Hospitality

Here I sit in my "island room" at BA somewhere in Utah, struggling to become a true castaway. This assisted care facility is not a hospital, but it is a place where many of us suffer from one kind of malady or other. The root of the word "hospital" is guest, host, stranger. Our feelings about hospitals range from deep gratitude to fear. We feel "estranged." a wary "guest," and always ambiguous about the work rhythm of our "host." Why do they awaken us to see if we are ok? And what of the night sounds: the soft shoes racing across the floor; the chatter at the nurse's station. The moonlit brilliance of stainless steel and porcelain, the smell of alcohol and sometimes the subtle sound and smell of Death approaching your hallway.

When one is marooned, getting your bearings is critical. As I have pointed out in other blogs, routine/ritual is one way of ordering your life. Mornings for a devotional/scriptures, a short walk up and down the halls, a cup of mint tea to settle the jumpy stomach. Breakfast, another walk, an appropriate foreign film, some notes on a possible e-mail or blog. The help here is hospitable and they treat me as a guest. My Level One status allows me freedom to take short errands with family and friends. I am surrounded by books, a computer and a television.

But I often find myself lonely, starved for conversation. When Samuel Johnson's Rasselas finds a would- be city dweller trying to be a country shepherd, he finds the man near madness. He quickly packs his bags and follows Rasselas and company into Cairo, a kind of 17th century Portland, Oregon. He needs to talk and to listen. Conversation is for me a form of prayer. For our distraught "shepherd" the pastoral [rural] life has isolated him from other people. For some, like my son-in-law solitude works. I would rather talk and listen than scale the mountains, mountain goat style. Is your solitude self chosen or are you imprisoned by circumstances? Are you a mere face in the crowd or the congregation? The worst kind of solitude, I think.

Is it possible that solitude is a mere frame of mind---as is loneliness? However, I noticed my last time through Marquez' A Hundred Years of Solitude that solitude turns out to be a negative term, something closer to loneliness or isolation. Gold coins, epic love affairs and numerous military conquest and businesses, yet nothing remains. Emptiness. A journey into demise--and a wonderful warning to the reader. Nothing material in this life but love will remain. With a list of more than a dozen versions of solitude, I am forced to limit myself to a couple. Solitude is aloneness; solitude is sometimes loneliness; solitude can be decay, the inability to withstand time itself. The village Macando "will," says the last Aureliano, "soon be wiped out by the wind." Even the precious hieroglyphics of the family parchment will be only partially translated. Words die, words which capture our past. How do we survive? Along with scripture and "walking prayers" [I seem to be better on my feet than on my knees], my last, most critical resource is the people around me.

In his stirring account of life in a Nazi concentration camp, Victor Frankel discovered that [1] love and [2] work [exercise?] provided the logos [meaning] he so desperately sought. As the camp's only doctor, he lost himself in saving others. When most of the camp was "transferred" out, Frankel volunteered to stay with the sick. Those who left were never heard from again. Out of that "work" came love, and that love for others saved him. If I'm reading the Gospel of John correctly, love of others lies at the heart of meaning in life.

Let me send along an excellent DVD recommendation on Netflix [streaming or disc]. "Happiness" strikes at the heart of our search for meaning. The most unhappy country in the world? Japan. The happiest? Denmark. And it seems the more wealthy people become, the less happy they become.

You ask me what loving others means? I try to meet the simple needs with warmth and affection. A quick shoulder rub, a hand on the arm, a kind word to the confused, walking with the Parkinson's patients who wobble their way heroically down the hall, listening to endless redundancy from the demented, the 10 minute retention of those struck down by Alzheimer's.

There's hope, then, for all of us castaways. At least I'm not talking to a volleyball with a painted smiley face.

 

 

 

 

 

Otherness

 

Once again our country convulses with yet another social problem. Last month people lived in tents for two days in order to get a seat to hear historic arguments concerning same sex marriage. The outcome seems sure under the promises of the Constitution; the right to privacy, to equal treatment under the law and the pursuit of happiness.

While watching a Swedish movie about three men thrown together in Greenland, my thoughts turned to Otherness once again. What happens when three Swedes find themselves living in Greenland, a landscape of ice and snow, hunting animals for a fur company based in Oslo?

Larsen,a tender hearted poet, joins Radbaek, more wolf than man, one who has killed his wife's lover. Holm, the middle of these two extreme personalities, does the scientific work for another company. But he fails because conflict is inevitable in this violent ping pong game of life.

 Zero Kelvin dramatizes the struggle we all encounter when facing alien circumstances, i.e., geography, climate, a new work place, a "new" person in our lives as neighbors and acquaintances. Or could the person we loved become someone "different” than we anticipated?
 
The three fall into conflict about everything from Larsen's poetry about his true love and Radbaek's view of human nature as "red tooth and claw," a world of betrayal, hatred and even murder. Holm can only arbitrate, balancing precariously on a tight rope trying to separate two antitypes. But in this universe of ice, there can be no middle ground. And that inability to come to terms can make all the difference in our lives.

Ironically, the film 's language [fair warning: terrible language] was far more Other than I choose to tolerate, I watched, spellbound, by the inevitable decline of Larsen's sensibility, what his girlfriend calls "soulfulness," into just another copy of Radbaek. "You have become me," the wolf-man tells him.

And Larsen does. The poet shoots Radbaek when he finds him beating Larsen's favorite sled dog to death with a rock, then returns with more bullets to finish him off. "You will never find peace and soul-full-ness again," Radaek mutters through bloody lips.

Celebrating Easter this year I thought about The Christ, who was to the Jews, after all, too much Otherness. All the wrong trappings: Nazareth, carpenter's son, not a member of the Sanhedrin, a "religious revolutionary."

So in the end we must anticipate Others and Otherness--the alien. Joseph Conrad's characters can't survive alone--especially in the jungle. In the "Outpost of Progress," solitude, jungle lushness and fevers, bring murder-suicide. For some of our children and adults yet another meeting seems more than they can bear. And for loved ones, sometimes even their own loving family is more than they can bear. Or even a classroom: Rules.Work. The redundancy that builds character and patience and good citizens.

My dad always said, "never say you won't live__________. "Go where the work is.” We all can't live in Orem. Someone is going to have to move to Alabama--or Nevada. And with that traumatic move comes neighbors whose skin is not white, whose marriage style is same-sex, with children. The climate personifies the Mojave desert. You could live miles away from family and too broke to bridge the gap. You may have to learn Spanish. Or Icelandic.

How large is your world? How much Otherness [anything that is not me] can you tolerate and perhaps even love?

Threshold

I notice lately that the news boys are telling us we may be on the threshold of a possible nuclear war with North Korea, that prison-country bound to leader-worship and insanity. But what is this so-called threshold experience?

When we built our new home in Bishop, California, Dad didn't seem to get around to putting thresholds in the doorways. Soon the Mojave winds began to send sand and cold air under the door. Jack Nielsen came to the rescue once again and tightened down the house. 

We spend our whole lives crossing thresholds. This liminal experience shapes and forms our lives like it or not, because crossing a threshold, a boundary, moving from one kind of space to another remains a ritual we can't ignore.

When the bridegroom carries his bride over the threshold, they enter a new space, a new life, fraught with expectation and some fear. Can we make this marriage work?  When we walk the ceremonial Cub Scout bridge and enter Boy Scouts?  We pass into another phase, another passage towards maturity. Hopefully. Failure to jump through the "hoops of life" marks us as "arrested." Our timing is suddenly off. 

Who's looking for a high school dropout these days for a well-paying job, anyway?

My second father, Jack Nielsen, took me to my first day of school. Mom bought a red sweater with double white stripes on the sleeves--very collegiate. We still have the photo of that threshold experience: out of the house, away from my mom four hours a day and into the noisy often confusing world of kindergarten. I tried to keep the crayons inside the lines, relax on my towel for 15 minutes after milk break and then walk home.

Going off to elementary school or high school only prepares for the more traumatic farewell to friends and family when we drive off to another state and a whole new set of rules. And in some of those university settings, kids who were eating hamburgers and dating girls find themselves rushing fraternities and sororities, drinking gallons of beer and enduring endless indignities in order to be a  "member." Sense of time falls away; they sleep less, study occasionally, if at all.

What are the liminal experiences in your life?  An  LDS mission--off sometimes to a new country/culture/food and language. And constant rejection. Or, what of marriage?  Of becoming parents? Of joining or leaving a church or a neighborhood--or taking on your first "real" job. Some corporations are hiring "life coaches" just to get their newly hired MBAs through the day. "Hey, no one ever told me I do sloppy work and that I often fail to finish my project on time."

Yes, sometimes we stumble on the entryway or choose to remain in the visitor’s waiting room in a temple. Once you pass by those boys in white, card in hand, you've entered a whole new world of religious experience--you enter a forest of symbols. You've moved from the Profane to the Sacred. A friend who had been on Pioneer Trek one summer, said, "I am not quite the same person I was before we left. I stood on holy ground, and I felt it."

I see us moving through these boundary experiences until our final passage: from life to death. Sometimes our life rhythm shifts, however. I am now where my life has arrived. With little anticipation, I am still amazed how "old age" challenges me. I thought one Zion's Camp would be sufficient.  [Guess not!]

But in all our passing, however, we learn by experience. Sometimes it's like jumping off the river bank high above 7 feet in Bishop creek. It had to be done, if Buzzy Koonz could do it. 

Here we go--into another new, sometimes dangerous space by crossing one boundary and landing in a completely different setting.

Hermit of Bel Aire

 

 

March 11, 2013

                                                                         

Dear Allen and Linda,

Thanks for your friendship. You bring me a wide range of thoughts and emotions and even tools. The rocker rocks fine, Allen. I hope you found things improving across the sea, Linda. As parents you have always been there. And, in the end, perhaps that's all we can really do for our children. Until they realize at some point in eternity that Someone Else has always been There for them [as we say], we must stand by and serve--with warm embraces and unconditional love. And that love sometimes means allowing those we love to pivot, stumble, then free fall until they reach the inevitable "bottom" of the abyss. And there is always a "bottom."

 

This parental "work" we do is our battle. Like the ancient Spartan warriors, their ergon, their work was war. But parenting is about peace. Peace and sorrow. Samuel Johnson was gutsy enough to claim that sorrow often leads to a "cure." We are all three, we happy three, engaged in this ergon. Our relentless sorrow sometimes, says Johnson, "rusts the soul." If allowed to build on itself, it threatens to "putrefy and stagnate" our lives.

 

Our hope? Such inertia, such ennui can only be overcome "by exercise and motion." So, your constant "exercise is" is to continue reaching out to others with your hearts [big hearts] and minds [big minds].

 

And so you come to visit the hermit of Bel Aire.

Misperceptions

One of the joys and pains of life is looking back on our perceptions--those views we once thought infallible. When 13-year old Briony, the child prodigy poet, in Ian McEwan's novel, Atonement, bursts into the library to find her sister, Cecilia and Robbie, locked in what Briony assumes as assault--a "true" act of violence, her young mind cannot register the event, the act of love.  She immediately assumes the worst.  It confirms a letter Robbie has sent Cecelia, a torrid letter marked with a word Briony doesn't even know, let alone understand.

The letter moves through the outraged Tallis [tentacles, trellis-like?] family. The police arrive and take Robbie away to prison for assault.  Cecelia remains frozen--whispering only, "I will wait for you. Come home to me." Robbie spends three years in prison and then heads off to Dunkirk and the Somme.

What of our own youthful misperceptions?  Like Briony, we had only the language of our surroundings.  We defined events with the limited words and experiences of youth.  When Buzzy Koonz, baseball cap backwards on his head, an oily hank of hair blowing in the Mojave wind, screeched his Western Flyer around the Stover twins, my heart leaped.  Now there is a cool guy with a cool bike and as a 6th grader, "going out" with twins!  Twins who were 7th graders!

A few months later we moved to our new home in town.  I left Buzzy and his strange swearing habits and the Stover twins whose parents were proud owners of a collection of books, hidden under their bed. Then one Saturday afternoon I "read" the secret books with Buzzy and the Stover redheads.  I waded through plots and descriptions of hot-breathed encounters in woods and in the backseats of cars, parked like trout, tail to head in what they called The Drive-In Theater.  But my attention wandered over to Tommy Weaver's, who had the most exquisite collection of matchbooks in town.  We made our last foray to Bishop Creek to the dreaded Seven Foot, the infamous "deep" pool and waterfall that cooled our desert-baked bodies that last summer on Emory Lane.

I believe that the people in our lives are "messengers"--of light and truth--and darkness.  Yet a darkness that could contain later light. Our conversations, our musings and imaginations are forms of prayer and bring insight and "light" [but often conflicting opinions]. One scholar calls conversation a "sifting of opinions." Could his mean that a conversation, a kind of sharing of light and darkness becomes something else when it morphs into a debate, an argument, a contentious parallel battle with words?  Wendy Ulrich contends that lasting marriages are built on the foundation of "settling critical issues."  Even these differences often transform us and the marriage.

Is there room, then, for those apparently dark messengers who pass into and out of our lives?  Do I yet have space for Buzzy and the dreaded Stover girls?

We are sent here to learn the right words, light that secures [but not always and forever sometimes] our encounters with other humans.  What could I bring as an 8th grader to my relationship with R. Tomayo?  He could throw a tight spiral 30 yards [usually on the money], he knew all about Tijuana Bibles, and much about female topography.  His carnal knowledge stretched far beyond my own. I would catch some of those spirals and read a couple of his cartoon-like illustrated Bibles, but I remained too light to follow him into the trenches of tackle football.  It took two weeks and several scrimmages to realize that even in the days of leather helmets and no face masks that 125 lbs. was not enough weight for a middle linebacker.

RT and I met daily in band.  I couldn't bulldoze a running back like Dale Denton but I excelled at the trumpet---First Trumpet.  Under RT's  tutelage, however, my sophomore year the trumpet sounded less clear.  I answered instead the Siren whisper of girls. Yet I treasure the "youthful follies" of which Joseph Smith speaks [But I'm certain his "follies were not mine]. 

With darkness or folly came experience and eventually resolution about the kind of truth I wanted that would outlast a Saturday night. 

Mercy Messages

A couple of mercy missions this morning, visiting the afflicted here at Bel Aire. Some talk about their lives--many of them abandoned early in bad marriages.  I shared a Dr. Pepper with Anne, who is blind and alone, though she has two good daughters close by who help her.  Other residents don't relate to her, however.  

I thought again of Pio's Prayer-Blessing for me.  It is something which means more now, even though I only recover the feelings, not the Spanish.

It was a bold move asking Pio to give me a blessing, Lora.  A private moment with Pio, a teacher or priest and doubtless marginal in the institutional church.  But he indeed knows how to talk to God and I wanted him of all the male members in your ward to intercede for me at that time.  His Spanish was beautiful, as he blessed my “broken heart” (literally and figuratively).

The strangest recollection, lately, was of a beautiful little gal I dated off and on, Dolly Golich. One day at school, my senior-screwed-up-year, she stopped me, pulled out of my front shirt pocket a scripture I had typed up.  "So if you study the Bible, Larry, why do you make out with girls in your trailer?"  There was my chance!  Why didn't I hold her cheeks in both hands and kiss her, saying, "You're right. I begin today; now." Strange how this little hot make-out would chide me.  A messenger of counsel.

Wendy Ulrich [Experiencing the Temple] cautions us that people, sometimes people very different from us, just may come into our lives with a "message."  Be on the lookout for so-called wolves who are really sheep, often unconscious of their lamb-like counsel.

Love, Dad

P.S.  It was, after all, Steve Oakey who ushered me into the Assisted Living [Homestead] Ranch decision.  He, no wolf, by the way, was there at the right moment with the right advice. Did he know in his bones I was inevitably heading for a complete physical and emotional collapse?

Coming Soon...

Larry has resurfaced, and will publish a few more blogs as early as this weekend!  Stay tuned.

Noonday Demon, Again: Guest Blog, by Ron Christiansen

Had meant to read your new post after we visited Austin two weeks ago, but just now getting to it. As I think I mentioned to you, this line of thought reminds me (not surprisingly) of Andrew Solomon's book "The Noonday Demon: an Atlas of depression"--it's a much more engaging read than the title may suggest though it certainly does have an atlas-like feel. He is sometimes tedious but his intro chapter on depression and his chapter on the history of depression are quite good. 

In the history section Solomon cites the 5th century christian aesthetic as describing 6th combatant in the 19th Psalm as the noonday demon which "produces dislike of place where one is, disgust, disdain, and contempt for other men, and sluggishness." Cassian's description is a bit more active less indifferent than the one that you offer (though you do suggest the "sucking" of intellectual and spiritual energy). Solomon continues by saying that Cassian saw the noonday demon as the "thing that you can see clearly in the brightest part of the day but that nonetheless comes to wrench your soul away from God." That about gets it right I think--maybe it is the contrast between the light of day and the mood, a contradiction the mind and heart can't quite make sense of. 

Building on this idea, Solomon explains why he chose this as his title: "because it describes so exactly what one experiences in depression. The image serves to conjure the terrible feeling of invasion that attends...There is something brazen about depression. Most demons--most forms of anguish--rely on the cover of night; to see them clearly is to defeat them. Depression stands in full glare of the sun, unchallenged by recognition. You can know all the why and the wherefore and suffer just as much as if you were shrouded in ignorance." I love the thought of depression as brazen, as invasive, maybe because it is personified into something real. 

As you suggest here, action is in order. Cassian suggests manual labor. I like what you say here--meditation, routine, stimulation. It occurs to me that anything which can wet/water (in contrast to the emotional dryness you speak of) the soul is worthwhile. For me usually a show like Downton Abbey (btw Ali and I have knocked out 4 episodes since your/Cam's recommendation) or a good novel can help. But during times of extreme dryness and indifference, I have to rely on the tried and true, the ritualistic. This might be scripture for some; recently for me it is a few scenes from the LOTR or Moonstruck (learned this from Lora via you) or a long meditative hike. 

Thanks so much for the post. It found me today mid-fight with the noonday demon, having been all-out sick for two days, sun a shining, weekend hikes and plans ruined, soul needing some stirring and engagement. 

What is UP with DOWNton Abbey? Guest Blog, by Lora Clark

While living back east, I had the opportunity to visit the lovely Newport mansions in Rhode Island. The Breakers, the Vanderbilt Estate, is my favorite. As I walked through this magnificent mansion, and later on the expansive grounds, I wondered about the people that lived and breathed there. What were the relationships like between the servants? Between the Vanderbilts and servants?

The new PBS Masterpiece Classics "little darling" is Downton Abbey. Why not invite a group of aristocrats who live upstairs and the servants who live downstairs into your home every Sunday night? You'll witness their parallel lives unfold. You will find yourself loving both groups.

Who?

A strong professional cast. Every person is interesting and has a story. There are three in particular, who become verbs immediately: Pamuk, O'Brien, and Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham.

And who can forget the tacit Mr. Bates, with his iconic cane, from first episode to last? He speaks less but says more than any other character of the cast. Or the ever-wise hero, Lord Grantham?

Note the carefully-worded and intelligent script. Every word counts. For example, Lady Cora, "You married for money." Lord Grantham quietly asks, "And have you been happy all these years?" And they embrace. Time goes too fast, and you don't want it to end.

Contrast these finely honed lines to the "royal" Kardashians' reality TV show, where endless babble about nothing leaves you wondering why you just spent an hour waiting for it to end.

Why Watch?

• It provides a historical framework, ie, the sinking of the Titanic, World War I, etc.
• Each episode leaves you eager for the next. What will be Bates' fate? Who will marry Mary?
• Watching it with millions of others during prime time creates a feeling of community, not unlike South American novelas.
• There's something soothing about rhythm, continuity and problem resolution. The episodic structure helps us pace our week. Some of us watch The Good Wife for the same reasons.

The series raises a question about the shelf life of a place like Downton Abbey. Can a 300 room castle survive financially in the face of a changing economy? What is the equalizing effect of the war on Downton Abbey?

The Wolves: Guest Blog, by Donnell Hunter

The wolves who take up residence

in his lungs make their presence known

each time he breathes.  At first there is

only a solitary lament, so faint

he barely notices it slumping down

from the hills. Now it has grown

to a full pack.  He listens until sleep

overcomes him.  He tells no one,

not even his wife.  It is a secret

he must keep to himself.  By day

they are gone, coursing his veins, perhaps,

in search of game, but when it gets dark,

they come back with each expiring breath. 

He learns to distinguish their howls: 

the low-pitched one is Lobo, after

a story he read when just a child.

The mate’s voice is higher.  He calls

her Blanca.  That’s all the Spanish he knows,

so he gives the others names like Black Leg,

or Gray Wing.  Where the words come from,

he has no idea—no wolf  he’s ever known

in life or myth can fly.  They just sound good

to his ear.  He goes to the library,

checks out all the books he can find,

one by Barry Lopez, Of Wolves and Men. 

No illustration is even close

to the images his brain conceives. 

He stays up late, tries not to wake

his wife with the chorus he brings

to bed, the voices he has grown

to love.  He adjusts the counterpane,

takes a deep breath, lets it out slow.   

When the air is almost gone, the wolves

begin, as he knew they would.

He counts to see if someone new

has joined the pack, inhales again,

lets go.  Yes, there it is.  He can

see him, darker than all the rest,

stalking down.  No need to find a name. 

The name he’s heard since birth,

but never speaks aloud, crouches,

ready to leap with its taste of salt

from the tip of his tongue.

            —Donnell  Hunter

BYU Studies   Number 2, 1999

Three Women I Want to Meet in Heaven

Mother Teresa
At her death no one kicked up more passing commentary and insightful criticism than did Mother Teresa. Several books and even copies of her journal rolled off the press or digitalized themselves into Kindles. Everyone became an "expert" on her "doubts," her moments of darkness. Others found a hidden "political" agenda in her orchestrating of her world famous orphanage. Some accused her of arrogance and temper, as if Beethoven, Bach, and Patton were free of such emotions. But let the critics be praised for sleuthing research and damned for their cursory conclusions which led many to forget so much of what she had done. 

Yes, many forgot her good works. Had everyone forgotten the fruits of her labor? Myopic in their dissecting of her very human heart. I find great compassion for those who love and serve "in spite of" mixed motive or confusion or doubt. The little known film, Catholics, dramatizes an abbot, ruling a small monastery on an isle off Ireland, insisting on the Latin liturgy in spite of Vatican II. A young Martin Sheen, now sporting a turtle neck and assuming Buddhist postures as he prays, tries to bring the priest [Richard Harris] into the 20th century,

The heart of the drama, however, drives deeply into the doubting heart. The abbot suffered a nervous breakdown at Lourdes. No miracles, no Resurrected Christ, Nothing. Yet, like a persistent salmon, he swims upstream, driven paradoxically by doubt, finding not a liberating freedom but purpose in his work. For some that may be all organized religion can bring. The fruits, however, remain, as they do in Miguel Unamuno's short story about an exemplary doubting priest who does his job.

And then there is Graham Green's famous, The Power and the Glory. The whisky priest stumbles through the crowd-imposed demands for confession, for the blessing of children, for the sacrament. All of which he remains unworthy, amidst the tumult of the Mexican Revolution in 1920. He continues; they are comforted and he is finally apprehended and executed. A wasted life? 

I will embrace Mother Teresa for her works--and for her doubts. I'm a Kolob Standard Time believer, so I believe many doubts will transform into Faith and Acceptance. The Goodness will prevail. And for thousands of throw away babies in the streets of New Delhi who became adults, this occasion of embracing and giving thanks will be a festival of love. 

I want to be there. 

Ethel Waters

The opening of the Korean war began the closing of our Bishop years. The year we moved to the Paradise--Escondido, California--our lives changed forever. For my fragile mother, it meant that four restless children could play outside until after dark. We pretty much stayed within the five acre confines of Thompsonville, so  she felt assured we were safe.

Mom's favorite hobby was reading aloud. The waning months of Bishop took on a meaning for me that surfaced only after I moved to Texas. Submerged in my unconscious is the memory of her walking up and down the living room floor, reading Ethel Water's autobiography, With his Eyes on the Sparrow. As she read, bits and pieces of this remarkable black woman filtered into my brain. 

I remember that she married at 12, that she worked a shift of cleaning [of course] and sang at night--anywhere they would allow her to belt the blues with an already burgeoning full warble that made her famous. Mom's empathy got the best of her occasionally. I would hear her say, "Oh, this is terrible." Gosh, or even "Damn, should things be so hard for other people we call Americans?"

In the third grade I had taken up the trumpet with gusto and soon knew who RC Handy was. Mom explained to me that it was Ethel Waters who sang that score and made it famous, not a trumpet player. I did try to make it famous by winning a talent contest in the 8th grade by playing that very "St. Louis Blues." Later, in high school, I would hear her full-throated blues, often followed by people I never SAW but could HEAR. Dinah Washington, for example. Of course Ethel Waters did go on and work in films, sometimes with white people. Now, over a 100 years since her birth and now her rebirth, I would love, in the spirit of my Mom, greet her and thank her for her voice and the way her music seemed to encapsulate moments in my life that were unfolding. Her music triggers the memories--even today, in my later winter years. I would say, hoping for a hug, "Thank you for your life, for the heartache you endured, for the isolation and the pain you sang your way through. I will never forget you."

Malinche

Few of you, unless you are a well read Hispanic, would know Malinche, the companion but not the wife of the reckless, infamous, blood-thirsty Cortez. As a 4th grader, I was chosen to draw Cortex in our California history class. I remember the imposing helmet and the ready sword he held over the bad guys--Montezuma and his people, those heart-wrenching, human sacrificing aliens in the jungles of Spain's Imaginary Kingdom.

Forty years later I developed a course in critical thinking built around some of the ethical implications embedded in Malinche's life. The mother of the first Mexican, she is the Mother of Mexico. Some Hispanic men call her the "Mexican Eve," the base Indian betrayer of her people, birthing a European Spanish child, Martin. She spoke four dialects and mastered Cortez' Spanish within weeks. Malinche "negotiated" the so-called treaty with a beguiled Montezuma. She translated from Cortez' Spanish into the Aztec [a Mayan linguistic cousin]. 

She trekked behind Cortez and his soldiers as they consolidated the enemies of Montezuma and watched the systematic destruction of the island kingdom of the Aztecs. Cortez brought "Catholic Christianity" to a benighted people. The bloody heart rip-outs stopped. The Ten Commandments took over. Well, sort of. What followed was the mission system that would extend along the California highway that lead to San Juan Capistrano, 21 miles away. 

I will speak my gratitude in broken Spanish. She will fill in the gaps. I won't be looking for Cortez. My eyes will be only on her, thanking her for her brilliance, her perseverance, for her greatness, as the Mother of the beautiful Mexican people.

3 People I Would Rather Not Meet in Heaven--But Maybe Later.

In an effort to be insightful but not mean spirited, I've chosen three people I would rather see--a little later. I know if you D-list 3 people, you think of the Stalins, the Hitlers, the now seemingly indestructible Robert Mugabe.  Help me, here. Why do bad people get the good genes? The man is nearly 90 and still able to kill a few dozen fellow citizens before breakfast.

Well, I've selected three men [are there no bad women in my history data base?] who reside in the interstices of human history. They remain the subject of historical and ethical debate. About the stock falls on, say, Robert E. Lee, someone "proves" "Bobby Lee" could have easily won the Civil War with another 50,000 men.

Here's my list: Robert E. Lee, George McClellan, Douglas MacArthur.


Robert E. Lee:
I do not approach Lee as a professional historian but as a fellow human with more questions than answers. I don't know if I would have the guts to enter into a conversation with him about any particular battle strategy. I would love to hear his response to Pickett's question, "Why did you send my cavalry group 'up the gut' at Gettysburg?" Pickett's broken charge did lead him once, years later, to say, "That old man killed my army."

I would wonder aloud why a man who contended he fought for his "country" and not for slavery did have a 100 slaves while running his father-in-law's plantation, and was known to always ask the man with the bull whip to "lay to." The skin had to fly, he believed, in order for people not to want to run from a situation "worse than death," as one slave put it--towards freedom.

Would someone please ask him what he really meant about Virginia as a "country?" I know the argument about secession, state's rights, etc., but I sometimes wonder, recently, for example, after watching a documentary on Lee, if his own acquired aristocratic roots through marriage added to his perception of Virginia as a country--a piece of real estate that had bragging rights on Jefferson, Adams, Washington, etc. Was pride a factor?

And why the painful slaughter of his troops, now boys, endured the last two weeks before calling it quits and going to Appomattox to turn over his sword to a more common, blue collar Grant, the embodiment of the ethos that I admit I admire more than spangles, mint juleps under the mangroves, served by enslaved human beings.

George McClellan:
Had I written this 3 weeks ago, I would have happily described George McClellan as the worst general in the history of the US army. Recent research rescues him as someone who brought order and obedience to the Army of the Potomac. For me, however, he remains a metaphor--someone who can get ready, plan carefully, put a lot of talk and spit and polish, as we used to say, into a project.  He knew how to dress for a ball, but he couldn't dance.  And though his men respected him, he had no respect for President Lincoln, whom he called a "Gorilla," in a letter to his wife.

But he could never deliver.

I had a collegue years ago who spent more time talking about his credentials than about the art of teaching. He read books with such care that he refused to fully open the book for fear the spine would pop. He never annotated because he feared marring the pages. And he was genius enough not to have to annotate. He never finished his degree, no matter how many leaves he said he needed and how many more research assistants he demanded to finally deliver the Great American Dissertation. But nothing ever happened---especially in the classroom. I once suggested, out of administrative fiat, that "There is more to teaching than sitting on the edge of the desk and talking randomly about 'ideas' and meandering speculations." Torro Ballistics! He remained the McClellan of the classroom.

Douglas MacArthur:

To lead an army of men into battle, a general must obviously have an abundance of ego. My so-called "personal" encounter with MacArthur came through the papers during the Korean War. I knew of the famous promise to the Philippines: "I shall return." And he did--in a carefully staged "action" photo sequence. I know, it's not the first time the military has "photoshopped" a so-called "scene" of military success in order to pull yet more money into the Military Industrial Complex. After all, it's one of the few viable manufacturing businesses left in America.

It takes a lot of Ford cars to equal the profit on the sale of one F-15 fighter to Saudi Arabia. The glitz and  fudging aside, that, by the way, continues in Afghanistan. General Be-tray-us taught an unlearned Obama the art of smoke and mirrors in the name of "surge." And it continues.

My disenchantment with MacArthur started during the Korean War. He seemed like another military savior in khaki, dark glasses, the storming of Inchon and the systematic push of the overrated North Korean army from Pusan all the way to the frozen Chosen Reservoir. He and Ridgeway seemed incomparable.

Then came the Chinese. MacArthur, forgetting who leads the armed forces in our country, opted openly for an atomic bomb attack on Chinese forces. He tried to ride over Truman, the least understood and least appreciated president in our history. No, he was not Lincoln, but he understood the Constitution and could see the dark specter of the military thrusting its fist into the Executive Office. He also ignored demographics. Mao, in response, said, "we can afford 3 million soldiers."

Later, it became clear, once the Wall collapsed that secret records revealed Stalin's willingness to join China and go to war with the US. It's common knowledge today that most of the so-called North Korean air force was comprised of Russian pilots.

My approach would be quiet and courteous. I have not forgotten what such men have done to try and keep us free. And now that MacArthur lives where there is no war, I can only wonder whether "Old Soldiers" really are willing to "fade away."

In the Other World we remain essentially what we are here. True, the softening continues; the love for others increases; and finally, our perspective changes.

Given the Other Worldly context, I am perplexed to know what doctors and generals spend their time doing there.