Topic 216: Winged Circle

Carol:

Over My Head,  At My Back

“This project is mostly an intellectual exercise for a newly-retired writing teacher and her anxiously-unemployed librarian daughter, both of whom are in need of something to keep them occupied during a transitional time.” (About This Project)

Topic 216 is a “throw back,” returned to the basket when I pulled it months ago, thinking it required more research than I wanted to do. It still does, but I can’t throw it back again because I now can see the bottom of a basket that once was completely filled with strips of paper. Two-hundred and sixteen essays behind us, and most of the remaining topics are “throw-backs.”

Megan and I now have worked on this project for over twelve months, a little experiment to fill our time, present a mental challenge, and provide some structure to our day.  For me, much of the fun was in figuring out how to approach the “throw back” kinds of subject matter, the head-scratchers, and the yawners. I always told my students that their job was to find a way to take an assignment and “make it their own,” so I have had lots of opportunities to practice that principle. 

I usually have a direction in mind by the time I head out on the morning walk.  Not today.I sat down for coffee with wings and circles pushed to the back of my mind. Our neighbor’s patio is inviting, and the temperature perfect for slow sipping and chitchat. Suddenly, Marc pointed up at the sky to a bird in flight. He is always doing that, pointing out birds on bushes, in the trees or flying overhead. But, this time when I looked up, I didn’t need the birders in the group to identify the long legs and wings of a Great Blue Heron.

As I looked back down at the patio table, my eye caught our host’s coffee cup. On the side of the cup was an emblem, a winged circle. The logo was from the Arkansas Department of Aeronautics, whose emblem is the “Great Seal of the State of Arkansas: with white bird wings added.  Interesting coincidence.

Wings and circles eventually led   to literature. Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” is pretty well standard for any high school English textbook, and it introduces the notion of carpe diem—in tandem with sexual seduction—right at the point where adolescent hormones are kicking into action. Seize the day, a perfect bridge between the elegant language of the 17^th century and the imagined seductions of teen-age boys: “Let us roll all our strength and all our sweetness up into one ball, and tear our pleasures with rough strife…” ( Marvell).

The other half of “carpe diem” fails to penetrate most young minds. Why are we urged to 

“seize the day”?  Because aging and death are inevitable, because the world changes and

 missed opportunities cannot be retrieved.  

“But at my back I always hear

Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.”

I really feel those wings of change at my back this morning.  After 12 months and 216 essays, Megan and I have come to another “transitional time.” I am no longer newly-retired, and she is no longer unemployed.  I have plenty of fun research and writing projects to keep me occupied. And, Megan has her own exciting work and writing projects. I am about to lose my favorite cartoonist and writing partner, co-conspirator in movie getaways and book-buying frenzies.

Thirty-six topics left in the basket. 

Sources:

Image of Great Blue Heron in flight. PeterWallack. Wikimedia.   

Marvell, Andrew. “To His Coy Mistress.” Poets.org.

Megan:

 The Ciiiiirrrrcle of Life

I really wish we hadn’t kept throwing back the hard topics. After two weeks of vacation and illness, I could really do with one like “On the Dog.” Except I don’t think “On the Dog” was a real topic from the book– I think we just chose it as our first essay because it would be an easy way to start the project. 

As my mother mentioned earlier this week, it’s been just over a year since we began writing on The Daily Theme.  When we started,I had a concern, which I revisited several times over the year – that when we finished the project, an entire year would have passed and I would have nothing to show for it but this website. And in my mind, my father is telling me that’s not very “In the Moment” thinking and my cynical side is chiming in to suggest that Nowhere is exactly where a year of living “In the Moment” gets you.   

Of course, a lot has changed – or rather, a lot has happened. I’ve reconnected with my childhood friends. I’ve spent more time with family than I have in the past 10 years combined. I experienced professional disappointment for the first time ever – getting turned down for job after job.  I’ve changed my diet (although, just as I wrote that, I took a bite of a very non vegan chocolate chip muffin), and taken classes.

I got a puppy, and regretted it, and then stopped regretting it. And if I were writing “On the Dog” today, it would have been a very different essay. Mom just shouted down to me that Bella dragged her purse into the loft, opened it up and ate her toothbrush all in the time it took to write the essay. But if that’s all the damage she caused, then we are having a good morning.

When we decided to try writing every day on the same topic, I estimated it would take just about a year to get through the 250 topics. I hadn’t factored in vacations and illness and days when we just weren’t in the mood. And job interviews.

 I couldn’t have known that one year to the day of starting this project, I would be offered a job (I thought it would happen sooner).  And now, I’m not sure what that’s going to mean for this website. I know I’m not going to be able to write every day. I want to be able to finish the 250 topics, but it feels more “Circle of Life” to just end it now.  Except that a circle never ends.

 

Topic 214: Acid Tests

Carol:

The Dead Zone

 

I call the stretch of the I- 10 between Blythe and Indio the Dead Zone. It  peaks at Chiriaco Summit, which at 1700 feet altitude isn’t much of a summit unless you consider that you are climbing from 800 feet at Blythe in the middle of a desert and jockeying for position with massive trucks that slow to a crawl. I reckon I have driven The Dead Zone over 100 times since we moved to Arizona in 1983.
 

We called it the Dead Zone not just because of the arid terrain. Our radio reception would usually die out somewhere after Quartzite. We had a stack of tapes to counter the monotony, but often we would just talk, letting the conversation meander all over the place.
 

The first few years, we made the trip with two toddlers strapped into car seats. Going west, we usually broke the journey with a stop for breakfast in Blythe. As the kids grew older and quit napping, they would ask questions that often couldn’t be answered with our pooled knowledge which was long on language and literature and short on science and technology. How many times I wished we had a dictionary or a portable encyclopedia so that we could find the answer right away.
 

By the time the kids outgrew their car seats, I often made the trip without Marc to visit my parents and brothers’ families in southern California. If we left Thousand Oaks by 5 a.m., I could avoid the worst of the traffic crawling into Los Angeles from the San Fernando Valley and the kids would sleep until we hit Blythe for a food and fuel stop. The Dead Zone seemed to stretch during those years, no conversation for the driver and no music if I forgot to pack the travel tapes.
 

The kids grew up, the vehicles changed and the technology evolved.  Our current vehicle has an I-Pod port and a CD player, but the conversations continue. Last August  Megan and I read essays out loud from a 1925 writing textbook. By the time we hit Blythe, we had committed to writing our own essays and creating a website. The first Daily Theme essay was posted on September 1, 2010.
 

On September 5, 2011 we found ourselves again traveling the I-40 back to Arizona after a family wedding. The radio was turned off, and conversation picked up after Indio. Did we know that Chiriaco Summit has a General Patton museum? Should we gas up over the border in Ehrenberg, or should we continue to the Pilot stop at Quartzite? My mind wandered ahead to the daily theme due the next day.“Acid tests.”  Hmmm.
 

I cheated a little and threw out a question to Marc. “So, how would you define “acid test”? Is an acid test the same as a litmus test?  If only we had a dictionary or an encyclopedia.”  A voice from the back seat suddenly announced, “According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, an acid test is….” Megan’s cell phone, not much bigger than a playing card, had become our dictionary thanks to the Internet.
The conversation eventually led us to Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters, Tom Wolfe and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Like I said, we are short on science and technology and long on language and literature.
 

Megan says the satellite reception on that dreary stretch of desert between Indio and Blythe was strong and clear. Guess, I’ll have to find another name for The Dead Zone.

Megan:

I came back from California with a little cold, which has now transformed into a serious sinus infection. For those of you who may not know, I start a new job next Monday, and I'm pretty sure that if I call in sick on the first day, I will fail the litmus test for new employees (litmus test being interchangeable with acid test, according to Merriam-Webster) and this is the best I can do. 

Back to bed.

Topic 212: Bristles

Carol:

     Men of a Certain Age

 In my genealogical climb through the branches and tangled vines of my family tree, I have discovered photographs of a lot of hairy men—beards down to the belt buckle, mutton chop sideburns, pomaded pompadours. But, the moustaches tend to show up in photos of family men around the 1920’s No matter what state they lived in, or even what country, moustaches dominated early 20th century male fashion.
 

The   photograph of Walter Lugrin Sr  (1878-1940) shows a man who is meticulous in details of dress. He wears a stick pin in his carefully knotted tie, a white handkerchief in the pocket of his expensive-looking suit. The moustache is bushy but neat, somewhat between a chevron and a paintbrush (American Moustache Institute). I wouldn’t expect less than thoughtful, measured care in the looks of a watchmaker and businessman who worked for  the  A. Wittnauer Co in Manhattan.  Married to my great-aunt Hattie Edwards, Walter was a family favorite who had gotten jobs in the jewelry store for Hattie and three of her sisters.
 

Edward John Scott (1857-1925) also sported a moustache although we have no photos of him as a young man. He too was a “company man” who worked for the same employer for over 20 years, as a printer in New Mexico for the Las Vegas Optic newspaper.  This photo (around 1918) shows a more casual  approach to dress. appropriate for the West. Hand cocked on hip, jacket thrown open, topped with a straw hat to keep off the New Mexico sun, E. J. Scott wears a bushy moustache too, not quite as contained as Walter’s but nevertheless in the “chevron” mode.  His expression is less business-like, less imposing than that of Uncle Walter back in New Jersey E. J. is often shown with that same affable smile in photos with his grandchildren, including my father, another Edward Scott.
 

Frederick William Stanley York (1876-1968) was from the Canadian branch of the family.  His mother Catherine was a first cousin of E. J. Scott’s wife Selina Jane, whose parents had immigrated to the American Midwest in the 1860’s from Ontario.  Stanley and several siblings moved west from Ontario to Manitoba and Alberta in the late 1880’s.  Stanley’s photo shows a young man of ramrod posture, eyes staring directly into the camera, high collar and white tie.  Although not as bushy as E.J.’s moustache,   Stanley York’s bristles add a good two inches to each side, a much truer chevron. This photograph  was probably taken around 1898, about the time he traveled with a group from the Churches of Christ congregation of Carman, Manitoba, all the way to Nashville for training at the Bible School.  From  photos of his horses and chickens, I know he farmed in Alberta with his wife Ella. They lived long enough to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in 1953. The moustache was long gone.
 
Go back one generation from Walter, E.J. and Stanley and you’ll find that men of a certain age—staid, married men—wore beards. But, the beard only really came into fashion in the United States in the 1850’s after several decades of a vogue of clean-shaven faces.
By 1920, the beard went out of style again, replaced by either a moustache or goatee, no doubt influenced by Gillette’s invention of the safety razor which became standard-issue gear for U.S soldiers in World War I (source: “Safety Razors”). As fashionista Heidi Klum might say, “Bristles. One week they’re in, one week they’re out.”

Sources:
 “The Lemania Legacy.”
“Moustache Styles.” American Moustache Institute.
Safety Razors.” Wikipedia. 



 *Please note that Carol was very late in finishing her essay today, and Megan's essay reflects that fact. 


Megan:

The many uses of Bristles

Yesterday, on the way to the movies,  Mom and I had a conversation about this topic. Conversation is probably not the right word. I tried to guess what she was going to write about and she wouldn’t tell me.

“Are you going to write about hair brushes?” I asked thinking it sounded like something she would write about.
“No,” she replied. “I thought that might be what you were going to write about.”
“I could write about how it annoys me that you think your scalp is too sensitive for my brush, and I can’t even get your brush through my hair.”
“You mean like how you bristle about the bristles on brushes?”
“Oh my god.”

“Bella has bristles on her chin” she suggested.
“Those are whiskers. Are you going to write about facial hair?"
“I’m not sure how much I have to say about that,” she said, stroking the whiskers on her own chin.
“This morning,” I offered,  “I found this long curly black hair growing right out of the side of my face.”

She finished choking just as we arrived at the movie theater and saw the worst movie of the year – One Day. It was so bad. Also, it had the same premise as a story I’ve been working on which follows a character (me) on the same day each year. I was going to use my journals. I’ve put a lot of hours into this project, not to mention the ten years that had to pass in order for me to accumulate the entries. I’m not sure it’s going to work – it’s more of an exercise, but I can assure you that the unedited and angsty journaling from my late teens is still much more interesting than that movie we saw yesterday.

I guess the fact that the movie was bad is a good thing. It’s worse when you come up with an idea and then someone else has beat you to it and theirs is better. At least I have a chance to improve it.

Anyway, I’m not doing too well with this topic today. I keep wanting to add that my mother did not finish her essay because she had obligations this morning, obligations she has known about for a while – so she could totally have written the essay before. But I skipped out all last week, and I knew about Kelly’s visit for months. So, I don’t have any right to be annoyed. Except, have you ever noticed that getting annoyed at something is not a logical reaction anyway, it happens whether you have been rightly wronged or not? Still, when I write and she doesn’t, I bristle with annoyance.    

Topic 208: Discords

Carol:

A Little Night Music

A chord is a combination of at least three tones or notes sounded at the same time, The dictionary also says that chords are usually “concordant” or harmonious. They “agree” with each other.  We have borrowed from the musical world to describe people as harmonious, or to describe situations as discordant, i.e. lacking in unity or harmony. I have spent enough time using daily themes to talk about the tragic discord of the Civil War, of the American Revolution, of the Vietnam era 60’s. Today, I prefer to write about music.
 

A few nights ago, our family went to a potluck followed by an evening of “musical play” with a local musician. He calls his programs “Music for Every Body” with a clear reason for separating that pronoun “everybody” into two parts. Prescott is full of accomplished musicians, artists, and actors who have gravitated to our mountain community. Jonathan Best seems to roll all those parts into one, and he lives up to his name. He is one of the best.... at making great music, at making people feel comfortable, and at showing people how to play in new ways through Playshops: “We all need a safe place to explore our music like a child.  When we talk we sing and when we walk we create rhythm" (source: Jonathan Best homepage)
 

Tuesday night, we played our musical bodies with  fourteen people of all ages outdoors in downtown Prescott in a circle, accompanied by what sounded like thousands of cicadas in the trees above us. Off in the distance we could hear band music playing from the square, just a typical summer evening in “Everybody’s Hometown.”  Jonathan started out with a little bit of teaching, not the pedantic rule-setting but more like rule-breaking. He shared his experiences with the Masai in Africa, where every body in a village sings and dances. Every body. Then he had us hit a note, our own personal note. Not to worry, Jonathan said. Not to worry about harmony in the traditional sense, i.e. chords with regular intervals based on our scale. There would be no wrong notes, no discord, just an incredible variety of sounds coming together in play.
 

Jonathon’s studio is called “The Music Garden. As the evening progressed and we moved on to trying out his suitcase full of musical instruments from all over the world, he helped us grow more confident as we experimented with musical sounds and unusual noise makers. It was great fun to watch my husband, who will never dance because somebody made fun of him when he was a teen-ager, who never sings in public probably for the same reason. Yet, there he was hitting his personal note, and then experimenting with a tiny accordion as part of an impromptu trio that included a train whistle and a finger harp.
 

In Jonathan Best’s Music Garden, there is not only room for “disharmony" but for silence; in his Music for Every Body playshops, there is room for silence as well as sound and for listening as well as performing. When he said that all the activities were optional, I took him at his word without feeling guilty or self-conscious. I chose to listen, which if done with intention and focus is also a form of participation.
 

By eight p.m. the band in the Square had quieted down and so had the cicadas. The fourteen musical bodies and their conductor, the Best conductor ever, stowed the instruments back in the big, old suitcase. Fourteen happy musical instruments put their chairs away and headed home. Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-Long.
 

Sources:
Jonathan Best homepage.

Megan:

I'll show you optional...

The other night I attended a presentation by a local musician at the day-time hospitality center where my mother volunteers – Quixote’s Garage.  Once a month, there is a potluck followed by a talk of some kind. There have been presentations made on the death penalty, neo-natal care in developing nations, native American art. My mother gave a presentation on Women’s History Month.  I never, ever feel like going to these events at The Garage, but when I have a choice about whether or not to attend, it is always clear that not attending is the wrong choice. But they’re only once a month, the other people who go are interesting and invariably I do have a good time.

This week, I skipped the pot luck part to have dinner with a friend first so I arrived late, but while everyone was still eating. I was actually excited to hear this musician play because Dad said he performs in all the bars and is the best in town. I might have misunderstood that though, because it turns out the guy's last name is Best. Either way, I really enjoy live music, so I was relieved that I wasn’t so late that I was interrupting the performance. But when I sat down, my father turned to me and said, “It’s not going to be a show. It’s a proactive thing.” and he pointed to an open suitcase over flowing with instruments.

“Do you mean interactive?” I said. We both frowned. We feel the same way about these programs at The Garage, and an interactive musical event is very much not in our comfort zones. Immediately I started planning my exit. I was going to say that I felt sick from the meal I’d just eaten (this wasn’t a complete lie – I was uncomfortably full), and was only debating whether or not to throw my dad a bone and claim to be too ill to drive myself (thus getting him out as well), when suddenly the unbelievable happened.

We were sharing the table with a couple who were in town visiting their son and his fiancée (who volunteers at The Garage). We’d been chatting about diets (the father had recently lost 50 pounds), when the son came over and said, “I’m really not feeling well, must be something I ate – Dad can you drive me home?”   He totally stole my exit plan!

So, I had to stay. And so did my dad. The musician arranged us in a circle and we each got an instrument. Mom and Dad both chose maracas, and someone passed me a horn that made the same honking sound as a clown’s nose. I couldn’t play it without getting the giggles. AND the musician made us sing! He made us talk in gibberish and then sing the gibberish to people like we were having singing gibberish conversations. I have never been so incredibly uncomfortable and self conscious, although I did find that I enjoyed saying “hay bippity blibbity boo?”

In the beginning, Mr. Best told us that participation was optional, not to do anything we weren’t comfortable with, but I figured I had about the same choice there as I did to attend. And so Dad and I were standing there in the circle singing gibberish when I noticed someone was missing.

My mother.  She was sitting down outside the circle, hands clasped in her lap, and watching us all make complete asses of ourselves. I was like, Seriously?

Topic 206: My Sleeves

Carol:

The Sleeve

 I started planning my daily theme essay in my head yesterday evening, taking mental inventory of the different kinds of sleeves in my wardrobe.  Suddenly, my memory did one of those unpredictable backward somersaults that took me to a name I learned 40 years,  La Manche. The Sleeve.
 

La Manche is the French name for the “arm” of the Atlantic Ocean most of us call the English Channel.  Known for being “country-prideful,” the French would never refer to The Channel as English.   Imagine La Manche as being shaped somewhat like a sleeve, in fact one of those mutton sleeves that women wore in the 19th century. The “buttons” on the wrist of the sleeve are Dover, England and Calais, France. The wristband is the Strait of Dover. The broad end of the sleeve is marked by Penzance at the tip of south-west England and Brest in northern France.
 

The Channel also gave its French name to an area of the Normandy Coast that includes the beautiful Mont St Michel. La Manche is technically a “department,” or civil administrative region. Mont St Michel is an island of sorts where the Couesnon River meets the waters of The Channel. At one time a natural bridge connected Mont St Michel to the main land, revealed at low tide. This little islet is one of numerous islands of varying size “decorating” The Sleeve, including the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands.  

The shorelines on both sides of the Channel have a rich history and strategic importance. But, today they constitute major ports and tourist locales with a combined population of over 3.5 million people (source: “English Channel”).

Le Havre beach

The friendly rivalry shown by Channel swimmers and boaters  goes back to the  1800’s.

No contending hostile shipping meet in the waters of La Manche, as our neighbours term what we call the English Channel. Far more glorious, far more agreeable… are the friendly contests of the friendly fleets of England and France in doings of mutual regard, esteem and friendship. We have indeed laid aside the sword for an olive branch, and long may this be held for the enjoyment, the benefit, and the gratification of the world, our countries and ourselves (“Naval Doings” 427)
 

Evacuation of Dunkirk

Eighty years later, the true test of that “mutual regard, esteem and friendship” came when the Battle of Dunkirk stranded hundreds of thousands of British, French and Belgian troops on the beaches of Normandy. On May 26, 1940 Winston Churchill addressed the House of Commons to garner support for a massive evacuation of the troops. During the ensuing nine days, a flotilla of boats ranging from navy ships to fishing trawls and lifeboats to family pleasure boats evacuated almost 340,00 soldiers across The Channel, including about 140,000 French soldiers (source: “Dunkirk Evacuation ”).
 

Today the quickest way to traverse the Channel is not by ship or boat but by car or train. Since 1993 “The Chunnel,” a 31 mile railway tunnel under the Strait of Dover, has been providing service to increasingly speedy trains. Tourists and business travelers can now journey from London to Paris in 2 hours and 15 minutes (source “Channel Tunnel”).
 

I haven’t crossed La Manche by Chunnel or Channel although I have flown across it several times. Speed may be great, but I prefer my Sleeve a beautiful deep ocean blue.

Sources:
“Channel Tunnel.” Wikipedia.
“Dunkirk Evacuation.” Wikipedia.
“English Channel.” Wikipedia.
Image of Le Havre beach and the Channel. Wikipedia.
“Naval Doings.” Nautical Magazine. Vol 34 1865, p. 427.
   

Megan:

We’ve had some silly topics before but I’m pretty sure this is the worst. Topics that would be better than this one (but still about clothes): My Shoes, My Buttons, My Pockets. I like the last one. I could write a whole essay about what I find in my pockets. Actually I couldn’t. I only ever find used Kleenex and movie tickets. Sometimes a dog treat.

What can I possibly say about my sleeves? Have you ever noticed that in most of the cartoons I am wearing a tank top? That is because in real life, most of my shirts and dresses are sleeveless. This is not due to any sort of bias against sleeves, although I do find that most long sleeve shirts are too long for my short arms. In 100+ degree heat, sleeveless is better than sleeved.

I suppose there is a fashion to sleeves – by which I mean, sleeve design changes with the fashion. I base this entirely on the part of Anne of Green Gables where Anne asked Marilla to make her a dress with puffed sleeves. That book had some influence on me and for probably the only time in my life, I had a preference about sleeves (aside from now, where my preference is none). When my grandmother made my First Communion dress (even though she was not Catholic), at my request she gave the dress puffed sleeves.

First Communion dresses, by the way and in case you didn’t know, look like mini-wedding dresses. They are miniature because they are worn by children, but also they don’t have trains. It is also tradition to wear a veil, or at least it was when I was a kid. I haven’t been a First Communion service since my brother had his (little boys wear suits and ties). I wonder what my grandmother thought about the Catholic ritual. I once asked her what was the difference between her religion, which was Methodist, and mine. She answered, “Methodists don’t worship the Pope.” Oooh, my mother was angry.

Anyway, I was really happy with my dress, and according to my mother, it’s packed away for me. I’m sort of sorry that we were the only Catholics in the family, because it would have been neat for one of my little cousins to wear a dress made by their great-grandmother. For a second just now I had a thought about finding the dress and giving it to one of the girls, but I don’t think that’s a good idea after all. The last time I saw the 3 year old wear her princess dress, she spilled an entire milkshake down the front. Of course, I was 8 when I had my First Communion, so she’s got about 5 years to grow before she’ll fit in it, and maybe that’s plenty of time for her to stop being so clumsy. OR, if I ever get married, she could be the flower girl and wear the dress then. That might be nice. I’ll have to time it pretty carefully though.

Topic 205: On Keeping a Secret

Carol:

Ask Me No Questions….

 Generally, I don’t care much for keeping a secret although I realize that depends on the what and why of it. I don’t like “skeleton in the closet” secrets, but I respect the privacy of people who confide in me. But, what about the garden variety little secrets that lead to happy endings? I’m just not very good at those. 
 

For one, I do not have a poker face. My family knows this and takes advantage. We used to play a game called Rommoli at big family gatherings for the holidays. The game would get pretty competitive, and the only edge I really had was being the youngest and thus not considered a threat.  During one round, I drew a hand that I knew could not be beaten in the poker phase. The more I looked at those cards, the more excited I got.   The corners of my mouth started to curl up in an uncontrollable grin. When we got to betting for the poker hand, my oldest brother looked at me and turned to the rest of the family. “Don’t bet anything. Look at Carol’s face. She has a winning hand.” So, I ended up taking the hand with absolutely no pay-off. I told you my family is competitive.
 
Not having a poker face is only part of the problem. The other part is that I hate to lie. Even the happiest secrets involve some dishonesty or equivocation. “No dear, I am not planning a surprise party for your birthday.” When asked a direct question, even though I want to keep the surprise, I get squirmy and uncomfortable inside or I break into that darn uncontrollable grin. Either way my body language is a give-away, so I try avoidance tactics, such as “Now dear, I know you don’t like surprise parties.”
 

I have managed to pull off surprises by only telling half the truth. And, the fun of watching the expression of delight on someone’s face  is worth the squirmy lies. When I threw a party for my mother’s 85th birthday, she took great pleasure in working on the invitation list with me and the details of food and decorations.  At the party, she was having such fun being regaled by her friends in the church choir that she didn’t notice when our back door opened In walked the secret “gift” I had managed to keep, both my brothers and their wives from California. The look of total joy on her face was worth keeping that particular secret.
 

I’m not the only one who has kept a secret like that. One of my favorite surprises came after my son was born. A friend in town invited me to a “little informal coffee gathering.” She said it might be hard to find a babysitter, so I was welcome to bring both the baby and the two-year old. The other ladies wouldn’t mind. When I came into her living room, the first person I saw was one of my neighbors. I remember thinking it an interesting coincidence that she knew my hostess. Then, in walked a friend from church, oh another interesting coincidence. When commented to my hostess about the serendipity of it all, and she burst out laughing. “Why, Carol, didn’t you figure out this is a baby shower for you?” Duh.
 

So, this is a big birthday year for my husband. For his last big birthday, I planned a surprise weekend at a beautiful hotel with lots of family. I may have something special planned already, maybe not. I’ll just stop there because he reads our Daily Theme essays, and I wouldn’t want him to start asking questions.

Megan:

Growing up, I was taught that secrets are lies. Being asked to keep a secret was being asked to lie, unless the secret was temporary, in the case of a surprise or a gift. I always had the feeling that my parents felt secrets within a family were a sign of oppression and dysfunction, and consequently they tried to raise my brother and I to be open and honest people.

 I remember only two times my father asked me to keep a secret – both times the secret was from my brother. My uncle died when I was 6, and my father asked me to keep the details from my brother who was 4 because he was too young to understand. The second time was when I confided to my father that I didn’t believe in God and wanted to stop going to church. I was 12, and my father told me it was important to set an example for my brother so I had to keep going and not mention anything to him. The first secret I understood, the second I resented.

Now that we are grown, my parents’ attitudes seem to have shifted. My mother has always been uncomfortable with the idea of keeping secrets, but at the same time has often said there are some things she doesn’t want to know. She also hates gossip, and tries to mind her own business, and depending on her mood she sometimes doesn’t even share things one might expect to come up in a normal conversation. While I was still in England, my brother lost his job. I didn’t speak to him as often as I did my parents, so it was several months before I found out. He was as surprised as I was that no one had told me. Living as far away as I did, I would have thought my parents would keep me up to date about the family.

As I’m writing this, I understand more why they discouraged secrets when we were children, but keep them now that we are adults. It was a matter of safety, I guess. Children should be raised without shame or fear, but adults have a right to some privacy. This is an issue that comes up often in my writing.  There are things that I know, events that have played a part in shaping me, that are not mine to share. There are things I have done, mistakes I have made and learned from, and because of the learning I cannot regret them. But still I hesitate to share them because I’m afraid it might change the way my parents look at me. This is exactly what they wanted to avoid by raising children to be open and honest, but it’s unescapable. Everyone keeps secrets from their parents.  We know they have unconditional love, but see no reason to test it.

Topic 203: Bird Music

Carol:

Birdland Lullaby

Mourning Dove

My husband is a collector. He keeps books, magazines and other hobby paraphernalia all over the house. That includes a shelf in our bedroom with 22 books on birds and bird-watching. Binoculars of varying sizes and quality are stored in closets although his favorites are in the drawer of the washstand by our front door, ready to grab when he heads out on the morning walk. Birding has become a passion for him, and it has become enjoyable for me as well. I like to sit on my deck and recognize the symphony of bird songs Marc has taught me to recognize: phainopeplas, mourning doves, Gambel’s quail and Steller’s Jays.
 

Just below the shelf with 22 bird books is a very large book representing another of Marc’s more recent passions,  jazz. The book is Jazz: A History of America’s Music (Ward and Burns) which we bought for Marc along with a set of CD’s from the soundtrack of Ken Burns’ 19-hour PBS documentary (2000). When I told Marc today’s topic was “bird music,” he immediately responded “Charlie Parker.” 
 

Charlie “Bird” Parker, the great jazz saxophonist,   got his nickname “Yardbird” only because he loved to eat chicken. It became shortened to “Bird,” a nickname  he played off in in such  jazz compositions as “Yardbird Suite,” “Ornithology,” and “Bird of Paradise” (source: “Charlie Parker).
 

By the early 1950’s Charlie Parker was at the height of his career and influence on the American jazz scene. Bass player Charlie Mingus wrote a tune honoring the musician he admired so much, titled “Gunslinging Bird.”  Parker’s unique chord changes, built off 12-bar blues chords, became known as “Bird Changes.” The Birdland Jazz Club in New York City was named for him , and he was the headliner at the club’s 1949 opening. One of the most famous jazz songs of all times was a direct reference to Parker and the club, George Shearing’s 1952  “Lullaby of Birdland.”
 

Unfortunately, Charlie “Bird” Parker’s personal life was marked by chronic abuse of alcohol and heroin. In the late 1940’s he was committed to the Camarillo State Mental Hospital in California, where he stayed for six months. He was even banned from the Birdland Jazz Club. When he died on March 12, 1955, he was only 34-years old. Actor/Director/Composer Clint Eastwood turned Parker’s story  into the excellent 1988 film Bird starring Forest Whitaker. Whitaker researched Parker’s life thoroughly and even took saxophone lessons to prepare for the part, which won him a Best Actor Award at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival (source: “Forest Whitaker”).
 

Okay, so I’m a bit of a collector myself. I have a stack of piano music in a closet off the living-room,  much of it from the 1950’s when I was learning to play the piano.  Right underneath the Czerny book of scales is the sheet music for “Lullaby of Birdland” with George Shearing’s picture on the front. It actually belonged to my older brother Doug, the brother who drove me crazy with his bongo drums and loud rock-and-roll music on the record player, especially "Rock Around the Clock.” But, I loved to listen to him play the piano, hunched over the keyboard and looking cool. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still see him in the corner of the living-room leaning over the keys and I can still hear the notes of that jazz piece.
 

Thanks to Marc, I enjoy bird music. Thanks to Doug, I enjoy Birdland music.
 

Sources:
“Charlie Parker.” Wikipedia. 
“Forest Whitaker.” Wikipedia.
Image of Mourning Dove. Althepal modified by snowmanradio. Wikimedia Commons.
          

Megan:

Did you hear that?

Before I got Bella, I used to turn down going on walks with my dad because I thought he was going to talk about birds all the time, and stop every 3 feet to look through his binoculars at birds, and ask me all the time if I could hear the birds.

For the record, I can almost never hear the birds. There’s an entire world of sounds around me that I can neither detect nor identify. (Just this exact very second, as I was typing this, I felt a fly crawled into my ear. I could hear it buzzing and I had a moment of panic about whether or not I should stick my finger in my ear, what if I squashed the fly and there were dead fly parts stuck inside my ear forever? But it turned out the sound was my phone on vibrate. There was no fly, I was just getting a text message.) Most of the time, it doesn’t bother me that I can’t hear. My father hears things I can’t. Big deal, so does the dog.

He (my father, not the dog) can identify birds by their sounds. We’ll be walking along in the early morning quiet and he’ll suddenly stop and say, “Did you hear that? That’s a Bottle-neck Toey.” Then, in a higher voice, he says “Drink your teeeea.’” And we’ll pause and sometimes I do hear it – a chirping sound with the same rhythm and number of syllables as “Drink your teeeeea”.

There’s one bird he’s really obsessed with lately, which apparently whistles like it’s trying to get my attention. He whistles to mimic the sound, and I can hear him. The other night at dinner, Dad put down the fork and said, “Did you hear that?” and my mother nodded. “It’s a Fee-No-Pep-La. Megan can’t hear it.”
My mother looked at me, surprised. “You can’t hear it?”
“No.” I said, “I can’t hear it.”
And then both of them were whistling at me, like they were trying to get my attention, a quick short whispered whistle and, again, I could hear them just fine. Then there was be a long pause, and my mom said, “You still can’t hear it?”
 

No.

So, this is what I was hoping to avoid by not going on the walks. But as you can see, there is no avoiding it at the dinner table, and Bella has to be walked. Turns out there are plenty of other things I can talk about with my father, and there’s other wildlife to watch and listen for – I can hear the coyotes howl just fine. But still, I’ll be in the middle of an involved story about this funny thing I saw on Youtube and how explaining it doesn’t really do it justice so I’ll just show him when we get home and then I realize he’s not walking next to me anymore. So I turn around and he’s got the binoculars up, panning the tree line and he says, “Did you hear that?”

Topic 201: Behind the Teeth

Carol:

Mouthing Off

Sometimes don’t you just feel like putting your hands over your ears and screaming? The kind of “behind the teeth” primal howl of emotion that implodes if you don’t open your mouth and let it out?  I start to feel it when my daughter gets “that tone” in her voice as she asks “Are you finished with the essay yet?”
 

Yesterday, we decided to forego the essay. Megan suggested it, and I didn’t argue because every other Monday I get really stressed out.  That’s when I experience the convergence of writing the daily theme, picking up the house for the arrival of the cleaning crew and getting ready for my volunteer “job.” Stress makes me get “that tone” in my voice, too, and I feel like putting my hands over my ears and screaming. I must have a really tough life, eh, if I let such minutia make me feel crazy. 
 

Not that I have never experienced real scream-worthy stress. I was teaching one January when both my pre-school kids got chicken pox. I would get up at 5 a.m. to grade papers and prep for the class, drive in through the slush of a winter storm to teach, then head back home to start soaking them in oatmeal baths to alleviate the itching. I worried a lot about what new illness would create day-care havoc. 
 

My major stress relief back then, besides hiring a cleaning lady, was being with the students. Most of them were women, most mothers. They knew exactly what I was going through and commiserated with the right amount of sympathy and humor. In fact, I felt more relaxed at work than at home.
 
Right about that same time my husband was experiencing his own scream-worthy stress. He hated his job, didn’t much care for the people he worked with, and was frustrated with demanding, angry clients. His body reacted with debilitating migraine headaches, so It became obvious that some kind of change needed to happen. That was the spring we decided to take a year off and travel the country in a motorhome.
 

For the most part, that odyssey  provided just the respite from the screaming, howling stress that we both needed. We threw away all our work-centered routines, got up with the sun and went to bed with the moon. And, over an 18,000 mile journey, we only had two loud, emotional melt-downs, both times when we were hungry, tired and cranky.  And we returned to Prescott with plenty of memories to sustain us when the stress started to roll over us again.
 

I don’t know all that much about the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, but I saw his painting “The Scream”(1893) when I was studying in Europe.  It was part of a larger Munch exhibition but I only remember “The Scream.” I was mesmerized by the anguish of the figure, shown through primitive, broad strokes. Apparently, Munch himself understood that “behind the teeth” raw emotion of suffering. He wrote to a friend, “You know my picture, ‘The Scream?’ I was stretched to the limit—nature was screaming in my blood…After that I gave up hope of ever being in love again” (source: “Edvard Munch”).
 

Okay, so I was exaggerating a bit. I do feel stretched to the limit sometimes, even without juggling work and family, but I have never experienced that deep angst of Munch’s painting, thankfully never experienced such loss of hope or love.
 

Any minute now, Megan is going to call up to me with The Question. “are you finished yet?” I don’t have to put my hands over my ears and scream because…. I’m finished.
 

Source:
“Edvard Munch.” Wikipedia.

Megan:

We didn’t write yesterday for a few different reasons, but if I’d been able to think of something to say about his topic, we probably wouldn’t have taken the day off. Today we don’t have any early morning obligations, so I can’t weasel my way out of it again. Even Googling the topic didn’t help, but I did learn that there are behind-the-teeth braces available now. That’s cool. But I’ve never had braces so I can’t talk about how nice it would have been to have the new ones, instead of the other, front-of-teeth kind. Instead, I’m going to talk about the dogs. Again.

Last Friday, Milo got into a fight with a friend’s neighbor’s dog. Every Friday we have coffee at this neighbor’s house, and we let the dogs off leash to roam her giant fenced in yard. Usually Milo ignores the neighbor’s dogs, but for some reason – and I think Bella was the reason – they went for each other at the fence. I heard the noise and ran with my father to break them up. The other dog had squeezed its head through the fence and clamped onto Milo’s jaw. My father had to kick the dog several times before he let go of Milo’s face.

There was a fair amount of blood, from both animals, because before the dog got Milo, Milo got the dog. I didn’t see how it started, but since Milo is the least aggressive dog ever, I think he must have been protecting Bella – who’d spent the whole fight leaping straight into the air and howling. After the bleeding stopped, Milo was fine, but my mother and I agreed that we should not take the dogs back to our friend’s house.

So, we decided to try the dog park. I’d taken Bella the week before, but we hadn’t tried it with both dogs. Milo immediately joined a pack of males, each determined to mark every plant, chair and garbage can, while Bella followed along. I wasn’t sure how our two dogs would interact with each other with so many other distractions around. At home they are pretty attached (correction, Bella is attached to Milo), but I just figured it was because there were no other options. But the only time she left his side was if he sneaked off without telling her. When she noticed he was missing, she’d run over to me and wait for Milo to come back into view.

After awhile, we were joined by two pit bulls – one was a little puppy, much smaller than Bella, and the other was huge and terrifying but very sweet.  He took a liking to Bella, and Milo took a liking to the pit puppy. Neither of the younger dogs appreciated the attention. Bella hid under my chair and the other puppy crawled into my lap, Milo still salivating by her rear end. And then I noticed he was dripping blood all over the puppy’s back. He’d somehow opened the wound he’d received the day before. 

I’m not that familiar with dog parks, but it is my understanding that there is an etiquette. Don’t bring aggressive dogs, or dogs in heat, or unvaccinated animals. One dog bleeding all over another also seemed like bad manners, so we apologized and left. But as soon as I’m sure he’s healed up, we’ll go back again.

Topic 198: Talkers

Carol:

The Biography of Phil A. Buster

Right now it seems like the folks we elected to serve our needs in Washington are all talk and no show. Will they come to an agreement on the budget, raise the debt ceiling or not, to increase taxes or not, stall or vote? With all that discussion and debate, even the F word has been thrown around.
 

Filibuster, the process by which United States Senators can delay or even prevent a vote on a bill with a tag-team style talkathon. The word itself, according to the US Government website, comes from a Dutch word meaning “pirate,” as if politicians who invoke the filibuster rule are high jacking the ship of state, if only temporarily.
 

There are rules to the filibuster rule, of course. Speak as long as you want on any topic you choose unless or until three-fifths of the Senate (it was two-thirds until 1975) calls for closure under Senate Rule XXII, or “cloture” if you prefer the more elegant French term. Rule XXII, adopted in 1917 under pressure from Woodrow Wilson, was first used in 1919 to end a filibuster against the Treaty of Versailles. How a propos.
 

Filibusters were most often used in the mid- 20th century on civil rights issues, and particularly by southern Senators.  When my family lived in  Louisiana during the 1940’s, my mother sent her parents an editorial from the Houston Post “which amused us but also burned us up a little too. The attitude of the South is so different from ours. They think they are a law unto themselves… And to think that a group of senators could take up a week of valuable time pulling a filibuster as they did!”
 

The 1942  filibuster my mother was referring took place over five days, when southern senators were attempting to forestall legislation that would eliminate the poll taxes used in their states to keep low-income residents from the voting booths (most often African-Americans).  Over thirty years later, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond would take the record for the longest individual filibuster  when he spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the 1957 Civil Rights Act (source: “Filibuster and Cloture”).

Huey Long in mid-talk

My mother also mentioned Huey Long in her letters from Louisiana. Long had been assassinated in 1935 after serving first as Governor of Louisiana and then as its Senator from 1932 until his death. He was a colorful and effective communicator whose Senate tactics are captured for posterity in The U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall, where his bronze statue shows “this master of the Senate filibuster captured in mid-sentence” (source “Huey Long Filibusters"). His most famous filibuster took place in June 1935 when he spoke for over 15 hours. He began by reading and dissecting every page of the United States Constitution.  When he ran out of topics, reporters in the press gallery sent him notes, and eventually he resorted to talking about southern recipes such as fried oysters.
 

The most famous invoker of Rule XXII was Jefferson Smith—not a southerner and not even a real politician. Who didn’t cry when the naïve young Senator, played by Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, talked himself into exhaustion in defense of his reputation.  Who hasn’t seen that movie and wished for a real Jefferson Smith to bring his honesty and high ideals to Washington.  It took a 1939 movie by Frank Capra to show the world what Phil A. Buster is all about.

Filming Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Sources: 

“Filibuster and Cloture.” US Senate website.
 “Huey Long Filibusters June 12-13 1935.” US Senate website.
          

Megan:

My extended family is full of talkers – people with big voices and big ideas, eager to share gossip, stories, anecdotes and memories. Get us together and everyone is talking at once, and it’s so loud that sometimes my dad has to sit in the car. My immediate family isn’t really like that. My father and brother are very quiet, and I’m only talk a lot if I’m with a good friend. Even my mother, who has the loudest voice after years of projecting it to the back of a classroom, isn’t really a talker.  As with any of us, if there’s a topic we are interested in or passionate about, we can’t shut up about it (I’m looking at you, Genealogy) but generally speaking, there’s a lot of quiet time in our house.

Or, there was before we got the puppy. Milo only makes noise if someone has pulled into the driveway, or Bella is pulling on his ears.  Bella, on the other hand, is a talker. She has a vocal response to pretty much everything (except intruders), but nothing valuable to say. This morning, on our walk, we were plodding along at our usual pace with no wild or domestic animals in the area to distract us, but Bella kept up a steady whine for blocks at a time. She wasn’t pulling on the leash or acting agitated in anyway, but she wouldn’t shut up either.

In the house, she’s been driving my mother crazy by barking to go out, barking to come in, barking to get Milo excited. Even when she’s asleep, she makes noise. If I shift her out of my way, she keeps her eyes closed but releases a deep, guttural rattle – not a growl, more like a groan. She growls too, if I bug her too much, but I ignore that and keep bugging her because I don’t want her to think she can take that kind of attitude with me. It’s not polite.

The other day, I took Bella over to a friend’s house to play with her dog. Our dogs have play dates. I can see how easy it is to let pets become surrogate children --  especially when we use the same language to describe their activities. Anyway, we were sitting in my friend’s back yard and the neighbor pulled into the driveway next door.  My friend’s dog, Lucky, totally ignored the neighbor while Bella went all territorial. 

Her guard hairs stood up, and I always wish I had a camera when that happens because it is the least impressive thing I’ve ever seen. Milo gets a full Mohawk from head to tail when he’s on alert. Bella has one tuft between her shoulders, and one just above her tail – it just looks like she was brushed the wrong way.  But up went her little hairs and she tore over to the fence barking and hollering until I called her back. I reminded her that we were guests, and that if the resident dog wasn’t alarmed, there was no reason for her to be either.

Despite her near-constant vocalizations, she’s turning out to be a good dog. She hasn’t eaten a dead animal in 4 days and hasn’t had an accident in weeks. We’ve still got a ways to go on obedience and sleeping through the night. The other night I found myself quoting to her a specific passage from this book – and by passage, I mean the title. 

Topic 197: On Going to War

Carol:

     Soldiers of God

Today’s topic was one of the first we pulled from the basket eleven months ago when we started our daily theme project. Too complex, too controversial, too somber, too personal—too everything-- for a 500-600 word essay. Megan is braver than me, more honest in tackling the tough topics that enflame debate and fracture families. But, I’m thinking this morning about The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the thousands of American clergymen who had heart and spirit wrenching decisions to make about their congregations, their families and their own roles in the unfolding of the American Civil War.
 

My paternal grandmother had DeWitt, Malone and Caldwell relatives in most of the southern states. As might be predicted, her great-grandfather Lewis Lee DeWitt Senior, pastor of Bassett Creek Baptist Church, took up the battle cry of the Confederacy and volunteered for the Home Guards of Clarke County, Alabama. Four of his sons, numerous nephews and son-in-law had already joined.  But, the battle lines were not so clearly drawn in the larger Baptist denomination. By the beginning of the war, the Church had already split over the issue of slavery, with the Southern Baptist Convention formed in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia (source “Southern Baptist.”).
 

The Presbyterian Church had also split into southern and northern factions. My grandmother’s Caldwell relatives during the Civil War were mostly Presbyterians:  Rev. Cyrus K Caldwell in Tennessee, Rev Andrew Harper Caldwell of Panola County, Mississippi,  and Rev John Madison McKnitt in Rome, Georgia. Rev. Robert Caldwell Grundy had become the pastor of a Presbyterian church in Memphis, Tennessee in 1857, but despite his southern roots,  

In the climactic period leading up to the Civil war he courageously and loyally opposed the secession of the southern states. . .after the war was precipitated and the city was occupied by Confederate troops they compelled him to close his church, besides which he suffered other indignities by reason of his adherence to his convictions (Connelley and Coulter 66)

 By the end of the war, Rev. Grundy had moved his family from the hostility of the Memphis congregation to Ohio where he died in 1865.   


My paternal grandfather had numerous clergy relatives in his Grandfather Cowles’ extended family, many of whom  who had dispersed throughout the Midwest from Connecticut and New York. In September 1862, Congregationalist Minister Salmon Cowles was living in Lee County, Iowa when he wrote to a Massachusetts cousin:
 

I do not know what are God's designs by such terrible judgments upon our beloved Country -- But my mind was struck forcibly with the conviction from the first, & the conviction has been increasing up to this time, that God has some grand purpose to accomplish, by this mighty uprising, & awful chastisement.

Unlike the Bapists and the Presbyterians, the Congregational Church had escaped the divisiveness of the Civil War mainly because of demographics( few adherents in the southern states) although the Church was divided among its leadership on how to end slavery.
 
Another Cowles cousin, Presbyterian minister Sylvester Cowles of New York wrote to the American Anti-Slavery Society of of the anguish of a young church member who had visited family in Alabama. “To see members of the same church sit at the communion table of our Lord one day, and the next to see one seize any weapon and knock  the other down, as he had seen, he could not live there” (Source: American  Slavery as It Is 177-178).
 

It turns out religion in America, the twists and turns that take us in different spiritual directions, is not so simple. Religion is not a tall, steady, oak tree with a sturdy Methodist branch here and a Baptist branch there but a rambling, prickly vine that sends shoots into unexpected places. And, in 1861 for the clergy of America, soldiers of God, never was the issue of going to war more complex, more controversial, more sober, more personal.

Sources:
American  Slavery as it is: Testimony of a thousand witnesses.
Connelley, William Elsey and Ellis Merton Coulter. History of Kentucky, Vol. 5. P 66

 

Megan:

Today I have transcribed selections from my journal written in March and April 2003, when we first invaded Iraq. At that time, I had been studying abroad in England, but was back in the US for Spring Break. I could probably say more to contextualize and/or explain these entries, but I'm just going to let them stand.

March 19, 2003
WAR today.
I’m in Arizona now. Bush gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq. 

Tonight we bombed them. And the war began.
 

I have no thoughts.

March 22, 2003
The WAR. (It’s called Operation Iraqi Freedom) For f***’s sake.

I leaned against a pillar, eating ice cream and watching the protest like it was another form of entertainment, like this war itself – flip on the TV, there it is, we can watch the bombs get dropped for free, without risk, without much concern for those standing below and when it gets boring, we turn it off. And when the marchers turned the corner towards me, I practically ran to the car – didn’t want to be recognized with my ice cream apathy and I drove to the mall to complete the transition into a person I loathe. I can’t make any excuses. This is not okay.

Later:
How is a foreign attack on an American fort while we are at war considered an act of terrorism? If they resist, defend themselves, they become terrorists? Where is the logic? What am I missing? The reason I don’t pay attention is because I am so irritated by the vocabulary, the implications of “evil doers” and “regime change” and “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” It feels like propaganda.

I’m not paranoid, but I don’t believe what’s going on. I think the government is hiding information. We don’t know that he has Weapons of Mass Destruction. Aren’t we just making a country of soon-to-be fatherless children hate Americans more?

But the soldiers are surrendering. Maybe they do want him gone. Maybe this is the right thing.

I’ll never pretend to be politically and socially aware again.

April 9, 2003
In the mornings, we watch WAR on television. My friend thinks if we were at war all the time, there would be WarTV because people wouldn’t want to watch it on every channel. We can turn the war on and off. The TV is dark and we sit on the porch because it’s a sunny day. We watch the cat watch the birds.

They took down a statue of him and the Iraqis rode the head through the street. Wonder briefly if it was a good idea, maybe the war is good. But Rumsfeld apologizes to the relatives of an Afgani family, accidentally killed yesterday. We don’t know where Saddam is. Or Osama. And we change the channel and watch Regis and Kelly.

April 21, 2003
On the plane to England, but still on the ground.

The WAR might be over. Dunno. The Regime is over anyway. Strange how I thought I’d experience war in a foreign country, but it starts just after I leave and is over before I return. Not that the military action is over… I wish I knew more about things, but I never know if what’s being said is true. And I don’t know what I mean by truth.