Goats

Championship on the line. Ball on the five yard line. Though the quarterback has brought his team to this moment through many an adversary, he must still punch it into the end zone or all will be for naught. And even though it's only an intramural football championship on the line, it still feels as significant as...

It's the last play of the game. I was that quarterback. I called for an option, faked a hand-off and rolled left. There was absolutely nothing between me and the goal line. Tony Ruggerio was standing in the end zone wide open as well. For some reason I bolted for the goal instead of throwing the ball. Sadly, two steps from victory, I was snagged from behind. Game over.

I didn't really dwell on it a lot but it did sting because I made a bad decision. True, Tony could have dropped the ball. But he was wide open and he'd caught them all year. The following year I was off to college, then moved to Minnesota. My family moved to Pennsylvania so going home no longer meant returning to New Jersey.

Ten years later I visited my old neighborhood in Bridgewater, I ran into an old friend who was on that team. As soon as he saw me, instead of saying "Hi, how've you been?" he said, "Why didn't you throw it?"

That's the problem with being the goat. And you never forget. In fact, I cannot remember a single play from that intramural football season. I remember only the one, and it still stings.

So think of that when you think of these famous goats.

Billy Cundiff
It's bad enough that he missed that field goal in the last seconds of the NFL Championship this past weekend. Nowadays, the response in cyberspace is instant. And merciless. Having had the chance to tie the Patriots and take the game into overtime, he muffed it. I'm sure he'll never forget that kick for as long as he lives.

Bill Buckner
The guy had a stick, winning a batting title in 1980. He played in the All-Star Game for the Cubs one year. And he had over 2,700 lifetime hits in his twenty-year career. But this is not how we remember old Bill. Instead when we here the name Bill Buckner, with think of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. Things were looking good for the Red Sox going into the 8th inning. But then, when the Mets tied it up the game went to extra innings. In the tenth, with two out, a simple grounder to first baseman Buckner should have clinched the World Series. Instead, he muffed it. Three singles followed and the Mets re-gained their stride... as well as the win. It would be many years still for the Red Sox to get the ghost of Babe Ruth off their backs.

Steve Bartman
Hoo boy. Talk about a goat. This poor fellow had to leave town. He is probably living somewhere under an assumed name so that no one from Chicago plugs him.

The incident occurred in October 2003 in another game six. This one was for the National League Championship. The Cubs were five outs away from winning the game and playing in their first World Series in over half a century.

In this incident the goat was not one of the players. Rather it was a fan seated in the front row of the left field corner. A fly ball was hit into the corner. Left fielder Moises Alou went to catch it, but the enthusiastic Bartman interfered, knocking it away. The next thing you know the Marlins, who should have been finished, were racking up runs, eight of them in all. Series tied, momentum shift, Cubs' hopes quashed. Marlins took game seven and went to the World Series.

Death threats followed and Bartman had to disappear. Life is hard, but especially so when you're a scapegoat.

For One Night of Love

SHORT STORY MONDAY

Part one of a never ending story. A work of fiction in the classic style.

For One Night of Love

Helmsboro, Minnesota, is a town undergoing change... rural, yet slowly being transfigured by the spread of housing developments and zoning regulations. The farming has always been difficult in these parts, due to the short growing season and the hardscrabble land, hence after scratching out a living for as long as sensible most of the area's farmers have sold out, subdividing their properties and encouraging their sons and daughters to pursue more promising careers in other fields. Many have migrated to the Twin Cities, though others have stayed behind, uncertain what to make of the changes taking place all around them. Because of its low crime and good schools, the area has developed a good reputation, attracting many new families into the community.

Jeremy Tanner lived in a farmhouse on the right-hand side of the Helmsboro Road, often called Old County Two, an old asphalt road that sweeps up and away from the city below. Situated on forty acres, nearly all of it once cleared, his grandfather built the house shortly after the Great War, saying, "First you build the cage, then you catch the bird." His father grew up on the site and imagined that Jeremy would raise a family of his own here one day as well. Since his father's death nine years ago the land has remained neglected, for Jeremy never took an interest in gardening, nor in any other kind of farm labor for that matter.

In the old days, Jeremy's great-grandfather harvested hay for hops for a local brewery. The160 acres the Tanners then owned were some of the best in Helmsboro. His grandparents met at the farmer's market, as did his parents. But it was hard work, and the Tanners were hard on their women.

Jeremy's mother hanged herself in the barn when he was too young to remember so that it has been more than thirty years since the house enjoyed the attentive care of a woman's touch. After his father passed away, Jeremy found employment as a pot washer and kitchen help at the Northview Country Club. The house and land were paid for so that his modest wages suited him fine. He had no career ambitions, preferring instead the cloistered solitude with which he surrounded himself at home.

Jeremy had not been been a bad looking youth and became what some would consider a modestly handsome man. What hindered him socially, and disturbed him deeply, was a nervous condition over which he had virtually no control and which made him quite self-conscious and socially reserved to an extreme. He was plagued with muscle twitches and tics that manifest themselves in a variety of ways that included eye blinking, head jerking and facial grimaces. They had first appeared in his early teens, and no matter how he tried, he could never entirely control them. First it would be a tightness in his shoulder blades and he would roll the blade, and then do it again and, like a persistent itch, would continue the motion until it became a strange elastic jerking movement which took all of his concentration to restrain. Once successful overcoming that tic, the discomfort would show up in his neck, and for several weeks he would jerk his head, or roll his eyes, or make a sniffing noise or clear his throat. The variations on this theme were maddening and made him a victim of cruel jokes in school so that he could hardly bear having to return each day to the ridicule and insults of his peers. Feeling himself a freak, he learned to find comfort in solitude.

Over time the severity of these multiple tics diminished and often he showed no unusual signs at all. However, whenever he experienced stress, the tics would return. They were especially troublesome in his relations with the opposite sex, to an extent that he was embarrassed by them. The facial twitches and grimaces especially shamed him so that he even considered taking his life because of his inability to control them in the presence of a girl whom he wanted to please. Many times he wept bitterly because of his condition until at last, having come to believe that no girl would ever love him as he was, he resigned himself to living alone for the rest of his life. When his father died, it relieved him of the burden of having to find a wife to please his father. He could travel his solitary road in peace.

At thirty-one, he had settled into a routine which more than satisfied him. Life was no longer a burden for him. In fact, he was quite contented with the life he now lived, a life of routines and small pleasures. Though his workday began at noon, he liked to rise early, usually before dawn, to take long walks, weather permitting, and then to return to his home to draw. He spent hours walking, observing the evolving countryside, and even more hours in his room making pictures. Other than his employment, and the few mundane tasks which all single people must attend -- sleeping, bathing, washing clothes, paying bills, etc. -- this was the whole of his life.

On the other hand, he never read the papers, nor listened to the radio, nor did he own a television. (He took his father's TV to the Goodwill two weeks after the funeral.) He never went out to restaurants, shows or bars, and only went to the store when it was an absolute necessity. He was neighborly to his neighbors, but mostly kept to himself and they, knowing well his preference for solitude, left him to himself, an unspoken contract.

But for his walking, the hours he spent with pen and paper were the hours he lived for. So absorbed by his picture making was he that he would set an alarm clock to alert him that it was time to get ready for work. Otherwise he might easily spend an entire day making tiny, hatch markings for a shaded background and forget to report to his job altogether. What might seem boring and tedious to others, Jeremy found relaxing and even stimulating. He was amazed by his own pictures and by the wondrous spatial illusions that could be created by the stroke of a pen.

Jeremy did have other distractions. He enjoyed a good book now and then. And he liked to play a harmonica, especially in the late evening after dusk. Sometimes he would go out behind the barn and sit on some old crates playing lonesome sounding melodies that slid away into the vastness of the night. At one time, too, Jeremy had a dog of which he had been fond, but the dog had been hit by a car and killed and Jeremy could not bring himself to replace her.

CONTINUED

After the Crash

SHORT STORY MONDAY

"We are all so much together, but we are dying of loneliness." ~Albert Schweitzer

After the Crash

Standing outside in the misty dark, Jess felt unusually quiet. A rusty pipe propped open the door of the tin shed, its butt end digging into the gravel driveway. The single dim bulb in the shed revealed a green John Deere and the dusty clutter of four decades -- old car bumpers, boxes of paper, pitchfork, rusted garden tools and engine parts. The haze made the whole scene appear fuzzy and colorless as if draped in a shroud of gauze. Only the green John Deere reflected any color, sitting in a cleared space in the midst of, but seemingly detached from, the labyrinth of rubble. Hank Denmark stood alongside the rear wheel of the tractor, his greasy cap pulled snug over his brow.

"It's got to get more gas!" he shouted to Stanley Ross, who had climbed up into the tractor's seat and was now attempting to disengage the clutch. Stanley pulled the stick up, and then back part way.

"It needs more oil here," Stan said.

Hank told him why it had to be stiff like that, and stepped back as the engine turned over, the old John Deer lurching backward with a heave.

Stan quickly cut it off. "This thing's dangerous!" he laughed, dropping down now from the green behemoth.

Jess looked across the way to a streetlamp softly diffusing its light through the evening fog. The thickness of the moist misty night made everything seem strange. Hank and Stan seemed different, too. Their bodies seemed thicker, bulkier, more real.

Hank and Stan closed their business with the tractor and shuffled out of the shed. Hank turned out the light.

Over by the truck Hank asked a question about a guy who had recently returned to town who was now divorced. Jess continued watching and listening as the two men talked on, standing in the shadow of Stan's box-shaped truck.

A loudspeaker was blaring from some remote distance, but not enough to distract from the story Stan was telling.

After a while, Hank said, "Let's go in the house." The temperature had been dropping quickly.

The three went inside, but feeling awkward and alone, Jess said goodnight and stepped back out again, a nauseous churning in his gut.

He wondered how much of his life work they would be able to recover, and why he hadn’t backed up more often. And how did it happen this time? Folding his arms across his chest he shivered against the cold.

A Few Minutes with Roy

Having mentioned yesterday that some of Arundhati Roy’s ideas resonated with me, I should like to briefly comment on a few of the points she makes.

Ms. Roy’s book Public Power in the Age of Empire begins by noting that those who run our country claim to be on our side but in reality do not act in our best interests. Nor does our government care about what we think as long as we remain placid and keep re-electing those in power.

“Ordinary people in the United States have been manipulated into imagining they are a people under siege whose sole refuge and protector is their government. If it isn't the Communists, it's Al Qaeda. If it isn't Cuba, it's Nicaragua. As a result, this, the most powerful nation in the world - with its unmatchable arsenal of weapons, its history of having waged and sponsored endless wars, and the only nation in history to have actually used nuclear bombs - is peopled by a terrified citizenry, jumping at shadows. A people bonded to the state not by social services, or public health care, or employment guarantees, but by fear.

“This synthetically manufactured fear is used to gain public sanction for further acts of aggression. And so it goes, building into a spiral of self-fulfilling hysteria, now formally calibrated by the U.S. government's Amazing Technicolored Terror Alerts: fuchsia, turquoise, salmon pink.”

This stance of keeping the people manipulated into obeisance while the rich get richer is not uniquely American. I remember when oil was discovered off the coast of Mexico and it appeared that our neighbors south of the border were going to be rich, rich, rich. But while living there for a year in 1981 it was impossible not to notice the squalor the poor experienced in the big cities, the sprawling slums blanketing hillsides. Simultaneously, the presidents of the ruling PRI and their cronies suckled the golden teats of this oil flow so as to leave absolutely nothing changed except the size of their Swiss bank accounts. All democratically elected hoodlums.

When we were raising our children, my wife once read a book on parenting that noted that parents need to approach their children with an attitude that says, “I’m on your side.” The upshot of this is that the kids feel affirmed and listened to. The children are not always right, but there is a relationship that is healthy and which has ontological value.

Arundhati Roy’s premise is that government’s do not have this attitude when it comes to their poor. She cites dam projects which caused massive destruction and forced evacuations of the poor in India and elsewhere, of the massive destruction of homes in beautification projects for Olympic-sized entertainment complexes, and a whole catalogue of other indignities. And who is speaking on behalf of these people who have no voice in the modern world? These are part of our human family.

Even worse is the death and destruction wrought by war. The Bomb did not get dropped on troops. It leveled a city which was just like any city anywhere made up of people who went to work like you and I go to work, with schools, children, mothers, grandmothers… The destruction of the World Trade Center was not a military attack on a military target. The lobbing of bombs into Israel by Hamas and the incursion into Gaza, what happened there? Political powers made decisions, innocent people with no say in those decisions are killed, wounded, maimed.

But wars aren’t the only form of violence against the world’s poor. The World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions are writing economic policies and legislation that has no concern for the consequences wrought. According to Roy, “With a deadly combination of arrogance and ruthlessness, they take their sledgehammers to fragile, interdependent, historically complex societies, and devastate them.”

Because the situations are complex, Americans don’t understand what is really going on in the world. When people like Roy begin to raise their voices and get shrill enough to be heard, it frightens us... not the content of what these people say, but the megaphones they use to say it. As Roy says, the government uses this fear strengthen its power, like a mother hen drawing her little chicks up under her wing. “Yes, it is scary out there, little chickies," our leaders say, "so get up close to me here. I will protect you from the big bad wolves.”

This woman from India has done her homework. I am not sure what her prescriptions are for solution or if I line up with them entirely but I do believe she is speaking for a large contingent of humanity who at this point in time have no power, and no voice.

If interested in getting a taste of these challenging ideas, read Public Power in the Age of Empire here

The Lonely American

"Knowing, in a deep-down sense, where you are from contributes not only to your sense of identity but to your sense of community." ~Vance Packard, A Nation of Strangers

Last night I picked up the current Utne to read an article called "The Lonely American." The article begins with some grave statistics, cited for you here:

Two recent studies suggest that our society is in the midst of a dramatic and progressive slide toward disconnection. In the first, using data from the General Social Survey (GSS), Duke University researchers found that between 1985 and 2004 the number of people with whom the average American discussed “important matters” dropped from three to two. Even more stunning, the number of people who said there was no one with whom they discussed important matters tripled: In 2004 individuals without a single confidant made up a quarter of those surveyed. Our country is now filled with them.

The second study was the 2000 U.S. census. One of the most remarkable facts to emerge from this census is that one of four households consists of one person only. The number of one-person households has been increasing steadily since 1940, when they accounted for roughly 7 percent of households. Today, there are more people living alone than at any point in U.S. history. Placing the census data and the GSS side by side, the evidence that this country is in the midst of a major social change is overwhelming.

The article is excerpted from the book of the same name by Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz, whose aim appears to be to show how the American lifestyle leads to social isolation.

They note that socializing is not the priority it ought to be in our culture. They cite the frenetic pace of life driven by materialistic pursuits as part of the problem. They also note that social isolation is damaging to both health and ecology, though I didn't make the full connection on this last assertion.

What I found absent in the article, and hope it is not deliberately ignored in the book, was any reference to the groundbreaking work by Vance Packard on this topic, A Nation of Strangers.

Olds and Schwartz may be correctly sounding alarm bells regarding isolation, but what they're seeing is the fruit of what Packard cited more than forty years ago. In his 1962 analysis, "Personal isolation is becoming a major social fact of our time. A great many people are disturbed by the feeling that they are rootless or increasingly anonymous, that they are living in a continually changing environment where there is little sense of community."

Before citing more from Packard, though, it could be that this is simply the fruit of acidity of modernity. Existential philosophers like Camus and Sartre observed this "alienation and despair" as an isolating phenomenon which for many is the human condition in our Western world. The problem with the "existential hero" is that he can't connect, and thus claims it noble to stand alone.

The reality is that we weren't created to stand alone. Families, communities, tribes, clans, associations, friends... we need them because life is hard. And we're not gods, we're mortals who have a lot of hard things to deal with from time to time.

One of the things I remember most vividly from Packard's book was that people are more mobile in our modern (Fifties/Sixties, USA) society than ever before. With the free-wheeling lifestyle glorified in books like Kerouac's On the Road, young people left their stifling rural communities in droves and went to the big city where the lights are bright on Brodadway. The critically acclaimed Midnight Cowboy (Jon Voigt, Dustin Hoffman) portrayed one pair of lost souls in this exodus. And the theme song by Nillson says it all, "Everybody's talkin' at me, I don't hear a word their saying." Seeker Joe Buck finds himself alone in a big world, and it's a hard world.

But Packard cited other causes for this rootlessness, much of it work related. In the course of my life I've been aware too that military kids and preachers' kids are often the victims of mobile lifestyles that make it challenging to develop connections. It's almost a byword now to say, rather flippantly, you have to go where the jobs are.

For more on Packard, and an interesting application of Packard's observations to the Red States / Blue States divide, check out this perspective by the Brothers Judd.

Pain and Sorrow

"Yet man is born to trouble as surely as the sparks fly upward." ~ Job 5:7

"Life is difficult." So begins Dr. M. Scott Peck in his searching book The Road Less Traveled.

Peck continues. "This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths." And in a footnote, he points out that it is one of the Four Noble Truths taught by Buddha, who said, "Life is suffering."

According to Peck, accepting this truth results in a form of inner liberation. While we each may experience a unique package of sorrow and troubles, it is a common fate. As the Proverb states, "Even in laughter the heart may be in pain, and joy may end in grief."

Peck's message is that we should not be caught off guard. Life is hard. That is, hard things can happen to us, and unless we are made of stone these things will affect us. It is part of being human. But we can respond to this reality in a variety of ways with ultimately positive ends. Artists turn it into art, musicians into song. For many it is a weight that humbles us into self-forgetfulness and leads us into a place of greater awareness of others' pain, isolation, despair.

These are not things that happen overnight. Grief must do its work.

A number of songs came to mind today. "Tears in Heaven" by Eric Clapton was among the first, written when he lost his four-year-old son in a tragic accident. "Fire and Rain" was a similar heartfelt song through which James Taylor bared his soul when I was a young college student.

Blackbird, from the Beatles' White Album, speaks to me from this haunted place as well.

Blackbird

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Take these broken wings and learn to fly.
All your life

You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Take these sunken eyes and learn to see.

All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free.

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly

Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Take these broken wings and learn to fly.

All your life

You were only waiting for this moment to arise

You were only waiting for this moment to arise

You were only waiting for this moment to arise

For this reason it is not good to be alone in the world. There is value in having friends and/or family with whom we can share our burdens.

Notes: The painting atop this blog entry is by Turtle, a local Duluth artist. The blackbirds were painted from a window in my apartment my last year in college.

To Save the World

"When people are ripe for a mass movement, they are usually ripe for any effective movement, and not solely for one with a particular doctrine or program." ~ Eric Hoffer

When I was really young, my brother and I used to make up games like these two, which probably lots of kids did. For example, when we were at our grandparents house, we'd try to get all around the living room without touching the floor. The floor, we'd pretend, was molten lava or some other deadly thing. In other words, to amplify the intensity of the game, there was a heavy price to be paid if you lost. It was a life or death game and we'd really get into it.

A second game was keeping a balloon or a ball in the air, or many balloons, by tapping them upward. Gravity would bring them earthward. The stake in this game was the end of the world. That is, if the balloon touched the ground, the whole world would be destroyed.

These memories were triggered by a discussion between two brothers in V.S. Naipaul's Magic Seeds. The one brother's life feels empty. He has no "cause." He wishes he had something to fight for. The second brother tells him to open his eyes. "There are causes all around you."

This is the idea behind Hoffer's statement above. People who feel their lives are small, who feel their lives are petty and meaningless, long for meaning. The childhood games we played as kids worked when we were kids, but as adults we know that the world will not blow up if the balloon touches the carpet.

What's especially intriguing is that both Naipaul and Hoffer seem to be saying that it hardly matters what the mass movement is. When conditions are right in peoples' hearts, there are a whole range of causes to fight, or even die, for.

Hoffer devotes a portion of his book, The True Believer, to the makeup of these people types . They are the disaffected, the poor, the misfits, the outcasts, minorities, adolescent youth, those in the grip of some vice or obsession, the bored and the sinners. They want to be free from feelings of isolation. They want to belong to something bigger than themselves. They want to give meaning to their lives.

Interestingly enough, three thousand years ago King David's first army was assembled from the disenfranchised in Israel. When Saul, Israel's first king, attempted to solifiy power by eliminating his potential replacement, David finally had to flee to the hills. He was joined there by others who were on the outs. In the book of Chronicles it says that, "Day after day men came to help David, until he had a great and mighty army." I used to think they followed David because he represented "right." Perhaps to some extent he was simply a galvanizing force that attracted the outcasts because many needed to belong to something. This is not to say that David was simply another mass movement, but that the Bible account corresponds with the way we'd expect people to behave based on what we know today about the sociology of mass movements.

In the world today, there a millions seeking causes, seeking meaning for their lives. To the degree that we are unable to integrate the poor, the lower classes into society, to give them hope of a better life by contributing to the community and society at large, to this very degree they are susceptible to alternative causes. Suicice bombers don't emerge out of nowhere. They come from the disenfranchised. What greater proof of one's passion for a cause than to give one's life for that cause...

What are the causes that matter to you? What is the meaning of your life? Think about it. Then go out and make a difference.

Cassandra’s Dream

Just finished watching Woody Allen’s most recent release, Cassandra’s Dream, starring Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor, among others. There are many great facets of the film, including the superfine way Allen creates fully developed characters with a minimal number of brushstrokes. He’s a master in this regard.

A follow up to Match Point, the film has the same seriousness, setting (England), ironies, and mix of characters with their different generational viewpoints and motivations. The characters are transparent to the viewer, but not to one another. In this regard, the screen writing is brilliant.

It is a story of two brothers -- and their love interests as well as family ties -- who have character flaws. Each has dreams that require money, and each seems intent on escaping the responsibilities of the family business to pursue what are patently foolish paths. At one point the brothers reminded me of some of Elmore Leonard’s criminals who are both smart and foolish. The outcome of the film was from the beginning self-evident, why could they not see it coming? Yet people do these kinds of things all the time. The music track alone tells you this is a tragedy and going to have a bad ending.

I did have a problem with the Phillip Glass soundtrack on one level. Yes, it worked well in this film, but for me it evoked The Illusionist. If someone pointed this out (and someone must have) I can picture Allen saying, “That’ll work. Not that many people will have seen both films.” Or something to that effect.

That may be the one weakness of the film, not the music, but the decision to not push something to another level. Mr. Allen’s philosophy of film making is not to produce great art. It is to get the stories out. He is undoubtedly filled with stories, and simply doesn’t waste time on time consuming details. Or so it seems.

For this reason, despite the fabulous acting and great dialogue, crisp character development and tight story, the movie might not receive its share of critical acclaim. But then, in reading his book Woody Allen on Woody Allen, he owns up to the fact that he is not striving to be Bergman or Fellini. He does not wish the comparison to be even made. He is simply a man who loved the movies, and who has lived out his dream of being able to make movies. Ultimately, he probably doesn’t really care what the critics think, which is a nice place to be if you can get there.

In the end, I would have re-shot at least two or three moments in the film that should have been re-shot to “get it right.” Though maybe in the grand scheme of things it didn’t matter. There is much to like here with its echoes of Greek tragedy and other classic moments in literature. (The scene in the bedroom felt eerily close to the problem Raskalnikov encountered in Crime & Punishment, undoubtedly intentional.)

The film has sensuousness as a theme with almost none of the usual Hollywood demonstrativeness. It hints, rather than reveals.

The title for the film comes from the name of a boat which the brothers buy. The name Cassandra is taken from mythical Greek tragedy. Cassandra was loved by Apollo, but ended up being cursed by him when she did not return his love. Her gift of being able to foresee the future was forever a source of pain and frustration for her. The viewer of this film, like Cassandra, knows from the first that things will turn out bad, but can do nothing to stop it.

As is often the case, “The best laid plans of mice and men do often go awry.” Or to quote a maxim of my own, “We tend to get what we want, but we usually get more than we bargained for.”

Much To Be Grateful For

We take so much for granted. Hence there is value each year on Thanksgiving day to reflect on how much we have to be thankful for. Friends, family, loved ones, a home, a job. It is a good tradition to make a list, to write it down. Writing forces you to clarify even further, and this process makes you even more appreciative.

But if you are an American, when you have finished your list you will have still not recorded some things that are so basic, so part of our lives, yet we take them for granted. One way to deepen your appreciation for how good you have it is to visit an impoverished Third World nation.

We did not do such a thing this week, but we did go there in pictures when the son of a friend of ours shared photos from his recent nine day trip to a slum called Cite Soleil outside Port au Prince. Having lived in Puerto Rico and Mexico, I have seen slums. But I'd not seen anything that closely compared to this (except perhaps some very poor sections of Mexico City.)

The shanty towns stretched far as your eye could see. No yards, no electricity, no running water, disease infested stenchwater and muck all through the streets, makeshift homes of corrugated steel and miscellaneous scrap materials, and death. One in four children never see their fifth birthday. Reality is grim, and hope is difficult to imagine.

Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere. For a bed, many people sleep on cardboard. AIDS is rampant. Food is lacking. And for most, even if you want to work there are no jobs. What is there to look forward to?

Without electricity, if you had as cell phone, there would be no way to re-charge the battery. No microwave ovens. No way to read this blog post because you would not have internet access, or a computer. Was that a mosquito bite or a malaria infection you just received?

The mission of The Haiti Orphans Project is to improve the lives of orphaned children in Haiti by providing medical care, access to education and equal access to basic services. If you wish to do more than "give thanks" you can visit their website and see what a few handfuls of good people are doing out on the front lines where poverty reigns.

http://www.haitiorphansproject.org/haiti/english/home88.html

The Burden

The old masters knew the truth of how it is, while we moderns so easily forget -- or evade -- the wisdom of the ages which so plainly stands forth.
Sept. 12, 1993

"Life is a tragedy." ~ Sir Walter Raleigh

"O life! Thou art a galling load
along a rough, a weary road." ~ Robert Burns

"Our aim should not be so much to live long as to live well." ~ Seneca

"Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the great truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. One we truly know that life is difficult -- once we truly understand and accept it -- then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters." ~ M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled

"Life is suffering." ~ the first of the Four Noble Truths of Budhha

And yet... and yet...
"O Lord Almighty,
blessed is the man who trusts in you." ~ Psalm 84:11

How Soon Till High Noon?

Heard Chris Hedges on Minnesota Public Radio last night... speaking with much venom for the Christian Right. Some of his outrage may have a measure of legitimacy, but what does he advocate as a solution? He cites Karl Popper's The Open Society & Its Enemies, stating that we (meaning The Left, or the intellectual Elite) may have a right, even an obligation, to silence "the intolerant" for the sake of the greater good of society. Hedges argues that the Right must be silenced by action.

What concerns me here is that we live in a Machiavellian era where Virtue is neither a supreme value or a relevant one. Bare knuckled power is the bottom line. Crush the opposition by any means possible before he crushes you. It's the new Cold War, only a war of ideas, with no apparent attempt at understanding. The objective is to win.

The Right takes the same stance. Both sides appear to be arming for battle... waiting for High Noon. Who will draw first?

August 21, 2007

Verbal vitriol has long been a part of the American political scene. (Read John Adams, by McCulloch.) Much of it is rhetoric. It concerns me, however, when I hear the shrillness in Hedges' delivery. He is a man with an aim: move his audience to action. And what action is it he wants them to take? He spells it out. Not only does he quote the Karl Popper passage in his speech, he uses it in the introduction to his new book.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."-- Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (reprinted as the introduction to Chapter One in the book by Chris Hedges called, "American Fascist: The Christian Right and the War on America.)

And so we are marching toward a faceoff. Each side professing that Tolerance and Free Speech, long time American virtues, may be no longer important. Each side professing to its followers that the other side cannot be trusted, and at some point we'll need to make a grab for power because if we don't, they will. Are we heading toward a gunfight at the O.K. Corral?

Machiavelli, in The Prince, essentially states that it is better to win by lying, cheating and stealing than it is to lose. The end justifies the means in Machiavellian morality. This is a world view at odds with the Bible and Christian ethics. And for this reason, it cannot be embraced as an action plan by the true Christian, whether politically conservative or liberal.

Passionate Purposefulness

Excellent meeting of M5 last night. Shared my theory of Passionate Purposefulness... and was shown that it needed further development. The third dimension is self --> others. A potentially profound life model is developing. Excellent insights by group.

Also had opportunity to share about influence, and the impact my grandmother had on my life. Read 3 of her poems, including 'Life', which they all wanted a copy of after.
December 2, 1997

Here is the poem Life which I shared that evening ten years ago, followed by a link to the dedication page I created in my grandmother's memory.

Life
If you, in your way of life
Have ever been a stranger

To the dread scarred face,

And frightening ways of danger,

Then the safety you possess

Is hard to realize.

Until some danger threatens you

You blindly close your eyes.

If failure never came to you
Success can have no savor.

Your love must know some hate

Or it can have no flavor!

If sorrow never choked our throats

Or teardrops dimmed our eye

The dizzying heights of happiness

Are lost and gone awry!

He who reads diligently

And after truth has sought
And has truly never doubted

Has as truly never thought!

So use your doubts and sorrows

Like a springboard from the sky,

The lower down they take you

The higher up you fly!

http://www.enewman.biz/p-sandy.html

No Victims?

Completed Joyce Carol Oates' "First Love"... Long short story or short novella. Painful, dark, so vividly written it tears, mutilates your own heart. Incest and dark secrets from 11 year old victim's point of view.

Some people say there are no victims. But yes, there are. Adults make choices and children suffer. This suffering of the children is the tragedy, the great tragedy, of the Fall.
May 9, 1997

At this moment I am reminded of Princess Di's work with regard to land mines. One of the great horrors and tragedies of war are the massive quantities of unexploded mines and bombs which sit idle for years and decades, scattered in massive quantities about the globe. All too often it is the children, out to play, who discover to their own peril these maiming implements, not of mass destruction but of personal life disfiguration and dismemberment.

I think, too, of the investors who profited from the development of these terrible devices, and who continue to profit from investing in companies that create new concepts for doing damage to tomorrow's children.

Perhaps we should think it through. Can we invest in organizations and businesses designed to alleviate sorrow? Yes, that is what giving to charities should be about. But what about the totality of our lives? In addition to our giving to charities, both our livelihoods and our investments can contribute to making the world a better place.

On every level we can make a difference. If we so choose.