A Hard Week

It's been a hard week. Mark Sanford, Sarah Palin, Michael Jackson, North Korean cyber attack, more deaths in Afghanistan, serial killer (shot and killed) in South Carolina, the usual sarcastic and whining/screaming BS on FOX News, and the continual lies from politicians and the media. It's hard to know what is the truth these days, and perhaps we never knew and will never know. Some think there is such a thing as "absolute truth," but prove it to me. Maybe truth, like beauty, is relative to whatever situation is before one's eyes. We all see things differently---there is no debate about that---and do so filtered through our individual history, personality, education, experience, temperament, spirituality, emotionality, and level of sanity.

I have just finished reading The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy (author of No Country for Old Men, made into a recent movie). The three volumes are: All the Pretty Horses (1992), The Crossing (1994), and Cities of the Plain (1998). I am sharing one passage from each volume because these excerpts represent philosophies that are worth serious "think-time." They are compelling, profound, disturbing, and (ironically) comforting words.

From All The Pretty Horses: "He said that those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength and that they must make their way back into the common enterprise of man, for without they do so it cannot go forward and they themselves will wither in bitterness. I wanted very much to be a person of value, and I had to ask myself how this could be possible if there were not something like a soul or like a spirit that is in the life of a person and which could endure any misfortune or disfigurement and yet be no less for it. If one were to be a person of value, that value could not be a condition subject to the hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning, I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage is a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandons first. After this, all other betrayals come easily. I knew that courage came with less struggle for some than for others, but I believed that anyone who desired it could have it. That the desire was the thing itself. The thing itself. I could think of nothing else of which that was true."

From The Crossing: "Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes. Of a certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us, they no longer have even a name. The story, on the other hand, can never be lost from its place in the world, for it is that place. There is but one world, and everything that is imaginable is necessary to it. For this world also, which seems to us a thing of stone and flower and blood, is not a thing at all but is a tale. And all in it is a tale and each tale the sum of all lesser tales, and yet these also are the self-same tale and contain as well all else within them. So everything is necessary. Every least thing. This is the hard lesson. Nothing can be dispensed with. Nothing despised. Because the seams are hid from us, you see. The joinery. The way in which the world is made. We have no way to know what could be taken away. What omitted. We have no way to tell what might stand and what might fall. And those seams that are hid from us are, of course, in the tale itself, and the tale has no abode or place of being except in the telling only, and there it lives and makes it home, and therefore we can never be done with the telling. Of the telling, there is no end. And whether in Caborca or Huisiachepic or in whatever other place by whatever other name or by no name at all, I say again all tales are one. Rightly heard, all tales are one. "

From Cities of the Plain: "He was not a man given to illusions. He knew that those things we most desire to hold in our hearts are often taken from us while that which we would put away seems often by that very wish to become endowed with unsuspected powers of endurance. He knew how frail is the memory of loved ones. How we close our eyes and speak to them. How we long to hear their voices once again, and how those voices and those memories grow faint and faint until what was flesh and blood is no more than echo and shadow. In the end, perhaps not even that. He knew that our enemies by contrast seem always with us. The greater our hatred, the more persistent the memory of them so that a truly terrible enemy becomes deathless. So that the man who has done you great injury or injustice makes himself a guest in your house forever. Perhaps only forgiveness can dislodge him."

Don't Cry for Me, Argentina. Let me cry instead (on camera).

I can't take anymore (as they might say in Argentina, no mas!), but I know more is coming, so I'll just have to gird up my loins, something apparently others have been doing in "exotic" places like Buenos Aires. Anyone who doesn't know that Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina made a tearful admission of unfaithfulness and multiple apologies yesterday at a press conference is so far under a rock that it's hopeless to try to explain this bizarre set of circumstances.

After the press conference, which was attended by some young ass-monkeys standing behind Sanford and, unfortunately, within constant camera shot so we could see their immature laughing, smirking, and generally stupid behavior, we were treated to an endless parade of cable "news" opinionators and bloviators who treated the matter in the usual mocking (liberal) or defensive (conservative) way.

To me, the most disturbing aspect of this commonplace romantic indiscretion is not that Sanford has a mistress. That's no surprise. He's a middle-age married man (not excusing middle-age married women). He's a politician and, therefore, must be somewhat hungry for power and simultaneously deluded in thinking that he, unlike others, won't be caught doing the nasty. What annoys me the most about this situation is that neither Sanford nor the opinionators mentioned one word about the breach of his fiduciary responsibility to the State of South Carolina. The fact that he was "out of pocket" for 5 or more days (a) without telling anyone the truth of his whereabouts, (b) unable to be reached, and (c) leaving the governor's office (and the state and the country, no less) without officially transferring administrative power to the Lt. Governor should be and probably is an impeachable offense. That he totally abdicated his responsibilities as Governor is not even being discussed. That should be the first concern of the legislature and voters in South Carolina.

The morality of his infidelity to his wife and family is really a secondary concern, but since it's more sexy than talking about fiduciary responsibilities, that's what gets all the attention. The prurience and touchy-feely "forgiveness" and "support" these hypocritical, ignorant Republicans in South Carolina are so willing to show him now that he's confessed his "sins" makes me want to puke on my shoes.

First, it is their duty to see that he's impeached or forced to resign immediately. Once he's out of the governor's mansion, they can forgive him all they want for his "moral" shortcomings, and Sanford himself will then have the time to seek the mental-health counseling he obviously needs to figure out why he's nucking futz.

Refusing the stimulus money and having an affair showed bad judgment but are not criminal or impeachable offenses, but walking off the job without a word (except for lies) is what people should be focusing on and punishing him for doing by impeaching his ass. Let's remember that Clinton was impeached (initiated by Republicans), but Clinton never had an unexcused absence from the White House.

Any politician who is elected to an office, takes an oath on the Bible, no less, and swears to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America or the State of South Carolina and faithfully execute his or her duties of the elected office has to be held accountable (impeached) when he or she fails to comply with fiduciary obligations. Period.

Volunteers

About 2 years ago, I noticed a "volunteer" tree growing in my back yard, near to the house. Because its ascension would not eventually impact on overhead telephone, cable, and electrical wires, I let it continue to volunteer. It started out as just a 2-foot shoot but rapidly grew to over 15 feet, reaching the second story of my house. It is right outside my office windows, so it's great entertainment for the cats who sit in the office windows and for me as I labor over the computer. Now this tree is a dominant presence, and it serves as a shelter, pit stop, and food source for many birds and some daring squirrels. It took until this spring for me to be able to identify it as a white mulberry (Morus alba). As the berries ripen, they turn deep purple. Before they've had a chance to ripen, however, they are voraciously eaten by birds of many different colors, species, and temperaments. In just the past couple of weeks, the cats and I have seen catbirds, cardinals, robins, grackles, and even mockingbirds vying for these berries, and sometimes this competition has led to noisy confrontations that are a source of amazement and amusement for the cats and me. This free-for-all starts early in the morning, about 6:30 a.m. Eastern time. In a few hours, everybody has gone on to other things, and things are quiet. Throughout the day, various kinds of birds will fly in and out of the tree, using it as a way station, but the early-morning hours are the most entertaining. The catbirds, especially, drive my cats crazy. I guess they aren't called "catbirds" for nothing. Between the bird battles, squirrel scoldings, and the cats' chattering and slobbering as they watch all this, I can hardly hear myself think.

Recognized as the last tree to bud in spring, gardeners use the mulberry as a sign that danger of frost is past. The plant's genus name, Morus, means "delay" in Latin. Small green cup-shaped flowers appear in March and are wind-pollinated. Fruits are similar in shape and size to blackberries and start as white, turn green, and eventually (if they aren't eaten first) the deep purple/black of any mulberry. Mulberry trees are propagated by seed, grafting, and hardwood, softwood, and root cuttings.

In 1621, the white mulberry was introduced to Virginia for the new silkworm industry expected to burgeon in the south. Colonists were required to care for the trees, whose leaves were the diet of the silkworm. For two centuries, the silkworm industry flourished in the United States, but by 1839 cheaper labor in foreign countries, severe cold in winter, and disease brought the industry to a close.

Wildlife is obviously attracted to the tree. If they miss getting the fruit on the tree, the ripe berries drop readily, covering the ground, where butterflies, fireflies, gray squirrels, wild turkeys, and songbirds congregate at a messy mulberry "pub room" floor.

Mulberry is one of seven important plant groups for bird habitat. They provide food during the nesting season along with shelter and nesting sites. Over 60 species of birds feed on mulberries including robins, bluebirds, cardinals, grey catbirds, mockingbirds, cedar waxwings, orioles, tanagers, and vireos.

People like mulberries almost as much as birds. Mulberries make a perfect snack. A cup of raw mulberries contains 60 calories and is high in dietary fiber, riboflavin, iron, magnesium, potassium, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, and very high in iron. The easiest way for humans to harvest large quantities for freezing or baking is to spread a plastic tarp under the tree and shake the branches. Ripe berries fall like rain. There is no chance for me to do this here since my mulberries are almost all gone in the white/green stage. There are simply too many birds competing for them at this time of year.

Berries vary in flavor from sweet to tart depending on the variety. They make delicious tarts, muffins, breads, pies, and fruit crisps. In Medieval England, mulberry puree was added to spiced meat or eaten as pudding. In Tibet, dried mulberries were ground into flour and mixed with dried almonds for a staple food in winter. Stories from England report that ladies would take afternoon tea, scones, and cream under the mulberry tree, letting the fruit drop down into the cream. I wonder what else dropped into the cream. Thanks, but no.

Mulberry leaf tea originated in the Orient and is used as a medicinal herbal tea. In the United States, fruit farmers often planted mulberry trees as decoys, keeping birds away from the more treasured and less abundant berries. The common practice of planting mulberry trees on farms near barns and homesteads served both domestic animals and the farm family. Mulberry trees bear an abundance of fruit and pleasure to humankind and wildlife over their lifetime. Red and white mulberries live up to 75 years, and black mulberries have been known to produce fruit for 300 years. My white mulberry tree, I'm pretty sure, was accidentally or deliberately shat out by a passing bird. I thank that bird, and I see now how altruistic such a shat was, for the fruit of this tree is feeding many other birds who, in their own time, will have shat as well, and perhaps white mulberry trees will volunteer all over Parkville and Baltimore in due course. Nature is its own reward.

I have another volunteer tree, and this one is now about 4 feet tall, the child of a huge American Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) at the rear of my back yard (see upper right picture). Because it will eventually grow to 100-120 feet in height, I also had to ensure it would not impinge on overhead wires. I wish we lived in a world where all "wiring" had to be underground (or we were altogether "wireless") so trees and other plants could freely grow without being subjected to our pruning and our whims.

If we humans would stop developing, paving, mowing, spraying, weeding, polluting, pruning, and otherwise disturbing the land and environment, it wouldn't take Mother long to re-establish Paradise. That's one of the hopes I hold in my heart. There are far too many people on this planet and not nearly enough vegetation or volunteers. "The breeze, the trees, the honey bees--all volunteers!" (Juliet Carinreap)

D-Day Remembrance, June 6, 2009

At age 85, he was still a tall, erect, slender man with large hands and big aviator glasses. His wife of 60 years stood beside him, cane in hand, arm linked to his. They had just finished their breakfast at Bob Evans. As they walked through the foyer of the restaurant, he lost his balance and fell backward, taking his wife with him. They both lay face up on the floor of the foyer, their bodies in the shape of a distorted "C." Both had clunked the back of their head against the glass door and were dazed and immobilized in this humiliating position. Several people came to assist them, and I was among those who helped pull them into a sitting position and then eventually onto the wooden bench in the foyer. I did a cursory examination, looking at and feeling the back of each gray head, to see if any laceration or other injury had occurred. I took their pulses and asked them pertinent first-aid questions about dizziness, weakness, respiratory distress, and so forth. I asked the manager to get an alcohol swab and band-aid so I could clean up the slightly bleeding wound the gentleman had sustained on his left palm. The manager and I stayed with the embarrassed couple for about 20 minutes, making sure they were well enough to drive themselves the few blocks home. When we walked them to their car, he bragged about his new Dodge Charger and said he'd only had the car a month. We helped them into their car, and I followed them home just to make sure they were safe. The manager asked me to return to the restaurant so he could buy me breakfast.

During the 20 minutes or so that we sat in the foyer during their recovery, the man's wife told me, "We've survived worse than this." I learned that the gentleman was 18 when he signed up with the army. After a short basic training, he was deployed to the Philippines where he took part in the famous Battle of Baatan.

On April 9, 1942, as the final stage of this battle, approximately 76,000 Filipino and American troops, commanded by Major General Edward King, Jr., were formally surrendered to a Japanese army of 54,000 men, the single largest surrender of a military force in American history. These prisoners of war were moved to Camp O'Donnell because the Japanese were inadequately prepared to handle such a large group of POWs. Thus began the infamous Baatan Death March.

The Bataan Death March took place in 1942 and was later determined to be a Japanese war crime. The 60-mile march involved the forcible transfer of 76,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the Philippines and was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse and murder and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon the prisoners and civilians along the route. Beheadings, cut throats, and casual shootings were the more common and merciful actions, compared to bayonet stabbings, rapes, disembowelments, numerous rifle-butt beatings, and a deliberate refusal to allow the prisoners food or water while keeping them continually marching for nearly a week in tropical heat. Falling down or inability to continue moving was tantamount to a death sentence as was any degree of protest or expression of displeasure. Prisoners were attacked for assisting someone failing due to weakness or for no apparent reason whatsoever. Strings of Japanese trucks were known to drive over anyone who fell. Riders in vehicles would casually stick out a rifle bayonet and cut a string of throats in the lines of men marching alongside the road. Accounts of being forcibly marched for five to six days with no food and a single sip of water are documented in postwar archives, including filmed reports.

The ending point of the death march was Camp O'Donnell. In this camp approximately, 1,600 Americans died in the first 40 days that they were there. Almost 20,000 Filipinos died in their first 4 months of captivity in Camp O'Donnell. The healthier prisoners took turns burying their comrades into mass graves, just as they, themselves, would be buried, days or weeks later. The conditions of Camp O'Donnell were terrible because the camp did not have the sanitation infrastructure or a large enough water supply for the number of men that it held. Many men died from diseases because of these poor conditions. There was little medicine available to the prisoners that acquired these diseases. Inadequate diets of the men contributed to the high death rate. Diseases such as dysentery (from a lack of safe drinking water) and beri-beri from malnutrition were common to the POWs. Another cause of death was the mistreatment of the prisoners by the Japanese soldiers. Due to the high death rate in Camp O'Donnell, the Japanese transferred all Americans, excluding 500 that were left behind to bury the dead, to Cabanatuan, north of Camp O'Donnell, on June 6, 1942. The 500 Americans that were left at Camp O'Donnell were transferred to Cabanatuan on July 5, 1942. The Filipino prisoners were paroled, beginning in July 1942.

Cabanatuan was a temporary camp for most prisoners. From Cabanatuan, most prisoners were sent to other camps in the Philippines, China, Japan, and Korea, where they were used as slave labor. Some worked in mines, others in farms, others in factories, and others unloading ships in Port Areas for the remainder of the war. For the remaining 3 years of their captivity, the original prisoners of Camp O'Donnell were spread throughout the various slave labor camps in Japan, Korea, China, and the Philippines, until each camp was individually liberated in 1945. These prisoners endured the whims of their brutal captors and the uncertainty of when, if ever, their captivity would end.

The exact death count has been impossible to determine, but some historians have placed the minimum death toll between 6 and 11,000 men, whereas other postwar Allied reports have tabulated that only 54,000 of the 72,000 prisoners survived. The gentleman at Bob Evans today was one of these. As he said, "God knows how I survived. I don't."

The Japanese occupied the Philippines from 1942 to 1945. On January 9, 1945, U.S. forces led by General Douglas MacArthur forces invaded the Philippines by force, beginning the second battle of the Philippines. On February 4, 1945, U.S. forces entered Manila and completely recovered the city within 3 weeks. The second battle of the Philippines ended in April 1945, resulting in the liberation of the Philippines. On July 5 of that year, Washington announced the complete reconquest of the Philippines by the United States. After the surrender of Japan in 1945, an Allied commission convicted General Homma of war crimes, including the atrocities of the death march out of Bataan and the atrocities at Camp O'Donnell and Cabanatuan. The general, who had been absorbed in his efforts to capture Corregidor after the fall of Bataan, claimed in his defense that he remained ignorant of the high death toll of the death march until 2 months after the event. He was executed for war crimes on April 3, 1946, outside Manila. While D-Day remembrance was being held today in Normandy, France, at which President Barak Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephan Harper spoke eloquently about the ultimate sacrifice and the hope of peace, we had our own World War II memories at Bob Evans in Towson, Maryland, with a man who endured what we cannot even imagine in our worst nightmares.

Cairo hears Obama

CSPAN has posted the video (and transcript) of the entire 55-minute speech given by President Obama in Cairo at http://www.c-span.org/. The speech was co-sponsored by al-Azhar University, which has taught science and Quranic scripture for nearly a millennium, but the actual venue was the more modern and secular Cairo University.

The speech was reflective, thoughtful, sensitive, intelligent, appropriate, and hopeful. At the very end, Obama said this:

"There is also one rule that lies at the heart of every religion – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples – a belief that isn’t new; that isn’t black or white or brown; that isn’t Christian, or Muslim or Jew. It’s a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization and that still beats in the heart of billions. It’s a faith in other people, and it’s what brought me here today. We have the power to make the world we seek but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written. The Holy Koran tells us, 'O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.' The Talmud tells us: 'The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.' The Holy Bible tells us, 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.' The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God’s vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth. Thank you, and may God’s peace be upon you."

If only all the people on this earth would live these words (as so many billions claim to believe in one of these "Great Books"), what a world it would be. Just simply that: To do unto others.

At the end of Obama's speech, it was somewhat surprising and majorly enheartening to hear the students chanting "Obama, Obama, Obama." Perhaps a change in man's inhumanity to man/woman does reside in the young people of today. We can only hope that is true. This world cannot continue to be about power, greed, lies, selfishness, and hate.

More Chances to Learn

There are three relatively new Web sites that provide free access to thousands of video lectures by university professors, other educators, and experts in all facets of business and academic pursuits.

1. www.ted.com
2. www.youtube.com/edu
3. www.academicearth.org

All of these are free and have something to appeal to everyone's level of interest and curiosity.

They don't lead to college credit, but still.................

Enjoy!

Trivializing Torture

In the old days, before political correctness grabbed our imaginations, we used to glibly refer to "the Chinese water torture," acting as though we somehow knew what that actually meant. We supposed it was something like the heartless dripping of a faucet, which is something we've all experienced. We also used to laugh heartily at the prospect of torture manifesting itself as imprisonment in a dark cage and being subjected to the unending, repetitive playing of "She wore an itsy-bitsy, teeney-weeney, yellow polka-dot bikini" over a tinny loudspeaker, thereby creating an earworm that would plague us long after the song itself had ceased. These tortures were, of course, more mental than physical. We would often pretend we were being tortured by our mere juxtaposition to a person or social situation we did not like. Ah, those days of torture; how elusive and implausible they were.

Now we are being asked to define torture for real---in our country, as a national security practice, as a community of diverse opinions and beliefs, and in our individual consciences. Torture asks the question: "What would shock the conscience?"

Torture is currently being animatedly discussed by everyone, but perhaps not yet very rationally or effectively, on three simultaneous levels:

1. Is it moral?

2. Is it legal?

3. Is it effective?

My opinion is that it is none of those things. What is your opinion?

Waterboarding seems to head the list of tortures being discussed and denied. It is a practice that was used to interrogate 9/11 detainees at Gitmo and prisoners in Iraq. Is waterboarding torture? Some say it is not because it doesn't cause any "lasting harm." How do we know that it doesn't cause any lasting harm? We don't.

Some say also that waterboarding is a technique that merely simulates drowning. Journalist Christopher Hitchens subjected himself to waterboarding to see what it was like. Even though his voluntary waterboarding was done under strictly supervised conditions and he had a panic button he could press when he reached a point of uncomfortability with the experience, his conclusion is that waterboarding "...is actual drowning that simulates death." That is quite a different point of view.

Sean Hannity, one of the conservative bloviators on FOX News, stated that he would happily undergo waterboarding just to prove to "the folks" that it was not torture. Thus far, there have been no reliable reports that he has made good on his boastful offer. Let's see if he ever does. He and others of his ilk continue to trivialize the seriousness of this discussion by referring to torture as "enhanced interrogation techniques."

For those who do not consider waterboarding to be torture, they should undergo it just for the hell of it to check it out.