Memorial Day: For all the Fallen Fathers (and Mothers), Real and Imagined

On leave in Florida. 

I am 45 years old and I'm still coming to terms with the impact my father's death had on my life. Just when I think I've caught all the ripples and echoes created by the absence of gravity Dad instilled in my life, I end up finding just one more thing. One more ripple. One more echo. And it never stops. The impact of his death on my life when I was 17 has been and is incalculable. It set into motion virtually all the circumstances that my life now is built upon, from my own fatherhood that has long defined the geography of my life to my writing which has long been the compass I've used to make my way through map I draw with every step I take and every line I write, to the deep anger that drove me towards self-destruction,  the weight of guilt and obligation that tore me away from self-destruction, and the imparted wisdom that eventually drew me back to the greatest love I could ever imagine.  My father was a complicated man, though I don't think he wanted to be one. Then again, it's possible that men placed on pedestals always look complicated. Through the years of learning more about myself, I've been able to humanize him a little more... especially as I am now the age he was when I was small and  I was in and out of the hospital -- the age he was when he became my hero and the archetype by which I still (whether I mean to or not) judge all would-be heroes, real or imagined. It also happens that my father was a veteran of two wars (Korea and Vietnam)  that America has

consistently overlooked. I would say that he part of the ignored generation of American Veterans -- but the truth is that our government has historically ignored those who risk life and limb in defense of the ideas embodied in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Our government breaks bodies and spirits, but it does not buy what it breaks. And while my father was fortunate enough to come back physically intact and mentally steeled, it's impossible for me to say exactly what the impact of his military service was -- which started when he was 17 and continued until he was almost 40. It's impossible for me to understand the impact it had on him because I have never served and because he died before he felt like he could share those stories with me.  I feel the absence of those stories almost as acutely as I feel his. It's also impossible for me to understand the loss felt by sons and daughters whose fathers -- and whose mothers --did not come home alive or in one piece. And although I've long held the opinion that war is a travesty perpetrated by cowards too far removed from the devastation to feel its impacts, as time goes on I find that I see it even in starker terms. War is a sin, and a tragedy with an impact so devastating that it's easier to make more war than it is to examine the impacts.
Please check out my work for sale in the STORE and  on Amazon.  You can also throw a little in the tip jar:

Gator People Live In the River: Conscious Conscience

Government is not reason. It is not eloquent. It is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. - George Washington

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. - P.J. O'Rourke

If there is an argument against the existence of what the tea baggers and neo-cons refer to as "the nanny state" it is the shameful state of the social net.

The gradual whittling down of social programs to force people into market-driven servitude  "for their own good" comes down to us from the same folks who would drug-test anyone applying for help and be critical of anyone on assistance who has the unmitigated gall to have a cell phone. Of course, the paternal and dehumanizing tone these powermongers, lackeys, and lapdogs take is completely lost on them, and generally ignored by those well intended folks insist that voting Democratic will somehow fix the problem.

Not that I'm endorsing the GOP, the Tea Party, or any other version thereof , sometimes referred to as "third parties" (which is a funny term since the collected total of them would not garner a full third of the ballot tossing public if anyone paid attention to the details of their notions). Far from it. Experience and perpetual study has taught me that the only difference between a lying incumbent and a well-intended outsider is corporate sponsorship and the first sniff whiff of power. Beyond that, all politicians are by nature too pragmatic for anything as ideal as real "re-form.*"

 

Now, those of you who insist on calling Obamacare )AKA the Affordable Health Care Act, AKA The Single Largest Upward Redistribution of Wealth since the Wall Street Bail Out and the 401K) proof of the existence of the nanny state roll your eyes and mumble about gun rights and lazy poor people with iphones and how your tax dollars are being used to support a bunch of ingrates, be aware that the very people you have decided to blame for all your problems (the poor, the homeless, the powerless) are not waiting for you to catch on to the fact that after they're shuffled off from view that you will be next.  Your judgement, hatred, and paternalism masked as philosophical ideology does not change the fact that you have more in common with them than with the powermongers and grafters with whom you have thrown in your lot.

Not seeing or hearing the train barreling down on you doesn't change the fact that the train is rolling on.

The recent cuts in SNAP -- the food assistance program that used to be called Food Stamps -- will have catastrophic impacts on people who are the least able to wield any political power to improve their lot. Meanwhile, Exxon will get tax subsidies that far outweigh any tax they might pay. Meanwhile, the insurance industry will get richer and people who can't afford insurance will be further penalized. 

The good news is that there are people out here who are not waiting on the government to grow a conscience; and they are not waiting on you to grow one, either.  But we will share when you're in need. Just remember how you got here when you arrive.

______

* Notice the root word and prefix. Then think about what it really means.

Williston Update: Eyes And Ears

I got to a state where phrases like "the Good, the True, the Beautiful" filled me with a kind of suppressed indignation.." - Thomas Merton

The biggest change since the last time I traveled by train is the heightened sense of paranoia... I mean security. There's a huge television in the Concourse B Lounge that plays a video on a permanent loop. The smiling, friendly woman in an Amtrak engineer's uniform assures us that we were all in this together. TSA, along with city,county, and state police are all working together to ensure that our rail experience is safe and enjoyable. They have specially trained explosive sniffing dogs. While the friendly engineer lady reads the cue cards, a montage of competent officers and well-trained dogs plays. Everyone is calm and courteous and official. 

But, that's not enough, according to the kind engineer lady and one of the calm and courteous and official TSA agents. 

"After all," he proclaims to the camera, "we're all in this together!"

They say they need my help. MY HELP. Why, I can be a hero,too! I can be the eyes and ears of the police and turn in people who look suspicious.

Whatever that means. The video makes sure to not advocate racial profiling. I am told several times to focus on behavior, not looks. The nice engineer lady is Black. The TSA is Latino. All of the people committing "suspicious acts" are white... and a few of them are even dressed like urban professionals.

After all, it could be anybody.

The thing about traveling, whether you're on your own or whether you are traveling with someone or with a group, is that at some point you have to be able to reach out to fellow travellers. Even if it's just to ask directions or about some procedural. In order to travel, you need to know when to reach out and ask for basic assistance. 

Yes, there are going to be less than trustworthy people; but generally, if you keep your wits about you, and you pay attention to your surroundings, you begin to learn who you can reach out to.

But does that mean that I need to be not  racially profiling and report some abstract "suspicious" behavior to a cop?

I don't know. I tend not to trust cops. I know there are good ones and there are bad ones... but in the end, they're the arm of an institution I have long lost faith in. And for all the talk in that Orwellian video about NOT racially profiling, the fact is that cops do generally profile people. The fact is WE ALL generally profile people. For example, when I say "I don't trust the police" I realize I'm lumping a whole bunch of people  together. The best I can do is try and remember that when they're people,too. 

I sometimes hear the phrase "post 9/11America." The heightened sense of paranoia... I mean security... and increased hassle of traveling. Random searches and added delays are a part of the deal. Your property is not private if some representative of one of the cooperating agencies decides you are behaving in a suspicious way. 

An Ohio Valley Yankee in Virginia, Part 5: Don't Need a Weatherman

"A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves." -- Marcel Proust 


"Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get." - Mark Twain


"Even a paranoid can have enemies." - Henry Kissinger


As promised, the weather update.

You might recall, Dear Dedicated Readers, that I once posited that the weather is chasing me around the the Eastern half of the United States. Specific examples:

1. The day I left Mount Carroll, it was to get ahead of a snow storm. By the time I left Chicago, it was snowing there.
2. The day I left Cincinnati, it rained.
3. The day I left Lexington, it was cold and the wind was strong enough to carry away Dorothy (And her little DOG, too!)
4. The day I left Willow Drive, it rained.
5. The day I left Ashland, it started snowing. (Yes, it stopped. But the weather was there... taunting me.)

But, to be fair, even I was skeptical. Yes. If there's one thing I've learned it's that you never trust a single event to explain the larger machinations of the universe.

And you don't trust the second.

Or the third.

Or the fourth.

Or EVEN the fifth.

But the sixth time that a similar weather pattern happens to show up within a day of my departure?

Well, then, Dear Friends and Valued Readers, I have no choice but to sit up and take notice.

It's snowing. I realize it's February and that snow isn't exactly completely UNHEARD of... even here on the  Virginia coast. But I'd also like to point out that the winter has had a late start. I'd also like to point out that even when I was down by the Ocean View Shopping Center spending a few more hours with my daughter, even she remarked how odd it was that the grass was still green.

So there.

The storm began and a loud clap of thunder, then a heavy rain that turned into snowy rain. The thunder cloud must have been right over head because it shook the room. And I'm on the first floor of a two floor building. 

I'm off to Washington D.C. tomorrow morning, back on the tried and true Greyhound Bus. My bus leaves at 8:16 in the morning. Yes. Had I thought it out better, I might have given myself some time to sleep in, since check out isn't until 11. My original thought was that I'd get up, check out, and walk across the street to the very conveniently placed Hampton Road Transit Bus Stop

Not the bus stop. Actually, I think this is a new sign, even. 

But when I went to the fairly easy to use HRT website, I found there was NO BUS SERVICE this far out on W. Ocean View Avenue on Sundays. 

That's right.

No bus service. This is one more thing to go down on my List of Things I Hate About Norfolk.

Ok. So I don't have a list. Not an official one. But I have stated, I think quite clearly, that the only reason I would ever come here is to visit my daughter, Stella.

She's older than this now... or a really short 17 year old. And I still miss that jacket sometimes.

No bus service means that I have to spring for a cab early in the AM to get to the bus on time. So, on top of how USER UNFRIENDLY this town is -- unless you have a car, or are rich, or are in the military -- I have to include that visiting here has cost me more money than I planned and that as a result of that my stay is far shorter than I wanted it to be. So thanks, ugly, gray, unfriendly, illogical, sterile, and ignorant (all proof that the DOD clearly had a hand in city planning) Norfolk. Thanks for picking my pocket, shortening my stay, and generally making it more difficult to get around a city on an isolated peninsula that requires two underwater tunnels just to get to it.

(I haven't mentioned how ILLOGICAL it is here? Well, allow me to illuminate. The cheap ass motel I'm currently sitting in as I type this post is on W Ocean View Avenue. But when you're on the street, the view of the ocean is BLOCKED by houses, apartments, and condos... except at Ocean View Park. And there's nothing there except a random structure meant to look like a large Japanese shrine. According to Stella, people sometimes rent it for weddings. She thinks it's stupid to spend so much money on such a boring place to get married.

Ye Gods, I love that daughter of mine.)

[If you like what you read here, you can help by:

1. Passing the link around.
2. Graciously donating to the cause using the button on the right hand side of the screen, or by going to paypal.com and donating to mickp@gmx.com.
3. Contact Catherine Sellers at Greyhound, 415-331-6049. Tell them you are asking about a sponsorship when the operator picks up. I write about them enough. They should be helping me help them. Right??

Thanks for reading.]