Commemorating the War Dead

 This visitor from the Southland finds a reverent fascination while walking in Boston, a metropolis that exudes profound historicity across a New England land/city/scape expanding southward from Lexington and Concord down to Dorchester and beyond.

I mean, quite significant in the memory of this ole baby boomer was a certain unforgettable Senator/President from nearby Hyannisport, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. 

He’s the one who said “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Later, after that inauguration speech, he went over to an ancient European region, Germany, and advised the people there “Ask not what we (Americans) can do for you, but what, together, we can do for the freedom of man.”

But of course, he said all that before the conspirators of that era, 1963, shot him dead.

But I digress. 

Strolling, yesterday, the perimeter of Boston Commons reveals an abundance of Monumental commemoration for past Americans who died defending our nation and our ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

 Seems evident to me that the citizens of Massachusetts have done far more than their share of defending this nation against the destructive forces of tyrant kings, rebel slaveholders, bellicose nazis and fascist madmen..

On the uppermost corner of Boston Commons I find this monument to the 54th Regiment of Mass infantrymen who went down south during the war to liberate the captives of southern enslavement.

A few steps away and I am exiting the Commons, crossing the street and finding myself at the entrance to the Massachusetts State House, or, as we southerners call it, the State Capitol.

Having initiated our great American democracy experiment with a Tea Party back in 1774, the Bostonians have a longer history of collectively managing a gov. of the people—longer than us other kids on the American block. A stroll up and down and all around this Capitol opens up a vast array of fascinating historic paintings, portraits, documents, statues. Here’s the one I selected for you to see now: 

I chose this artistic portrayal of our American expeditionary force in Europe in 1918. It relates directly to the concluding chapter of my novel, Smoke, which is a story about the experiences of a young American businessman as he is traveling through western Europe in 1937.

Here’s the relevant paragraph from chapter __ of Smoke:

“       Now they were arriving at the battlefield. Jacques parked the car, leaned against the front fender, lit a cigarette. Mel and Philip walked through a stone arch, along a narrow, paved road lined with flowering linden trees, spring green with their large spadish leaves, sprinkled with small white blossoms. The sun was getting low behind them. Shadows of these trees had overtaken the narrow lane, turning it cooler than the surrounding fields, acres and acres neatly arranged with white crosses and gravestones, and continuous green, perfect grass between all. Having reached the end of the linden lane, the stepped slowly, reverently, along straight pathways, passing hundreds of silent graves on either side. The setting sun was still warm here, after their cool approach from beneath the trees. 

       At length, they came to the row that Philip had been looking for, the one he had read about in the army guidebook, where his father’s grave was nested precisely and perpetually in its own place in eternity:

 

Clinton Aaron Morrow

born July 13, 1895 in North Carolina, USA      died Oct 30, 1918

in defense of Oordenaarde, and the free world

Smoke

“. . .and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

Chicago!

 While visiting Chicago, I was inspired by Carl Sandberg’s classic poem, composed in 1916. Sitting on a bench, Chicago River in front of me, Chicago Tribune behind, surrounded by fellow travelers like me, I began pecking at the Sandberg inspiration, with maybe an idea for a poetic update. . .

Culture catcher for America middle,

Sheltering sojourners in midwestern winter,

From first founder, free black Jean Baptiste Point du Sable

and then a thousand journeymen later, strong and able

You became Gatherer of Lake to River glories:

Chicago! great Stacker of Stories,

in the Land of ancient Potawatami

later enabling a million settlers’ opportunity!

With peoples Kaskaskia, Illinois, LaSalle and Jolliet met;

Then Algonquin, Mascouten, Miami with Marquette.

A six-mile canoe portage between River and Lake

was no small chore,

Diverting pioneers’ smooth steerage in days of lore,

Until the Illinois canal came by blood, sweat and tears,

And then a jazzy brass section in latter years.

And if that wasn’t enough to stoke your stack

Those swamp-whippin’ Chicagoans turned the River back

so it flowed westerly through Illinois to the Mighty Miss’ip

carving out a great  waterway so any good ship

could navigate American hinterland from the Hudson 

through the Erie to Lake Erie to Huron and Lake Michigan

even making a turnaround and doin’ it all back again.

I mean, it’s My kind of Town! (as Sinatra later sang)

Westward ‘cross the prairie it rang,

Busy, bustling, bravissimo,

       Easterners came; some Westward go

Rolling by wagon and locos and boats

Breezin’ past the corn and the wheat and the oats.

And there they were on Lake Michigan shore

Hoisting up the American Dream more and more

Digging and hoisting and building and founding the Store

Enterprising rising made the first skyscraper ever!

when they raised up a steel beam with one hell of a lever!

American commerce from door to door 

Sears & Roebuck , Montgomery Ward, Marshall Field and more!

Next thing y’know they’re light’n up a World’s fair 

and  making elevators instead of stairs!

When Tesla told Edison that AC was the way to go

Then lit up Chicago World Fair just for show!

Showing off with that newfangled 1893 fair

In the midst of the new electrifying air

City of big, bustling Dreams

generator of winning teams.

Cubs and WhiteSox here

Bears and Bulls snorting opponents’ fear

Blackhawks on ice; no! they aint nice.

WhiteSox took World Series thrice!

Capone and Moody; both dwelt here

With gangster gear v godly fear.

’T’was both gang and Gospel  territory

Outlaws gunned down in clouds of glory!

Oh, thou coarse and strong and cunning city, 

piling load on load, job on job, smooth and gritty

tireless as a dog with tongue a-lapping

rising high as eagle flapping.

Soft seashore cities send their untamed to you

to be tested, unrested; in the busted sod you grew;

sodbuster hinterlands; plowman crops commands

harvesting, shipping to fulfil American demands.

"Oh! by the time we reached that Chi-town

Them Bears was a gettin’ smart." 

They're all Midwesterners with brains, brawn and heart!

Ramping up a real convoy of strength

In American heartland of Continental length.

I mean, only the Green Bay boys up the coast

had more NFL titles, but of  victories, Bears had most! 

King of Soul

Nowhere to Go!

 After hitler’s third reich had attempted to extinguish the Hebrew race, the Jews who had survived that Holocaust had nowhere to go. . . except their ancient homeland.

They had established an ancient homeland under the leadership of Moses, about 3000 years ago.

In the mid-1940’s, those European Israelites who had escaped or evaded hitler’s concentration camps, mid-1940’s—they truly had no choice, except to try to get to—to use an ole Beatles’  phrase—“get back to where you once belonged.”

So they got together and blasted and outlasted and cajoled and planted and supplanted  their way back into that land where they had started their long journey long, long ago—the land called Palestine. 

It was no walk in the park. I mean, they were between a rock and a hard place after hitler had tried to extinguish them from the face of the earth.

Truth be told, they had, as Prime Minister Golda Meir later told Senator Joe Biden in 1973, nowhere else to go. 

I mean . . . and I’m a post-WWII baby boomer, remembering that. . . Ringo had sung, back in the day, 1960’s-70’s— about having “nowhere to go” as . . . “oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go.”

as if having nowhere to go were some blissful condition like nirvana or Tuesday afternoon with the Moody Blues or a walk in central park with Paul Simon talking to a lamppost. . . 

No, no, no. Those post-Holocaust escapees running for their lives in 1945 had, literally, nowhere to go. . . except back to where they had come from long ago.

And that’s why Golda Meir had told Joe Biden, back in ’73, that they had had nowhere to go . . . except where they did go.

And they called it Israel! just like the ole days, like it or not.

And that, my friends, is what, as  Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.”

And they sang, “We were like men who dreamed, filled with laughter, with songs of joy!”

Listen and you will hear the joy, from the Bridge Ensemble:

(http://micahrowland.com/carey/13 Itamar Freilach.mp3)

and furthermore as my friends Danny and Donna and David sang: Aliyah Yerushalayim

(http://www.micahrowland.com/carey/09 Aliyah Yerushalayim.mp3)

Glass half-Full

Nero's Fire Folly

 An old story has passed down from the history of the ancient Roman empire: while the ancient city of Rome went up in flames, the emperor Nero “fiddled while Rome burned.”

That may true; or it may not be. But we do know, according to the ancient Roman historian Tacitus,  it is not far from the truth.

Tacitus wrote a report on the disaster, an uncontrollable, raging fire that consumed the capital city of the Roman empire in the year 64.

Here are a few excerpts from his account:

Before the disaster started. . . 

“On the quays (wharfs) were brothels stocked with high-ranking ladies. Opposite them could be seen naked prostitutes, indecently posturing and gesturing.”

“Nero was already corrupted by every lust, natural and unnatural.  But he now refuted any further surmises that no further degradation was possible for him. . . a few days later he went through a formal wedding ceremony with one of the perverted gang called Pythagorus. The emperor, in the presence of witnesses, put on the bridal veil. Dowry, marriage bed, wedding torches, all were there. Indeed everything was public which even in a natural union is veiled by night.”

“Disaster followed. Whether it was accidental or caused by a criminal act on the part of the emperor is uncertain—both versions have supporters. Now started the most terrible and destructive fire which Rome had ever experienced. . .”

“First, the fire swept violently over the level spaces. Then it climbed the hills… when people looked back, menacing flames sprang up before them or outflanked them. . . . Nobody dared fight the flames.” . . .

 “. . . rumor had spread that, while the city was burning, Nero had gone on his private stage and, comparing modern calamities with ancient, had sung of the destruction of Troy.”

After the fire:

“Of Rome’s fourteen districts only four remained intact. Three were levelled to the ground. The other seven were reduced to a few scorched and mangled ruins.”

Such are the inflammatory destructions of a self-obsessed demagogue. Tacitus concluded his report with this statement about what the people thought:

“ People believed that Nero was ambitious to found a new city to be called after himself.”

It seems the self-aggrandizing control freak  was willing to destroy the whole city so that he could rebuild it with his own identity dominating it.

The above  selected excerpts were lifted from John Carey’s book, “Eye-witness to History.” published by Harvard University Press, 1988.

Later, much later, long after Nero and Tacitus had turned to dust,  an American observer of human history, Mark Twain, said:

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”

Let us hope that there are no modern-day Nero-wannabes out there waiting to destroy our “city” for the sake of rebuilding it in their own image.

Glass half-Full