Rwanda 19 years later

Somewhere in the world today, it's time for gifts to be opened, because the twelve months of Christmas just keep rolling on and on. This year, Samaritan's Purse presents more than 6 million gift-boxes to children on every continent. Probably every day of the year, a few of those presents get opened, somewhere.

Last week the celebration of gift-giving was in Kigali, Rwanda. My daughter, Kim, was there; she works for Samaritan's Purse, the distributor of yuletide surprises that extends generosity everywhere across the world, especially in developing nations. Kim's UNC photojournalism training launched her into a career where she could share these moments:


It may not be five golden rings inside the box, or a partridge in a pear tree. But whatever the surprise booty turns out to be, my guess is that the immediate benefit of each shoebox-gift being opened will be a pound or two of joy.


That's quite a change among the children in Rwanda, compared to the class warfare and genocide that was happening there nineteen years ago.


I would not suggest that Operation Christmas Child is responsible for ending the tribal strife that tore Rwanda apart in 1994; that peacemaking task was surely accomplished by the good people of that country who made some good decisions and then acted resolutely upon them. But now Christian givers throughout the world, whose presents were prepared last fall, are happy to have contributed some fun items there-- toys and toothbrushes, jump-ropes, dolls, crayons, cracker jacks and God-knows-what-all, along with the good news of our Creator's presence among them on this troubled earth.

Glass half-Full

Mr. Roosevelt's dilemma

In the novel I am writing, Smoke, the Eschen family--Hezekin, Helene, Hannah, and Lili-- have just arrived in eastern France. The year is 1937; the Gestapo have recently arrested their son, Heinrich, and imprisoned him at Dachau.

Under a pall of Nazi-induced fear, the Eschens have decided to risk losing everything--their business and home--by leaving Munich to flee Germany, even though they do not know what Heinrich's fate will be.

In chapter 14 of Smoke, the refugee family have been taken in by a French family who live across the Rhine border, in the province of Alsace. Now they are sitting at a well-appointed table to share a meal with some newfound friends. We enter this scene at the supper table of the Ravel family and a few of their companions. Helene is describing the Eschens' situation with the group:

Helene wiped the tears from her cheek. “What we seek, Madame Leblanc, is a young man, a good man in the very flower of his youth; but he is locked inside Dachau prison—our son, Heinrich. And now it is so very hard to decide what is to be done. Should we stay or go?”

“Even if you must go. . .somewhere. . .must it be to America? Why not wait here, here in Alsace. You are close here, close enough to respond quickly, if Heinrich were to be released. If you were all the way to the United States, your help for him would be almost impossible.”

“Our travel visas here are good only for two weeks. But we have relations in New York—they are our people, Jews like us—who are working on our behalf. They are even willing to deposit thousands of US dollars in the banks for us, and send affidavits to endorse for our immigration, so that we can obtain visas to enter the United States and start a new life there.”

The host, M. Ravel, at the head of the table, inserted, “Peut-etre . . . your temporary visas here can be extended. We may be able to find some help for you with that. Although there is no consulate in Strasbourg, we do know some people are well-connected. Other refugees, like you, have come from Germany and have been able, with a little time, to make better arrangements, to stay in France. Now that you have gotten out, you should slow down and get your bearings, form a strategy to establish communication with Heinrich, if that is possible; there may be more resources here in Alsace that you realize. You really do need to stay close to Germany, Hezekin.” Cartier looked directly into the man’s face, then at his wife. “You do need to stay nearby until Heinrich is released, or at least until you have heard some definite news, or until this whole damned Nazi thing blows over.”

Henri Leblanc then spoke excitedly, “The Third Reich is not going to go away! They will inflict their German hatefulness on Jews and some others as long as they can! They will not stop until they are forced to stop. Hitler and Goebbels have railed against the Jews since the beginning, even since ’33. It was their intention all along to rob you of your business and then run you out of Germany. But our leaders, Petain or—we need another Clemenceau, or Poincare, maybe that young man, DeGaulle—somebody needs to rise up and intervene la-bas. Every since Hitler waltzed into the Saar last year, with no resistance whatsoever from us, those Nazi brutes who salute and follow his every command without question have been frothing at the mouth to run the Jews out of Germany. That is what the Gestapo is assigned to do, and the Third Reich will not cease its campaign against the Jews—especially the prosperous ones such as you.”

“But do not despair!” said Henri’s wife. “You have come to the right place. We can help you. We’ll give you sanctuary as long as we can.”

But the Eschens were not the only ones in such a situation as this. There were many others who were fleeing, and would flee, from the tribulation of being Jewish under Hitler's Third Reich. As the terrible tide of Nazi oppression filled Germany during the next three years, and through the years of World War II, there would be many, many more who sought to leave, and find a new life in places such as Britain, the United States, South America, Africa, and Israel.

What to do with them all? This was only one of many complicated dilemmas that President Roosevelt, as well as Mr. Churchill in Britain and the leaders of the French Third Republic, faced in those tumultuous years before, and during, World War II.

It was the worst of times, even worse than today. May it never happen again to any people group on our planet.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

Punkadelic Pete

You've heard about Punkadelic Pete, right?

Punkadelic Pete will stick his scientifically-correct head out on March 22.

If he sees his shadow, we'll have six more millennia of global warming.

If he doesn't see it, we'll have six more millennia of global cooling.

Warming shwarming, or Cooling fooling?

Keep your eyes and ears open and let's just see what Punky Pete does.



CR, with Photon Phil, in Glass half-Full

The Mockingbird?

Pat and I traveled yesterday afternoon, from our Blue Ridge mountain home in North Carolina, down to Georgia.

We are spending the weekend with our daughter, Katie.

This morning I wake up to the sound of a bird outside the apartment window. The call of the bird is different, not like the sounds of birds where we live. Here in Georgia, the advent of spring is rampant, compared to our snowy home environs which is several thousand feet higher in altitude and a degree or two of longitude more northerly on earth's sphere.

Shortly after daylight peaked through Katie's curtains, as I was laying on the floor to stretch my back and legs because I was not used to the soft bed, I heard the mockingbird somewhere outside.

At least I think it was a mockingbird. I can only surmise it was a mockingbird, because this little creature would not stick to one song, but kept changing his/her calls from one signal to another. So I'm laying there thinking, isn't this what a mockingbird does? Is it not called a mockingbird because it "mocks" or imitates the songs of other birds?

This little aural adventure reminded me of my childhood at grandma Mimi's house in Baton Rouge, some fifty-odd years ago. My sister and I would be laid into a guest room for an afternoon nap. This was unique because Mimi had, in that guest room, a fancy (she was of French heritage) four-poster bed with a white fabric canopy over its top, like you might see in movies about 18th-century royals or some such setting.

As I would be reclining on that luxurious bed, I could hear birds chirping on the other side of the curtained window. (The window treatment matched the poster-bed.) Mimi and J.C. had an outside courtyard with high brick walls around it and all sorts of Louisiana plants within--crepe myrtles, azaleas, camellias, canna lilies and gardenias and so forth--and a birdbath or two. So outside the window, the bird would maybe be sitting in the birdbath taking a bath and having fun in the water.

Be the bird as it may, in the birdbath or on the brick wall or perched on the leafy hedge or wherever it was casting its little hybrid songs, the feathery crooner was doing its yakkity thing, just being the birdbrained creature that God made him/her to be. I may have heard a mockingbird at that time and maybe that's why I'm reminded of that childhood memory as I lay here now in Georgia in March 2013. But actually the bird call I remember most vividly from that nap time was not the mockingbird, but a blue jay.

I think it was a blue jay, anyway. The call was just a single shriek, like a "caw." But it wasn't a crow's caw. It was not as loud that, and much kinder and gentler. Maybe that's the call of the blue jay, or maybe it's just the way I imagine a blue jay would sound, with his little bishopric peaky cap on his head and that big black beak sticking out like some kind of stuck-up sabre or something.

Anyway, back to the mockingbird, if that's what it was, in Gainesville this morning. This bird, as I said earlier, did not stick to one call, but just kept whipping out a whole collection of different calls, one sample after another, like a moog gone au natural under the errantly genius touch of a four-year-old. Some were quick staccatos. . . ch ch ch ch, or some sustained legatos. . .wrr wrr wrr wrr wrr, or mixtures. . .ch ch wrr wrr wrr, or little buzzy blends. . .vzz vzz vzz vzz, or indecipherable birdbrain phonemes. . .brd oop brd oop brd ooo, or jazzy little themes. . .whoobidy shooop whoobidy shoop whoobidy shoop shoop shoop, with every now and then a dovish coo followed by a hawkish wra! wra! I've got rhythm, was a part of the message, like Porgy or Gershwin or some other person of ancient Americana. A kind of poetry it was.

A bird with an identity crisis, I guess, is what it must have been, a little like the interpreter who was stretched out on the floor with nothing better to do on a Saturday morning than harken to those first auditory signals of spring down hyeah in the deep south, y'heah me now?

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

Sandra Day O'Connor, former Justice of the US Supreme Court, told Terry Gross that her first job as a lawyer was taken without pay. Furthermore, Mrs. O'Connor had to occupy a desk in the secretary's office of that law firm, because she was a woman at the time. Still is, and a woman like no other.

Justice O'Connor, with admirable pioneering chutzpah, had blazed a trail, way back in the1960s and '50s, for women in the legal profession, as well as for all working women generally. She was the first female US Supreme Court Justice. Three more women have been set on the Court since her unprecedented appointment by President Reagan.

But for the cowgirl lawyer from Arizona, the chauvinist humiliation she had to endure along her career path was just an obstacle to be overcome; it came with that frontier territory. Hearing her accounts, it almost seems to have been no big deal. Her primary objective seems to have been, all along, justice for the people of the United States, and not necessarily blowing some loud feminist horn.

She is a great leader in our nation. Nevertheless, she is a humble woman--a wife and mother who happens to be an attorney. One key element of her personality--I think you will hear it in the interview--is humility. Humility can carry a person a long way in this life. Justice O'Connor, like Rosa Parks, had to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous sexist prejudice. But she remained constantly humble, and determined. She would not be denied her destiny. Humility enables a talented person to endure untold subtle and blatant persecutions, because passionate vision can trump all that difficulty. Sandra Day O'Connor's life is, in my view, a testimony to that principle.

Listening, via radio, to the testy interaction between Terry's edgy, progressive politicism and Sandra's prickly, accumulated wisdom is fascinating; it is an aural telescope into the generation gap of the edges, as well as the no-woman's-land between push-the-envelope liberalism and bootstraps conservatism.

I have admired both women for a long time, although for very different reasons. This interview was an amicable match between two titans of public disccourse. Check it out:

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/05/172982275/out-of-order-at-the-court-oconnor-on-being-the-first-female-justice

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

O ye Chicken Inspector

O ye O ye

chicken inspector!

Ye better do ye job

cuz we be

dependin on u

to catch the contagion

to snatch the salmonella

before it do it bad thing.

Now be de time to

do ye job,

reverse dat ol strike mentality

dat ol labor union barricade whoopfiz biz

wi cryinz in d'street

an all dat anarchy bee-ez.

Jez do ye job

cuz we need u stay on task

no matte what sequesta cracka say.

Knock down dem salmonellas

today

and giardias and germs

ev' day

das what we say!

Hey! Keep it clean.

We be a clean machine. Les keep it

dat way. Do ye job no matta

what dey say no matta

what FDA say

no matta what OMB or Security or DemRepub say

Do yo job today

cuz we need u yeah!

TSA U 2!

even if dem frequent flyas glare at you.



O ye O ye

air traffic controller!

Ye better do ye job

cuz we be

dependin on u

to unsnarl dem can o worms

in our skies

so we don' dies

trying to fly 'round

get from town to town

get up get down

Don' pay no 'tension to dat background noise,

dem consumer device toys,

jez keep ye eye on d'blip

not on d'slipping dip

cuz we be depend on u.

Keep yo eye on de donut

not on de hole.

Dat sacred duty--it be soul,

of our nation, an

das what I'm talkin about:

Don't pout.

Times is hard y'all!

Heed the call.

Now all ye workin folk out dere

Now be d'time for all mens

an womens too

to come to d'aid of our country today

cuz we be

depend on u.

I aint shittn you.

Les keep dis ting goin

don let it fall

don let it stall.

It don depend on dat Wash'n beltway be-ez biz,

cuz is what it is and dat all dat it is.

It depend on me and you.

Dis be true: on me and you, an don stop prayn.

Das all I sayn.



CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

Helene Berr's bad dream

May it never happen here. Not that it ever could, of course.

But it did happen--the nightmare of having some political evil start as a trickle of disturbing news reports that are too close for comfort, then turning into, over a two-year period, a slow plague of arrests that send folks to the black hole.

You heard about Joe? the guy at work, or Shawna who lives down the street; you have a class with him, or you had lunch with her last week. Or god forbid it should ever happen to anyone in your family.

But then it did. They took Helene's father away, put him in a detention center at a place called Drancy, near Paris, very near where the Berr family lived, even though--even though--their home was in the very shadow of a famous world landmark--the Eiffel Tower.

And even though he was an important man in French industry-- a smart, hard-working, successful family man with a major corporation.

It was a surprise--the rude suddenness of it--the arrest falling upon someone so close to home, a member of your own family.

But then, history is filled with such as this. Not in America, of course, except on tv.

In this true story, you see, the powers-that-be had determined that Raymond was not religiously correct, or maybe not ethnically correct.

The bad dream had started with someone who lives down the street, someone you know casually and you see every now and then, once a week somewhere--at work or school--someone who is a friend of a friend, or a friend of an enemy.

Next thing you know, they get arrested, for no good reason, arrested for not being religiously correct, or ethnically correct, whatevah, u try to fugeddaboudit.

This happened in France, a civilized country of reasonable people, in 1942-44. Since then, it has happened in other places. Before that, it happened in many places. It didn't start in Germany. Maybe it started in Russia, or Spain 500 years ago, or Babylon 2500 years ago or even before that.

Right now it is happening somewhere. But not in America, of course. Maybe Syria, or Somalia or North Korea, or Egypt or

Helene Berr's Journal tells the terrible tale of Nazi-occupied France; it is the frightening testimony of one very sensitive, very smart twenty-something girl whose blooming life was forever arrested by the occupying evil. The nightmare is a long, slow slide on a slippery slope of political oppression that you knew in your bones was coming but were afraid to really deal with. It took a couple of years to fully develop. But when it finally did come--you've heard of Auschwitz, right?

Yes, it did happen. These things happen, because this is the human race we're livin in.

This book is not for you who want to be perpetually entertained. All comfortably-numb online and cable-ready enticements will end someday. Then what happens? Maybe you oughta find out what happens.

No, this book is more like education, although Helene's recollections of unjust, irrational events as they alarmingly unfolded, are very tender, painfully prosaic in their stabbing truth, like a Dante's inferno, or Cable's descent into hell on 500 channels.

Sadder, but wiser, will you be if you read it: The Journal of Helene Berr, translated and commented by David Bellos, published 2008 by Weinstein Books.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress