Writing for Sanity's Sake

Seeing people flee their countries in order to try and save themselves and their families is distressing to put it mildly. It is a human tragedy not witnessed in this generation. Many, many of them are dying. Men, women and babies drowning at sea. All taking that uncertain risk, in order to escape an almost certain death.

Most of them are Muslim, although many are Christian…seeing as how the Christian churches in this area of the world, which had been under the protection of the strong man dictatorships in Iraq and Egypt, are now totally unprotected.

I was reading through some comments on posts today where someone was expressing regret over the death of so many babies and children…no matter if they were Muslim. Another person commented in that same post with a reply which I knew well, and which I consider the most repugnant and vulgar line ever uttered by a human being. He said he didn’t care about the death of these babies and young children because: “nits make lice” That line makes my skin crawl with rage.

It was first uttered by an ex preacher turned militia leader named John Milton Chivington. He was the Colorado militia leader who said, concerning the Indians in that territory during 1864: “Damn any man who is a sympathizer with the Indians. I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right under God’s heaven to use any means to kill Indians. Kill and scalp all, big and little. Nits make lice.”

So at Sand Creek, in November of 1864, he and 700 men slaughtered, raped, mutilated and desecrated an estimated 200 or more Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, two thirds of whom were woman and children, who were there supposedly under “protection” of the government with Chief Black Kettle, a peace chief as their leader. Nothing was ever done to punish Chivington for his leadership and participation in this heinous act against people whose sole sin was ownership of land which other men coveted, and a difference in beliefs and customs. When I first read this account in Michener’s “Centennial” many years ago, I thought it was fiction. Research showed it was not.

I go back then to the current situation of these Syrian and Iraqis refugees whose homes have been destroyed, who are being herded into camps with little or nothing to eat, no hygienic facilities, no dignity and little hope for a good future. I see the clips of their women and children…the innocent children. They are being displaced mostly because of their beliefs and customs, and because someone else covets their property.

It infuriates me about the comparison to the 19th century Native Americans. Is a massacre of these current refugees imminent if something isn’t done? Are there more John Chivingtons out there, both overseas and here in America? Of course there are. The fact that someone would use Chivington’s words prove it.

I hope if I have any Facebook friends out there who feel like a John Chivington, they will just go ahead and unfriend me after they read this. I don’t need them.

We are Afraid

….of things which are happening half way around the world. And I know that we have to be cautious. But, if we live our lives afraid of forces who do heinous things, and dramatically and cinematically record them just to make us afraid, then we have given over the victory to them.

Some members of humanity who are or were madmen have always done things such as this, but have never before had the ability to project them to the entire world on a practically uncontrolled and unregulated new technology. Two beheadings of innocent men is an inhuman act but, I can’t imagine the kind of fear that Vlad the Impaler would have caused if he had been capable of putting his deeds on the Internet.

We didn’t have the internet between 1958 and 1962 when over 45 million Chinese people starved to death…so very few people even know about it. The internet wasn’t there when 3 million or so people were tortured to death or hacked to death in the killing fields of Cambodia during the early 70’s.

Stalin’s forced starving of up to 12 million Ukrainians during the 30’s (because the Ukraine wanted independence…sound familiar?? And he was our ally??) is scarcely known of. What is Facebook had been around then?

Many, many acts of tremendous, inhuman violence have occurred during human history. Way too many to mention here. Most of these acts are so deeply buried in history books that it is hard to seek them out and find them, and really hard to believe they really occurred. They were only documented on the written page, with few if any photographs. There were no “viral videos” of them.

If I die in an attack on this country by these crazed terrorists, I will not do it because I am hiding in my house and not living my life. Screw them, I refuse it! I hope to make a trip to the beach next month and I’m not going to sit around and worry about them.

Let the countries in the neighborhood of these killers put the boots on the ground, or let them be taken over. I don’t think they will let that happen. Saudi Arabia itself has one of the most well equipped and largest armies in the world. Outside of Israel, they are the strongest in the area. Maybe they think their army is “just for show” so let them put it to work. We certainly have provided them enough money one way or the other. Also how about Jordan and Turkey…the countries who want the U.S. to foot the bill and provide the manpower. Let them do it. Their excuse is that we caused it, and that may have some truth to it. They want us in, then they want us out, then they want us in.

There are many more things that I am afraid of, besides the beasts in the Middle East.

I’m afraid of the loss of love within families, friends and communities.

I’m afraid of seeing another child die at the hands of their Father or Mother, because we are unwilling to stop the drug problems in this country or because we are afraid to admit that we need many more facilities and experts to treat mental illness, we need more and better trained workers to help.

I’m afraid of another kid being mistakenly killed in his bed by some “gang” member who is there because he had nothing better to do, maybe nothing to do at all.

I’m afraid we have spent way, way too much money on fighting wars in foreign countries and way, way too little money on creating jobs for young people, and on education. If we had taken all the money we have spent on war in the last 13 years and applied it to education, not one student would have had to pay for a college education.

I’m afraid we are becoming creatures who depend too much on electronic devices as a way to express ourselves, and not enough time looking into each other’s eyes when we speak.

I’m afraid we are going down the path of sacrificing our emotions, our privacy, our finances, and our freedom to the idol of the “cloud” What happens when we turn so much of our lives over to it, that if a solar flare brings it all down we would be hard put to survive? Are we there already?

As I was exercising on 911, I was looking out the big window in the front of the room and saw at least 6 jets flying from West to East. They were not the ones who leave the big puffy contrails, but the ones in a hurry to get somewhere, whose contrail vanishes in a minute or two. I bet there were a lot of fighter planes in the sky that day. We have a lot of them in this country. We have a pretty damn secure country really. We have a pretty great country really.

It’s going to be a real shame if we let fear mongers, warmongers, professional people dividers, the media, the politicians, the mega financial institutions, or the terrorists scare us into abandoning or giving away the freedoms we have been given in this country.

I really think if anybody with ill intent hits the beaches of our country they will be in for a big surprise.

At some point during the day today, the names of the people who died at the World Trade Center will be read aloud again. The innocent people who died there. We pay tribute to those heroes who died on that day, while they continue to whisper in the wind: “pay attention, don’t let our lives be wasted…it could happen again”

I personally think they died in order to entangle our country in an endless war. Not a war against a country or a group of people, but a war against an idea. A war against a word. How do you win that kind of war? How do you know when you have won? We certainly haven’t been doing much winning since that day. It would be a miracle to put this country back to the way it was on September 10th 2001. I don’t know if it will ever happen.

Americans have lost much of their privacy and personal freedoms since that day. We all know about the Patriot act, but there were and are many, many other changes to our Civil liberties which have been promulgated since that day. Enough to fill a book, many books really. Our freedoms took an extreme hit that day those innocent people died.

Presidents gained the power to practically wage unlimited war, through the AUMF…the Authorization for the use of Military Force. Originally passed to use against Al Qaeda, the Bush administration used it, along with puffed up UN sanctions in order to go to war in Iraq. Millions died.

The Obama administration took it to a whole new level by using it as a basis to drone kill practically ever person they considered a “prominent ” member of any terror related group, including U.S. Citizens. Hundreds or thousands of innocent people have died as collateral damage. Thousands of lawyers are employed to insure the killings are legal under the AUMF.

I’d hate to be Bush or Obama if there is Universal justice for the deaths of innocents.

So in the ensuing fifteen years your life has changed drastically and probably forever, though many don’t realize it, because they don’t feel it….yet.

Look to those who have profited since the day those innocent people died. Follow the money, as one of my friends says, and you will draw closer to the purveyors and the people movers who may have actually wanted this eternal war to happen, or at the least, saw it as a way to line their pockets, and swell their bank accounts. I haven’t got time tonight to make a list of the dirty bastards. You can Google them if you are interested. It’s not hard to find.

Another 911 anniversary today. The fifteenth. I sincerely pray for the lives of those innocent people killed that day, and those who have died since then because of the effects of that day.

They didn’t know when they went to work that day, or got on a plane that morning, that they would end up being sacrifices on the altar of the need for eternal war, greed and the need for a reduction in freedom for America and the entire world in general.

Others look at what happened that day, and based on what they heard on the news media….or what they thought the news media was giving them, have drawn a totally different conclusion than what I have drawn. And that’s OK. It’s fine.

Everything is opinion, and perception is always going to be reality.

Yesterday I had both and they were sort of unexpected. We went to Church and my daughter Kirsten was scheduled to sing a solo. She told me it was a new song and it was one she really liked, and it had spoke to her immediately when she first heard it. When she came up to the front and looked back to the sound engineer for the track to start, he shook his head…”nothing there” he said.

My daughter kind of had that look on her face which said “this is not good” but…as things go, the CD wouldn’t work and she undertook to sing the song acapella. She started out on key and her voice built as she sang the song…I was able to listen closely to the words of the song “Blessing” more than I would have normally been able to…there was no music, no melody to get in the way of the beautiful lyrics and the story they told. It was a blessing.

Later…we went to my niece Shanna’s house for dinner. Her little daughter Jenna, who has Down’s syndrome, met me at the door and I went into the living room and started to play with her. I haven’t been around her as much as I should have and I was a little worried about communicating with her…but we got right on, started playing with the big mega “stacking” blocks. I started to sing a song just for the heck of it…I think it was “Unchained Melody” She looked at me and just stared and then she got a funny little look and took me by the hand and led me back to her little room. She pointed at her CD player and turned it on so that the music played and then pointed at me. She was telling me “look this is where my music comes from”

From then on the rest of the time I was around her I could feel the communications coming from her through her eyes..the melody coming from her heart. No words had to be said, no lyrics had to be written. I know it must be hard to have that music in your heart without a way to speak it…how frustrating it must be at times when you know what you want to say but cannot say it…, you know what you want to share but other people cannot receive your sharing. So….the song without the music was a blessing…and so was the little girl’s music from her heart without the words. Both meant so much to me.

If I thought there was a chance to change America through what I write on Facebook, I would go all out with pen and pencil blazing to change what is, in my humble opinion, wrong in my beloved country. But there’s never been an instance of which I am aware where I have changed someone’s minds about their beliefs.

This is a reactive media. It’s an emotion driven ride where many people let others do their thinking and their writing for them. The media is inundated with “dueling memes” on all the hot button issues of the day. And in the end, hardly anyone’s Facebook persona is the same as their real personality. We all write from the perspective of our own positions, not from the perspective of how we would treat each other if we met in Wal-Mart, much less really get to know each other by becoming real life acquaintances. It’s a sad and futile way to try and deal with living in the real world.

We are taken advantage of by the demagogues and self serving political worms because they know all the right strings to pull. Up becomes down. The meekest and most polite people become right fighters for the wrong causes. It causes my heart to break, and my eyes to fill with tears at the injustices being heaped upon us from all sides, like hot coals on a pig in the ground. All we are lacking is the Apple in our mouth, and the oligarchic theocratic rulers will have us for dinner.

Longfellow wrote: “and in despair I bowed my head, there is no peace on Earth I said. For hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth good will to men”

Common decency is being replaced by the boorishness of the bullies who will say any vulgar thing. How do we as Americans honor this type of attitude as acceptable? Is this the new normal? Will we go back to dueling before long to settle our differences and protect our honor?

Do we let a vocal minority of lawbreakers dictate morality for all of us? They do not even represent the majority of their own group! Yet we would hold them sacred above the law.

I’m puzzled, I’m confused, but most of all I am disheartened and surprised.

As I look at my watch to see what time it is, and then at the calendar on the wall to see the date I realize that there is nothing, nothing whatsoever that I can do about the 67 years and 11 months that have already passed by on these two instruments of measurement.

All I can do is pray that the time that is ahead which I have left is

spent being more helpful to others, more loving than I have been, more

giving than I think I should be, and most of all more appreciative of

all that I have been given, right down to the tiniest tick of that watch

that I have on my wrist……

I was just looking at the calendar today, and I’ve glanced at my watch several times. Our two most reliable methods of “keeping up with time”.

Such a mystery, isn’t it? A minute of time does not seem like much, but try and hold your breath for that sixty seconds….then it becomes a long time.

Almost sixty six years is a long time, but it really doesn’t seem like much. It’s flown by like a 747 at top speed! Coast to coast in four hours!

I wonder how forever would feel?

A lot of our religions are rooted in the human beings need to live on and on, and the fear of the unknown that plagues our thoughts.

I wish I had the time back that I have spent fretting about the unknown. I’d take it back a second at a time, like the ticks on my watch. Or a week at a time, like on my calendar.

I’d take it a minute at a time, and maybe try to hold my breath!

Most of all, I’ll take it as long as it is given to me, and I’ll try my very best to be more grateful. And I’ll endeavor to stop fretting so much about that great unknown. However it ends up, I don’t think it will be a bad thing.

To Err is Human

“To err is human, to forgive is divine” so says poet Alexander Pope. Now this line from was a great big old huge poetical work of his that was LONG! There was another good one from this work too: “Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread” One more: “A little learning is a dangerous thing.”

Those three sayings have got to be in the top 100 of things people have said since 1701 (which is when Pope wrote them) they’ve pretty much become standards.

I’ve always thought that a little learning is a dangerous thing. Nowadays if you get on Facebook very often, you will see what I mean. As Forrest Gump said: “That’s about all I’ve got to say about that”

I know that I have “erred” pretty often in my life, and I have been forgiven. So somewhere out there are a lot of divine people running around. I’ve probably done a lot less forgiving than I should have. I’m trying to catch up, so give me time.

Finally, in this group of somewhat disparate quotes (all of these came from one LONG poem remember) is the one about fools rushing in where angels fear to tread. I’m not sure about where exactly it is that an Angel would fear to tread. Angels have been described as being pretty courageous. Fools on the other hand are…well…foolish. Maybe it means that people should plan ahead and not take risks, lest they get themselves into a “pickle” Wait a minute…that’s another one. Dang.

My conclusion here is, that after reading only about one third of Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” for a college English lit class I once took, I am now glad that the internet age has ushered in the ability to Google the things I only once dreamed of being able to learn. I’ve learned a lot over the past 10 years or so. Actually probably a lot more than I learned in college. I read, and read, and read, and research…and sometimes I still cannot tell satire from reality. As a matter of fact, it is getting a hell of a lot harder to do so. I guess a little learning IS a dangerous thing after all.

All the hate and the negativity we see and hear are like the swamp mud we have to crawl through to get to the sugary white sand at the ocean’s edge.

I lay here and think of ordinary things, like our two block walk to the festival last night with Eli and Rue. They both had on their sandals, and it was slow going …but…it was wonder time. I learned more about living life during that walk than I have in many single YEARS of my working career. What did I ever, ever do which was more important than those twenty minutes? I would conjecture….nothing. That was time which was more precious than gold. I find I have a lot of that lately….but never too much! I find far too often I appreciate it’s significance later instead of in the moment, much to my consternation.

And then I see people who are my contemporaries in this world, with whom I have had some issues during my life. I now feel that those differences meant very little, if anything at all in the larger scheme of things. I can shake their hands, or hug them and in all human honesty wish them well. I wish them good health and happiness. I can’t hold on to the past. Can you?

I find that my circle of priorities in caring, is beginning to grow smaller in its revolution. Things which used to seem SO important, now fall outside of my journey. And I know the orbit will continue to grow smaller and smaller still, as I age. More and more things will wane and become tinier in view, until one day I will retreat inside of myself.

My hope is that it will not be soon, but for all of us it will be too soon, no matter the date and time.

I watched those fireworks go off last night and I feel our lives are a parallel to them. We come into this world and light up the darkness, and interact with each other simultaneously like so many different rockets. We are different sounds and different colors and different levels of fury. We affect each other on so many different planes. But our time is short and we are soon just smoke and ash. What other’s will remember about us will be how pretty we were at our best and brightest.

What other’s will remember about us is if we cared, if we respected, if we loved, if we gave, if we listened, if we played, if we danced, if we sang, if we forgave, and if we looked with open eyed wonder at the priceless gifts surrounding us and said “thank you for this”

Thank you God for this. Thank you our creator for this. Thank our lucky stars for this.

As Peter Falk’s character “the Grandfather” told his grandson after he finished his reading of “The Princess Bride”, when the little boy asked if he would read it again he said: “As you wish”

Thank you for this. May all things be as you wish.

A Philosophy to Live By…

You tell your children “I will always love you, there is nothing you could ever do that would make me stop loving you.” You tell them this before they know what you are saying, and you keep telling them this for as long as you can, so that no matter how old they get they cannot remember a time you have not told them.

If you do this the world will become a better place.

You then tell your family. “You are my family, and nothing you can ever do will keep me from loving you.” You tell them this because they are your family, and because it is true.

If you do this, the world will become a brighter place.

You tell your friends: “You are my friend and I love you, and nothing you could ever do will be so bad I cannot forgive it”

If you do this, the world will become more serene.

You tell your enemies that you care greatly for your children and your family. You tell them there is nothing you would not do to protect them,….nothing. You tell them that it is in their best interest to become friends.

If you do this the world is given a chance to draw breath and think.

I hope if we do this the world has a slim chance to heal wounds that have been open and bleeding for as long as there have been people.