DeWitt Clinton's Blog

We Have Won

2009-10-05T12:47:00.002-05:00

“We have won”
The bus drove and drove and drove and drove and drove much much further than I imagined any bus delivering marathoners for the annual Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon should have to run. I kept thinking, this is taking about 45 minutes at 65 mph by bus to get to the starting position. Perhaps the best part was the 5:30 am Starbucks Mild, a blend I’d recommend on any day that anyone wants to do something stupid/strange/impossible/recklessly endangering massive lower muscle groups. But the little town of Grafton looked mighty north of where we were headed south over the next painless/painful 3-6.5 hours, the times for the fastest, and those not as fast as Pheidippides was when he raced from Marathon to Athens to announce the Greeks had defeated the Persians (BTW the story has many versions, some believe he actually ran 300 miles in several days…but the sad part is that after making his epic speech, HE DIED.

Of course, marathoners do die, and even recently, but not today, as temperatures were mild to chilly, and the day looked perfect for doing something most would never consider. The approximate 3,000 assembled inside Grafton’s High School cafeteria and hallways, with some reading the Sunday paper, others taking in their PB&J, others just quietly wondering how the day would go. At 15 minutes until the start, we all poured out into the 52 degree weather and immediately began jumping up and down to stay warm. We all lined up beside our predicted times, and one sign even read “Next Day.” Clever. Very clever. I lined up next to the last pace group, a group that if I could stick with long enough, would get me in at 5:00 even. An 11:29 pace is a bit on the slow side if running one mile, but we’re all advised to start slow, end fast. That advice is very sensible on paper, but something sometimes happens out on the road. One woman tripped, on nothing, and injured her elbow. How do you compute that?

The first mile, second mile, third mile ::::::::::: we’re good, smiling, pain free as five Bayer Back and Pain caplets are doing their magic in my blood stream, mixing it up a bit with the mild Starbucks, and earlier, the oatmeal and raisins concoction. In fact, the pace group was a bit too slow for me, so I pulled out a bit ahead of them, though I wonder today if that was a mistake of starting too fast. Hard to tell, as we were hardly moving?! No turkey buzzards in sight, circling possible prey for lunch. Nobody down on the road with an ambulance whirring to assist. In fact, for 13, maybe 15, possibly 16 almost 17 miles, not bad, and now the pace group has caught up with me, and I try to stick with them, running in a pack so tight, I was sure to step on, be stepped on with every pace. I suggested some of my old Army chants, modified to a marathon, but I’m sure some of the youngsters thought that was way too militaristic for the nice day it was.

We’re now walking through the water stops, and I’ve taken the first of two “chocolate mocha goo,” a delicious concoction of electrolytes and sugars that guarantees a successful race. Now the left leg is not getting any of the Bayer Pain and Back caplets….perhaps there is a circulation problem. We pass neighbors who are enjoying the morning with cheers and little kid high 5’s, and then someone in the group brought up what we’re going to eat when we finish. That got me onto blueberry pancakes, and I began to lose focus, losing a bit of stride, in fact, where did my pace group go?

They weren’t behind me, that I was certain of. I could see them as I turned the 100th corner of the race, too far ahead to sprint, when it’s only the 17th mile or something like that. I’ll catch them at the end. But the morning began to get longer, the left leg began to ask incessantly, where’s the f…..Bayer everybody else got? Then the right leg started whining. So now we’re doing our first non water station walk, and I try an Olympic style race walk with elbows pumping so as not to lose too many seconds doing this unscheduled walk. For a first time marathoner, I’d have to say, trying to start a run position in the 19th mile after a 55 second walk is harder than expected.

But finally we (that is everyone behind me) are on the final miles on magnificent and chilly Lake Drive, with all hopes and aspirations remotely possible that I could actually finish not in the “Next Day” group. Shuffling along with two screaming legs isn’t exactly what one could do on a lovely October Sunday next to one of America’s Great Lakes, but it’s what I’m doing right now, and let’s get this F….thing over with! At last, the last loop, we’re in the Lagoon, the last mile, so let’s start the sprint, Sir. Starting? Engine Problems. Engine in idling. Engine not even engaging 1st gear, Sir.

Okay, let’s drive this baby into the finish in NEUTRAL…So that’s how it ended…crossing the finish line in Great Pain, a bit discombobulated as to what I was doing, but somebody called out “and here’s DeWitt from Shorewood” over the loud speaker, and suddenly the legs found a little bit of goo and Bayer Aspirin, and so we crossed the finish line, big congrats from the Race Director, handed a bottle of H2O and the coolest (warmest, really) aluminum wrapping paper coat to wear knowing this was the best time ever, technically WR breaking time, WR breaking time ever, Personal Best, PB ever. We have won?

Have You Consulted Your Dead Philosopher/Therapist Lately

2009-09-20T18:02:00.001-05:00

Have You Consulted Your Dead Philosopher/Therapist Lately?

By now, haven’t we all stepped into a “shrink’s” office and had a session or two, or two years, or twenty years, of different kinds of therapy? Obviously something wasn’t working right, and a friend, spouse, parent, friend, somebody sent us to somebody who knows how to deal with these things. Or even if you haven’t had one of those difficult sessions where everything becomes illuminated, haven’t you been to a job counselor, a school counselor, a minister, priest or rabbi to figure things out? A friend’s daughter is now providing therapy for toddlers. Really? That young? And sitting in waiting rooms, I’ve seen a spectrum of the ages walk up to the front desk and check in for an appointment.

I’ve often thought that if someone in this world, or perhaps I should say here in the States, is in need of relief of pain or suffering, they often find the offices of this or that therapist. In fact, it would be surprising to consider any other profession outside of psychology to take up this noble task. But to my surprise, I’ve found, simply by browsing at the reduced books cart in a local bookstore, a book that has raised my eyebrows, created smiles, generated many “a hah’s,” and many other astounding insights. The book, Plato not Prozac is an eye-opening alternative to the natural inclination that when something is wrong “upstairs,” we should consult someone who knows something about psychology, or someone who has worked with psychos….which includes almost all of us at one time or another. But Lou Marinoff’s guide is an excellent introduction to seeing how philosophy (and its many different paths) can be just as valuable an aid for examining the life that is in sorrow, or some other uncomfortable human condition.

Yes, the book is a bit dated, published in the last year of the last century, but it really has been a pleasure to see how philosophy can be applied to what normally is the purview of psychologists and therapists. It does have a bit of a self help tone to it, as it offers plenty of names across the world who are certified philosophical practitioners, but it also offers a rather sensible explanation for why those in the field of psychology can go only so far in helping “the patient” to recover from whatever illness or past event, or relative, or boss, who might be the cause of the illness. The book also offers a significant number of “case studies,” so we can see how philosophy can be applied to the “illness,” but as well, we also get a brief survey of all of the philosophies which we can choose from as our “treatment plan.”
Feeling the angst of existentialism? Feeling too “relative”? Been caught in too many deconstructive moments? Worried about acting out too much with post modern tendencies? Whatever your philosophical grounding, this delighting and edifying medication may help you through your next crisis, or just provide a very necessary antidote from continuing your 20 year relationship with your therapist, who encourages you to return and return for more of what keeps you in therapy. Well, it’s a book that may be out of print, and a bit hard to find, but if you were browsing through 50% off books in a Barnes & Noble bookstore, perhaps you can find it. If not, I can certainly loan out my copy.

Lastly, Marinoff succinctly lets us know why his book might save us all quite a few health care dollars by writing, “How well we live—that is how thoughtfully, how nobly, how virtuously, how joyously, how lovingly—depends both on our philosophy and on the way we apply it to all else. The examined life is a better life…Try Plato, not Prozac.” For a list of mostly dead therapists, he provides a very helpful and short bio with his “Hit Parade of Philosophers.” So if you are a bit exhausted by the same questions from your therapist, perhaps this book might provide some fresh insight.

Plato Not Prozac: Applying Eternal Wisdom To Everyday Problems, Lou Marinoff, MJF Books, 1999.

It All Starts With Doubt, Doesn't It?

2009-07-30T13:36:00.002-05:00

It all starts with doubt, doesn’t it?

For some, it may never be acceptable to doubt what we hear from authorities, such as police officers, judges, legislators, or moving into the more divine professions, the clergy. But even as a kid, perhaps you had that moment when things weren’t as clear as they appeared to be. I can still recall the stern warning from my neighbor lady who told me never again to tell her little sons there was no Santa Claus. At the time of the reprimand, she was also breast feeding, and I’m not sure I was a keen listener, but I was somewhat regretful, and wanted to stay in the room as long as possible.

But doesn’t doubt enter into our thinking when things just don’t seem quite right? No one doubts mathematical calculations. Or how many runs were made in the last baseball game. Or how many phonemes can be counted in these words. But every once in a while, we do have to rethink our understanding of the universe, such as when Pluto became a “minor” planet. As we ponder the possibilities of doubt in our everyday existence, I imagine some level of questioning arises over even the most mundane of issues, such as in the statement, I don’t think four jets just flew over our village, I think it was five.

But doubt really seems to get in our bonnet when it comes to matters of faith and belief. After all, isn’t that where you assumed this piece was going? So did the character played by Philip Seymour Hoffman commit the possible crime of molestation in the recent movie, “Doubt”? So even though we might keep our skeptical eye open on a daily basis for a variety of inane/mundane comments or remarks, it’s the big questions that spark a never ending debate.

As a preacher’s kid, I always assumed what dad said from the pulpit was pretty much the real thing. But one Sunday, I heard him used the word agnostic, and ever since, I’ve been trying to examine the questions he pondered with his Methodist flock of congregants.

This conversation might begin with whether or not a word can be taken literally, especially old words, especially really old words, as found in The Tanakh, or the New Testament. Some assume, and will jab their finger into my chest, and say, of course it’s true, just like it was written. But as the former Speaker of the House (Tip O’Neill) from Massachusetts would say, all politics are local, I’ve adapted that to all writing is political. Every piece of writing then has a purpose, and most of the time, it is to persuade someone of some opinion. So here is the question, is opinion to be “trusted,” believed beyond doubt?

Those were the quiet reverberations as I began my recent journey through a stack of new books on questioning faith, God, and all between. Several months ago, all right, over last winter break from teaching, I found a fascinating history of this concept, in Jennifer Michael Hecht’s Doubt, a 494 page examination, plus notes and Bibliography, on perhaps one of the most engaging questions we could ever raise, either in our own minds, or those we have conversations with. She has a keen eye for detail, perhaps too many details, but the final picture is astounding for how many cultures, movements, authors and skeptics have raised questions about the authority of this opinion or that. In addition to learning about fascinating movements and their impact on countless civilizations and cultures, the book is also a joy to read.

Casting little doubt on her scholarship, I decided to see and read what all the ruckus was about with the new/old debate of the existence of God, particularly Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, a book that will infuriate those who know better, and enlighten those who might have questions about what “authorities” have said is true regarding the believability of God and God’s wonders. Of course the book is one of those that comprise the Great Questions and so, it is important that one be somewhat open and somewhat receptive to the ideas of the atheistic point of view or the reader will just toss the book away as dribble, or worse. This book is an excellent balance to those who might have refreshed their interest in the history of doubt, through Hecht’s research.

Of course, this new interest can get out of hand, and even be written about badly, as in Christopher Hitchen’s God is not Great. This book falls under the category of “too much complaint, too biased, and too arrogant.” It takes awhile to get used to his brash style, but the content is enlightening, and if you are a fan of his political writing, then perhaps this is one to enjoy as well. Here’s a brief passage that will disturb anyone, making the book a classic text on the art of the provocateur: “Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience” (56). Of course there are many more damning/damaging indictments, but this certainly lets a reader know where the rage is centered in Christopher Hitchen’s text, with a subtitle that has an equally disturbing focus: How Religion Poisons Everything.

After something like that, shouldn’t we be aware of the “counterattack” on the new atheists? Perhaps so, if one is inclined to disbelieve not necessarily all of the above, but the contents of the all above. That’s where Chris Hedges comes in with his retort of When Atheism Becomes Religion: America’s New Fundamentalists. This book is designed to retort the arguments of these godless philosophers, especially the works of Christopher Hitchens and an author we haven’t yet been bombarded by yet, Sam Harris. Hedges’ arguments are of the friendly type, acknowledging quite a few of the basic complaints of the atheists as reasonable, even to the point of agreeing on several key horrors of what religion has brought to the world.

Yet Hedges’ seems to spend a considerable amount of time describing how a godless world leads to a totalitarian world, and so, we can see how those totalitarian philosophies have brought monstrous reigns of terror just in the 20th Century. Dawkins counters this argument that a secular life does not lead to a life of despair and hopelessness, but Hedges seems to think that the likes of Hitler and Stalin and Mao, perhaps, will scare us all back to the pew. Perhaps. What is quite helpful about this text is that it condenses, unfairly I suppose, some of the basic principles of the New Atheists. For that reason, it’s a good counterbalance to all the talk so far about a godless world, or cosmos, if we can only look into black space that deeply.

Are you still here, Dear Reader? Perhaps you gave up long ago. If you have any patience left, I will be brief and close with perhaps the most stunning of all these books, Sam Harris’s The End of Faith. I’ve read a few books a second time, and this is one of them. My copy is much bluer as I’ve inked so many passages that make me wonder, reflect and imagine the truthfulness of the many fascinating arguments of this author. As someone who still has a keen interest in both Western and Eastern religions, I have to admit at times I was spellbound by many of the author’s assertions. The chapter on The Holy Inquisition was quite disturbing to read about, as well as his sequel on anti-Semitism. The chapter on Islam is a difficult one to embrace, as so much of it counters the presentations I try to make in an undergraduate course on Islam. Another fascinating and quite absorbing chapter is on Buddhist meditation and consciousness. Be prepared for some deep work.
On finishing the text, I wanted to start all over as much of it was read too quickly.

Well, these are several books which will certainly disturb, agitate, provoke and cause some readers to even throw a few into the fire, that is, if on a summer night, you want to add more flame to the hotdogs and burgers. But perhaps these titles might be an opportunity to examine our own faith, and ask the question, what political interests are imbedded in all of our religious texts? I encourage you to find one of these books, and perhaps even more. Lastly, if commenting on any of these to the blogmeister, please no flaming.

Books Cited:
Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Mariner/Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 2008.
Harris, Sam. The End of Faith. W.W. Norton: New York, 2004.
Hecht, Jennifer Michael. Doubt. Harper One/Harper Collins: New York, 2003.
Hedges, Chris. When Atheism Becomes Religion. Free Press: New York, 2008.
Hitchens, Christopher. God is Not Great. Twelve/Grand Central Publishing:
New York, 2007.

Where's Your Universe?

2009-06-18T12:57:00.001-05:00

Where’s Your Universe?

Is the Universe “out there,” or is it “in us”? From a simple Buddhist perspective, it’s in us, as all reality is perception. But ever since the great scientists of the European Renaissance, and the Golden Age of Islam, we’ve come to understand (believe) that the universe is a constantly fluctuating maze of this and that “out there.” As a reader of this blog, you are, or you think you are, “out there somewhere” sitting on a three or four legged chair or something like a chair, squinting at your computer screen, and not inside my brain, for if you were, I’d ask everyone to observe decorum, and please whisper, as the space beneath my cranium is actually a small reading room.

Okay? How are we doing so far? Some of you might want to click away from this nonsense and do something that is less associated with time, space, and the Universe. Yet for those who are fascinated with the problem, and it is a problem, I want to bring your attention to a new scientific text with the short title of Biocentrism that essentially will undermine Western views of scientific investigation, particularly as it applies to the nature of the Universe.
The book is featured in the current issue of “Cosmic Log: The Universe in Your Head,” as found in the Tech and Science section of the news website, www.msnbc.com. Do find the blog, and check out this new discovery/insight for I’m sure you’ll want to head to the bookstore to order this fascinating new scientific reassessment of how we perceive the Universe.

Essentially, the two scientists, Robert Lanza “with” Bob Berman, offer a reversal of the notion that the universe creates life. Instead, they suggest “life creates the universe,” which isn’t that hard to grasp, but what is exciting is the second part of their equation, that “observers” [that would be all of us] are now part of the equation.

To clarify, the world keeps changing, constantly, in part, because we are able, as observers, to see these changes and chart the differences. We are all agreed, aren’t we, that the universe is different than our Polish student of the Krakow Academy (see previous blog) Nicolaus Copernicus observed with his Universe cracking telescope.

The two scientists/biologists suggest the world is defined through consciousness, a view not that surprising to Eastern philosophers and teachers, as we know through the teachings of the Buddha that “all is one,” but all that we see and observe is through the eyes of the “observer,” and whatever consciousness that individual brings to the observation.

How many out there are still reading? I hope a few, and if you are there, here’s one last question the scientists ask that will surely send you off to your bookstore for Enlightenment of the Eastern kind, not the Western Enlightenment of the 18th Century Age of Scientific Discovery. Here is their question: Where is the universe even located? Hmmm. Out there, right? But if you are not sure, then I urge you to find what might make for a fascinating summer reading, but maybe not on the beach. The book is Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe, by Robert Lanza with Bob Berman, BenBella Books. Let me know what you think.

2009-05-26T14:39:00.004-05:00

Krakow Cracow

One morning, a few days ago, I was sitting with fellow Shoah scholars and educators in a 14th Century chapel- like lecture hall in one of the oldest universities in Europe. We were all waiting for the Chief Rabbi of Poland to open the 2009 Conference on “the Legacy of the Holocaust,” a biennial conference sponsored by the University of Northern Iowa and Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Moments before we had stood in the inner courtyard below, somewhat amazed to learn that Nicolaus Copernicus probably conversed as we did about what was going on in Krakow, and of course, possibly wondering where we all were in relation to the Universe.

Our few days in Krakow were breathtaking, as we not only were treated to the delights and charms of a few days at a European university, but as well, we were able to engage each other in a variety of interdisciplinary subjects of research on the Shoah, or the Holocaust. Scholars from Israel, Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, the U.K., The Czech Republic, Australia, Poland, Austria and the U.S. participated in two days of on-going research connected to the conference theme of “Family and the Holocaust.”

When not in academic sessions, we left the 14th Century University to enjoy the beautiful and historic town center with its Cloth Hall, churches, horse drawn carriages and perhaps the best lunch anyone can find in this beautiful city.

Conference participants had the opportunity for a day trip to the nearby shtetls (small Jewish villages), a walking tour of the Krakow Jewish Ghetto during World War II, as well as the Plaszow Labor Camp (featured in “Schlinder’s List”) or a visit to the death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. I chose to revisit Auschwitz as I had just finished teaching a short, introductory course on the Holocaust at my university, and wanted to see if I could absorb any more of the history of this Hell on Earth. On this visit, we were privileged to have one of the best and most informed guides of the Museum who explained to us the many displays and artifacts that are part of the old Polish Army Fort, or Auschwitz I.

I must admit this is one of the oddest places on earth, as the Auschwitz Museum attracts travelers, tourists, and scholars from all over the world. Perhaps the oddest sense is what one sees in the parking lot outside the admissions building. At any time of the day we could see 20 or more buses parked neatly to accommodate the many visitors who come to this place. And in order to hear our guide over the other 20 or so guides leading tours, we all wore headphones in case we wandered too far from our leader. Of course Auschwitz was a tower of Babel, with few hardly able to understand the various barking order of the German SS officers. But I will admit that as we walked through the Polish barracks to see photographic and artifact evidence of what happened here, I couldn’t help but see hundred of adolescents as well as parents and grandparents who were making their somber way through building after building.

Let me say this, that every single display of horror and torture was stunning, paralyzing, and profoundly disturbing. I still cannot get out of my mind a blurry photo taken by a prisoner (how was that possible?) of naked women running across a field. The image simply brought on the same immediate response I had when I last saw it. I’ve not seen another picture that has ever created such an instant overwhelming emotion. The open windows of the second floor exhibits provided fresh, cool air, knowing that other barracks contained similar kinds of evidence of this Final Solution. The room sized display of shorn hair was also deeply disturbing, knowing that what was collected had not yet been shipped to Germany for a variety of macabre purposes.

Our afternoon visit included a guided tour of Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, the expanded death camp where more than a million or million and a half were slaughtered in the gas chambers and crematoria, or survived as slave laborers in the IG Farben Factory complex. We walked through the public latrines, barracks, and slowly made our way toward the Final Solution, where we could see the destroyed gas chambers and crematoria. A few of us left our tour guide, and wondered further back and to the fourth and fifth gas/crematoria buildings, one of which was destroyed by fearless sonderkommandos who were Jewish prisoners who had to handle the grisly task of moving the dead from the gas chambers to the furnaces. Briefly, the whole walk was quite chilling. I’ve presented this information to underclass juniors at the university where I teach, but still, standing and breathing at this place is quite different than standing and breathing while talking about this place in far away Wisconsin.

After showers and clean clothes following our “tour,” we all gathered at the Galicia (the province of Poland we were in) Jewish Museum back in Krakow for kiddush and motsi (blessing of wine and challah before the Jewish Sabbath), and a delightful buffet before a guided tour of a photographic exhibit of images of Jewish life and culture in Poland. Later, we were treated to an hour concert of Yiddish songs, the perfect way to end this extraordinary day.

Almost every morning I would rise quite early and jog along the Vistula River, passing cyclists, other joggers, and men sweeping their restaurant/bar boats anchored along the banks. My jog became longer and longer each morning as I felt more confident that I would not get lost, counting bridges going and coming back, passing by the Jewish Quarter, and the Wawel Castle, where I would visit in the last hours of Krakow.

My colleague Ron Berger presented his work on second generation Holocaust survivors with a talk about how his father and uncle survived their horrific experiences, one in Birkenau (Auschwitz II) and the other by surviving in forests for the duration of the War. Following his talk we continued with our last morning and afternoon concurrent sessions on a variety of Shoah topics, including my own artistic interpretation of fusing the lyrics of the Tao de Ching with Chinese-like lyrics of images of Auschwitz. By the end of the day, I suggested we find one of the many evening concerts to balance all the intensity of the various presentations, so we listened to arias and oratorios by a gifted female soloist and her organ accompanist as a fitting way to balance all of the presentations earlier in the day.

The next morning I ran even further on my route, perhaps in exasperation and exhaustion for the last few days, but also, to just keep tiny little embolisms from breaking out in my legs or lungs as we were flying home at 36,000 feet. A few hours later I sauntered up to the Wawel Castle in time to observe one of the Sunday masses at the Royal Cathedral. Following the service I wandered toward the front of the nave, taking in all of the royal and Catholic history with the different chapels and ancient crypts. When visiting Poland, one always wants to return with jewelry made from amber, so I returned to the Cloth Hall in the Market Square to find something that might glimmer in the sunlight, finishing off the visit to Krakow with a delightful café au lait in a bookstore filled with the different languages of Europe. I wasn’t ready to return home, but then I found myself in a cab dashing to the airport in time to follow the sun all the way back to Chicago. Perhaps I have forgotten to mention how many large Polish Zywiec beer steins I emptied.

Where Were You at Sunrise This Morning?

2009-04-08T16:12:00.001-05:00

Where Were You at Sunrise This Morning?

Just a few hours ago, Orthodox, and some non-Orthodox Jews around the world celebrated the rising of the Sun as they had not done so since 1981, for that was the last time the Sun was in, according to the Talmud, the exact position in the Heavens as it was when it was first put into orbit by The Creator. Of course this is a bit different from the Sun worshippers on Summer Solstice, for most of them are just glad to have a long day of sunlight, as the days will start to get shorter and shorter until mid December. But we can also be reminded of a celebration of the sun known as the Festival of Sol Invictus, an ancient winter solstice holiday that was later designated as Christmas Day.

But even before that, we had Egyptian priests stepping out into the morning dawn in full priestly garb, awaiting the Sun Creator Ra in hopes that the sun would return from a long night in the underworld, or whatever the Sun chose to do when not lighting the Egyptian Kingdom. Perhaps the Sun worshippers today perform the same rituals as did our ancient priests, just glad to have the warmth return again after a chilly night.

Sun worship was quite essential to the ancient Hindus, for Surya did not only kept the Sun on a timely calendar, but also battled against forces of darkness for his followers below. And of course the Incas certainly had their closest to the Sun worship, high up in the Andes.

We’ve gotten away from saying thanks for the light, so even though we might be a bit late with our Birkat Hachamah, Hebrew for the blessing of the Sun, it wouldn’t hurt if all of us stepped out of our shelters for just a moment and looked up to the sky, even if the Sun has already lighted your way. Or I suppose it wouldn’t hurt if you tried it on your own tomorrow morning, for we will all have to wait another 28 years before we have this opportunity again. If you can’t say the Hebrew, then just follow along with the transliteration:

"ברוך אתה ה' אלהינו מלך העולם עושה מעשה בראשית"
"Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of the Universe who makes the works of Creation."

Wardrobe Malfunction Alert

2009-03-22T05:53:00.002-05:00

WARDROBE MALFUNCTION ALERT!

A few days ago I was presenting my last class on Islam trying to make connections between European Colonialism, the long occupation of Algeria, the surge of Algerians into French culture, and finally some of the unique challenges France faces today in the Islamic community. After presenting a few clips from both sides of the “European Islamophobia, debate” and asking students to write a journal entry on what was most provocative, stimulating or educational about the last four weeks of their study, I was ready to “wrap up” our short introductory course. Putting my books away, a student came up to me, looking as though she wanted to actually whisper something private. She did. “Professor, your fly is open.”

I first tried to remember if she said she worked in a senior care center, as the discreet message seemed like something a seasoned nurse would tell an old man. But in any case, I dashed up two flights of stairs, student papers covering up any embarrassment, and finally found the culprit…a 1 ½ wide zipper expansion, but thank heavens for colored under ware and long shirt tails. I returned to the classroom for an Act II of the same Lecture, but now, more knowingly confident that I was not exposing young minds to needless guffaws.

But then, do guys have wardrobe malfunctions very often? Is it old age that keeps the zipper from returning to the top position? It seems that the young and beautiful goddesses of Hollywood and TV Land are the most prone to the malfunctions, with straps breaking, or buttons revealing either the color of panties, or in Britney Spears’s case, actually no panties. Most of the accidents reveal one nipple, but in my quick survey of these types of fashion bloops, I don’t recall any two nipple faux pas.

Guys live for these female accidents, as all guys would probably admit, from pre adolescent to geezer. These are what guys live for, for that ultimate moment of being in the beautiful right place when something snaps and the world is perfect for a second or two, but for the guys who don’t have the paparazzi around, well, it’s just more of a failure to return the zipper to the starting position. I have wondered if this is a special subcategory in the DMV IV manual of psychiatric disorders, but perhaps it’s just part of our multitasking world that we live in, that we forget to check how we appear to others when stepping out into the public.

If we quickly take a gaze across the thousands of internet links on “wardrobe malfunction,” one could begin to imagine that clothing manufacturers were actually conspiring to have their attire featured on the latest gossip news. It’s not just thin shoulder straps, as I’ve seen or heard of shoes flying off feet in the middle of a crucial “Dancing with the Stars” number, or when some of the most beautiful models in the world, slip and slide down a highly polished stair case as they are aspiring to win Miss Universe, or something like that. Of course pratfalls in high heels don’t quite constitute wardrobe malfunctions, as that’s more of hardware than a software problem.

Knowing that I was going to be reported to the University Morals Police, I quickly confessed to my colleagues in order to have the report on file before any students began filing reports on their own internet gossip networks. Little did I realize that wardrobe malfunctions have happened more often than I would have ever expected. One professor wrote back when she remembered an incident in junior high when all the buttons on her blouse popped off like a popgun. What she remembers the most are the two evil boys in the back who yucked all afternoon. Another professor recalled a “teaching moment” when her half slip just slipped off her body into a lovely pile of lace around her shoes. And a guy has just confirmed that I do not have early Alzheimer’s when he reported that he taught a whole day of composition classes with his zipper unzipped for all to ponder. By the way, one professor offered the best coping technique when finding out one is blowing in the wind. Simply pirouette, look down, zip everything back in place, turn, and wait for the catcalls from the classroom. That seems reasonable. But to clarify, don’t catch any skin down there as that might result in a more dramatic and unexplainable situation, otherwise known as the “There’s Something About Mary” syndrome.

Yet in an odd sort of way, perhaps this is the reverse of what will happen soon on campuses all across the country this spring, when we’ll see more and more from both the top and behind, as I’ve unfortunately witnessed far too much to keep my mind on some intellectual or theoretical concept. On these spring days and soon to be summer days, we’ll see more than we can ever see in one balmy afternoon than we’d ever see from the occasional malfunction. But perhaps the most amusing incident comes from a now long gone faculty member who howled and howled with delight when she recalled one summer outdoor class when a young man in Bermuda shorts forgot to put on anything underneath. Perhaps we can all agree that might be the most eyebrow-raising wardrobe malfunction of all time.

So all of this has some meaning, doesn’t it? The world is becoming unbuttoned, unstrapped, unzipped, un-slipped, un-shoed, and even slightly under-dressed. Early visions of the senior care home? Let’s hope not, but it does remind us of how little material remains between the skin we cover, and the skin which brings a smile to all of us, either an embarrassing one, or a hoo-rah for others. So everybody, before we step out into the public, let’s check our straps, laces, buttons and zippers for who knows who’s out there dreaming of our personal nightmare.

O Babylon

2009-01-12T12:47:00.001-06:00

O Babylon

In a short “arts, briefly” item that appeared in the January 8, 2009 New York Times, we’ve learned that Babylon may be coming back to life, perhaps as a walk through museum. Of course news about any other place on the planet is of much more newsworthy notice, but if you’ve ever admired rocks in the Middle East, as I have, then this news is of great international consequence. Some who are more familiar with the daily news of four millennia from this locus of the world may say it’s about time, while others may see Babylon as just another bygone of the Ancient World.

But take notice, the U.S. State Department has agreed to funnel $700,000 towards the renovation of this spectacular city, and perhaps this is good news as the Occupation Forces of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force caused considerable damage to the ancient ruins. Perhaps all of us should chip in one American dollar to the World Monuments Fund so this extraordinary city of the 2nd Millennium B.C.E. can be brought back to its important nexus to world history.

After all, it was the “gateway of the god[s],” perhaps as significant as The Bodhi Tree, or Mount Olympus, or Mount Sinai or Mount Moriah or any other site that reminds us of what the ancient world considered holy and magnificent. Of course it’s also a confusing place, causing much consternation among the peoples of the world, just as much as it did for the characters in the recent global screenplay, “Babel.”

We should give some credit to the city planners, for Babylon at one time was the city of the World, the largest city of the World, but then I’m sure ancient cities of the Far East and Africa had equivalent marvels which we should address sometime soon. While many scholars of the Bible will say the Torah, or for Christian readers, the Old Testament, is sui generis, it is noteworthy that much of the literature that came out of Babylonia found its way, indirectly and subtlety into the Book of Genesis and possibly even Exodus, with reference to the Code of Hammurabi, perhaps the first legal code of the Ancient World. Of course the Code isn’t at the site right now, but neither is anything else.

If it wasn’t for Lord Byron, or Sennacherib, we wouldn’t have such great poetry, or misguided battle tactics in the failed storming of Jerusalem when “The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold/And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold.” Anyone who knows the story knows that Jerusalem was saved momentarily, in part, connected to the {un-}glory of Babylon.

By the early 600’s (of the B.C.E.’s) the green thumb Nebuchadnezzar II provided for one of the wonders of the world, the nectarian Hanging Gardens, but of course, that’s a story that hasn’t been completely verified. Yet if it wasn’t for Nebuchadnezzar, we might never had heard the unbelievable arias of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Nabucco,” which connects more and more of us to the stony palaces, though few of us want to remember the origin of the opera and Israel’s defeat and exile as is so movingly depicted in Act III with the Chorus of “va pensiero.”

And where would a few of us be today had it not been for the magnanimity of Cyrus the Great who sent the Israelites packing back to Jerusalem after their 1st Exile as noted in Isaiah and Jeremiah? Many of the Jewish holidays, as well as counting any of the days of the week, or months, or years, can possibly be found in the long 70+ year exile in Mesopotamia. Perhaps we need to ask a scholar to take us through parts of The Babylonian Talmud, or even the origins of Genesis and Eden which would take us back to The Enuma Elish and the Babylonian story tellers who were just trying to figure out those very first days in the desert.

For a look at Babylon from Hollywood, get out your DVD copy of Oliver Stone’s “Alexander” and watch the famed warrior/globe trotter enter the magnificent gates of Babylon, as well as seeing all the beauty that it was in the 3rd century before the C.E.

Yet who doesn’t remember the Deutsche Orientgesellschaft and the German team that began excavations in the late 19th Century? But perhaps the oddest of all inscriptions, in our own era, is by a follower of the great past: “This {partial restoration of Babylon} was built by Saddam Hussein, son of Nebuchadnezzar, to glorify Iraq.”

Of course there are other sites to get excited about, and The World Monuments Fund is certainly a place to learn about the many different restoration projects going on in this world, in our own time, but if you’d like to see Babylon brought back to its stony glory, then by all means, see what you have left in your retirement fund, and consider a small donation. Yes of course, the U.S. economy has tanked, or will tank, and how can you give something for heritage, but if you can, then perhaps we can find a way to restore what once was the “gateway of the god(s).”

Vatican Shifts Stance on Heretical Astronomer

2008-12-25T19:44:00.001-06:00

Vatican Shifts Stance on Heretical Astronomer

In a stunning success for science vs. faith, the Vatican is now ready, or willing, to acknowledge that planet Earth does revolve around the Sun, and not as the Church believed 400 years ago. But the news coming out of the Vatican doesn’t exactly put it that way, in fact, no mention is made in any of the recent reports that Galileo Galilei’s observations were accurate, or assumed to be correct, or favored a scientific view that could be easily replicated. Instead, in a recent deliberation at the Vatican, “Science 400 Years After Galileo Galilei,” Vatican scholars came to believe that the astronomer was “one of the faithful.”

This comes after a trial of heresy, a sentence to life imprisonment, then a reduced sentence to house arrest. I am not certain if he was able to keep his telescope. What seems an odd addendum to all this is word that L'Osservatore Romano recently published a story about alien life in the outer universe. All this comes about as Pope Benedict XVI is working toward correcting a perception that he is anti-reason, or more simply put, an opponent of science. Perhaps the alien story was a stretch.
Even so, with all the preparation, excitement and hoopla for Galileo Galilei, some Vatican officials aren’t as forgiving as the Pope.

To help celebrate the 400th anniversary when he pointed his refracting telescope to the Heavens, the United Nations is calling 2009 The Year of Astronomy, with papers and presentations all over the world celebrating the mix of (some) faith and (plenty of )science. Then what happened to the statue of Our Astronomer tentatively planned for the Vatican Gardens? It appears that, according to the Vatican newspaper, “The dramatic clash between Galileo and some men of the Church left wounds that are still
open today.”

Who, pray tell, is still seething? Who, pray tell, is still pouring pride into the “wound”? Just how long will this go on? Regardless of the naysayers, we’re hopeful the statute will go up, and in the Gardens. I do forget the layout of the Vatican Grounds, but perhaps on a sunny day, the soon to be standing statue might be viewed on the same azimuth as the Obelisk in St. Peter’s Square, if one has the courage to make such a climb.

One of the more impressive statues in the Square, this is an Aswan granite guide to the Time of the Day which once graced the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, before Emperor Caligula brought it to Rome as booty in 37 C.E., and later was moved by Pope Sixtus and countless slaves to St. Peter’s Square in 1585. Galileo Galilei was about 21 at the time, fourteen years before he set his eye to the Heavens. I’ll have to check if the young Italian was on hand to witness the big move. In the meantime, when you’re visiting Florence again, or for the first time, be sure to stop in the Museum of History and Science to catch up on Galileo’s life and scientific discoveries. Perhaps the Museum has moved a Bible into one of the displays to confirm that the Astronomer read from the Book of Genesis.

Sources: msnbc.com, and “moving the Vatican Obelisk,” from a blogsite “on landscape and architecture.

Obama Chooses Family Friend for Inaugural Poet

2008-12-22T13:29:00.002-06:00

Obama Chooses Family Friend for Inaugural Poet

With much excitement, anticipation, toes crossed and breath held, we all wondered who might be selected as the poet for Barak Obama’s Inauguration. Would it be the new Library of Congress Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan, or her predecessor, Charles Simic? Would Maya Angelou be invited back for a repeat of “On the Pulse in the Morning”? Who has the fortitude to stand before 4-6 million shivering Americans and world guests to listen to the waxing and waning of “an occasional poem,” as they are so terribly named? Who even memorizes poems these days as Robert Frost did on a cold January in 1961? Is there such an American poet who has been vetted of appropriate metaphors and synecdoches for such an auspicious occasion?

Lyndon Baines didn’t even want to waste time with such triviality at his Inauguration. And Ike? Does anyone remember a poet honoring the great General? Well perhaps this is unfair, for who remembers the Benediction at any of the Inaugurals? Okay, can anyone out there (without Goggling) remember a line from any of the Presidential Inaugural speeches, with the exception of “Ask not….”? Lines do seem to fade once the party’s over, don’t they?

So we do have a Presidential Inaugural Poet, and she is Elizabeth Alexander of Yale University who has a remarkably fine list of honors and achievements, and you can find more about her by going to the www.npr.org site
and searching for her interview on Thursday, Dec.18. But I was just wondering, what do you think would be appropriate images or even lines of the Inaugural Poem?

Who could forget Maya Angelou’s?

Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, and into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope --
Good morning.

A favorite image is seeing old man Frost reading from memory his closing lines of such solemnity:

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

Those lines do sound today a bit heavy handed with the piano key-iambic hitting just the right stresses. But heck, it was cold out, and we never got to hear the poem he wished to read, as he didn’t wear sunglasses for the intense snow glare that day. Anyone remember “Dedication”? It’s even more somber, if that’s possible. What is it about “the state of somberness” which gets these Inaugural poets bringing out the chariots, or cheerleaders? Sorry!

Now Miller Williams had it right, when he stepped up to the podium for Bill’s Second Inaugural. The photo of Bill sitting behind Miller who is reading is near priceless for “rapt attention of a poet reading a poem.” Here’s a stinger of Miller’s:

But where are we going to be, and why, and who?
The disenfranchised dead want to know.

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s talk about the dead, a favorite for all poets.

And then there was James Dickey of all people, standing up for Jimmy Carter in 1977, choosing not to read a piece written for the occasion, but instead, pulling out a favorite of his, “The Strength of Fields,” with a rip roaring closing line of

My life belongs to the world. I will do what I can.

Now I am getting goose bumps; aren’t you? Okay, enough of this inaugural poetic torture. What would you like to read at the mike? Do you have an inaugural line? A title? Please submit your lines, images, metaphors and synecdoches, and I’ll try my best to cut and paste something that might catch the attention of the Academy of American Poets, for who knows what we might be able to create? We might be making inaugural poetic history here.

Please, though, no “hope springs eternal” lines. We’ve gotten the point on that one. Also, no blubbering. No whining. No chest puffing. Nothing too bellicose. Please, only one personification per poet, please. Think out of the sonnet box. Be grand, but not too grand. Be strong but not too strong. Be fresh, like Ezra Pound (see college modern poetry textbook) insisted. Perhaps a little pedestrian, but some nobility as well, for a Kennedy is bound to be in the audience. No “send forth” instructions. We’ve already done that. Keep it family style, too, as we don’t want any nipples showing that might need to be covered, after all, the meteorologists predict the temps will be in the low 20’s. Finally, and with some reservation as a poet who loves long historical poems, keep it to two pages, please. The public isn’t ready for a modified epic, at least not when teeth are chattering. So here’s your challenge. Send a few lines, titles, noble thoughts, and we’ll try to paste together a hit for the Yes We Can Team.

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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Returns

2008-12-07T19:58:00.001-06:00

Sir Gawain & The Green Knight Makes the Top 100 Notable Books of the Year

The news is quite astounding, and reflects much on the power of a good poem, written, some say, in the late 14th Century in a dialect few of us can converse in, but imagine the surprise when the newest translation of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight showed up on the New York Times Book Review “100 Notable Books of 2008.”

This calls for much celebration, not only among living poets, but all of us who take an interest in literature that lasts beyond the year of publication.
Let’s all find a copy (for some, look in an old college literature anthology, English Lit Vol. I) of the poem, and set aside time between New Year’s Eve Day, and New Year’s Day to savor some of the mind-tripping Middle English 101 stanzas that aren’t all that long, if you don’t mind a giant who loses his head, and some pretty steamy scenes, and a potential second beheading.

May I suggest we read it to our loved ones over whatever hot drinks when sipping throughout the New Year, but please, try to find a green scarf to help carry all of us back in time to knights, a lady fair indeed, and one very sharp axe that does draw blood.

Go ahead and stimulate the economy by actually buying the new translation by Simon Armitage (Norton, $25.95), but I am sure you can find other editions not quite so pricy if you look around. So as you are all making your trips for Holiday Merriment, be it Christmas or Hanukkah, or Winter Solstice, Saturnalia, or Kawanza, take time to bring in some firewood, find some extra lap warmers, see what kinds of English teas are tucked away in the back of the pantry, and see if there’s even time for baking a batch of scones.

With much anticipation, we begin:
No, I have come to this court for a bit of Christmas fun
fitting for Yuletide and New Years with such a fine crowd.
Who here in this house thinks he has what it takes,
has bold blood and a brash head,
and dares to stand his ground, giving stroke for stroke?
Here! I shall give him this gilded blade as my gift;
this heavy ax shall be his, to handle as he likes.
and I shall stand here bare of armor, and brave the first blow.
If anyone's tough enough to try out my game,
let him come here quickly and claim his weapon!
I give up all rights; he will get it for keeps.
I'll stand like a tree trunk -- he can strike at me once,
if you'll grant me the right to give as good as I get
in play.
But later is soon enough,
a full year and a day.
Get up, if you think you're rough,
let's see what you dare to say!"
(Paul Deane, trans., 1999)

Armistice Day Remembered

2008-11-11T08:24:00.002-06:00

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Below is an op-ed piece that appears in the Nov. 11, 2008 New York Times. Today I also begin a short section on Holocaust Studies in my World of Ideas class at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and I'll provide a little information about the Treaty of Versailles which was signed in June of 1919. So I thought this might be an appropriate piece for all of us to read. Your blogmeister, DeWitt Clinton

from The New York Times
November 11, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
A Holiday to End All Wars
By ALEXANDER WATSON
Cambridge, England

TODAY is the 90th anniversary of the armistice that ended the First World War, and it will be commemorated very differently on each side of the Atlantic and across the borders of Europe. It’s a reminder that not all “victors” experience wars in the same way, and that their citizens can have almost as much difficulty as those of the vanquished states in coping with the collective trauma of conflict.

For Americans, Veterans Day celebrates the survivors of all the nation’s 20th and 21st century wars. In France and Britain, by contrast, the mood is altogether more somber. In these countries, it is the dead who, since 1919, have been the focus of the ceremonies.

Why this difference? After all, for citizens of all three countries the date marks a shared victory. In the jargon of the time, Nov. 11, 1918, was the day of their soldiers’ triumph over “Prussian militarism,” the vindication of a “fight for civilization” and the successful finish of a “war to end all wars.”

In the years after the war, official ceremonies in the United States reflected these victorious ideals and celebrated “world peace” — it was only after World War II that the day was dedicated specifically to veterans. The touchstone of loss and suffering for Americans remained the Civil War, the world’s first industrial conflict, which 50 years before World War I had taken the lives of more than 600,000 soldiers. Memorial Day (or as it was originally known, Decoration Day) was first instituted in May during the late 1860s to commemorate these fallen.

In contrast, it was only in August 1914 that the horrors and shock of modern warfare came to Europe. The Great War, as the conflict is still known in France and Britain, was a prolonged and vicious struggle demanding the commitment of nations’ wealth and manpower on an unprecedented scale.

Over four years, armies millions of men strong clashed indecisively in horrendous conditions. For the first time on this scale, genuine home fronts formed, as civilians were targets of bombings and food blockades. British war losses, at more than 700,000 men, remain the heaviest in the country’s history. French and German dead were even more numerous, totaling 1.4 million and likely 2 million, respectively.

It was the need to come to terms with this immense loss of life that shaped European commemorations of Nov. 11. On the armistice’s first anniversary in Britain, a two-minute silence was observed at 11 a.m., the time the fighting ended; industry was shut down, traffic halted and people across the country fell quiet to remember the nation’s dead. In France, public grief was expressed more loudly, local communities gathering every armistice day to hear the names of the dead read out by a war orphan, and responding in unison, “mort pour la patrie” — “died for his country.”

Cenotaphs were built to comfort the bereaved whose relatives had no known resting place — the bodies of hundreds of thousands of men had been lost on the battlefield or eviscerated by shellfire. In 1920, “Unknown Warriors” were chosen and entombed in London and Paris; Rome followed suit in 1921.

In towns and villages more modest memorials and plaques to the fallen were erected, becoming an enduring feature of Europe’s landscape. At veterans’ insistence, Nov. 11 was declared a national holiday in France in 1922, and Germany too introduced an official “people’s day of sorrow,” or Volkstrauertag, in 1925 to honor its war dead.

Today, the commemoration of Nov. 11 varies greatly across Europe. For Poles, the holiday is not a day of mourning but rather of celebration, commemorating the rebirth of their nation in 1918 after more than a century of occupation by Austria-Hungary, Prussia and Russia. In Italy, the war dead are remembered on Nov. 4, “the feast of the fallen,” the day in 1918 that fighting came to an end on its battlefront. Across Central Europe though, the greater horrors of the Second World War have subsumed those of its predecessor within popular memory; in Germany, for example, commemoration of the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities now takes precedence over the losses of the last century’s first conflagration.

Yet in France, where the death toll of 1914 to 1918 exceeded that of 1939 to 1945, the dead of World War I retain a strong grip on the national conscience. Across the country today, local mayors will lead remembrance services, the names of long-buried soldiers will be read out, military bands will play and citizens will sing “La Marseillaise.”

In Britain, where an estimated three-quarters of the population paused during the two-minute silence on the armistice’s 80th anniversary and where, in 2002, a BBC poll rated the Unknown Warrior as the country’s 76th greatest citizen, public memory of the war is even stronger. Visit the country (or its former dominions including Canada and New Zealand) in November and you will still see paper poppies being widely worn — a reference to the blood-red flowers which grew on the shell-torn battlefields and to John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields.”

The brainchild of an American educator, Moina Michael, the poppies have been sold since 1921 to support war widows and veterans; a record 37 million were purchased in Britain in 2006. Even 90 years after the war’s end, the rites and symbols of what George Kennan termed “the great seminal catastrophe” of the 20th century retain their poignancy.

Alexander Watson is a research fellow at Cambridge University and the author of “Enduring the Great War.”

My Friends, Our Long National Nightmare is Over

2008-11-05T09:03:00.001-06:00

MY FRIENDS, OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS OVER

Somewhere in the hazy craw of childhood memory, I can still see Dwight Eisenhower “inspecting the troops,” a Boy Scout Jamboree somewhere in safe Republican Kansas in the late 1950’s. I’m sure, as nearly always, he “carried” Kansas in the Electoral Votes, but I do recall someone saying how he scowled at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. I’ll admit I can still see Tricky Dick, but mostly due to the occasional documentaries on History Channel, as well as a slightly improved memory of his decision to bomb Cambodia, to prowl around in Democratic offices looking for scuttlebutt, and being somewhat paralyzed, as we all might have been who are still alive, by the Watergate Hearings.

Those Victory hands still pop up occasionally in my abdulla oblongata, or somewhere up there, when I see presidential candidates ascend or descend from planes from various political trips made across the world, or here in the U.S. I’ll admit I remember more from President Ford on Saturday Night Live, than I do of his presidency, but mostly I connect a few wires to the Fall of Saigon, and the Aftermath, which is still a nightmare.

Mostly, I remember Ronald Reagan as amusing, as someone who didn’t seem to attack civil liberties, or undermine the Constitution, though we still need to investigate more of the Iran Contra scandal, though most of us would just like to forget it, but perhaps not the Nicaraguans. For eight years we lived under his doting leadership, and though the specific days are just about as hazy as when Dwight Eisenhower walked by, we probably did not seem to revile the actor, but we tolerated him, knowing he earned the respect one has to accept for a landslide victory, or was it two?

George Elder was a statesman I suppose, and though no one wants to really consider that Kuwait was a legal province of Iraq before European powers separated it from the northern provinces, shortly after WWI, I still sense that George Elder was not motivated by madness as his son would be regarding who actually owns the oil fields. So as poor as my memory is, life under Republican presidents up to George the Younger was not miserable, in fact, some of those days since Dwight must have been pretty good.

But that all changed eight years ago today. I can remember “Florida, Florida, Florida,” as Tim Russet so ably put it. And then we were off to the Supreme Court to decide who would lead us into the Age of Terror(ism). The memory of 9/11/1001 is, of course, burned, singed on all of our memories, much more than any aching memory of being overrun by North Vietnamese regular Army soldiers who captured for a few minutes one mountain top somewhere in South East Asia. Soon, without precedent (perhaps I can be corrected on this) we learned that all laws and justice, a bit to our surprise, would emanate from the White House, even if they were illegal and unprecedented.

Soon we were going to muscle our way against the world, intimidating everyone, as if we were not behind George the Younger, then we were against him. Actually I didn’t want to be behind him, or in front of him, as he was such an intimidating cowboy with such unusual swagger and smirk. Well, I’m no White House historian, but looking back, it seems like the eye of Hurricane Katrina was actually hovering inside George Bush’s Office, and so the level of devastation and destruction is nearly impossible to record, but many writers will begin the herculean task.
Our world shrank after the dismissal of the Kyoto Accords, and whether it was graft, or stupidity, or just proof that absolute power does corrupt even born again Christians, to a certain degree, (and you can decide how much), we became an old crumbling Roman Empire, with too many enemies from too many borders. But last night something changed, a sea shifted, and so without tearing up, I’m just glad to have lasted as long as we all did in our makeshift foxholes. Perhaps we can join other earthlings in learning how to live together again.

Just in Case II

2008-10-29T06:58:00.001-05:00

Just in Case, Chapter II

Just as everyone I see has shorter fingernails, and other signs of an expected crisis, I now realize we may have to reconsider moving to an abandoned nuclear silo, or nest of silos, to live out our days as deprived democrats. However, I do have some good news regarding the General Election. We have made new arrangements to launch a NASA space vehicle to the planet Uranus which we have heard on good authority has no RNC (Republican National Committee) offices, or even better, no lobbyists. Sadly, the planet also does not have any DNC offices, so we’d be pretty much on our own out there. So we are rounding up all those who’d like to take the life journey with us, and though we are moving into our senior years, we’re not too worried about arriving when we are over 200 years old, as the opportunities are just too great to pass up. Some of you may be wondering where we will launch, and I can say, unofficially, we have reconnoitered a downtown skyscraper scheduled for demolition and we’ve been rebuilding the launch vehicle in the old elevator shaft. Of course if the Election does go haywire sometime around the last Florida votes are counted, we realize the possibility of a few downtown buildings buckling and collapsing as we make quite a bit of boom boom as we skedaddle out of town.

We’ve actually been receiving bon voyage cards, so many are asking about our supplies for the 140 year trip. Definitely, we’re thinking of a dairy herd, as who’d want to go without cheese that long, but we do wonder how many pots and pans we’d need for a few wheels of Colby or Cheddar. We’re also thinking about a barn full of hay for our high flying mo-mo’s. I actually have some farm experience, so we’re taking a field of broccoli sprouts, as well as a number of other stable vegetables that will get us through until we land sometime in 2208 or maybe, if we’re lucky with wind speed, 2206. Right now we’re trying to figure out the formula for converting soy beans into soy burgers, but I’m sure it’ll come to us soon. We’ve also asked the local bakery if they’d supply us for say, a long trip to Uranus, with a variety of loaves, just to keep us happy and contented. Butter is no problem, as we can call upon or Holsteins to change their routine every now and then.

We also have plenty of room for a menagerie of beasts and fowl, so we are now scouring the far corners for some of our favorite critters. We’ve spotted rare red-beaked cranes flying through the DMZ between North and South Korea, and they’re expected, well, we’ll keep the doors open until the very last minute as we very much would like their company on our long flight. We’ve also asked our botanist friends what would transport well, so we’re making a list of plants and small growing things that we just shouldn’t do without. Oh yes, we’re negotiating right now for a truckload of bottled Evian, though it’s a bit pricy buying wholesale.

Many are wondering about our opportunities in a place where no Republicans or Democrats have ever been spotted. Of course we’ll open a listening post, in case any wish to follow our flight path, but for the most part, we expect a lot of hiking, and we’re told, on very good authority, that a herd of Blue Point Siamese are looking for a trainer, so I am taking a few extra “cat dancers” toys to see if I might apply for the position. My wife is right now packing away all of her pastels and water colors as we’ve also heard the planet is looking for a good visualist who can capture the radiant colors for a travel-to-Uranus campaign offer that is just too good to turn down.

Of course we’re packing favorite books, and yes the Tibetan Book of the Dead is at the top of our list, along with a few verses of Genesis (we like the Noah story), the Bhagavad-Gita, who couldn’t travel without that wonderful story, and of course, our subscription to The New Yorker. My wife has asked if we can’t add a few catalogs, in case we get an internet link and can do some on-line shopping as we speed by the planets.

We’ll be working right up until November 4, and we’ll even calculate a delay if the Supreme Court has to decide, again, who will capture the White House. We do have a few seats left, but please, if you do want to consider travelling with us, be sure to bring a few peanut butter and jellys as it could be a long ride. I’ve also been speculating on inviting a few young people to come aboard, something like Lot’s daughters, just in case we need to keep the population growing as we sail into our future. The details of that are still a bit iffy, as we’ve not worked out a good enticement offer. But you’re invited, so just email us your arrival plans, and I’d suggest only one piece of luggage with one carry-on please. Yes, we’re serving chocolate cookies as Midwest Express has arranged for us to buy all of their jet engine fuel, as long as we promised to take pictures of any new planetary airports for future expansion plans.

Oh, yes, of course, we’ll shut down the launch engines if enough blue states can carry us into a new era. Yes, we’d still have those lobbyists, and those nastier than usual Repubs, but perhaps we can find a way to all get along, at least until another General Election. So wish us well, be sure to vote, cross your fingers and toes, and take a few good deep yoga breaths. It’ll all work out, someway.

Just in Case

2008-10-19T18:11:00.001-05:00

Just in Case (Plan B)

Just in case Dems are swindled (“the Bradley effect”) out of another General Election, I’ve decided to form a “more perfect union,” though I’m still struggling where to either buy or rent land for the new Capitol. Yes, of course we would have a foreign policy, and as well, something domestic, but perhaps these will not be priorities in the new Administration.

I’m currently searching on Google Maps for the closest (from Milwaukee, Wisconsin) underground nuclear silo, or nest of silos, as a possible site for the new Clintonia, as historians might refer to it someday. In many respects, this perfect union will be like a much-looked-forward-to sequel to another Governor’s “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” with of course creatures identified as female terminators, aka T-Xers or “Terminatrixes,” as Republicanators.

Yes, we’ll have a farm policy but to the surprise of the new electorate of disenchanted Dems, we’ll need to establish soy as the new protein base, allowing the atmosphere above Clintonia to cleanse itself of bovine gases, which may take a decade or two. (Note: we may need to sell all our beef to foreign governments to raise cash for our new Treasury, but perhaps we should keep the dairy herds, for who doesn’t like Cheese Heads? This loss of beef may disappoint carnivorous Dems, but to appease the masses, I’ve found a supply of Kikkoman soy sauce with a big distributor in Wisconsin which would add a dash of flavor to the poor legumes. Some have suggested we plant acres of broccoli, perhaps to honor another Rebublicanator, the great George W. Bush ’41, who had much to say about the cultivated cruciferous plant.

But on to the more important business of running the “perfect union.” We will form Departments and Agencies, though in a brief review of who will immediately be living in the nest of silos, we can’t have as many “heads” as our new space will be quite restricted. Our first mission, however, will be to set sail for Cuba not only due to the amiable amigos, but because the warm waters will be therapeutic to all those who suffered through the disaster known as the 08 Debacle.

I can say this with some authority that we will move the National Endowment for the Arts up to the Department level, and perhaps expect our new citizens to partake in the artistic life of the new Clintonia with more verve and enthusiasm, reading not one book every year, but possibly two. Since we’ll be producing soy beans by the ton, perhaps even able to export the little ones, we might not need an Agriculture Department, but let’s keep a slot open in Interior for someone who likes trees, oxygen, polar bears and arctic ice, some of my favorite agenda items we’ll want to defend in the next Administration.

As to Commerce, we’ll all need to know how to better add and subtract from our checkbooks, with no overdrafts anymore, as we just can’t afford it in this more “perfect union.” Perhaps we can use a TYME machine for our national bank. As to Justice, crime will diminish, I’m certain, as we’ll melt down all known weapons of both mass and individual destruction, so everyone will have to learn the art of debate and diplomacy all over again, in case they missed it in the 10th Grade! I admit I favor Al Gore for the Department of Energy. Is anybody really going to challenge that?

We can expect a new Department of Sports, and to everyone’s shock and awe, we’ll be making “triathlon” the new national sport, with everyone taking swims, rides or jogs on a much more individual, and group, basis. This will cut down the need for Health and Human Services, but we will probably have to open a few clinics for those who keep falling off of their new bikes with clip shoes, or for those who suck in too much lake water while trying to learn the Crawl. Soon the country will experience national fever for their new tri team.

We have much to do everyone. Someone should try to find a good zerox machine, but perhaps we can all stay in touch with a My Space account. Now, we do need to designate who’s cooking dinner on what nights, and who’s willing to wash up after. The little ones will need to be taken care of, so we will need lots of dads and moms to volunteer some play time on a regular basis. Anything else? Oh, I almost forgot, we’ll want to make an open invitation for Barak and his family and all of his election team to join us, perhaps in Havana, for a farewell to the old country, and a HooRaw for the new Republic. If the weather is nice, we just might make Havana our winter White House. In case the Election is favorable, however, and we all hope it will be, we’ll put all these ideas down the silo, and cap it until we face another bleak “End Times.”

Doomsday Machine May End Earth as We Know it With All of Us Spinning in a Black Hole, Forever

2008-09-10T21:40:00.004-05:00

If you are interested in sub-atomic particle theory, as I am, the news of the Hadron Collider starting its engine today is too much to pass by. Many news outlets are stoking the improbable (probable) fear that our planet will be sucked into a new Black Hole that could escape from the underground Collider. For background, please scroll down this blog to March 27, 2008 for background on philosophical perspectives on this ominous day, only hours before the anniversary of September 11, 2001.

Ten things I’d like to do before being evaporated into a black hole by the Big Hadron Collider
1. Cast an early vote for the Presidential race.
2. Ride the Amtrak coast to coast.
3. Hike through Hungary with a food critic.
4. Hike the modestly difficult trails in Zion National Park.
5. Swim around Manhattan Island sans stinging jellyfish.
6. Read another good book.
7. Write another great poem .
8. Orchestrate orgasms for everyone of appropriate age.
9. Refrain from grading any more papers.
10. Review Hebrew lessons.

Ten things we might all want to do before being evaporated into a black hole by the Big Hadron Collider
1. Review rules for early voting.
2. Start digging a “black hole” shelter.
3. Contact everyone we’ve ever known and tell them how wonderful it was to know them.
4. Explore possibilities of being launched into space on a commuter flight.
5. Review rules of geometry, and, if possible, sub-atomic particle theory.
6. Invite everyone over for a feast, even if it is dark out.
7. Stop by the science store, and buy a telescope of any power, for possible gazing.
8. Make plans to move into your bank vault, if #2 is not feasible.
9. Kiss Kiss Kiss everyone you possibly can.
10. If time permits, review the Tao de Ching.

Ten things I wish I had done before being evaporated into a black hole by the Big Hadron Collider
1. Walked down and walked back up The Grand Canyon more often.
2. Held my mother and father when they left this Earth for good.
3. Visited with the Dalai Lama about human suffering with a chai latte.
4. Came in last in the Beijing Olympic Triathlon.
5. Raced on a horse in the Il Palio Festival in Siena, Italy.
6. Helped more students to write more amazingly.
7. Been chummier with my siblings.
8. Loved my sweet heart more.
9. Invested in a local Greek restaurant.
10. Talked with Socrates more.

Ten things I wish we had not done before being evaporated into a black hole by the Big Hadron Collider

1. Not elected so many Republicans into office.
2. Learned how to speak with the larger insect, bird and animal world.
3. Not invented weapons of mass destruction.
4. Not discovered ways to murder each other.
5. Not abandoned Africa.
6. Not discovered oil.
7. Not invaded countries.
8. Became better listeners and diplomats.
9. Not let a country be controlled by influential lobbyists.
10. Learned how to save the polar ice shelves.

Waiter, There's a Head in My Soup!

2008-08-10T10:13:00.002-05:00

Waiter, there’s a head in my soup!

Do you faint in your soup bowl after donating blood? I usually do, in fact, I’ve been asked by one organization to never show up again, for I not only fainted on the cot while giving blood, but passed out later into the chicken soup. Physicians tend to call this phenom a vaso vagal syndrome or an even more syncopated term, a vaso vagal syncope.

A few days ago I had a real major syncope as I was minding my own business lying peacefully in a state of post spinal and general anesthesia as 70% of my pesky prostate had just been removed, when out of nowhere, really, nowhere, my heart beat and blood pressure starting dropping precipitously into never never land, and the nurses had to call in a quick response team. Of course I was all clammy, with my eyes rolling around in the back of my head, but other than that I was pretty peaceful. Everyone around me was not. Lots and lots of white coats. I was pulled back to this earth by an injection of atropine, and with that I resumed a “normal” heartbeat of about 44 beats. “What happened?” I asked. Dumb question. It’s a question I’ve been wondering about lately, for I’ve been fainting near pools of blood most of my life.

In high school I tried organizing a blood drive for my dad’s church or perhaps for a school event. Everything was going fine, at least in my distant memory of the early 1960’s, but I do remember landing in the soup bowl and being fished out by very kind blood donors. Years later, standing in line for a blood donation at college, I could hear the simple questions being asked of every student donor, and one question caught my ear, “have you ever fainted?” Of course I had had only one incident, but by the time I was seated for the “interview,” and the question asked, I bravely but oddly said no, then landed on the floor. I was not asked to return. My short life as a donor had a terrible track record. I pretty much gave up the idea, until a synagogue was sponsoring a blood drive, and surely an incident (really two) as a youth could not linger all the way into mid adult life, so I bravely volunteered, and wasn’t asked if I ever fainted. While on the bed giving blood, I left earth again. After being called back, what could be more refreshing than some hot chicken soup? Waiter, there’s a head in my soup!

Years ago, while exploring the writing life in Bowling Green, Ohio, I had a tooth extracted. The shock of losing an important body part was quite stressful, so I closed the door of our bedroom and just tried to accept the bloody hole in my mouth. I was quite good in the dentist’s office, with all of the right sedatives to dull the pain. My wonderful wife suggested as a pick me up, let’s go out for dinner. These were the pre-tofu days, when we were still licking our lips over baby back ribs. It was a wonderful evening, and the entire restaurant was doing great business on a Friday night. My wife decided to freshen up in the ladies’ room, and when she returned, our entire table had been cleaned of all unfinished dishes and drinks, as I had, Oh No, landed face down in the baby backs. Obviously, I was the town drunk, so management cleaned up the table, and me, and had propped me up against a bench near the exit door. The waitress was all smiles, and said our table had been “taken care of.” My wife didn’t quite know what had happened, but realized I had once again, aimed for the chicken soup, this time, a slower reaction to the surgical procedure of the afternoon.

So it’s like this, pretty much all my life, yet whenever it happens, I hardly know what’s going on, but others are certainly responding around the maelstrom. I’ve had other moments. I still recall getting an inoculation in a doctor’s office in Milwaukee years, even decades ago, and after the injection, the doctor left and said I could wait a few moments if I wanted to. He left, and later nurses found me on the floor, looking for soup I guess. They propped me up, and then left the room knowing I was okay; a few minutes later, they found me slumped all the way over in my chair. This happened years before the synagogue blood bank night. I admit I do get a little light headed when checking out the sales on the lowest shelf, and sometimes coming out of long yoga positions with my head way below my heart, if I come up to fast, well, I just look for a close wall.

But last Wednesday night I’ll admit was a doozy. But probably not any more of a scare for the hospital than when I went in, years ago, for a simple colonoscopy. After what I thought was a perfectly safe “black out” sleep, I was awakened by the attending physician who said, “We thought we lost you!” I calmly remarked “where did I go?” The procedure hadn’t even started, as I was given a good dose of Demerol. Now I wear a necklace with the good words, “no Demerol.” I had crashed so to speak, but in medical terms, I “experienced” an a systole. Flat liner. I’m not sure how long I was flat lined, but I still have some consciousness, so it couldn’t have been too long, right? Reaction to Demerol, right? But the attending doc might want to consider the old vaso vagal syndrome. The next time I went in for the same test five years later, the same doc said we’re going to do something different today. I actually got a little medicine that increased my heart rate, so I wouldn’t “drop” again into no no land. Things went swimmingly that time.

So, after my prostate was adjusted accordingly with a 70% reduction, I assumed we were all on green lights, but without anyone advising me otherwise, I did go all clammy, I did start flapping my arms, I did roll a few eyes, and then another black out, without soup. If this syndrome of mine should continue, I have been offered a tip-top table to experiment on, where the cardiologist places me on a surfing board completely horizontal, then vertical, then horizontal. Cool, kind of like the Gravitron ride at the circus where the drum is spinning so fast, the floor drops out from everyone’s feet. Then the skin sort of does the Mach 1 thing of flapping in the wind. Very cool. I might have to try it if this syndrome persists, but usually this occurs when I notice blood pools coagulating.

P.S. The pee is flowing like never before, at least in recent memory. The BPH or benign prostatic hyperplasia is pretty much gone. The surgical procedure, TURP or Transurethral (yep, that’s up the penis) Resection (yes, a creative word for removing organ matter) of the Prostate went very well. I didn’t stay awake to consult on this one. Before, the “stream” was like a garden hose after the water was turned off. Now, the stream is something like a red fire hose, and it feels like it, too. Strange how one can laugh while doing something so human.

Okay, enough of this. Next time will be visiting on something much more civilized.

Stinging Jellyfish Attack New York City Triathletes

2008-07-27T20:25:00.001-05:00

Stinging Jellyfish Attack New York City Triathletes

Though it reads like a seedy headline from the National Enquirer, this time, the truth was floating and bobbing in the warm waters of the Hudson River on July 20 for the annual New York City “Olympic Distance” Triathlon. This year I arrived much earlier for the swim start, and was much less panicked due to the efforts of my niece who also raced on Sunday. Looking out onto the river, men in my group leaned over the edge and noticed the bobbing pink-red lion’s mane jellyfish, and said with great confidence, one of the wise swimmers said, “Oh those guys, they won’t sting. You believe me right?”

I wanted to. I really wanted to, as I still have some residual trauma from a man-o-war sting operation off the coast of Miami when I was a kid. The pain was so intense, so shocking, that I was sure I’d been chunked in two by a shark. But the overconfident triathlete was wrong this time. They did sting. And they stung hundreds of the swimmers, but luckily, I did not irritate any of the jellyfish, and had actually forgotten them as I was trying hard to keep up with my own swim strokes as well as swinging arms and legs to my right, my left, my rear, my feet, and way too close for proper lane etiquette. The early swimmers (I started at 5:59 a.m.) had a stronger current, so I recorded a WR of 23:57 though in the pool where I train, the same swim sans jellyfish would have taken 45 minutes minimum.

Unfortunately, one triathlete, from Buenos Aires, was pulled unconscious from the Hudson. An initial autopsy was inconclusive, but many of the triathletes wondered if he was stung multiple times, or had an allergic reaction, or simply was overheated in his wet suit waiting for his start time. I’d never heard of deaths in triathlons, but of course they occur in longer leg races, with one dying earlier in the year in the New York City marathon trials for the Olympics. Surprisingly, five others have died in triathlons this year, all in the water. Oddly, I did not know any of this was happening until I was visiting with my step-nephew who was also in the race.

The transition area (one of two) had about 1500 look alike bikes, so we had to practice what our area would look like when gasping for air with half a wet suit clinging to the bottom half. In Transition One, the trick is to get the wet suit off, the helmet on, the shoes on with or without socks, and run with bike until a nice volunteer says you can mount for the ride. Try doing that when you are out of breath. Races are often lost in the transition area, and of course, I was a bit slow, but once out on the West End Highway, I started to remember the climbs and descents (nothing like the Tour de France, of course, but a climb for an old guy is still a climb). My niece and I concluded that the Department of Transportation had actually altered the terrain since last year, and even the year before as it was much hillier than either of us remembered. But I sense the road was just the same, our memory just a bit poorer as we are placed into older and older age groups. This year, I wasn’t as terrified descending one of the long climbs at 35 mph, but I still wondered about what I would do if I hit an unidentified object and began to sail away from my bike. But that didn’t happen, so we both pushed as hard as we could through the route, and finally came back to our transition area (again!) to dismount, and get ready for the run to Central Park.

This was the most grueling part of the race, as who wants to run their best time after a long swim and an even longer bike ride, but the stakes were high, as I was trying just to match my time from last year, or improve by a second or two. Just as with the bike ride, the route seemed longer than last year, but I sense it was just fatigue and exhaustion setting in, and of course, the temperature was in the mid 80’s for most of the triathletes. A far too cheery volunteer greeted us at mile 3 and said this was “his hill” and it felt much more of a demanding grade than last year, but I knew that if I could get to the north end of Central Park, then most of the remaining kilometers would be a descent, but that also was a fuzzy memory. Someone passed by me (actually hundreds passed by me on their way to the finish), a young woman who saw my Wisconsin triathlete outfit, and said she was from Wauwatosa, a suburb of Milwaukee. How often does that happen?

But the person that kept me on pace faster than maybe last year was actually my niece who started about 15 minutes after my start, and our agreed upon signal was hearing “Hey Uncle De I’m right behind you.” Then we would sprint into the finish line together as champions. So when the flags started appearing, and the well wishers’ whoops got louder and louder, and I heard no “Uncle De…,” I decided I had about 2 minutes of sprint air left, so I picked up my pace from a fast jog and decided to try and pass a few ahead of me. What a thrill that was, as I was usually the person who heard “passing on your right” most of the route. It’s quite amazing what a race like this can do. I ran across the finish line a little better than last year, and was greeted with a medallion (everybody gets one), an icy cold towel, and a commemorative ball cap and the best cold bottle of iced water I’ve ever tasted. What a great way to see 31.93 miles of New York City in three hours, thirteen minutes and 50 seconds!?

Repeat Dreams of Olympic Triathlon

2008-07-07T12:54:00.001-05:00

REPEAT DREAMS OF OLYMPIC TRIATHLON

What’s the point of climbing the mountain if you already have before? If you swam the English Channel, why risk becoming fish bait again? Is doing something “over” like repeating Freshman English? This morning I was out on my two wheeler spinning up and down Lake Drive off the shores of Lake Michigan in Milwaukee. A stunning sunrise. Not too many automobile drivers to face down at 5:30 a.m. Even the local coffee shop near the yacht club was closed as it was just too early for any human activity. But the air was quite humid, as storm clouds were brewing above, so I wanted to get in three long loops up and down the Drive to get in about 40K of cycling, the distance for the upcoming New York Nautica “Olympic” Triathlon on July 20.

I’m not exactly sprinting up the hills with my low gear, but I am making some tiny improvements. The old swimming hole for open water practice has some dangerous blue green algae, which in one report, is even dangerous to touch, as many of the local lakes and rivers have been infused with all sorts of dangerous runoff by-products due to the abundance of Biblical rains last month. So I continue to go back and forth in the indoor pool, pretending I am swimming down current in the Hudson in a few weeks. Actually I can visualize the meter markers: 1500, 1200, 900, something like that. Last night I just had to get into my wetsuit to see if I could remember the technique for getting it on, and of course, getting it off in less than a minute. The “off” exercise of getting the wetsuit off is quite demanding, especially if you try doing it standing up. That’s the sign of a “seasoned” triathlete. New triathletes often fall down trying to get all that rubber off in order to get to the next stage.

I do miss Pewaukee Lake, as creepy as the weeds were last year. There’s something euphoric about swimming, or attempting to swim, in open water. No buoys, no pushoff at either end, no concrete bottom; no, instead, weeds sucking you down, the markers for a turn are too far to see without binoculars, and the real problem is drifting away from the turn buoys, as there are no “lane” buoys to help you go straight down and back. But I do appreciate the level of fear when I am far out, way out, and the faster swimmers passed by 10 minutes ago. So perhaps in not risking death to the blue green algae, and e-coli, I may be in for a bigger shock than last year when I dipped into the Hudson for the first time in my life. I knew Cosmo Kramer in one episode of “Seinfeld” had attempted a swim, but I am having trouble finding the particular episode to draw upon any of his swim stroke tips.

The fast jogging has been slowly improving. What’s helped is to make the gym treadmill my friend, as well as a track field in west Milwaukee where I find encouragement from younger, speedier, thinner triathletes who think nothing of 8 800s. So it’s all coming together, whether or not I am ready for the Nautica Redux. The run through Central Park last year was quite exhilarating, but to have to swim .9 mile in questionable waters, and bike up the West End Highway in low gear, only to turn around and race down it in terrifying speeds, is really too much for older people. Who knows, it could be the hottest day in New York City. Most of all I hope I have the good sense to “PICK UP THE CHIP” (timing device) before I join my age group holding onto the rope that keeps us all from drifting.

I must have fallen during one of the training sessions, for now I am starting to wonder about an even longer distance, the so called 70.3 or “half Iron.” That would be 70.3 miles to travel, with a longer swim, more hours on a bike seat, and then a twice as long jog/run as now. Hey, I’m even thinking about trying a half Marathon this August. I probably will need to be certified soon, but for now, I’m either “in training” or resting from training. I am hoping, but not expecting, to break last year’s time by at least a second, maybe two. We’ll see. I need a nap now.

More Suffering On Its Way

2008-06-09T09:38:00.002-05:00

More Suffering on Its Way

Many of you are enjoying the sunny days of June, planning a picnic, going for a swim perhaps in a favorite lake; others might be contemplating a lunch outside, or maybe even attending to the weeds circling your tomatoes. Others will be standing in line for job fairs. Some will be sorting through the remains of their home, if they can even find what once was their home. Others are still floating in rivers and bays, not yet quite buoyant to pop up and be spotted, or nibbled on by finny creatures. Sooner or later, we’re all in tears, wondering why this has happened to us.

In the new issue of The New Yorker, (June 9-16, 2008) James Wood wonders about it as well, or we could say, on your behalf, as he reviews a number of new books which update the constantly befuddling conundrum of suffering. If you have made it this far in the blog, I would urge you to read the article, “Holiday in Hellmouth,” either in the print edition, or in the on-line edition before reading any further.

Now that you have at least glanced at the essay, I do wonder if good people would ever stop lamenting our sorry situations when we are down and out, groveling in our religious pity over terribly troubling life experiences that take us to the very depths of who we are as creatures of this earth. As you know by now, the book review/reflective essay is beautifully written to invoke our own miserable lives when something breaks down and reminds us of something more powerful has caused this to happen, or at least we might want to think so.

Suffering is something we can all relate to, right, for who doesn’t have a little empathy or pity for someone or some country or even a few whales who have gotten themselves onto a beached predicament. We all have feelings, right? Some of us express them better than others, right? Some respond impulsively with a check to alleviate the pain. Others talk about it at the water cooler, if there even is a water cooler anymore. Others just shake their head, somewhat relieved what has happened has not yet happened to themselves, a reminder that we are all close to what Job has already experienced eons ago.

But for all the Jewish and Christian references Mr. Wood reminds us of as he reviews several new books on our oldest theme, I do wonder why he has not balanced the essay with any Eastern traditions such as Buddhism which has something quite powerful to say about suffering. Heaven, or the idea of Heaven, writes Mr. Wood, is the concept that seems to “right” all the wrongs that have blemished this earthly life. And linked to Heaven, of course, is the Messiah, or the Awaited Messiah. In other words, it’s been bad, but in the next life, all our troubles will somehow vanish, that is, unless we’ve been tried and sentenced in the Heavenly Court for crimes that created someone else’s suffering.

But the Buddhists do have something that balances all of this, which Mr. Wood has strangely left out of his absorbing essay. Life is suffering, the Buddha would say. But when bad things do happen to Buddhists, no one cries out why did a Greater Force cause or allow this to happen? Life simply includes moments, perhaps even years, where things do go badly, but we can alleviate this suffering by becoming a little less absorbed in or own ego, and assisting others who are in pain and who are suffering. But there’s no Messiah, or God, or Heaven as a reward for this action, for there is simply the loving act of assisting others that lessens the burden of suffering. For both Buddhists and Hindus, the cycle of samsara, of life, death, and rebirth, in some way provides an answer to this suffering.

As much as I enjoy the films starring Sharon Stone, I do wonder why she so naively blamed the earthquake in China on China’s “Tibetan” problem. She blamed this tectonic motion in the Sichuan Province on bad karma. A few days later she apologized when she realized her foolishness about Chinese karma. I wonder what brought Sharon Stone to this enlightenment on Eastern thought. Was she, like many of us, empathetic to the cause of Tibetans? Probably so. Was it a response to their suffering? Probably so. Did the scheduled gay pride parade in New Orleans actually cause Hurricane Katrina, as Pastor John Hagee argued from his pulpit? Probably not.

The frustrating experience of reading this wonderful essay in The New Yorker is that if feels like it could go on for another hour or so, or a few more days at least. Suffering may be our biggest mystery, especially if on our picnics, or swims, or weeding our gardens, we step into the even more mystifying abyss of why are we here. Perhaps we can address that next time when I will propose that we read a terrific little Roman classic by that ever happy writer, Epictetus.

Pondering Space

2008-06-03T09:28:00.000-05:00

Pondering Space

As some of us will draw up hankies, or noise horns, or anything that will draw attention to the final end of the longest primary in American history, may I remind you that space may not be what you thought it was, at least from your college science perspective. I know, some of you are still reeling from the pain of losing Pluto to sub-planetary status, but try to get over it, as we have much much more work to do in understanding all the new space around Pluto, and beyond Pluto, space that we forgot to include back in our science class. Now scientists are telling us we should be watchful, not of who’s going to be on the Platform as the presumptive candidate of either Party, but of a new dark force, aka “dark energy,” as described by a science news writer, Dennis Oberbye, in the June 3, 2008 edition of the New York Times.

From one simple perspective, we may have to invent a new metaphor of Newton’s falling apple to be able to appreciate what has always been going on in deep space, but we’ve never been able to talk about it before, as we did not have the technology to measure what was “out there.” Now with the aid of a supercollider (see “Chasing God on the French/Swiss Border Mar 27,2008 blog) scientists will be able to hypothesize that perhaps all of our theories about the universe may be too SMALL.

According to the science article, “Dark, Perhaps Forever,” we could be tapping more than $600 million to search for this “dark energy.” And more than a few scientists think this may not be enough. But even more problematic is the idea of our concept of the universe, that we are actually in the one and only universe. We may not be in the one and only, in fact, it’s looking more like one in a zillion, as reported in the Times. And that takes us to the “meaning” question, doesn’t it, as we all want to know that we actually have some relevance in this big old neighborhood.

But according to one interviewed scientist, Dr. Edward Witten, in light of this new dark force, we may have to reconstruct what’s in our heads about what’s out there: “Before the discovery of the dark energy, quantum physicists tended to assume that the ‘vacuum’ we live in has some deep meaning that reflects nature’s deepest secrets….But if ours is only one of a zillion in a haystack, there is nothing special about it, no secret to be found.” Those remarks reflect for many of us, as long as there is a universe “out there,” or “in us,” surely we must have some meaning, but if the universe is only one of so many that we can’t count, does our “meaning factor” still hold up as defined by our religious texts, keeping in mind some of the religious texts don’t even bother to bring it up!

If everything works out, and the deep space budget can keep expanding exponentially, then sometime mid next decade, scientists will launch “J-dem,” (aka Joint Dark Energy Mission, as reported in the Times article). Perhaps then we’ll have a better fix on just how deep is deep space, but then, scientists are not completely sure they’ll have all the definitive answers. Some of you may be deeply disappointed to have invested so much in something so big, but like we’ve been doing ever since we put together the first machine, we keep trying to define ourselves by objects made by ourselves.

I don’t know about you, but I’m staying up for this one, as it’s almost too exciting to fall asleep over. In the meantime, if you are still looking for meaning, you can watch tonight’s finale of the Democratic Primary contest, or at least the possible end of the finale, or maybe the idea of the possible end, depending on political “dark energy.” Everything keeps changing, right?

Addendum on Race Talk Blog

2008-05-29T13:35:00.001-05:00

Here's a recent op-ed on a need for a national dialog on race. Thought you might want to at least know about this upcoming conference.
Blogmeister, DeWitt Clinton

By William S. Cohen and Janet Langhart Cohen
Special to CNN

Editor's Note: William Cohen is a former Republican senator and defense secretary in the Clinton administration. His wife, Janet Langhart Cohen, is a former TV journalist, model and author. They are the co-authors of "Love In Black and White," a memoir about race, religion and their experiences as an interracial couple.

William Cohen and Janet Langhart Cohen say that U.S. racial prejudice is still too divisive to be history.

(CNN) -- In 1835, Alexis DeTocqueville, in his seminal work, "Democracy in America," prophesied that the abolition of slavery would not eliminate racial prejudice, which he declared was "immovable."

Sen. Barack Obama, in running for the presidency of the United States, is challenging DeTocqueville's bleak assessment of the human heart. It remains unclear whether the Illinois senator is on a hopeless mission, or whether the American people will decide to make history by breaking with it.

Any discussion of race or racism inevitably stirs uncomfortable reactions. America is, indeed, a nation of immigrants. Most of our ancestors came here in search of a better life. Africans, however, arrived here in chains to make a better life for others. Yet to date, we have been unable to discuss the horrors of the enslavement, lynchings, segregation and degradation of African-Americans without prompting resentment or indifference.

"That's all in the past," is a common retort. "We had nothing to do with it. It's history. Get over it." The problem, however, as the results in a number of the primary states reveal, is that racial prejudice is not history, and neither whites nor blacks are over it.

While Obama has moved the subject of prejudice out from the shadows, more than his exotic name, origin and religious affiliation are at issue. When Colin Powell, one of America's most accomplished military leaders and diplomats, contemplated running for the presidency in 2000, his family feared for his safety. Also, during that same year, when Sen. John McCain ran for our highest office, he was the victim of a vile, racist smear in South Carolina.

There are deep grievances held by black Americans over their past and present treatment by the white majority and equally profound resentments held by many whites over what they see as preferential treatment for the black community. Unfortunately, a discussion of the racial divide in our country is too often reduced to sound bites or shouting matches. Moreover, the preachings and exhortations of several prominent religious leaders, rather than nurturing and appealing to our spiritual needs, have instead served to inflame passions and reinforce old falsehoods and antagonisms.

We are convinced that what is needed in America is a serious, open, civil dialogue on racial, ethnic and religious prejudice. To this end, in July, we are convening a conference in Washington on race and reconciliation with political, spiritual and business leaders. Our goal: to further a national conversation about the need for truth, tolerance and reconciliation.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writers.

Race Talk

2008-05-23T12:52:00.000-05:00

Race Talk
Haven’t you had it with the “race” question? Perhaps you’re still fuming over the “female gender bias” question, both of which have turned the Democratic Presidential nomination process into a shooting gallery. I’m no expert on either, as many of you know, but I do work with men and women as university colleagues in a town called Whitewater, of all places, and I have also taught, at several universities, students of both sexes and of many nationalities and races for, well, let’s see, since stepping off a plane from Vietnam in 1970. But the issue of race has simply made me crazy enough to shout, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” The character Howard Beale (Peter Finch) was mad about something else in “Network,” but I really am screaming as I write this to you all.

“Race” in my humble opinion, is now bogus, for it no longer has any meaning, in any context, and I am certain it has always been used to demean and invoke fear in one or the other, depending on who has had the larger stick. I am sick of the political, childish methods that many Americans have about their “fear of the other,” for it’s not always fear of the (insert color) man. I do admit I’ve lived behind the veil of whiteness all my life, but perhaps it is my experience as an educator that allows me to see that all students are not only equal, but that no student in my mind deserves more or less attention simply because of skin pigmentation.

When I recently heard West Virginians (over NPR evening news) describe their opinions about the candidate Barak Obama, my first reaction was what has made white West Virginians so fearful of a qualified nominee? I admit, also, I did find it hard to simply understand Appalachian dialect in reference to the Democrat from Illinois, (“Whites look out for Whites, Blacks look out for Blacks”). Hearing that, I sensed not just disgust, not just intolerance, but a sincere and deep hatred for someone who aspires to lead our nation in the post Bush era.

Has any discussion over differences ever been clarified through the myopic lens of race? Has it ever settled any misunderstanding? Has race ever clarified a position between groups that disagree? Has color of one person ever adequately defined a person’s human qualities? Has distinguishing race as the only factor in an argument ever made both parties equal in stature? Has the word “race” ever lifted one up in admiration and esteem? Perhaps it is possible that we are all racists when we are confronted with our own terrible fears of the “other,” but how much of that is something we’ve learned from our own culture, from our own parents, or even from our own true blue friends?

I also admit (I admit I’m doing a lot of admitting here, but bear with me, subscribers) to Democratic Party principles, and would easily be placed far left of center on any political position, but I just have to say, Let’s start a debate not about whether race is a factor but whether or not race has nearly always denigrated meaningful relations between human beings.

I see remnants of European Colonialism and its racial superiority, and even see the 19th and early 20th Century pseudo science of Eugenics as a factor woven into our national discussion in this primary season. The discussion has made politicians, and those wanting to vote for politicians, and those commenting about politicians and the electorate, as nothing more than an ugly bear baiting screened-in event where we pay other people to humor us with disgusting epithets and slurs.

So even though our forum here is small, I wonder if we can consider whether talking about race in any context would ever make us more thoughtful, engaging citizens. Call us Canadians, Bolivians, Afghanis, Greeks, Egyptians, Kenyans, Belgians, or even Americans, but from this moment on, I urge you, as “Roseanne Roseannadana” might if she were still on “Saturday Night Live,” to talk amongst yourselves and see if you can find a purpose in defining a person, candidate or not, through the lens of race. Though sociologists have probably already discounted the merits of race as a determining factor in ethnicity, I hope that someday soon (and it needs to be soon) we can have candidates (and applicants, and all the rest of aspiring individuals) who will be seen for what they can offer an electorate, and not on how they will or will not carry the white or the black or the brown vote.

I am always reminded of the sincere and heartfelt remark of the Dalai Lama: “Treat everyone as a friend.” That requires almost too much of us, but it certainly is a concept to try to wrap around our view of not seeing each other as one race or another.

Comments? Reply To All, if you wish.

Chasing God on the French/Swiss Border

2008-03-27T12:35:00.000-05:00

CHASING GOD ON THE FRENCH/SWISS BORDER

What are you doing this summer? Some have made plans for wandering through Natural History in New York City. Some will see relatives. Some hope to find a beach, even if it is still cold. Most of us will mow lawns, or sit on lawns, or pull weeds from lawns. But what are our particle physicists going to be doing in an underground reactor facility beneath farm yards and mooing cows on the French/Swiss border? Remarkably, miraculously, they will be searching for the last argument in the Big Bang Theory, the “God Particle,” for those of you not in the particle physics/string theory business. Though no priests, rabbis, clerics, imams pastors or gurus have been invited to even witness the event, in case a miracle does happen, what is most exciting about the study is the possibility of knowing, finally, What put the bang in the Bang?

What we’re all crossing our fingers for is the hope for finding what is known as the “Higgs boson,” or for those who have jobs in fields unrelated to particle physics, this is the key, or “missing link” to Aristotle’s notion of The First Cause or The Unmoved Mover. Let’s review, quickly. There’s you, then there’s your wonderful parents, then we have your grandparents….see where this is going? Let’s go all the way back. Back further than anyone can really imagine. Yes, that far back. So perhaps there was something that caused something that caused something to be formed, yes? Okay, what caused that? That I believe, as a non-particle physicist, has frustrated scientists for eons. For the non-particle thinkers, this is a no brainer. Why not say….God?

Okay, this is where it gets a bit more complicated? Isn’t it obvious the place we’re at, or in, or on, is such a lovely place, despite the trash not being picked up on Thursdays, that surely we should come to our senses (our Bicameral minds, to quote a psychologist, Julian Jaynes, who wrote on the evolution of the consciousness, 1976) and realize something Intelligent made Everything. But according to Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg, quoted in a recent interview with Newsweek, “the more we learn about the universe, the less sign we see of an intelligent designer.”

Here we have to go to religious texts, to clarify one point. All religious texts remind the faithful that God was the Agent behind the Cosmos. Okay, but who wrote the texts? Here I am always reminded of Tip O’Neill, former Speaker of the House, who commented that “all politics are local.” If you believe that, then perhaps we can spin his remarks to include, all “texts” are political. In other words, anything written has a purpose, an agenda, perhaps with the exception of assigned English papers. Even the beloved Rambam (Rabbi Moses b. Maimon, or Maimonides, 1135-1204 C.E.) questioned if YHVH was the creator of the Universe, which contradicted everything that Aristotle and every Jew wants to believe about the Creator. The Rambam simply mused that we’ll never know. So, we’re back to the people’s views. Literate people. Essentially, those who have special vision, either mystical or holy, who “know” how the Universe came about. Well, that’s what our summer scientists are hoping to find out. But what if they find not the “God Particle” but the “Not-God Particle”? Will we lose our sense of Purpose?

Here’s where it gets tough. If you already believe that A) the world is made by a Maker, and that Maker, in many different names and religions, is God, and B) that God gives purpose to life, then no matter what our particle physicists find this summer, it won’t matter, because we’re hard headed people, and we don’t like change. Besides, that would be a very threatening proposal, of which few if any Real human beings would really believe our underground scientists. But…are you still with me…? But, what about the greater percentage of living and non living forms in the Cosmos that don’t perceive their purpose? Would these “elements” feel devastated? Perhaps not, as H.S., or homo sapiens, deemed it necessary to claim Authority not only above Everything, but also claimed a text which proved it. There you have it. Thanks again to Julian Jaynes who helped us, even if his theory is questionable, to imagine when ancients began to think for themselves, instead of relying on the signs of a god in his Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

So, if you’re still with me, how many will vote for finding the Higgs boson? Here are a few more important questions. How much will this cost? How many bottles of French wine and how many wheels of brie cheese will be consumed when the flying protons are at rest in the Large Hadron Collider? Will the French government really protest the summer Games in Beijing? Will Switzerland’s right wing party banish Middle Eastern minorities out of their country? Who knows what will happen? Let’s wish our particle fellows God speed.

Boomers, Do You Know Where Your Car Keys Are?

2008-03-20T12:26:00.000-05:00

Boomers, Do You Know Where Your Car Keys Are?

The bad news is out. Depending on who has demented genes, a lot of us are going to leave this world as idiots?

A new study targets a whopping 18% of us who are going to end up babbling away our end days as our brains turn into fried brains, a delicacy I can vaguely remember my mother serving up to us kids back in the mid 20th Century.

By one study, the Alzheimer’s counters predict10 million of us are headed off to baby-land.

Frankly, I am opposed to these statistics. The most recent research predicts that one in eight of us poor boomers are destined for dementia, the Mother of all Miseries. Five million of us are already babbling. By 2030, we’ll be up to 8 Mill. By 2050 we’ll have about 11-16 million babblers needing help with digestion and elimination. Not good, everybody, not good.

So it really isn’t about losing keys, is it? After all, we just forgot where they are. That doesn’t mean our brain is mush, or does it? Instead, we should be asking who is our President. When my mother was asked, she replied, “What a silly question.” When asked what day it was, she replied, “Don’t you know?” Mother was good with her crafty questioner. I’m sure the oblique answers reminder her of her 7th graders who also didn’t know the answers, but came up with smart replies. One recent student of mine, when asked a Socratic question, replied, “Sorry, I was zoning out. What was it you asked?” Okay, then, that’s it. Alzheimer’s could be a cover for simply poorly phrased questions.

For the record, I am completely opposed to ever being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Those most likely to be diagnosed are those who have two parents who never knew what hit them. That would include me as both my parents had some kind of dementia. So let’s not take this lying down in our bedpans! People, we have to go on strike. We have to write to Congress. Any district will do, as the disease does not favor red or blue states, or labor, or farming, or industry. Let’s take to the streets, People. All of us need to march to our local pharmacy and demand a genetic recoding kit. Go ahead, say it, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” We have to work together, insisting that we keep our memories, even if we want to forget a few of them.

Yet if it does seem inevitable that a meteor will land in our brains, then I’ll settle for a compromise. How does this sound…a postponement, a lengthy delay, a “I almost forget about infecting you with the plague” condition? Here’s what I will agree to, possibly with amendments: I will agree to “onset” no earlier than five minutes before my “end times.” I would prefer to receive the seven awful years of existence while I am already in a coma. That’s reasonable? Numbers always tell the truth, don’t they? We can’t fight the numbers can we? Here’s a plan, concocted in the last three minutes, for making this work, even if you have awful genes:

1. Start talking about oatmeal with your significant others. The therapy will be meaningful, and besides, you can also make cookies from the little flakes.
2. Read a book, a challenging book, a book about something you know nothing about, a book that might open your mind to something you know nothing about.
3. Take in a play, even a silly one. Doesn’t have to be Shakespeare.
4. Start playing with numbers. Try it with cards, or with puzzles.
5. Memorize all the queens and kings of England, beginning with (let’s make it easy)Elizabeth I (1558-1603).
6. Hit a ball, or ride a bike, or move the legs on a track, or path. Start swimming!
7. Listen to “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” for a week. Bet you can’t stop after a week.
8. Try holding Salamba Sirsasana (head stand) for 2 minutes.
9. Okay, why don’t you add some suggestions…?

I’m going home now, as I am so distraught about this. But where did I park my car?

Vatican Announces Jews Can be 'Enlightened'

2008-02-08T12:44:00.000-06:00

Vatican announces Jews can be ‘enlightened’

{Subscribers: Warning, the following includes provocative religious commentary}

I am quite dumbstruck by Pope Benedict XVI who announced recently that God would be asked to “enlighten (Jews’) hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men.” According to the 2/7/07 USA Today’s edition, if the Good Friday prayer is answered, “all Israel may be saved.” For reference, blog readers may wish to access the original news item by searching for “Good Friday prayer revisions spark debate.”

The word “enlighten” is an improvement from the Vatican for the word “faithless,” sometimes translated in various Catholic prayer books as “perfidious” or “treacherous.” Much of this change has to do with the Pope’s unraveling of Vatican II doctrines, which may seem to the faithful as too liberal a view of Christian-Jewish inner faith dialog. I had hoped by now the Vatican would have reviewed its long history of hatred and fear of the Jew, but I am afraid Pope Benedict is far too conservative a figure head to allow for such reasonable tolerance.

This prayer, of course, takes me back to a perspective of teaching about the Holocaust in my university classes. Students are surprised, even if they are Catholic, to learn how much poison has been used to degrade and humiliate, even to quarantine Jews from the Church’s faithful. Sooner or later, the argument always comes back to who crucified Christ. What caught my eye and ear last semester when I raised this history of the Church were a few young men, or boys, snickering on the back row. Since they had not snickered before about any topic, and did not sicker after the presentation, I had to wonder just what they were thinking. I wish I hadn’t been so tolerant of their whispers. Did they have the same lesson from their local priest? I suspect so.

On an interfaith (Catholic, Baptist and Jewish) journey/pilgrimage to eretz Israel, or for others, the Holy Land, I welcomed the opportunity with my rabbi friend and Catholic priest to join them for a Sunday service at one of the beautiful churches in Jerusalem. The fact that we were “shot at” with stick rifles by young boys in the birth village of Sirhan Sirhan was another story, perhaps another blog. What I still remember is the Phillipino priest who reminded the faithful of who, once again, murdered Christ. I bring this incident into my class when we review Catholic Church policies that, in part, shaped the Holocaust. But surely the word “enlighten” is a safe word, isn’t it?

It does assume Jews are unenlightened. What is it that Jews don’t know? Why does the Church insist, or even return to failed conversion policies? Do we need to be reminded of the Vatican’s history of kidnapping Jewish children and baptizing them in the name of the Lord? Do we need to review the history of Pope Pius XII and his much debated history of indifference to the plight of European Jews? It is well documented how many Jews he protected within the walls of the Vatican. What isn’t as clear is his outright and total rejection of the Jewish policies of the Third Reich. Is this where the word “enlighten” is taken to? What other context is there? Jews should have converted when given the opportunity in the last 20 centuries. They didn’t, or if they did, it may have been simply to save their lives.

A few months ago Pope Gregory took issue with Muslims in reciting an old text composed by a medieval Byzantine emperor residing in Constantinople. In that speech he quoted the emperor’s views on forced Muslim conversions, something he was probably concerned about as Constantinople was under threat as the old capitol of the crumbling Eastern Empire. The Pope might as well have signed one of the scandalous cartoons depicting Muhammad which enraged millions of pious Muslims. He has not exactly apologized for those remarks; rather, he clarified what he was intending to say, not what he meant to say, or how Muslims interpreted what he meant, or intended to say.

Why does the Church keep doing this? The Old Testament is not “old” to Jews. It is simply, and very clearly, The Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. Jews have no need to convert to Catholicism. Jews have no need to be enlightened about the Savior of the World. For Jews, that didn’t work. It still doesn’t. Why does an institution as stately as the Vatican keep repainting the story that Jews are the epitome of the Devil? (See Church history, Medieval Period).

When I learned today that I was going to be “enlightened” on Good Friday regarding what I should believe, and if I believed it along with all the other Jews alive, and in blessed memory, then all of the Holy Land would be saved. Is it only because of the heartfelt Rhapsody which would initiate the beginning of the End Times? Don’t we have enough work to do on the ground, without getting into Christology?
Though this short missive will not make it to the desk of the Pope, I do wish His Holiness would use some common sense, based on the terrible results of this campaign that has been diligently spent on Jews for two millennia. Jews do not need to be saved. They never have, nor will they ever be saved by the Vatican’s teaching. What will repair the damage is for the Church to not see as its main business the hysterical need to convert everyone on the globe who is not yet saved.

Pass the matzah, please.

Does the Universe Blah Blah Have Meaning?

2007-10-08T15:43:00.000-05:00

Does the Universe Blah Blah Have Meaning?

A colleague of mine died unexpectedly just a few days ago. I’ve been quite flummoxed by the sudden death, especially as she had just moved into the office next to mine. Her death conjures up old and still confusing memories of another colleague who took her life quite a few years ago, and her death was a shock as well. Life always has meaning, we’re conditioned to believe, because human beings say it is so, but in the Sunday Edition of the New York Times (Oct 7, 2007) I read a quite provocative and stimulating two page advertisement that featured 12 scholars and scientists who tried to answer the equally flummoxing question, “Does the Universe Have Purpose?” This is one of those Latin logical arguments, isn’t it? Somewhere in the perfectness of Greek logic, can’t we say, Life has meaning, therefore the Universe has meaning, therefore both were “meant” by something which brought meaning to somebody’s theological mind, right? Maybe not?

Of course life, and the universe has meaning if you have faith, if you want to believe that’s so, if you can’t face the vast meaningless, random events theory that a few scholars offer for faith believers to chew on, but by and large, everybody wants to believe that we have purpose, and so by extension, the Universe must have purpose too, for we are part of the Universe. You can see the logic, yes? You can even add a Creator in there, if you think it will help find meaning.

But so long as humans talk to other humans, humans will tend to say, of course the Universe has meaning. But then a few of the scholars in the advertisement
(www.templeton.org/purpose) offered some challenging perspectives that humans might not want to think about, at least in the context of meaning. Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist and the director of New York City’s Hayden Planetarium, wrote something that smelled a bit funky. After agreeing that religious minded people might want to believe that God has given them purpose, he goes on to write: “But if you’re one of the 100 billion bacteria living and working in a single centimeter of our lower intestine (rivaling by the way, the total number of humans who have ever been born) you would give an entirely different answer. You might instead say that the purpose of human life is to provide you with a dark, but idyllic, anaerobic habitat of fecal matter…” Go to the website for further olfactory details…

Now I’ll admit, as long as humans pontificate ad nauseum about meaning, well, the little bugs in the world (microscopic, and those we sometimes run in panic from) bring on a whole new “context.” What about their meaning? What about their existence? How do they fit into the purpose-thing? Who is their bug God? Don’t they have a say? Of course not, of course not, just the humans get to own “meaning” right?

I know, life is so beautiful, and often, so not, that surely it was “designed.” And, to muddy the waters even more , humans have written that it was so. There, that proves it. But aren’t those deliberations just a poor human’s desire to make meaning out of everything? I’m a bit leary and weary of the pastoral/religious responses I’ve heard over the years, but then I know that’s what they’re supposed to say. Nothing new there. But the human rationale, or argument, for purpose just doesn’t seem convincing, and by the way, I’m a pretty up-beat guy, so it’s not any nihilistic notion that I offer. But when ever I hear anyone espousing the truth about this, it nearly always turns anthropomorphic, and then, I wonder, who’s trying to persuade whom?

Socrates had it right, as he had no faith with the philosophers of the heavens. Instead, he questioned why humans believe what they believe. He often found adults who knew they were right, and then, he began to help those poor Greeks learn that what they knew was just the opinion of someone else. Perhaps that’s all we’ve got. And then there’s The Buddha’s remark, “ I don’t recall saying anything about the (Hindu) gods.” Well, we have much to wonder about, don’t we? Please read the 12 scientists/scholars reflections on line, unless you read the Sunday paper. It’s okay we ask the questions. It’s the insistent answers that bug me sometimes.

"Does the Universe Have a Purpose?"

2007-10-07T17:08:00.000-05:00

Does the Universe Have a Purpose?

The New York Times ran a special 2 page advertisement featuring the comments of 12 scientists and scholars answering the question, “Does the Universe Have a Purpose?”
The short answers can be found in the Week in Review section (Oct 7, 2007) issue of the Sunday New York Times. The slightly longer responses can be found at
www.templeton.org/purpose (not hotlinked, sorry)

These are fascinating and quite thoughtful replies, and soon I’d like to chip in and add a 13th comment, but for now, please try to find the special feature as I am sure you and your favorite conversationalist could have a hey-day with the questions, and replies. I’m tempted to use the site when I start introducing Socrates in a few weeks to students in a “World of Ideas” class.

What are You Reading/Why are You Reading?

2007-08-21T21:42:00.000-05:00

What are You Reading/Why are You Reading?

cnn.com just reported on America’s reading habits, an update from the 2002 National Endowment for the Arts report which offered a fairly bleak, perhaps just discouraging sign that more and more, fewer and fewer of us are reading, but then the question is,
What are we reading? Here’s the article in case you’d like to read it.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/08/21/reading.ap/index.html

But then I began wondering if I had made the quota for the year, as an older near retirement age, aging literature professor. So if you don’t mind, I’ll pass along a few titles that have been quite rewarding, some more so than others, some which disappointed, and some I couldn’t finish as I didn’t have to write a paper or review.
Hope you enjoy the list, and they are all recommendations. Lastly, I didn’t read these last week, but over the last year.

I’ll start with the last book read, a recommendation, and one I actually started to read a second time as I wanted to more clearly remember everything the author wrote.
Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept was quite an eye-opener, and made me realize how naïve I was about the effects of Muslim immigration, population surges and Scandinavia’s complacency with integration. I believe the paperback is coming out on Sept. 11.

While all sorts of books on Buddhism are available to the public, I started rereading one book that I found in our Honolulu hotel several years ago, The Teaching of Buddha, which would probably be found by writing to the publisher BDK Sudatta Hawaii, in Honolulu. This isn’t anything like Thich Nhat Hanh or The Dalai Lama’s books, for it has more of a scriptural feel to it. Highly Recommended for someone who has an interest in the less commercial texts on Buddhism.

By all means read John Updike’s Terrorist. I’m not sure if it will grip you like it did me, but I found that this is one of the recent books I just couldn’t put down. Don’t you hate that when a good book completely absorbs your life!

Just before the movie came out, I wanted to read Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. What a beautiful writer. I loved every page of it. As with all books made into films, this one is much more rewarding than the beautiful filmic “Namesake.” Her The Interpreter of Maladies was quite wonderful as well, but I found that I had earmarked my last page about half way through. I do enjoy short stories, and if you are looking for perhaps the best recommendation of a good story writer, please, go out and find Jhumpa Lahiri.

Did anyone read Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason? I hope so. The material he writes about is quite absorbing, and I assume that anyone, anyone interested in the health of our planet will find a few chapters worth staying up late for.

This summer I couldn’t get enough information on triathlons, but I did find the magazine
Triathlete to be a delightful fantasy of what I could become, if I trained every day, found a trainer, and of course, landed a corporate sponsor. I can pretend I am right behind everyone one of those speedy swimmers, cyclists or runners. HaHa. But the book that helped the most, perhaps in its small tips, was Michael Finch’s Triathlon Training. I’ll start rereading it again in the winter when I am about to start training for my second entry into the New York City Olympic Triathlon next July.

Just the other day, while browsing through one of Milwaukee’s bookstores, I opened the pages of The New York Review of Books. I had always assumed it was the stuffiest of stuffy book magazines, but I found several wonderful articles which I quickly read over
several cups of coffee. The issue had a fascinating article on Gunter Grass’s new memoir, which if you haven’t heard about it, is quite controversial, and I also appreciated the insights about the Islamic scholar, Tariq Ramadan. I’ll look for more issues.

In a different bookstore I found a small blue book which just seemed quite enticing. Has anyone every heard of the Polish poet, Tadeuz Rozewicz? His new poems were quite refreshing and yes, eclectic, and yes, about Polish life and culture, and yes, require a reader to be patient with references the American reader might need background on, but it is a delight to read European poets. This collection was translated from the Polish by Bill Johnson.

I did enjoy, and have enjoyed, and will continue to enjoy the Selected Poems of Fernando Pessoa & Co., translated by Richard Zenith. I found this 1998 text in a used bookstore, but really, everybody reading this, go out and find Fernando Pessoa. I would recommend reading and rereading every poem!

Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcon came highly recommended, and I gave it a good read but about halfway through, I decided I wanted to let it go, and find something that might hold my attention a little stronger. I am sure I can come back to it. Perhaps I put my expectations of the South American novel ahead of the novel, if that makes any sense.

Over Christmas Break, I read, breathlessly, just before seeing the movie (a must!!) PD James’ The Children of Men. Oh, what a story. I admit having never read a PD James novel, but this story is so extraordinarily compelling, even though that sounds a bit too praiseworthy for any novel. A must read.

Speaking of must read, please put your hands on anything by the Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk. I didn’t get all the way through his Istanbul, but I’ll admit the competition for my time were hundreds of undergraduate English essays which had to take priority.
So I read the compositions, and as a change, or reward, I read his lovely memoirs of growing up in Istanbul. But his Snow is probably one of the most engaging, thoughtful, beautifully designed novels I’ve read, well, in a long time. He’s the recent Nobel Prize winner in literature, and while that doesn’t always raise an eyebrow, I would recommend you find something by this amazing writer.

Do you like history? I just found the most intriguing publication, the BBC History Magazine. It is just a treat, a delight, not necessarily a hoot, for it is quite academic, but it is for the common arm chair historian, and if you want to read about anything British, well, try to find this colorful and charming magazine.

And lastly, but not in order, I’d recommend that you find Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Toleranceby Ian Buruma. This book, along with While Europe Slept will give you a good detailed picture of what’s happening politically and socially in Scandinavian Islamic countries.

Please don’t think I’ve read these day by day, month by month, for I haven’t. But when I saw the cnn.com article on what we Americans were reading, I couldn’t help but look back in awe and amazement for just a few of the wonderful titles out there that might capture your attention as they did mine.

3:16:45

2007-07-29T09:10:00.000-05:00

3:16:45

Okay, it was the hardest, longest and most physically challenging “effort” I’ve ever put myself through, with the exception of Army basic training in the summer of 1968, but now that it’s over, and my back isn’t killing me as much, I have to say I would do it again, and again and again, until only three guys are left standing in my age group at the start of the swim down the mighty Hudson. I predict that might be the 75+ year age group, but I’d like to stick it out, and try for that in about 14 more Nautica Olympic Triathlons. In July 2006, after finishing terribly in a sprint triathlon, I never would have imagined that a year later I would have completed such a longer race, even sprinting to the end in Central Park. But the challenge from my niece was just enough to say, why not, I’m only 60, a Clydesdale, in triathlon weight terms, and riding on a speedy 1970 Miriushi 12 speed, no wet suit, no running belt. What a year of training can do!

Here are the grueling details. First of all, I completely, totally, idiotically did not comprehend how long it would take to walk from the transition area (where we changed from one event to another) to not only the end of the swim, but to the beginning, nearly a mile upstream. As a result, I found myself running in bare feet through a crowd of sauntering Sunday athletes who were all going to swim long after my beginning time of 6:00 a.m. As a result, not only did I forget to get my timing chip, as that was the last thing I thought I needed, but I made it into the water, and into my wetsuit in RECORD TIME, hanging on to the start rope for dear life, with about 18 seconds before the starter gun. I dipped into the water just to prepare for the longest swim of my life, only to bob up and see that everyone had started.

If you’re wondering did the current help me swim in record time, I would admit yes, and yes, I did swim it faster than in a current less lake in Wisconsin, but I wouldn’t exactly call it swimming, more like a desperate attempt to sidestroke my way down past the hundreds of bobbing heads that were ahead of me, and soon to be behind me. At one point, I heard my niece yell tons of encouragement, but after the first 25 yards, I was pretty much a drifter. The lesson of the swim is that I do need lessons for open water swimming, I do need to learn bilateral breathing technique, and I do need to stop thinking that pool swimming is anything, anything, anything related to open water swimming. But the good news is that I didn’t drift out into the Atlantic, I didn’t swim from buoy to buoy, and I wasn’t pulled out of the water by the NYPD. So was it my fastest swim ever. Absolutely!

I must say it was a miraculous feeling to reach the end of the swim, and get a hand out of the water from one of the race volunteers. Then a long wet walk/jog to the transition area, slip out of the wetsuit as fast as possible, and into bike shoes and a helmet in record time. The greatest challenge of the 40K bike ride was not the long. very long hill climbs up the West End Highway in Manhattan and the Bronx, no, the tough part came right in the transition area with a sharp right turn and an immediate steep climb. I had practiced this monster twice the day before, so I was ready to take the hill, and by some miracle, I made it up with falling, or causing a major Tour de France crash up. The ride was good, long, even longer, with more hills than I had trained for, and oddly, I passed a few riders, and I even offered encouragement of “How ya doin mate?” which made me wonder where did my Irish brogue come from in the middle of terribly hard bike climbs, but regardless of my brain turning Irish on the West End Highway, I returned to the transition area in one piece, with no flats, no crashes, no blood. Back to transition area, and into running (jogging) shoes and on to Central Park. (At this point, I assumed all my times were being accurately reported when I crossed several rubber timing mats, even though my chip was still hanging on the chip board way back at the start of the swim.)

My training for Central Park took place primarily up and down Lake Shore Drive and
Lake Park on the eastside of Milwaukee, so I had a few hills to train on, and in the last few weeks, I kept hitting these hills more regularly, and perhaps some of it paid off, for while I didn’t walk the 10K portion, I didn’t exactly jog the portion either, but to be honest, without a chip, it’s hard to say what I was doing with my tired legs, but toward the end, say the last mile, I could feel the excitement of possibly finishing and started to pick up whatever pace I had, and finished with a stride longer than I had in training, gasping for air, looking a little startled that I was actually going to finish. When I saw the clock above the finish line, I began to grasp the significance of the whole event, and was inspired to even sprint hard to the very end, in a sea of tears, and then to my surprise, a cold wet towel, a beautiful medal, and then someone asked “where’s your chip?”

All in all, the most exciting, challenging race I’ve ever trained for, and yes, I’ll try it again. Next year, I’ll try to remember to pick up the chip before hitting the water.

For pictures, go to
www.nyctri.com
then search for the pictures link,
then type in Clinton under name,
or race number 191,
and see a few seconds of the race.

Olympic Dreams

2007-07-04T10:32:00.000-05:00

Olympic Dreams

Ha Ha! Not the Olympics, not the Olympics every 4 years, no. But yes, Olympic “distance.” That’s what I’ve been working on as I try to put a few finishing touches on training for an Olympic distance triathlon in mid July in New York City. Can you imagine swimming in the Hudson off Manhattan for 0.9 tenths of a mile? Or cycling 24 miles up Manhattan through the Bronx or jogging through Central Park for a 10K? Okay, now let’s put all that together, in sequence, back to back, right after the other. Oi Vay!
Nothing I’ve ever done tells me I could actually do this, until last summer when I nearly called it quits in a sprint distance triathlon and my first outdoor lake swim. I kept holding on the buoys, dogpaddling, drinking the Lake, but somehow, miraculously, I made it to the end, and felt the good earth beneath my feet again.

That day last summer was incredibly hot, in the 90’s, with a high heat index, and a monster hill to just start the 5K. After it was all over, and sitting on a bench recovering my lungs, and legs, I realized how crazy I had been in thinking that indoor and outdoor triathlons must be similar, somehow. But they are at best only distant cousins! That afternoon I called my niece in NYC to see how she did with her Olympic distance race. Somewhere in that conversation, knowing I had come in dead last in my age group, I asked Deborah, how much further an Olympic was compared to a Sprint distance. And within a few weeks, I started getting ready for the biggest physical feat of my life. Now, I am only a few days out from the official New York City Nautica Triathlon.

Okay so I upgraded into a wet suit, a newer bike, and a cool outfit, but I’ve also lost about 20 pounds, gained a lot of confidence by swimming way way way further away from a beach than I ever have, and have started to even “take” a few hills on my new red racer. I’ve also fallen from the bike (clip shoes are a real trick to get out of before you fall over on concrete!), witnessed some bad bad cycling accidents, found thighs and calves I never thought I had, and have actually cranked it up into the highest road gear…not exactly anthing Lance might even notice, but a lot faster than my old 1970’s Mariushi 12 speed. I’ve also learned there’s no “pushoff” at the end of the lane in a lake, but learning also how to spot a buoy so far away, that it’s only a blip on my visual screen…but slowly, ever so slowly, I make the turn, and look for another one.

So, it’s off to New York City in a few weeks. My mantra? Sure, you guessed it,
“I am an Olympian!” That should get me through the long jog at the end of this crazy race. In case you’d like to see what the race is, and the distances, etc., here’s the website
http://www.nyctri.com

"Vacationing at Auschwitz" II

2007-06-22T14:36:00.000-05:00

“Vacationing at Auschwitz” II

Alex Perry writes a very informative and thoughtful essay, “Vacationing at Auschwitz” in a recent issue of Time Magazine on the subject of visiting Auschwitz. See his article on line in the current issue at
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1630425,00.html?xid=site-cnn-partner

Auschwitz is one of those places off the usual tourist map as it is a place of magnified horror and shock, yet it is also the most memorable place on earth that I have been to, and only for a few hours. Often, especially when teaching about the Holocaust, I revisit the walk I made with students and friends from Milwaukee to this notorious “secret prison” of the Third Reich.

Walking under the “Arbeit Macht Frie” is a chilling experience, yet it is also odd to see tourists from around the globe wondering through the brick army barracks that comprised what was once Auschwitz I, a Polish army camp that became a center of torture and brutality shortly after Poland was overrun by its neighbor/enemy. A number of the buildings offer a glimpse into the death camp, with displays of collected articles from the prisoners who arrived by the hundreds of thousands, day and night, month by month, year by year between 1941 and 1944-45, though I am not sure when the last train arrived in the last year of the War. By the time you finish a guided tour any visitor has a good clear sense of what happened here, and one can even walk by and even enter the first or “experimental” gas chamber and crematorium, though it has been reconstructed for tourists to have a “walk through.”

About a 3 minute or so bus ride away is the larger camp, Auschwitz II, which was expanded and magnified into one of the largest and efficient death camps of World War II. Without any trouble, you can take a picture of the classic structure of the main gate of Auschwitz II. Inside, it is quite remarkable, as today it looks like an open field with tens of tiny chimneys which to a new tourist, might be mistaken for the notorious five chimneys that sent 1.5 million men, women and children floating into the sky, or drifting down the river, or simply as field fertilizer. But they are only heating units of the countless number of barracks used in the 40’s for “housing.” I still can recall walking into a women’s barracks thinking that I might experience something, but it was quite clean, all the feces and urine had been washed away, and no one was screaming or moaning. No one was dragged away after a selection. I was safe.

At the very end of Auschwitz II, which might be a 30-40 minute walk, depending on your willingness to wonder through such a tranquil and peaceful field, you will come to the destroyed five chimneys and gas chambers though you can’t walk through any of it, unless you are looking for something like a bone or a scraping of Zyklon B. What is most memorable is the memorial plaque which explains, briefly, that 1.5 million Europeans were murdered here as a “final cleansing” of Nordic stock. By the time you kneel or rest at this memorial site, you probably are either tired, thirsty, or deeply saddened. I know I was. The sadness has lifted, but I am always remembering this place as one of the most unimaginable places on earth.

Huey Talk

2007-04-30T15:48:00.000-05:00

Huey Talk

A few days ago while running errands around town, a Huey, or perhaps several, buzzed the east side of Milwaukee. We have a reserve Army base located here, so I imagine they were just running operations in the sky, or perhaps some other innocent training mission.

But I was below, looking up, having pulled my Focus over, stuck my head out into the cold spring air, and looked straight up, and not quite surprised, but a little disturbed, I began to feel tears streaming down my face. This isn’t the first time the whack-whack-whack of the rotor blades of a Huey has done this to me. In fact it comes close to classical conditioning…put me in the air space of a moving Huey, and I usually start to leak all over the place. I keep trying to get over it, and I say I am over it, and I can go long periods of staying over it, but somehow, like those one or two-step snakes in Vietnam, I get bitten with immediate reactions.

Hueys resupplied our firebase in Vietnam every day, and always, a few guys were stepping onto the Huey to ship out, and a few were stepping off, as new timers for a 365 day tour of duty in Vietnam. Of course the Huey also supplied us with hot food (roast beef, peas, roast beef, peas, roast beef, peas, roast beef, peas, roast beef, peas, and roast beef and peas.) When the Hueys landed on our little patch of US Territory in the foothills of Vietnam, it was always a good feeling. The wind would kick up fearsome, but for all of us (I’ve lost track of everybody) I wondered if it was some kind of hope that flew in every day with supplies, food, new troops and old-timers. I’ve even flown in on a Huey to this firebase and flew out, so I have a sense, even though it is a distant one, of what it’s like to sit in on, with an M-14 sitting between our legs. I’ve flown in larger helicopters (Chinooks) for special operations, and smaller ones, little mosquitoes, for super fast travel, but it’s Hueys I came to expect every day, and even if the sun didn’t shine (6 months due to the monsoons) I still knew a Huey knew where we were, and wouldn’t forget us.

I came home in bad shape, not physically, but my head was a bit screwed up, and couldn’t quite get over the accusation that I was a monster of the Nixon Administration. I wore a combat jacket for a few months, but with time, I began to find civilian clothes must more comfortable, and created much less buzz with the civilians who I spoke to whether it was ordering fried eggs, or asking a professor about John Milton’s “Areopagitica.” I put away the few medals and “salad bar” items worn on my Army dress coat, and today, I couldn’t even begin to think of where they might be. The few pictures I took are fading away downstairs somewhere in a slide box, and the few paper photos, well, I have no idea where there are now. One photo captured an image of me shirtless with a flak jacket and helmet, M14, outside a bunker. I believe that was taken on Hill 477, probably before the Hill was overrun by North Vietnamese Regulars in June of 1970. I still wonder sometimes why a NVA bullet didn’t spray my brains out that long night so many years ago. I don’t obsess about it, didn’t dream about it, but when those darn Hueys pass over, it all comes back.

Years ago, I thought I wanted to go back to Vietnam, find the hillsides where I lived for 13 months, but I sense it would have been a lonely trip, and no one to really visit with. I read about Tim O’Brien of The Things They Carried doing that in a New York Times Magazine article, but I wasn’t sure about the whole trip. My wonderful wife urged me not to go. Good advice at the time, and I haven’t felt the urge to go, but oddly, and maybe this is the reason for the tears, I did share a wonderful meal with friends last night in Milwaukee’s only Vietnamese restaurant. Maybe the atmosphere, the Hueys, our war in Iraq and Afghanistan, all of it came buzzing by this morning. And the evening, a delightful little theater production of “Ears on a Beatle,” a light look at two FBI agents following the likes of John Lennon. I was doing just fine on the front row until the sound director included a Huey helicopter hovering over the The Dakota. I couldn’t help but close my eyes, tune out the sounds, and take a few yoga breaths. Why have so many Hueys buzzed my brain in such a short time? I’m checking the local air traffic the next time I go outside.

God Talk

2007-04-12T08:58:00.000-05:00

God Talk

Okay, so sooner or later, somebody’s going to ask, I believe in God, right? Well, that sort of depends, as my students like to say, for just about every question that I ask them. As a kid, I couldn’t help but at least say, “of course!!” as I was growing up in a Methodist parsonage, and praying over meals at home, and at church, and I suppose everyplace else where I thought it might help the situation. Nobody actually every asked the question, as everybody assumed everybody in Kansas was a believer. So swept up in the excitement of my father’s sermons, and baptisms and what I heard about funerals, that I decided while still in high school, that I would follow in the great footsteps, for my grandfather, too, was a Methodist minister.

So at the early and tender age of 18, even before I arrived at a church college to begin a pre-ministerial life, I started hitting the books required for securing a “license to preach.” This is it, I thought. Learn how to stand up before the believers and prove to them the joy of this life and the next, that is, if they believed. At the time, I didn’t believe I was in any trouble, with the Lord, or with any board that questioned my sermon topics that I used throughout my freshman year at a Methodist church college, as I was just a sub for the regular ministers who were not available to their flock.

I still have frightening memories of one college professor jumping up onto his lectern table scarring the b’Jesus out of us with rants and rages of a living, breathing Isaiah, or perhaps it was Jeremiah. I still attended the pre-ministerial student meetings, but remember that it was the late 1960’s, and despite the fact that I was living in Kansas, the rest of the world was revolting from so many different social/cultural/political problems that somehow, some of it must have trickled its way into that tiny town of Winfield, Kansas. English and journalism were beginning to replace the Bible classes, and even though I recall that I did poorly in nearly all of my classes, I found the work of the modern poets even more fascinating than the mysterious texts of the Old and New Testaments. By the end of my college years I was thinking more about the Peace Corps than seminary, and when that fizzled, I took a defeatist attitude and decided to volunteer for the U.S. Army knowing that there could be no way that I could be stationed in Vietnam for a tour of duty.

Little did I know that a Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, was also protesting the war in his country, and it wouldn’t be until decades later that I even knew he was there. Slowly I was losing interest in seminary, in even becoming a lay minister. Without knowing it, I had just drifted away from something that was fundamental and essential to who I was going to be, but now I was in a different kind of seminary, learning how to interpret “literary” texts, and I was even trusted with my first congregation of freshman though no faith in the word was required, but their words had many fragments, comma splices and run-on sentences along with even more frightening “agreement” errors. But I was beginning to get the hang of it, and besides, the flock left at the end of a season, and then a whole new congregation would sit in the pews next semester.

I admit writing the text, and talking about the text, and reading student texts were more appealing and invigorating than what I had planned on as a life of a minister, but the lure of graduate school and more classes and more new friendships with text writers was quite appealing. I had forgotten about God.

That is until a Jewish classmate invited me and my wife to his house in Detroit to enjoy a lunch in his “sukkah.” I vaguely recalled my father talking about this Jewish tradition, but now I am not sure I heard anything Jewish in my father’s church. It really didn’t matter for the hummus was delicious, and have been eating it for sustenance ever since, though at the time, I didn’t realize what was being kindled in my heart and mind.

Years and years later, decades perhaps, my wife asked if I would join her in attending a Jewish worship service on a Friday night on the east side of Milwaukee. We were just beginning to get started with our different academic assignments, yet my wife found herself yearning for something more than just having friends over, or trips to the zoo on Sundays. So without knowing what might happen, and with actually some excitement and curiosity, I decided to take up her offer. That evening, without knowing it, I had taken the first step in becoming a Jew. Between the rabbi and the cantor, the new “congregants” and the great cake and tea as part of the “oneg,” I had stepped into a world of the “Old Testament,” and realized how much I had missed, or probably misinterpreted, back then, in the olden days of college envisioning a life of a New Testament Methodist minister. Well that certainly changed.

Over the months and years of my wife’s own journey into Judaism, I, too, started to enroll and listen to my new Jewish teachers tell me about such things as Isaac’s sacrifice each fall season (where was I when I heard that as a kid?), or matzo ball soup (I can even make my own now), or who were the 6 million of a dictator’s wrath? Or maybe why Ruth in the Book of Ruth was not just a Moabite, but a distant cousin? Walking around in Jerusalem years later, I thought I had come home. Then came the new Jewish name. My father would have probably flinched, or twitched, on hearing that, but I never want to assume what he might have done. But his widow, my mother, was there for the conversion ceremony, and somehow she got through it. Soon I began further studies, and even tried learning enough Hebrew to take the next step, as an adult bar mitzvah boy. That didn’t seem to satiate my need for learning, so it was off to a summer camp rabbinic aide school, and by that time, I seriously wondered if a full time English professor could squeeze in a part time study toward a Jewish Studies program. When that seemed too much to do in one lifetime, I did take a step toward wanting to help others on the path toward Judaism, and in time, began teaching an Introduction to Judaism course to potential converts.

But at my university, where I was still able to manage holding down a full time job, I began to take on a new assignment of a course that reflected even a broader sweep of religion and literature, a general education course called simply, World of Ideas.
I began to read the Upanishads, and wondered about cool places like nirvana and what would it really be like to experience samsara. Then the Buddha came into my life.
Then the Dalai Lama. And finally, all the way from Vietnam, Thich Nhat Hanh, who taught me not how to hold my breath, but to simply acknowledge it. And much more.
But Lao-Tze also dropped into my life through this course, and so did Confucius.
And in time, so did Muhammad. And on the day I read Surah 37 in the Koran (in English, not Arabic) I couldn’t help but sense how this journey was a complete circle of coming and going, for there was not Isaac, but Ishmael, and off we went from ancient Israel to southern Saudi Arabia to rebuild the Kaa’ba.

So where is God in all of this? Actually I thought I found a hint when teaching Socrates, or introducing Socrates to my students. At one point, the “text” points to Anaxagoras, a “pre-Socratic” philosopher who got into much much trouble for interpreting gods as simply a metaphor for human desires, wishes and fears. Labeled an “atheist,” he too was run out of Athens because of his unpopular “views.” Yet it’s Anaxagoras who has my current interest. Why didn’t his views gel with the Athenians? Why was the personification of gods and goddesses more acceptable to even the smartest guys? Even Socrates paid homage to the Greek gods, for he was probably as pious as anyone.

And another mystery keeps me looking. Wasn’t it the Zoroastrians of Persia who introduced the Cosmic Battle of Good and Evil to the exiled Jews in Babylonia?
Where is God? Well, God just might be a text. I’ll keep thinking about it.

Training for the Big One?!

2007-01-30T10:50:00.000-06:00

TRAINING FOR THE BIG ONE?!

I can’t say exactly what the appeal of triathlons is, yet I am already beginning to feel that I want to step up to the next level, from “sprint” distance to “Olympic” distance. Last summer I tried an open lake swim in a sprint triathlon in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, and thought I was going to drown with the choppy waves, but I made it, a little shaken and stirred, and came out of the water like someone does for the first time in shock water therapy. I then got on an old 1980’s Maruishi 12 speed and pedaled my way through 15 miles around the lake, and then, on practically the hottest day of the year, started jogging up a steep hill. Well, I did terribly at this event, so I can’t quite figure out why I would want to swim, bike and jog even further, but on that memorable day in Pewaukee, I knew that I wanted to continue to train and improve for these triple heart beat events.

Actually, I’ve been entering indoor triathlons (an oxymoron) since the late 1980’s at a local gym in Milwaukee. Of course the size of the age group I’ve been in is quite small, and if I am lucky, I can pull a first or second or sometimes a third place finish without totally dying. A few years ago I entered an AARP triathlon in Madison, and thought the combination of indoor pool, and outside cycling and jogging worked just fine. A few years later I started to add on biathlons (jog and cycle) but unfortunately the one I entered has now shut down. After the debacle in Lake Pewaukee, I joined a triathlon training group in the Milwaukee area, and started swimming in a nearby lake with other individuals training for lake swimming. After the first dip, I thought I had been infused with a miracle growth hormone, for I hadn’t felt better in my entire life. Perhaps I ingested a few lake microbes that actually gave me a short boost. But it’s a bit chilly out there today for a swim (temp=23F today) so I am back to my gym, working up to 36 full laps or about a mile. For a while, I could only manage 9 laps or ¼ mile, the distance for a sprint triathlon, but with practice and perseverance, I am now training at the mile distance.

So I have to get an upgrade from my 1980’s Maruishi 12 speed and I will need a wetsuit, but for now, I am happy to get up to the gym and envision that I am about to either dip into the Hudson River, or tackle 26 miles in Manhattan and environs, and finish off with a 10K in the Park. Count me in, everybody.

Not All Poetry is Mad Poetry

2007-01-02T19:13:00.000-06:00

NOT ALL POETRY IS MAD POETRY

With all the excitement in the poetry business about bipolar, chronically depressed and schizophrenic poets, I’d like to advocate here, briefly, for the non-psychotic, non b-p, non-chronically depressed poet. I admit I sometimes wish I had that rush of energy and imagination that is often documented in poets going all the way back before psychotropic drugs were even thought of as a temporary solace from that “mad” energy. Every year I read about more and more of the world’s gifted poets as having some sort of psychiatric diagnosis. I’ve lived close to these illnesses, I’ve assisted in a funeral of a dear poet who lost herself to the impulse of the noose. I’ve read some of the best poetry criticism that focuses on the mental health of wonderful, wonderful poets. I’ve read just about everything I can by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison who has helped me more than any other clinical psychiatrist to understand what moves and terrorizes the fragile psyche of so many poets.

But every once in a while, admitting that I am a poet, and not diagnosed as a “mad poet,” I yearn for the calm, reasoned, compassionate, clever, charming, witty, imaginative voice of a sane poet. There are a few out there, aren’t there? I’ve learned that this propensity for writing poets gets more artists to the grave sooner than all other writers, and to be quite honest, I am quite saddened by this. At the same time, I know we must have a few elder, middle aged, somewhat aged, youthful and young poets who go through their daily lives without a manic or depressive impulse, just the quiet voice that calls the poet to the writing table, or keyboard, or whatever paper might be available for a dream in language, as some do call it.

Okay, I’ll admit I’ve been mad, sad, elated, ecstatic, joyous, amused, puzzled, perplexed, and all together overwhelmed with the beauty of experience tapped out into the beauty of lines and stanzas. I’ve written poems where I have been crying my heart out as I try to hear the voice of an ancient Incan warlord face the onslaught of Spanish conquistadors. I’ve laughed my way through a few lines, I’ve squinted, I’ve been baffled by the way lines simply appear on the page, and everytime it happens, I know I’m in a special time space warp that is for me the most precious of moments while here on Earth. Yet in all of those experiences, I can’t say they have come from a particular mental diagnosis. It just comes from the beauty of reading and writing, or writing and rewriting poems in the hopes that someone else might appreciate or just enjoy the meager work that I find to be the most fulfilling work of a lifetime.

I do enjoy the confessionalist poets and all who follow in their tradition. I am deeply appreciative for all the poets who have written through their depression and manic episodes, but occasionally, I just want to acknowledge that a poet doesn’t have to be a deeply troubled soul to be able to write deeply troubling poems. I do acknowledge that poetry is written in a particularly unique state of mind. Some might call it a dream state, a heightened state, an extra-sensory state, but just as a small footnote to the volumes and volumes of poets who have written with deeply troubled psychoses, I just wanted to add that a few of us out there, and throughout history, have just simply been awed by either the world, the language in the world, or maybe both. As a brief example, here’s something written just a few weeks ago that might illustrate where I’m going, or coming with this brief blog:

AT THE END OF THE WAR
(after “The End and the Beginning,” Wislawa Syzmborska, 1993)

DeWitt Clinton

We need to do something about all the lost limbs.
Would anybody please volunteer to search
For who has lost legs, arms, faces?

We’re all thirsty, yes, but does anybody know
Where we can find a brook, a creek that
Doesn’t have our floating cousins?

Yes, yes, we need a morgue, but first
We must find a few dogs to tell us
Who is beneath the stones.

We know Gertrude and Maurice and maybe
Alfonse, maybe more, all have to be found.
Bandages, surely someone has some bandages.

We want to rebuild. Does anyone have a ladder?
Let’s leave God out of this for awhile.
Let’s start in the square, and slowly remove

What was thrown down from the sky.
Who knows how to get a weather report?
Will there be good weather for tomorrow?

Yes, that’s a good idea, but we can always
Talk, there’s always a lot of time for talk.
We’ve got such a mess.

Brooms. Everybody, find all the brooms.
Can anyone send a letter, we need to let
Someone know this has happened.

Tomorrow we can start burning our families.
Surely someone will see the smoke.
Surely someone will come.

musingsI

2006-12-01T17:18:00.000-06:00

December 1, 2006
Life as a Poet
My Turn as a Poet of the World
DeWitt Clinton

You’re kidding, right? I mean, do you actually do that for a living?

Actually I don’t, but without it, I’m not much for the living, pretty much ready for six feet under. But hey, when I think about what I’ve written, and sadly, what so few have read, I do get pretty blue, but when cornered, like now, I often point to my old college professor who really was only a few years older than I was, and is still tapping out those beautiful letters, one stroke at a time.

On the days when I am not writing, and those are most of the days of my life, I often read what others have written, not always their poems and stories, but sometimes their interpretations or often, summaries of short stories or novels or whatever it is we are reading together in my state university English classes. I get a kick out of it really. Some days, I almost soar with delight thinking that I could not be doing anything with more relish than walking into a small classroom and talking about writers and what they do.

But on the days I do write, well, I bet you’d find it a bit odd, that time and space, owned not just by Einstein, just sort of stop, or at least stay suspended while I can get on with a line or two, a stanza maybe, sometimes a whole page. That’s pretty cool, to make something. But then we’re all making something, sooner or later. Isn’t that what we all are doing anyway?

But I don’t add up the checks, that’s for sure. In fact, there aren’t very many checks. And if you went to the Academy of American Poets, you wouldn’t find me, even if you tried. But I still write, sometimes short lines, sometimes long lines, like here, like now. And then I get this crazy idea that somebody, somewhere in this world will actually announce it to the world for those who read poetry, and that would be something of a hundredth of one percent or something.

But I’ve got to tell you of the immense, totally blindingly light-filled satori feeling when I do get a chance to scribble something on a screen, or even old fashioned paper. It’s more than cool, it’s breath, it’s joie de vivre, or something French like that. Most every person who does not write poetry (there are still a few out there as it is so easy to write them, I’m told?) tells me on reading something I’ve shown them that they, too, could write like that. But few can, to be honest, even if you give them white chickens.

So I tell nearly everyone I don’t know that I am an English professor. Oh, they say, Oh, I didn’t do too well in college with my English classes. My father heard the same remark when he said he was a Methodist minister, and they said, Oh, they hadn’t been to church very often. What’s going on? Why is everybody I don’t know apologizing for what they think I know.

Actually I don’t know much, especially after a grueling encounter with Socrates, a philosopher who seems to have really screwed with most of my philosophy students, but in a nice head jolting sort of way. Am I getting off track for you? Students of mine have said that, more often than I’d like to hear. But that’s the nature of what I do, listening to voices, lowering and raising the volume in my mind as to what lines get to come out first, second, or any time soon. Yes, it’s a circus you could say, but I have to tell you, sometimes it’s very good, very good, very very good.

I really don’t pay much attention to the Greeks that much, even if they did start the whole metrics count, with ingenious words to describe a hit on a syllable, or not. I’ll admit the whole order thing is a bit intimidating, so I’m more of a poet who’s okay with the tennis net not only down, but completely put away in the garden shed. But I think I am drifting. Yes. Where were we?

So as you are reading this, wherever you might be, take a moment to turn your gazing head and mind to the window, to see what’s outside, or what’s inside your mind fluttering around. You might be surprised. And then you’ll be the one who walks by as I am off to classes, saying, Say, have you got a minute, I just wrote something.