A Woman from the War

I think it was several thousand years ago that we heard about a war between the Greeks and the Trojans. And this collective memory in our mankind memory bank is evidence that this war thing that we hear about-- and sometimes catch a glimpse of while others of us jump bravely into the fray--this war thing has been with us for a long time.

Now it is not very often you meet a woman who has spent 28 years in the US Army, but this is what happened to me yesterday.

I walked into a room where some folks in my hometown were gathered for a certain purpose, and at the end of the meeting I met Lieutenant Colonel Lory Whitehead. What she had to say seemed important to me, so I gave her some money and she handed me a book of poems she had written. This is what happens in America. She had something to sell, and I bought it. And when I read the little book of poems it knocked my sox off. May we always be so free to exchange information without censorship and without meddling from whomever is surveilling at any particular place and time.

I've never been in the military, but I know people who have served us in that way. I have no understanding of what these brave souls go through; but because I read Lory's collection of letters, memoirs and poems that she collected over almost fifty years, I at least have some feeling about what these people go through to defend our freedom.

I was born in 1951. But about ten years before I came into this world, there was one hell of a big war that happened on this planet. While growing up, I learned about it in school, and every now and then I'd meet someone who fought in it, but it wasn't until much later in life--like about a year ago when I began seriously researching a different war, the war that dominated the politics of my youth. (You know the one I'm talking about.)

Twenty years before we got into Vietnam, when the Big War was going on-- the one where we drove the Nazis back into their holes-- most of us Americans who were alive at that time, early 1940's, banded together for the purpose of winning the damned thing.

At that time, women played a large part in our collective effort to defeat the Axis powers (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Emperor-worshipping Japan), but what the women were doing then was not much connected to combat. You've probably heard that old song from the period about Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B. That song, always sung by a female vocal group, is closely associated with the role of our women during World War II--to mostly act in supportive roles, Stateside.

All that changed (like everything else) in the 1960's when women became more and more directly involved in our military endeavors. By the time of Desert Storm, women were taking some combat roles.

Lt. Col. Lory Whitehead's poems include profound reflections of her experience in war, most notably in Kosovo.

What I would like to bring to your attention today is a poem that whe wrote and published in her 2014 book, reluctant warriors. The poem I have selected is: mama's two hands. I never in my life thought I would read anything like this, but as it turns out, I have read it, and perhaps you should too. Read 'em and weep.

mama was a soldier, her right hand

knew how to hold a salute



and had learned to fire

handguns and automatic weapons,

even grenade launchers



that strong hand waved men

forward as she led them

into harm's way.



and covered her eyes in pain

at memorial services

for fallen comrades.



mama was mama, her left hand

held a nursing baby to her breast



and was always available

to erase the tears of toddlers

frightened by loud noises.



that was the gentle hand, it pulled

errant children out of danger



and toasted the living

at weddings and christenings.



poor mama, it was often difficult

to keep each separate hand

in its proper place



and always the right hand

would be envying what

the left hand was doing.



(Copyright © 2014 by Lory Whitehead)

Reading a poem like this made me realize just how much the world has changed, even in the time-range of my lifetime. And this world is still changing, probably getting faster and faster. Because: while humans have always been changing, modern technology has enabled us to step up the pace of change, exponentially. I'm just hoping it does not spins out of control beyond repair.

Nevertheless, if our world does ever spin out of control, my ultimate hope is in Christ, which is to say, God. Not any man, nor woman.



Smoke

How Future becomes Present

I was born and raised as a child in the 1950's. During that unique period of history, the USA was growing in many ways. Our military infrastructure, which had been necessarily pumped up during the big war in the early 1940's, was morphing into an expansive peacetime economy. While we had needed tanks, guns, airplanes, aircraft carriers, etc in 1943, by 1953 our nascent prosperity demanded automobiles, interstate highways, refrigerators, washing machines and all the features of what was fast becoming modern life in America.

In the midst of all that economic expansion and life-changing technology, television entered the picture in a big way.

My g-generation was the first to grow up with TV, and this made a big difference in the way we thought and felt about everything. Now no one really knew what to expect of us baby boomers, because there never had been before, in the history of the world, a generation of kids who grew up with that lit-up screen projecting the world into everybody's living room.

So the old folks, most notably Lyndon Johnson, were taken by surprise when, in the 1960's, half the kids had no interest in carrying on with the capitalistic crusades of previous generations. We had not lived through that earlier time--the 1940's--in which the USA's "greatest generation" had shed blood and sweated blood and shed tears for the purpose of defeating national socialism and fascism in the world.

Furthermore, we grew up with a TV in the living room, and that changed everything.

Now our children--the X-er's, the millenials, etc--are manifesting a similar sea-change, as they are growing up, and have grown up, in the age of the internet. So it seems to me that my generation, the boomers, are now carrying the burden of watching a bunch of kids come along who have a totally different worldview. While we were natives of the TV age, they are natives of the Online age.

Now the question in my mind is, how will they be different from us?

During the past year or so, I have been studying the historical time in which I grew up, while at the same living in the present, and seeking to understand the times in which our three children (now in their thirties) have grown up.

My research led me to consider the work of Marshall McLuhan.

If you don't know who he is, but you are wondering, google it.

For the sake of simplicity in this presentation, I will say that he accurately figured out, early on, a few things about the effects of TV and radio on my generation. He was prescient, which means he could see where things were headed, where history was taking us, into a wide world of information exploration. Here is an example of what I'm talking about.

On May 8, 1966, while being interviewed by Robert Fulford on Canadian Broadcasting, Marshall McLuhan described future communication* in this way:

"Instead of going out and buying a packaged book of which there have been five thousand copies printed, you will go to the telephone, describe your interests, your needs, your problems, and say you're working on a history of Egyptian arithmetic. You know a bit of Sanskrit, you're qualified in German, and you're a good mathematician, and they say it will be right over. And they at once xerox, with the help of computers from the libraries of the world, all the latest material just for you personally, not as something to be put on a bookshelf. They send you the package as a direct personal service. This is where we're heading under electronic information conditions. Products are increasingly becoming services."

*quoted from page 101 of : Understanding Me, lectures and interviews, Marshall McLuhan; ed. Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines, with foreword by Tom Wolfe

The above quote was spoken presciently by Marshall McLuhan in 1966.

Now, in 2017, here is my revision of his statement, according to how his prediction has actually played out:

Instead of opening the Encyclopedia, you will use your electronic device to key in a word or phrase for your search. You may refine the search including a keyword about, for instance, the history of rocket science. The online services know that: you have an interest in physics, you've got a BA level of information usage, and you can lean on your device for any calculations necessary. In the blinking of an eye, the search results pops up on your screen. You choose, let's say, the Wikipedia link for starters, because you know the site's sources are populated by researchers and their databases all over the world. Then you get to pick and choose which linked info you want to include in your own work. This is where we have evolved to under "electronic information conditions." Information has become both a product and a service.

If you compare McLuhan's prediction with my interpretation of how this has played out in the real world of 2017, the textual exercise could be instructive about how history actually develops, as compared to how we think it might unfold: close, perhaps, but not exact.

And here's something to ponder. About nineteen and a half centuries ago, Paul of Tarsus wrote:

"For now, we see through a glass, darkly."

Which to me means: we can formulate educated guesses about what the future holds, but the picture is not clear to us. So, what else is new? It's up to you to find out. My experience says this could take a lifetime of learning.

King of Soul

He be smooth

Boss man Barack he come striding in '09

like buffed up bees's knees on a slickery dime

he come glidin in on rhetoric and cool

he be together, ain't no fool.

He say Watch out! you tea party duds

he drives 'em crazy til dey stuck in the muds

Now time come he say see you later

He be cool. He be Smooth Operator.

Now the Donald he be smoothie of a different kind

though he look like bull in china shop some time

now he flaunts his assets like they going out of style

he be big cheez cuz he gots a big pile

Watch out! you lefty whiners he taunts

there's no end to his assets he flaunts

with flapping big mouth like wild alligator

yet he too be a Smooth Operator.



Now here's the thing:



Though Barack look like he from the hood

he got his ducks in a row real good.

Now here come the Donald like a bull from the stall;

he act like he know how to take charge of it all.

Look to me like Obama be crafty and cool,

while the Donald be pushy and cruel.

It look to me like age of Statesmanship be gone

as another Smooth Operator come struttin' along.

Glass Chimera

The Snowbird Lesson

When I was a child in Mississippi, we had a book about birds of North America. For some reason, I know not what, I became fascinated by a certain bird that was pictured therein. It was the snowbird. Being a boy from the deep south, I had not seen much snow, which was a rarity where I come from.

Perhaps that rarity factor is the reason I was fascinated by the picture of the snowbirds in my little book.

Now I'm sixty-five, and living in the Blue Ridge mountains, which can be quite snowy this time of year.

Early this morning, December 30, we did discover the first snow of the season, and I have to tell ya-- along with the whitey flakes the snowbirds made their visit known to us.

Later in life, When I had become young man, I became fascinated with a song called "Snowbird" that was a hit on the radio at that time, 1960's. It was a tear-jerker tune, sung perfectly by a lady known as the Canadian songbird, Annie Murray.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq9bHd58-LA



"Snowbird" is a sad song about unrequited love.

"When I was young, my heart was young then too. Anything that it would tell me--that's the thing that I would do.

But now I feel such emptiness within for the thing that I want most in life's the thing that I can't win. . .

and

"The breeze along the river seems to say, that she'll only break my heart again, should I decide to stay.

So little snowbird take me with you when you go to that land of gentle breezes where the peaceful waters flow."

. . . and yet, beneath the poem's cold mantle of forlornness there is a trace of hope, a mention of "flowers that will come again in spring.



As it turned out, in my life the flowers did "come again in spring." Those misadventures in love that later became a flood of heartache ultimately were buried in the fertile ground of life's demands. Not only were seeds of new love sewn providentially into my life, but those seeds have yielded new flowers and more seeds.



Yet still, "the snowbird sings the song he always sang, and, as it turns out, eats the seeds always needs.



The snowbirds visited our house this morning, and wow! did they have a feast!

Those little critters are much like the two humans--my wife and I--who find much joy in providing seed for them during this snowy season. There's Snowy on the ledge, and his wifey down in the tree:

Thanks to love and marriage, which go together, you know, like a horse and carriage, or like . . . snowbirds and snow, my life has turned out to be a love feast instead of the festival of the broken-hearted that might have been, had not a wonderful loving woman come in and changed all that lovesick blues to pure white marital love, 37 years of it.

I wouldn't trade marital love for anything in the world. It's so much better than the broken heart that might have been. Thank God for true love that is lasting and faithful.

Here's another version of the song, "Snowbird," as recorded by the songwriter, Hank Snow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBwqqH0LTyI

And here's a parting pic of little Snowy with his Finchy friend.

Glass half-Full

A Poem for Christmas

Every Christmas season that comes and goes brings an emphasis that is different from previous years. This year's discovery is something called a "Christmas market."

This term, which seems to indicate a market that is in some way unique to the Noel season, a market that is more joyously conducted, perhaps, than just any old assemblage of vendors selling stuff. I first pondered the phrase while reading sad reports of the murderous bus driver at the "Christmas market" in Berlin. A day or two later, while Pat and I were skyping with our daughter, who is in Europe, Katie mentioned that Christmas markets are "all over the place" over there.

This Christmas eve morn, I was sitting in the chair by the tree, listening to Handel's Messiah, and wondering about the Christmas market phenomenon, and how it might be different from just any old walmart or kreske store. In order to learn what it is, I thought I'd look it up. But suddenly, a star shone brightly in my brain and I decided to write a poem about it instead, without even knowing what a Christmas market really is!

Oh Christmas market, O Christmas market free,

How lovely are your goods to see!

Though not in session when summer's here,

You're only in the Noel time of year!

Oh Christmas market, O Christmas market free,

How lovely are your figs and pears to see!



Oh Christmas market, O Christmas market free,

How festive Man hath profited from thee!

Thou biddest us to all buy faithfully,

Our trust in free enterprise, consumerly!

Oh Christmas market, O Christmas market free

How enterprising Man hath been with thee!



Oh Christmas market, O Christmas market free,

Thy giftings gleam so, so brightly!

Each purchase doth add its tiny part

To make our economy glow and spark!

Oh Christmas market, O Christmas market free,

Thy prosperity doth shine so, so brightly!



Oh Christmas time, O Christmas time so holy,

Thy nativity's obscured now almost wholly

by buying and selling of so many services and goods.

We would buy them all, if we could!

Oh Christmas child, O Christmas child,

Where art thou now in this world so wild?



But hey! What light through yonder darkness breaks?

Still through our dark markets shineth

The everlasting light.

The thoughts and gifts of all our years

are giv'n in Thee tonight!

Feliz Navidad, Jesus!



Glass half-Full

News of Mr. HoHoHo

With all the fake news that's been flying around lately, I wanted to make a contribution toward alleviating the problem of this malodorous development.

I read on the internet somewhere that fake news is similar to a disease in some ways. Fortuitously, it has been shown that nationwide outbreaks of fake news can be snuffed out with a vaccine, which is easily injected because of multitudinous media conglomeration points such as twitter, facebook and so on and so forth.

Now you know a vaccine is an actual sample of the dreaded malady, and if injected into the body politic, it can act in such a way as to provoke the body's generation of antibodies that will work against the dreaded disease.

Therefore, in the interests of the body politic of this malingered nation I hereby am shooting up (uploading) an appropriately innocuous minuscule amount of fake news for purposes of turning this damn epidemic around so that it will no longer plague us with its irrelevancies.

So I dug this story up on the internet, and I'm injecting it into your cyber-concsciousness.

Now you might feel a little pinch, but don't worry it's all for the good.

It has been reported that in the recent election, an illegal immigrant has voted. The alleged alien had slidden under the radar (it just happened to be in the state of Maryland) and was able to obtain a ballot and vote in the presidential election.

The votive offender has been identified as an illegal alien from Indochina. We have incredible sources who confirm that his identity as HoHoHo Claus Minh, although the counterintuitive ID which he used to enter the poll location has been proven to be fake; it was fabricated in 1982 by Venezualan hackers, who had learned their malodious craft in Russian sweat shops under the guise of cranking out unlicensed athletic shoes which the Chicago Cubs allegedly obtained for recently-disclosed purposes of gaining traction so they could teach the Cleveland sluggers a thing or two about our national sport. But this has not been corroborated.

Nevertheless, be on the lookout. At the present time Mr. HoHoHo is still at large, but we have been able to obtain an image of him, which was snapped by an alert journalist as the illegitimate vote-caster was illegally depositing his ballot into the box.

In an undercover interview conducted outside the polling booth Mr. HoHoHo intimated that he was very relieved to be able to vote again, as he had not voted since 1956 back in his home country of Indochina. His rationale for not voting since that time was, as he shared, that he was so upset that in his country a great election had been conducted in 1956 but the politicians down south refused to conduct the election in their precincts because, as Mr. HoHoHo said, "they were pretty damn sure they would lose the election!" And so they and their lackeys just didn't show up; they declined to participate in authentic democratic shenanigans. Now is that any way to run an election, or for that matter, a whole dam country!?

We think not, he reportedly said.

And so he has been mad about it since that time. Can you blame him? As Pulitzer prize-winning poet Bobby Dylan once said:

"I pity the poor immigrant, who wishes he should've stayed at home."

Although, to be fair, Mr. HoHoHo definitely does not wish he had stayed at home, because life in the America is, like, great!

Just glad to be here, he said. He disclosed that he lucked out--thought he'd have to climb over a big wall but as it was all he had to do was take a little swim to Key West.

The good news is he thereby got an opportunity to become a citizen and cast vote in great US of A. Accordingly, the reclusive Mr. HoHoHo has stepped forward out of the shadows to participate in the USA vote-gathering. This is quite an accomplishment when you consider that he is the only man in history to ever defeat all three, JFK, LBJ, and RMN, in an undeclared military theatre.

Mr. HoHoHo declined to divulge for whom he voted, although he did allow that their initials were not HRC; nor were the the DT.

All in all, the beleaguered alien seemed quite alive and well, and doing his part to make a positive difference in the good ole US of A!

(Please notify the CDC if this vaccine has successfully immunized your devices against the dreaded fake news epidemic.)

Glass Chimera

Ben Carson for HUD head?

Boy born in poverty grows up to be brain surgeon. Say what?

He kept his eyes on the prize, gave steady attention to what is important for his own personal development and advancement; Ben cultivated good habits, studied hard, pulled himself up by bootstraps, climbed the achievement ladder, learned a trade, surgery.

Brain surgery. Brain surgery?

No kidding. He became a brain surgeon, head of neurosurgery at Hopkins; among his many operations was the separation of congenitally conjoined twins. No easy task. The man's a problem-solver.

Later on in life, Ben trained his eyes on expanded horizons, became an advocate for productive self-sustaining endeavor. Disdaining a systemic predisposition toward .gov dependency, he became a classic example of the American self-made man, although he would tell you much credit should be given to his loving, resourceful mother. Furthermore, his dependency was not in .gov programs; rather, his sufficiency was found in God.

Ben moves along well in this life; his eyes are, as they say, on the prize.

So, by n' by, he runs for President. Why not? This is America.

Trump berates him on the campaign trail.

But later, after all the recounted ballots have hit the fan, Trump nominates Ben for head of a federal department, Housing and Urban Development.

Say what?

For a brain surgeon? Why not HHS? Why not Surgeon General?

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

But now what do we see? All kinds of protest from the welfare Establishment, elites of housing elevation inside the beltway don't like it one bit. Why?

No experience in the field. No experience in running housing programs.

No experience in federal .gov. No experience in any .gov whatsoever.

What about all the .gov programs he had to get around in order to be a brain surgeon running for Prez?

So here's America wondering, what needs to happen here? What is appropriate experience, resumé, and background for running/reforming a big .gov housing dep't.? Experienced proficiency in running a megalith .gov department?

Or something else, perhaps . . . intelligence, good sense, uncommon ability to apply one's self to daunting tasks, integrity, character, intimate familiarity with problems of poverty, incredibly unique educational accomplishment, persistence, determination, methodical approach to solving problems, an analytical mind, a skilled hand, a precise approach to cutting and mending, a winning smile. . .?

On the point of Ben having no .gov-departmental proficiency, the critics are legion. Their verdict: unqualified, ill-prepared, nothing in resumé to qualify him, he's anti-government, yes-man, uncle tom, blahblahblah.

Now why is this happening? Is there something wrong with Uncle Ben, or is there something wrong with big brutha HUD?

But I ask you this. Has HUD solved, since its inception in 1965, the problem of substandard housing in cities?

Has HUD solved the housing-related problems of poverty in the inner cities?

Uh, no, don't think so.

Could this HUDdish inability to solve the problems of affordable housing indicate, perhaps, the need for a new approach? a new diagnosis, new prognosis? The mood of the nation after this election would suggest: yes.

Ok. Let's take a look.

But an analytical look. Let's step back. Back to basics. Why do we even have a federal government? Why do we have, within that .gov, a Department of Housing and Urban Development?

To answer this question, we look to the Preamble of our Constitution:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare . . ."

Welfare? Well golly, our 21st-century image of that bureaucracy-burdened idea is a fact of life in the real world. It is what it is.

But let's promote it--welfare--anyway, because our Constitution says so. Let us go then, amid the noise and haste, and promote our best interests, the welfare of Us the People. But let us do it in in a revisionary way, a way that will permit some necessarily corrective surgery on a bloated, debilitated .gov institution that promotes programs of incentive-destroying dependency.

Let us move forward progressively, proactively, with a plan for overcoming the systemic dependency of HUD. Let us, instead permit, by whatever means can be devised, personal and familial independence, as we find it so boldly declared in our Declaration of Independence:

. . .whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Therefore, I move we allow the man who worked his way out of substandard housing, and ultimately out of poverty, to take charge of a new effort to correctively administrate affordable housing.

Let Ben Carson administrate the Department of Housing and Urban Development.



Glass half-Full