My mother missed outliving Henry Kissinger by just eighteen days. She would have liked to see him go.
Presented without comment
Random unrelated thoughts that are actually quite related
First thought: I’m getting really tired of the prevailing response to news of just about any garden-variety street crime being a roll of the eyes, followed by, “See? Bail reform!”
Second thought: Americans are very, very, very bad at seeing how societal problems tie into one another. Every issue is treated as a distinct problem to solve, which ultimately ends up meaning that none of them really get solved.
Third thought: You’d think more people would realize that maybe a country that incarcerates more people per capita (and in sheer numbers) than any other country on earth should start looking for different solutions to crime.
That is all.
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Striking
I’m generally of the view that ownership, or management, or capital, or whatever should almost never be listened to or taken seriously during times of labor strife, and that in such times you should listen to the striking workers. Not working is always the last choice, for obvious reasons, and when it gets to that point, things are generally well and truly bad.
Writer Mark Evanier has been one of my go-to sources for the ongoing Writers Strike in America’s teevee and film industry. This post is a good example of why:
This includes putting up with the most maddening part of it: Hearing some guy who gets paid a zillion dollars a week tell us that the business is hurting and there’s simply no money to give to us. When I hear this — and we always hear this — I always think, “Your only responsibility is to make as much money as possible for your company. If it’s doing that badly, shouldn’t you be fired?”
While we’re toughing it out, it would help to think about preparing for the next one. If we take a terrible deal this time, the next one will come sooner and be a whole lot worse.
If the last few years haven’t driven home the degree to which labor is getting short-changed their share of the spoils from record profits, I don’t know what kind of economy will.
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“Do you remember America?”
It’s July 4. A repost from one year ago:
“Do you remember America?” the curious person will ask one night, in a darkened tavern as they nurse their second or third drink. “The country tried to codify freedom and democracy? I mean, sure, at first it was only for a few of their citizens, but it was a start, right? They got better at it. And sure, getting better took a whole lot of spilled blood over a couple hundred years, and even when they said ‘Sure, fine, you’re free now,’ they came up with ways to keep you from really being free…but really, do you remember America? That country that tamed an entire wilderness! I mean, sure, they seized that wilderness from people already living there, but still. Do you remember America? The country that made polio a memory? I mean, sure, less than a hundred years later they tried to ignore a new disease, but that was pretty neat, right? And they went to the Moon! I mean, sure, that was so they could feel better about getting there first against a country that doesn’t exist anymore, and they never went again or did much about that, but still. Do you remember America?”
“I remember,” a voice will say, probably from the back of the tavern. A raspy voice, an old voice, unable to speak loudly much at all anymore. A hat drawn down over a haunted face, scarred and weathered by time. “I remember America.” And they will lift their whiskey to their mouth.
“What happened to it?” the curious person will ask.
And the person at the end of the bar will swallow their whiskey and look off into the distance, what little distance there is, and eventually they will shrug. “We did,” they’ll say. “We happened to America.”
And the person will drain their whiskey and leave out the back door. Those remaining who heard this exchange will puzzle over it for a bit, but eventually they’ll return their attention to whatever else is going on–a sporting event on the television, perhaps, or some story about what happened at work that day. You don’t often talk about fallen nations and collapsed empires at the tavern after work, you see.
But maybe the curious person won’t turn all their attention back to the dull conversation going on around them. Maybe some part of their imagination will linger there on the memory of a nation, born in fire and too much blood, a nation that aspired but fell short, a nation that rose higher and fell lower than it should have.
And they’ll wonder. Maybe.
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The sailors were mum about “Orange skies at noon”
In Memoriam
An annual reposting of some things pertaining to Memorial Day. First, a remembrance of a soldier I never knew.
Fifteen years ago I wrote the following on Memorial Day, and I wanted to revisit it. It’s about the Vietnam Veteran whose name I remember, despite the fact that I had no relation to him and clearly never knew him, because he was killed four years before I was born.
Memorial Day, for all its solemnity, has for me always been something of a distant holiday, because no one close to me has ever fallen in war, and in fact I have to look pretty far for relatives who have even served in wartime. Both of my grandfathers fought in World War I, but both had been dead for years when I was born. I know that an uncle of mine served during World War II, but I also know that he saw no action (not to belittle his service, but Memorial Day is generally set aside to remember those who paid the “last full price of devotion”). My father-in-law served in Viet Nam, but my own father did not (he had college deferments for the first half of the war, and was above draft age during the second). So there is little in my family history to personalize Memorial Day; for me, it really is a day to remember “all the men and women who have died in service to the United States”.
One personal remembrance, though, does creep up for me each Memorial Day. It has nothing at all to do with my family; in fact, I have no connection with the young man in question.
When I was in grade school, during the fall and spring, when the weather was nice, we would have gym class outdoors, at the athletic field. On good days we’d play softball or flag football or soccer; on not-so-good days we’d run around the quarter-mile track. But the walk to the athletic field involved crossing the street in front of the school and walking a tenth of a mile or so down the street, past the town cemetery. I remember that at the corner of the cemetery we passed, behind the wrought-iron fence, the grave of a man named Larry Havers was visible. His stone was decorated with a photograph of him, in military uniform. I don’t recall what branch in which he served, nor do I recall his date-of-birth as given on the stone, but I do recall the year of his death: 1967. I even think the stone specified the specific battle in which he was killed in action, but I’m not sure about that, either.
That’s what I remember each Memorial Day: the grave of a man I never knew, who died four years before I was born in a place across the world to which I doubt I’ll ever go. And in the absence of anyone from my own family, Mr. Havers’s name will probably be the one I look for if I ever visit that memorial in Washington. I hope his family wouldn’t mind.
I looked online and found these images, first of Mr. Havers’s obituary and then of Mr. Havers himself. The things you remember. I wonder what kind of man he was. He has been gone for more than half a century. His name is not forgotten.
Mr. Havers’s service information can be found on the Virtual Vietnam Wall here. He was born 14 October 1946 and died 29 October 1967, in Thua Thien.
—
Well, how do you do, young Willie McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile ‘neath the warm summer sun,
I’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the great fallen in 1916,
I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?
Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that faithful heart are you forever 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Enshrined then, forever, behind a glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame?
Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
The sun’s shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard that’s still No Man’s Land
The countless white crosses in stand mute in the sand
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.
Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
And I can’t help but wonder why, young Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did they really believe when they answered the call,
Did they really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain
The killing and dying, was all done in vain,
For young Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.
Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
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Thanks, Mom
My mother doesn’t like Mother’s Day, having established quite early on when I was a kid that she found it a cynical ploy invented by the greeting card companies. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t cite just one of many memories for which I owe her for having them at all:
And, a theme song for the ages!
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Mr. Klepper speaks
Land of the “free”, home of the “brave”
Land of the free…except for reading what you want to read, teaching your kids what you want to teach, seeking the medical care you and your doctor think you need.
Home of the brave…unless you’re a cop who is “frightened for your life”, or some random person whose doorbell rang or onto whose driveway a car turned.
It may be time to change our national anthem. We’re not anywhere close to living up to it. Problem is, it’s hard to make “Land of white people with guns, home of the scared shitless of everything” fit a tune nicely.