I? I wonder about that. The RAGE has not set in yet. The rage I speak of is the one that is going to sweep this country once everyone figures out that they are not going to avoid being stung to the core by this financial madness of the last forty years. And they will figure out that they were robbed, which means their families and their children's children, as well. Note that there are sites popping out on the internet about where the exact locations of the thieve's mansions are located! That is just the start. But I will back off a bit. I will leave Bill Bennet out of my vitrolic comment. He is bedded down on an opium mat somewhere, 'biting the clouds,' as they say in China (about opium smoking). I shall not attack William Kristol for awhile, no matter what his elitist pedigree and lifestyle seem to demand. And Krauthammer. He is a nasty little guy, but he's crippled, so I'll back off. That I support the auto workers, wholeheartedly, well, I guess that is okay. And I hope it is okay for me to continue to advise Governor Rod. Remember, he is our entertainment right now. We don't need him to pack it in just yet. Couric gets a pass, as does that little weasel Ben Stein. Maybe I can pick on Letterman. He seems to be able to take it.
The cards are gone. I don't know how they turned out. I never like the finished product because it could have used more work and detail. But my heart is in the right place. I send them to transmit care and thanks. Thanks for being someone deserving of getting one, in my judgment, and care about people who have great hearts and are helping us go in the right direction. The postman at the little post office here, Michael, a really really great guy, frightened me to death by first telling me the way in which I framed and glued the stamps to the envelopes would never be allowed. There I stood, with fifty of these things in my hands. He saw my look, and to prevent my collapse, and the subsequent trampling by everyone else in line, he relented. He hand-cancelled them. Thank you Mike, and Merry Christmas. Try to find that kind of greatness in a big city post office. On the other hand, he can tell me what is inside the envelopes of my incoming mail without my opening them.
The Advent trees are out there whipping around in the wind and blowing snow. I can see them from up here in my office. This office emits a 'blue hue' when I am working. That is most nights. People who have come to know that my abode is secreted right off the main road and a bit down the hill can see the blue hue when they drive by. Some beep, but I no longer attempt to get to the window to wave. I am just not fast enough. Harvey pays attention though. He always raises his head, looks toward the window and then back at me, as if to say: "Does someone need to be eaten?" When I do not respond, he lays his head back down and does what he does. Passes the winter time by sleeping, or making believe he is asleep. Fools me. Why is it that a cat can come out of sleep in an instant? I can't do that. Some of the reason that i go out into ten below weather, forgetting the nearby prepared duster, is because i am not fully awake at that point. I am fully awake a few seconds later when I get back in, however. Which reminds me. I have to find that envelope. For the newspaper guy/gal. I just cannot get by without the papers and I can't get down that driveway at that hour of the morning. Without a substantial Christmas tip I just know what is going to happen. I also can't seem to get up early enough to catch the sucker red-handed, delivering. Or, if I am up early enough, he sneaks in and out without my knowing. Maybe i should start drinking again. Or try that Ginko stuff. No, that was discredited, like red meat. Maybe it will come back, like red meat.
I have this friend in Texas. He is smarter than me. But he thinks that I am smarter than him. Or at least he makes me think that he thinks that. I am confused. But, anyway, he also edits some of my work. And he is terrific. But I have to be careful because he 'lays things between the lines,' if you know what I mean. I have to re-read his email several times to get everything. And when I don't, well, he is also a bit arrogant and steps on me with his marvelous intellect. I think I have convinced him to write again himself. He once sent me some work. It was better than mine. But I could not tell him that because...I was not big enough to be able to do that. So, for Christmas, I am encouraging him to write again. And that feels good. There is so much under-utilization of talent today. It is out here, but our culture has not been encouraging it.
Once i was so poor I could not afford a Christmas tree. I think it was nineteen seventy four, or so. I went to the Sears and Roebuck Christmas Tree lot to see if I could find a remnant. I had four dollars. And I had no car, well, none that ran. I got to the Sears parking lot and started checking the leaning cut trees. There was nothing under ten dollars. But I had the diligence only known by poor people. I went on checking. After awhile, a guy came over to help me. He had the buff outdoor wear that I have never really never known how to buy or wear. I tried to brush the guy off and keep on checking. But he would have none of it. Finally, stepping from tree to tree with me, like a bad Laurel and Hardy routine, he asked the big question: "How much do you have?" I shrugged trying to appear urbane, then gave up. "Four bucks," I admitted. "Where do you live?" he replied, which surprised me. What did it matter?
So I described the labyrinthian path I had followed to get to the lot. "No car?" he asked. I frowned. I could not figure out what his point was, so I let him have it: "No car, four bucks, no job, and no prospects, is that enough for you?" i started to walk away. "What about this one?" the guy promptly came back with. He pointed at a beautiful eight-foot Noble Pine. I just looked at him. He stepped closer to me. "This isn't really the Sears Christmas Tree lot. it's mine. I just rent the space every year. It would be a favor to me if you would take the tree for Christmas and let me deliver it with my truck." I couldn't say anything. I thought of all the proud reasons that I thought that that was a bad idea. He saw me think those thoughts. "I do it for redemption, so don't get the wrong idea," he said gently. "I wasn't always the way i am today. i was something less. And I owe it to The Man to do Christmas right every chance I get. You're my chance. Don't blow it for me." I nodded. What else could I do. I rode with him in his truck, with my wonderful tree in the back. He didn't say a word and neither did I. When he helped me unload it in front of my apartment I saw his shirt rise up on his forearm. There was a tattoo there. The image was of a couple of wings, under which was inscribed "101st Airborne." And I understood. "Merry Christmas," he yelled, driving away with his window down, a big smile looking back at me. I shouted the only reply that seemed appropriate: "Semper fi."
Those two newspapers were leaning against my front door this morning. I can't find the envelope with my cash tip inside. What am I going to do? I stood, newspapers in hand, and looked down my long driveway. It is a white nightmare down at the end of it. Overlapping plows in unwitnessed combat have crisscrossed the cul-du-sac and left jumbled 'Tiger Teeth' of piles strewn everywhere down there. I cannot imagine making my way into that mess to find my papers. I have got to tip this mysterious elusive newspaper person. Christmas stress. I read Judith Warner, a replacement columnist for David Brooks in the New York Times. Where is David? Oh, he needed a break for Christmas, I guess. These 'princes of press' must have their rest. I mean, after all, it takes intensive labor to sit and write something interesting. Another Christmas crock. Like the garbage Judith wrote this day. Brainless. Let's see, she writes about the fact that reason and logic are triumphing over the forces that make Christmas what it should be...wonder, marvel and faith. I am paraphrasing, as her stuff is not worth memorizing. She calls this the 'Woody Allenization' of Christmas. I do like that line, however misplaced and addled it is. You see, Judith is lost in the combating and overlapping mythologies of Christmas in our culture. She is all caught up in the Santa Claus thing, I guess. I am so very sorry Judith, but even though Norad has been tracking Santa's Christmas Eve flight ever since 1955, he is not real. We made it all up to have fun with our kids...and quite possibly for control and discipline purposes as well.
Christmas is filled with wonder, marvel and faith. You just have to look beyond the mythologies. The wonder that people can take a bit of time and think about the plight and condition of others around them. The marvel that they will go out and spend time and money to get something for somebody else that is just right, just to have that person feel a little bit better about life, and maybe them. The faith that something is at work of goodness, driven by, well, you don't have to know. You just have faith that there are more people like you out there, buying stuff not totally out of obligation but because you really want to get stuff for them. There was an old school joke about faith that always liked, even thought the underlying premise was discomforting. Johnny is sitting in the back of his grade school class when his teacher asks the big question. what is faith? Johnny raises his hand, which the teacher tries to avoid, as Johnny is a notorious trouble-maker (i like that part as I was always in that coat closet in my Catholic School for shameful questions). But the teacher caves in when there are no other hands. "Alright Johnny, go ahead...," the teacher says, with disappointment and a bit of trepidation. "Faith is believing in something that you know is not really true," Johnny responds, in his normal fashion. Johnny went, of course, straight to the coat closet, to inhale the aroma of all the little girl's coats hanging there, if he was like me. But the premise of that story is not true. You can have faith in any number of things that may or may not be true. We just don't have enough data or life experience to know. God is like that too. Is He there? Is He a He? What is the deal? I think He is, but I am not sure. I am beginning to sound like Woody Allen, who I never liked, although he is funny...but with some real bad personal habits.
About teaching. The Times had an article about teaching in it. The writer combined the plight and conduct of my beloved auto workers with that of teachers. They are unappreciated. That part is true. But auto workers do not stay up nights working on their stuff, worrying about their charges and taking extra time and effort to help a small person who really needs it. Teachers are different. I know one well. I mean one right now, sleeping and shopping away because she is off for the holiday (one of the few small benefits of the profession). This teacher is kinda normal I think. She asked me to write a short story for her grade school classes. So I wrote The Treasure Pool, which is found somewhere back there in these blogs. She gave out forty-nine copies and then had all the students write reviews back to me. She copied and stapled, read the story to make sure I had not slipped in any filth (I am, after all, an ex-Marine!) and then spent time and trouble helping these kids to come to terms with the plot, the theme and the elements of English such necessary educational arrows to have in their quivers. The critiques came back, and they were wonderful. Oh, I got dinged pretty good on my grades in certain areas. I wrote back to those kids who had given me bad grades for the most minor of things. I was stung. I was nice, but I had to say something! But the story is not about me. It is about the extra time and effort this teacher, Mrs. Machado, takes to really help and advance her students. She is an example of what it is all about out here, and in this holiday season. She follows Sister Sarah Fogarty (my fourth grade teachere) and Sister Michael Marie (my fifth grade teacher) in being one of those unknown and unsung saints. Maybe here, in this lonely blog, she will get the only public recognition she ever gets. But she is all about Christmas. The embodiment. And she is filled with reason and logic and understanding the universe. But she is also a thing of wonder, marvel and faith. Merry Crhistmas Anise Machado. We love you.
It is said that St. Francis of Assisi created the first Nativity Scene in his yard. The mythology has it that he set up a manger, and the then made up other characters from whatever he had laying around. He wanted to recreate the birth of Christ, the best he could, for himself and his friends. I have one. A manger and the Nativity Scene characters. The stable I made myself out of some old wood with a hand saw and some nails. It has survived intact for twenty-nine years. In 1969 I was fresh out of the hospital from getting all shot up in Vietnam. I could not be a Marine and I could not walk, or move well enough, to get a job. So I sat around and waited. During this time I found a small apartment in San Clemente to live in. So cheap that my other dwellers in the six-plex were new immigrants from Vietnam. Strange, to circulate among them every day as I limped around with nothing to do. One day I encountered an older man, who I knew to be the head of one of the families living there. His name was Huang Nguyen. Somehow, he had found out something of my service in his former country. He approached, shook my hand, and then apologized. I didn't get it. I tried to get to the bottom of things but his English was bad. Instead he invited me in to meet his wife and three young children. They treated me very nicely, and I was surprised. In country, the Vietnamese civilians I met had all been cold and remote. Huang took me into his bedroom/office. There he showed me two pictures on his walls. One was of him walking arm in arm with Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the North Vietnamese Army. In the other, he was striding along, a huge smile on his face, with Robert McNamera. I asked Huang who he really was. He told me that he was the former Province Commander of the I Corps area. I was stunned. That was the area I fought all over and had been wounded in. I asked Huang who's side he had really been on. He said that he was on both. He had a family. He did not know who was going to win. He then asked me what I would have done in his place. I thought over that one, and then had to laugh. We shook hands again, both laughing. We would have become friends, I think, except the language barrier was just too great. And maybe, I was too soon from that awful war.
It was just before Christmas, when Huang and I met that year. On Christmas Eve, his oldest daughter, a pudgy cute little thing everyone called Hamburger, because of her proclivity for those things, knocked on my door. She handed me a bag and said Merry Christmas, then giggled and ran. I took the bat in and opened all the small packages wrapped inside. The Three Wise Men. The manger. The baby Jesus. Mary and Joseph. The dutiful cow, sheep and donkey. And a big camel. All the pieces are porcelain and gilded with gold that has not tarnished to this day. The sit this evening in my home-made stable atop a special table near the base of my tree.
I think often of Huang and Hamberger. I wonder what became of them. They were always wonderful to me and seemed to always act surprised that I was wonderful back to them. As much as I could be. I had nothing but limps, scars and painful memories back then. Why did Huang apologize? Why were they so nice? Why did they give me a Nativity Scene, of all things? Today, I don't know anymore than I knew back then, although I have had a lot of time to think and many more battles to grow more experienced. If there is a God. If there really is a Jesus. Then Huang and his family were sent to help me through. To help me understand, at that so very difficult a time, that the Vietnamese people were not to blame. That they were not much different than we are, and were. That my pain did not have to be translated into an eternal hatred. And so I have the set. And it means a lot to me. Christmas is special in so many ways to me, and I wish that the spirit evident in this season would seep through to the rest of the year for everyone.
Kristol, that William fellow who writes for the New York Times. You know the one. William Kristol. Saliva runs from the side of the mouth Kristol. Maybe, if he keeps writing and getting read, one day people will say "Oh, what a load of Kristol," when they are talking about a pile of the steamy stuff. This morning both of my papers, thrown literally to my doorstep (I still have not sent that envelope with the cash in it), were just filled with garbage. Kristol's drivel stood out, however. His column was both a compliment to Cheney and and insult to Caroline Kennedy. He compliments Cheney on the man's using the "F" word on Leahy one day. Kristol thinks that, when Cheney was asked about whether he had really said that to the Representative, he said that he had and that it was called for. Cheney. The fat white slob of a moronic brutal coward that he is. Yes, the same man who was appointed head of the committee to find a real Vice President for Nucular Bush. What did he do? What clowns like him always do. He made sure that he took apart every real candidate that was evaluated, then declared himself the only viable alternative. This is the man who, under the influence of too much booze, and saliva dripping from his craven down-slanted lips, shot his friend in the face with a shotgun, then forced the friend to say that he actually needed that birdshot treatment for clearing his lifelong case of acne. The torture king Cheney. The war criminal. The same creep who says that the President can do anything, during faux wartimes, and it is legal. The Goodbye and good riddance Vice President of all time. And then Caroline. I too railed recently about the nepotistic trends in both our political and our art communities. I don't like it. I think that we went deep into democracy to get away from this kind of inherited passage of importance and power. Inheritance means that you are going to get some real stupid and crummy leaders in large amounts (the average I.Q. really is 100, don't forget, which is not bad but do we want them running our lives?). But Caroline is okay. You know why? Yes, you do. Me too. She stood there while her father was carted by in front of all of us. She has stood well against the rage of outrageous fortune which has bruised and battered her pampered existence for all of her life. She is our's more surely than anyone I can think of, except her brother John Jr. And he is dead. And I still miss him. So, I think that Caroline has a good heart. And I do not require much more. Cheney has a black heart, which he received in a secret transplant operation from the cadaver of Joseph Mengele. He has been very very successful at continuing those medical experiments, begun years ago by his donor. Please, Mr. Lowlife Kristol, do not ever mention those two people in the same column again. We know which of the two you most resemble.
And then there is the Torturous Tribune. Yes, they came out for torture again this morning. In time for Christmas. There little editorial piece explains it all away as being due to fear. The poor, weak and phoney- macho leaders of this country, so stunned and frightened by the events of 911, turned to torturing suspects in order to defend our country. Suspects. That is the key throw-away word in the article. Suspects. Who the hell was a suspect? Who is? And that word is one of the biggest problems with torture, and all that goes with it. The suspect can be anyone. People turn in people all the time, given an enormity of motivation. In Iraq we were giving out hundred thousand dollar rewards for anyone who would accuse and turn in a suspected terrorist. No questions. A hundred grand. The lottery over there. Equivalent to millions over here (well, it used to be. Now it is worth about $312.00, or soon will be). And you could get rid of your worst enemy quite anonymously. Wow. What a bonanza that was! The victim you turned in was instantly taken out of the country and then slowly roasted over charcoal fires ten thousand miles away (the heat occasionally quenched with water from the water-board pool), never to be returned to your country or village. Torture is absolutely terrible, to the people tortured (go figure) and the people forced to torture them. Even to the people that happily torture them (take a close look at the miserable facial features and expressions of Dick Cheney). Shame on you, the editorial staff of the disappearing Tribune. Do you know why you are going away, slowly but surely? Because you have no heart,and your 'thinkers' have no life experience. You have not lived hard, ever. You have not traveled the world, really. You have not lived in poverty or fear or without hope. I celebrate that for you. But you should not be in control of what we read, any more than Caroline should be handed the reigns of decision-making for an entire state in the Senate. You are probably nice people. But you are simpering fakes when it comes to understanding the human condition, then allowing us to be informed about it. Like the executives of the auto companies, as with the executives of all of our financial houses, you need to pass on. And you will, but you are going to take The Tribune with you. It is your right. And I understand that. But I will miss that Tribune of old, which your fathers and their fathers built. But twaddle takes its toll.
Hey, even that smarmy slob Krauthammer is taking my stuff. Okay, go ahead Charles. If it is good enough for Maureen Dowd than I guess it is good enough for you. He writes on the heels of my blog, with respect to Caroline's probably appointment to the Senate in New York, wherein I ran on and on about this 'transfer of royalty thing,' this nepotism and concentration (brought about by our media) of fame meaning everything about everything. Kraut is just an aging neocon without a cause right now. So go ahead and pick on Caroline. She has set herself up to be a target out here. I am sorry about that. For me, when I look at her face, I still see the fragility and pain of those terrible days in the early sixties. Piss off Krauthammer. Go pick on somebody your own size, like Bill Bennet (the slimy silent edifice of corpulent fat) or that radio rat (Rush "these are not oxycontin" Limbaugh).
Finally, there was a funny article. It was the reverse of "I confess, he did it," kind of a thing. There is this writer who is a supposed historian. He was fixated on, for most of his life, about a guy named B. Virdot who took out an ad in an Eastern Paper to solicit stories about hardship during the first depression (1933, or so). Then he sent checks, this Virdot guy, to the best stories. Well, it seems that our writer looked into this matter, which had perplexed and impressed him for his whole life. For years he could not find out who Virdot really was. It seems that the guy had used a fictional name. He investigated and then investigated some more, until finally his mother handed him a proverbial 'old black valise.' Inside were all the letters written to Mr.Stone, the real benefactor (Virdot). It turns out to be the writer's grandfather. His mother had never said a word. So now we have it. The great hero of those dark days turns out to be the grandfather of our investigator and writer. Now, is that a load of Holiday crap, or what? His mother never said a word for all those years. It reminds me of the 'silent warrior' veterans at the Naval Hospital. There are silent warriors, you know. They are the one's that did not do anything when they served. By being silent they protect that simple fact. You are left to assume, as they want you to, that they were in such bad stuff that they can't talk about it. Another load of brown stuff. Just like the Virdot story. The investigator and author works in fiction not history. And he is selling much more in that genre. The sale of drivel is going well.
Back to my cards. I am almost done. Really. Really! Shut up Harvey.
So, have you been to an airport since 911? A lot of people have, but, amazingly, a lot of people also have not. For those of you who have been, I offer my sympathy and rage buried deep. For those of you who have not, but will in the future, all you get is my humor. God, are you in for it. But, in watching Sixty Minutes tonight, you would have thought they we, the prospective passengers, were all of the problem. Our attitude. Our treatment of the security personnel. We watched TSA training. And we got to view the new Gestapo oriented uniforms. For some reason in this culture we have the idea that violence is prevented, and aggression tempered, by authority figures wearing ever more militant macho costumes. Who the hell is advising these nitwits? And it's in our military too. Ever look at photos of our Doughboys in WWI? Our GI's in WWII, or even our troops in Vietnam? They looked American and they, almost one and all, aside from looking stressed and burned out, looked nice. Looked of quality. Looked like they were part of the Jeddi Knights fighting for 'The Force.' Now our troops look like nasty Imperium troopers, with insect dark glasses and ugly helmets designed directly after the hated SS helmets worn by the Germans in WWII. Jesus Christ, give us a break from this developmental stupidity. Where are all the gay designers? Have they all died of aids? Cannot a single one of those gifted geniuses 'not tell' when 'not asked,' and help us out? And then, when they are done serving us there, can they please move on the the police and security services? Get stopped by a local state trooper these days. The uniform alone (with, of course, the derigour insect glasses) will scare the crap out of you. We are leaning toward our gayer more gentle side these days. How about we do that with our authority figures. The results might astound us all. What if TSA agents were just nice? Maybe out Puritanical Calvinistic origins just cannot stomach that.
But I digress. It seems that the TSA is upset that we treat them so badly. I have been to at least fifty airports since 911. Guess what. I have never ever once seen any passenger treat a TSA agent badly. I have seen no verbal or physical abuse towards those people. But I have seen a ton of TSA types making complete nasty-tempered asses out of themselves. The public is, by and large, well aware of the overwhelming power of the TSA dolts to put us on 'no-fly' lists or 'danger' lists for the rest of our lives. We know it and we know that power is present, and right there in our faces. Clint Eastwood might have been referring to the attitude of most TSA agents of today: "Go ahead, make my day." There was a little glimmer of truth that seeped through the cracks on that Leslie (I do not wear a wig) Stahl presentation. A woman complained about being abused in her 'training' class but then was on a video where she was at an airport directing passengers. She sounded exactly like what I have described, and it was right there. It was obvious that she felt that her charges were timid dumb dolts. And the passengers responded like that, just before we cut away. This is media spinning. It was brought to us by this very same media, and it was authored into existence by the political advisors of running politicians. The idea is to immediately jump on the band wagon with facts that are just opposite of the way things really are. And that is what is going on today with the TSA. And Sixty Minutes, Investigative nothings. Purveyors of pablum and disinformation.
Here is the solution. Technology. Not agents. And technology of hardened protection, not detection. Yes, build better tougher planes. There ought to be no ability of the crew to interact with the passengers anymore. None. The bulkhead built between should be impenetrable. Then stop allowing all that carryon. Yes, limit us to little bitty purses and bags with stuff like books and snacks inside. Nothing else. No computers, no cell phones, no games or ipods. Nada. No overhead bins (and more headroom!). All luggage gets checked. And then the technology of the plane takes over. Make the cargo areas hardened to be able to take even a small explosion. And build them to be jettisoned in flight. Now, the detection. Let it all go toward the checked baggage. No people involved. Just stuff being analyzed. Forget about the penetrating radar images to view our bodies. And do not believe that they are not going to keep the images and play with them, and laugh at all of us, or sell them. Our social security numbers were once sacrosanct. Then our driver's license information. All gone to graveyards every one. Your credit data is now forever (not five years or seven....they lie), and our driving information is for life (not three years or five or even ten for a drunk driving...they lie). F. Scott Fitzgerald: "You don't get to start over in this country." No shit. So stop believing them and get skeptical. It is a whole lot healthier, and you are also less likely to find your corpulent body on Facebook or Youtube.
I am finishing my cards. I really am. I have gone to the basement. Or, at least, I am going right this minute. Harvey is waiting for me down there. He has the mistaken impression that there are mice down there, and he hunts madly through all the stacked boxes and piled chairs and just stuff. He came up with a mouse once, and I was mad as hell. He brought that mouse in from the outside and then stocked his basement for the future. I just know it. There have been no more. I caught that mouse (with Harvey's unwitting assistance) and he is running free, under the snow, in a nearby field. Or at least he was until it hit fifteen below again a few hours ago. Now he is paused. On hold for the winter, so to speak. The non-existent one's in the basement I refuse to consider further, but I am about to put up with Harvey going down there and making believe, just to drive me daffier.
It is fifteen below zero out there, and the wind is whipping last night's five extra inches of snow into a moving white curtain of death. I went out in my robe anyway. Because I am more like Ben Stein than I care to admit. By writing that I mean, 'someone who is much more capable of transmitting the image of being intelligent rather than actually having that quality.' I am quoting one of the shrinks at the Naval Hospital, where I go every Wednesday, after he had been around me for awhile. I did not kill him, because I am not violent anymore. I swear. But I felt violent after coming back in the front door. I did not curse Harvey, who sat at the door looking at me with that 'Good Christ, but you are one stupid example of the species Homo Sapien' cat look. I had no rotten bleak words for him because I could not talk. I could only inhale. When I recovered enough, I looked over at the chair where I had carefully set out a huge sheep-lined Austrailian Duster the day before. Harvey sat there and looked at it too. Finally, regaining my voice, but having to discard my snow covered slippers (Ugh, of course), I was able to talk. "Don't start," is all I said, pointing at him with a snow and plastic covered Tribune. The mail delivery guy (I think he is a guy, but I have never seen him/her) has been dropping my papers at the door lately, ever since I found a note in the paper two weeks ago with an envelope for a Christmas bonus. What can I do? Put cash in it and send it off to some address in Elkhorn? I can't write a check because there was no name. Hell, I'll do it. I am such a pushover. I wonder if the papers will remain thrown to the doorstep instead of simply being dropped way down at the end of the driveway. That mail person. Clever bastard. I am caught in a vice.
Ben Stein was on television with one of his stupid droll commentaries, as I recovered my coffee and dumped the paper snow onto the fireplace ledge. God I can't stand that guy. His trademark smirking vocal presentation just drives me nuts. And then there is the content. "If we just go out and spend money then we won't need a bailout." That is the solution. Do not save. Do not hold onto anything. Well, I hope Ben is holding onto plenty and I hope that his investment counselor is named Madoff. He is another of these totally 'removed' talking heads making believe that they have a regular job and some sort of semblance of a normal financial life. He does not. He makes more in a month then the average person makes in two years! He can spend all he wants and never get to the bottom. He probably has one of those super-secret black American Express cards (twenty thousand in fees just to have, or so I am told). He is like that creepy baseball player who just signed a 160 million dollar contract to play baseball for a few years. The guy has barely a high school diploma. A box of rocks who can throw a ball. Which means he will also be allowed to become an author, a television spokesperson and honored member of our terminally sick culture. At least Ben Stein is smart. He is a short little troll example of a creepy man, but he does have a brain and some real formal education.
We have a guy, down in Chicago, named Steve Chapman who writes columns in the Tribune. Now there is another dumbo, along with Stein (when it comes to putting out garbage which is nothing other than vaguely disguised neocon philosophy). His solution to the financial mess is inflation. Yes, a true, world class, never call home, idiot. And he is too young to remember 1979 and 80. A home loan back then was written for around fourteen percent interest. Thats about fifteen hundred a month for a ninety-five thousand dollar home. Say what? So you get the loan and the house. No problem. When the interest rates go down you can always refinance, right? No. You see, because of inflation of everything else, except your income (note that they are talking about lowering all wages just now, and look at all the companies dropping contributions to 401k plans....the plans they all touted and pushed in order to get out of more structured and disciplined pension plans), you lose your good credit. So you can't refinance. And it is your fault. Just ask the lender. Under such circumstance they are happy to tell you that you are a loser, unless the outsourcing of today means that the representative on the phone says the word 'loser' in such bad English that you cannot understand it. Steve Chapman is just throwing crap up against the wall. Inflation. My ass.
Now John Kass, he is different indeed. He is the new Royko of the Tribune, and they have been running his articles on the second page of the paper. His nemesis is Governor Rod. Dead Meat Rod, he calls him. Dead Meat Walking, as of this morning's below-zero edition. I love his writing. He even swipes at our hero and savior (Obama) by inferring that his latest appointment from Illinois has ties to the Illinois mob (deemed to be the 'we-will-never-die-or-run-out-of-kids' Daleys). I love that too. Obama needs plenty of detractors, lest he fall down in his pew from absolute adoration of Rick Warren, his new spiritual guru (since that last black preacher was found to be 'socially unacceptable'). Kass is wrong, of course. He did say Governor Rod's "I will not quit" speech was okay. Okay? It was a 'Checkers' quality oration. He was great. He was perfect. Even his awful bowling ball hairstyle was okay. He even bent forward and down, so you could see that is is thinning on top. Now I really liked that. He is one of us. Oh yes, he is dumb as a post and he has some real mental issues. So what. Look at Senator Byrd or some of those other nuts we have in there. Larry Craig? Ted Stevens? Jesus. We have some goodies. Kass thinks that Rod ought to quit. He thinks that Rod is staying in to drive the best deal he can get. Well, no kidding Kass! Where the hell have you been? This culture loves a great confession, as long as that confession points the finger at someone else. "I confess, he did it," ought to be part of the Pledge of Alligiance. We could slip it in, right at the end, while we covertly point at the person next to us. "I confess I did it," on the other hand, well, we have electrical appliances and special injections prepared for those, soon to be dead, special cases.
And so this miserable representation of a Sunday morning ends with two cups of strong Alterra coffee. I must go out in the garage and pull all the cords from my generator. The power went out last night. The Alliant Company, our local electrical co-op, decided to experiment. Since it was the coldest night in a year, they thought that it would be great if we all remembered how important Alliant really is. Especially at this time of the year. So I turned on the infernal generator, but I have not had time to wire the thing into my electrical system. So I had extension cords running all about. Not enough to run the lights in my office, however. So I have cards to finish. The damned infernal custom cards. What am I doing out here? Why am I not in Hawaii, spending the money Ben Stein tells me will save everyone? I am being wary. That is what I am doing. I am hunkered down out here, extension cords piled high, the wind and temperature near absolute zero, my cards strewn everywhere with glue all over, and Harvey, laying right here under this monitor, studiously ignoring my slow descent into nonsensical madness.
