Book 5-June/21
Heroes In Our Own Eyes
William Shakespeare designated a minor character in his
play, Hamlet, to express and offer to us a profound advice, something which is
really an observation about the nature of the human animal. It rattles around
in our minds, and probably has since time immemorial. Certainly it has in the
Western world over the centuries, no matter whatever the origin of our personal
cultural tradition.
Polonius advised, “to thine own self be true, and it follows
as the night the day, you cannot be untrue to any man”*.
It may be that many people do not think about it, but some
of us, those with aspirations regarding the roles they hope to play in the
lives they will lead, have this buzzing around in their conscious and
subconscious minds. And it begs the question, who and what is that self?
Some of us, and certainly it was true in my case, concocted,
in the days of our youth, fanciful tales of the derring-do we would accomplish
in our lives. Aided and abetted by library readings that detailed the
accomplishments of heroes in past times, I painted myself into the foreground
of these scenarios. Along with this, necessarily, went standards of behavior
that demanded selflessness and virtue. I not only had to be brave and
courageous, but I had to be honorable, and generous to a fault. A hero could
not be otherwise.
So, to be true to myself, there were rigid standards of
behavior which I imagined I should live up to. They became specifically those
which I then expected myself to live up to during my life. I am sure many of us
have been subjected to entreaties from parents, other adults, and teachers, as
to standards of behaviors that were to be expected of us. And some of us
adopted those to guide ourselves in the way we led our own lives.
None of such standards are applied as rigidly or as harshly
as are the ones we inflict on ourselves. Taking them into account in our
private moments, we are aware of every one of our transgressions in that
respect. Totting up the score, we make judgements all the time as to whether we
are worthy of the self-respect we would like to have in relation to ourselves,
as we do apply them to others. We dearly want to like ourselves if we can. We
wrestle with our failings and remember them all.
And we judge our accomplishments in the same way. How close
did we come to achieving those deeds of derring-do, however we define them,
that we promised ourselves we would accomplish? Are we on the way to being
heroes in our own eyes? Or, being beyond all that, and in a resting phase, can
we assess a satisfaction for our accomplishments that is adequate for an
achievement of a private self-respect? If we didn’t make it all the way, did we
fight the good fight sufficiently to make
us worthy of self-respect in our own minds? After all, it is ourselves
that we cannot escape living with. How much self-destructive behavior can be
traced to remorse in this arena?
So, where did you go in life, you dashing dare-devils? What
mountains did you climb? What goals did you set yourself, to reach or exceed?
Were they modest and did you achieve them to your satisfaction? Were they
vainglorious and did you feel the bitterness of defeat? Was public attention
your goal, for good or ill, or did you need acclaim? Did you find your
satisfactions in the effort itself? Did you have to be satisfied with only
partial accomplishments? Were you like me who blundered around until the moment
caught me, rather than I seizing the moment?
If you are just starting out, you have all this to look
forward to. Go forth, you heroes and heroines of endeavor!
*Hamlet, Act I, Scene III, Polonius’ advice to his
son, Laertes: William Shakespeare.
Getting
Good Help! It‘s
raining on my parade.
I don’t like it
one bit.
I signed on for
sunshine.
I signed on for
flowers.
Who is writing
the script?
I may have to
take over the job
I should have
taken the job.
It’s hard to
get good help these days.
It’s raining on my parade.
I don’t like it
one bit.
I’m going to
write the script.
My program is
for sunshine.
My program is
for flowers.
I’m going to
take over the job
To get the job
done right.
It’s hard to
get good help these days.
EMMARR/APR/20
“If You Want To Know Who We
Are”
So We Can dream
The dreams we always dream, As humans
always do,
For something better. Hoping for something better. Fighting for something better, To arrive at something better, Fighting to keep the better.
Why?
Like dogs after scraps, We fight
Just to keep what we have earned. We are the animals we are, Jealous
of anything our fellows may have.
Why could we not be better? Must
we have more than we need? Would that work?
Or, would I still want what my neighbor
has Because
I am an animal human.
Is there something else we could really
be?
Hungry For Positive
Leadership
What a
pickle we are in!
Events
taking place around us bring home to us the reality that the ordered
international society we believed we inhabited under the Pax Americanus is
over. America, the superpower victor of WWII, faced down Russian aspirations to
hegemony. China’s communist power was still struggling to digest its gains.
Japan was under American tutelage. The European Union was created to end all
wars on that continent. The UN was still reined in and directed by the
democracies. America was the world’s peacekeeper and was ready to spend blood a
treasure to work its will.
Now, today,
we have China flexing its muscles, buying stakes and influence in dozens of
countries around the world. It is aggressively seeking to advance its
territorial influence. The UK is a spent force instead of an imperial power,
and the EU continues to fray at the edges, fearful of a resurgent,
mischief-making, Russia and buying in to Chinese bribery. Iran has arisen as a
world trouble-maker being encouraged by the Russians and the Chinese. And America
is threatened by a historic disunity and dysfunction in its institutions. It
has a leadership which appears weak in the face of its challenges. Its
functioning as a democracy is being threatened and it seems unlikely to attain
world leadership again for the foreseeable future.
In this
context, my particular focus, conditions in the State of Israel, may seem like
small potatoes. They command my attention, nevertheless, as the only
stabilizing force in an area of the world that has often been volatile. Recent
agreements between Israel and
neighboring countries has lowered temperatures. Their efforts are countering
troublemaking by both Russia and Iran, while suppressing terrorist activity in
Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, and the Sinai. At the same time their technological
achievements are improving lives in third-world countries in Africa and Asia.
Their mastery of the COVID epidemic in their country offers lessons for those
battling it everywhere.
Recent
difficulties Israel has faced in establishing a stable government have been a
concern for its friends, and a cause for jubilation among its many enemies. Its
democratic model is based on proportional representation, any party gaining 3%
of the vote is entitled to representation in the 120 seat parliament. This has
doomed it to a succession of governments dependent on inherently unstable
coalitions.
Israel is 73
years old. In its initial years, it drew its leadership from the pioneers who
came mainly from Eastern Europe and were collectivist in outlook. David Ben-Gurion,
its first Prime Minister, established the state in 1948. By 1973, sufficient
numbers had arrived from those who were expelled from the Arab countries in
1948 and after the 1967 war, that the complexion of the government was entirely
changed toward private enterprise. The leader then was Menachem Begin. Both
these leaders were protagonists in the original establishment of the state,
leaders advancing their mission above all else for the benefit of their
citizenry..
In the most
recent period, there has continued to be a private enterprise orientation under
the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, someone from the second generation
leadership of Israel’s history. Some might say that, although his leadership
advanced the interests of the country, (the longest ever tenure as leader, 15
years,) his personal interests appeared, to many Israelis, to be more important to him,
sometime, than the country’ welfare. Now after three elections without a
government, a fourth election has led to a wide coalition to oust him. This
coalition unites parties across the political spectrum, including, for the
first time in government, Israeli Arabs. Where this leadership will lead Israel
nobody really knows.
Who we
choose as our leaders is obviously crucial. The importance of the role played
by Roosevelt in rallying Americans to resist world-wide fascism and revitalize
the American economy cannot be understated. The role recently played by Donald
Trump in undermining American democracy and weakening that country as a factor
in world affairs cannot be overestimated. What the future holds for all of us,
in this respect, no matter where we live, is a matter of serious concern.
Whether
President Biden can effectively impact America’s current weakness, whether he
can act boldly enough to counter the treasonous behavior of legislative
followers of Trump in Congress, and in State governments, remain yet to be
seen. Whether America can confront its systemic racism and counter to the
anti-democratic impulse of white supremacists remains to be seen. What has
happened in America has strengthened the hands of autocracies everywhere. We
want so much to see the positive side of America we always believed in.
In Israel,
it remains to be seen if the grand experiment of a political horizon-wide coalition
can survive Netanyahu’s departure, and the inclusion of an anti-Zionist
component in government .If the entry of an Arab component in government can
materially improve relations with Israel Arab minority, it will be a triumph of
political leadership. Can Israel produce another miracle, this time in the
political arena?
We’re so
hungry for positive leadership after seeing too much of the other kind.
Circling The Wagons?
In the bad
old days of the frontier, in the American West, settlers from the East were
pushing into Native territory. These were resisting this apparently endless
stream of people compromising their way of life. When the wagon trains bringing
the settlers West feared attack, they would circle the wagons to better defend
themselves. This proved successful in averting disaster for some of the
travelers. The strategy was much less likely to be successful if some Natives
succeeded in breaking into the circle to attack the defenders from within.
Jews in
North America, and in Europe, (not to mention, Israel,) are being forced to
come to terms with a similar situation. We have within our midst some
individuals who are being labelled, an UnJew*. Individuals like these attaining
this label have been with the Jewish people since time immemorial. While, in
the years immediately after the truth of the Holocaust appeared, they were not
as public in their preaching’s, but they are with us today.
Looking
back, this term included the Jews who argued for the adoption of Hellenic
ideals, or for the Roman panoply of Gods, as well as the Jesus myth of
redemption, and the abandonment of sacred Jewish writings, as well as our
communal and ethical systems. In spite of all, the majority of Jews persisted
in following their own path, rejecting all blandishments. We remember the
Maccabis, who threw off the Hellenic yoke. And the persistent rebellions
against Rome, until Jewish sovereignty was destroyed by their legions. It was
Jewish concepts advanced by the dispersion of the Judeans that conquered the
Roman Empire itself three hundred years later.
But Jews and
Judaism had to survive competitive conceptual systems over the next nearly two
millennia. And there were Un-Jews among their own people who chose to make
their peace with the competitors, and lead the charge against their former
co-religionists. They included converted Jews who often spearheaded efforts to
forcibly convert Jews. Some were active in the Spanish inquisition, and in
attacks by Christian Church establishment on Jews in Central Europe.
They later
included Jews who adopted the Marxist utopian view of class struggle, promoting
the aim of freeing the classless masses with the lure of the Jewish ideas of
brotherly love, equality and social justice. Freeing the Jews themselves from
ideas of Jewish particularism and their religious concepts was also front and
center. In spite of the abysmal failure of this utopian model to achieve an
ideal society for the mass of people, it continues to be advanced in various
forms.
Associated
concepts at the heart of “progressive” movements see Jewish community
solidarity and identification with Israel through the same lens. The historical
results for most people under these absolutist views of society is cast aside,
as these Un-Jews within our own community urge their co-religionists to free
themselves from “ethnocentricism”, and abandon the “colonialist” outlooks that
makes them supporters of a “Jewish” state. They seek to advance their standing
in the “progressive” movement by casting the first stone at the community that
gave them birth. While many even continue adherence to communal rituals, far
from advocating other religious alternatives, they use the ideas of social
justice inherent in Judaism, to advance efforts aimed at de-legitimizing
Israel.
The
establishment of the State of Israel, internationally sanctioned by the United
Nations, and the League of Nations (with the support of Arab leaders,) before
it, was rejected by Arab powers for essentially religious reasons. Pan Arabism
was also a factor.
There has
been no mechanism available to bridge that chasm. Arabs in Israel, and
elsewhere, have been bombarded for generations now with indoctrination that
Israel should not be allowed to exist. Some Arab religious authorities and
pan-Arabists, plus anti-Semitic elements in the general population, have united
in their attempts to de-legitimize Israel. In this environment there is no way
to satisfy critics, and legitimate actions by Israel’s government are always
painted in the darkest manner possible.
The Jewish
ethic is inherently consistent with standing up for the underdog, the
marginalized and the oppressed. Echoing social justice language, our Un-Jews,
even purporting to be Zionists and scholars, are denying Jews the right to be
supportive of Israel, claiming that to do so would be to advocate “Jewish
supremacy”. They even advocate policies that would deal the Jewish state a
death blow. They deny the need for a Jewish state despite all the lessons of
history. This attack on our perception of ourselves as “progressives”, yet
raised with unquestioned loyalty to Israel, has made for some discomfort for
some Jews in the West and even in Israel.
This
rebranded Marxist philosophy deserves the ashcan of history this political
theory has been consigned to. Show the Un-Jew the door! Call them out for what
they are! We have survived them in the past. Let’s circle the wagons and watch
who we let into the magic circle!
As for me, I
may be a supremacist after all!
*The Un-Jew:
This term comes from a recent article by Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy,
published June 15, 2021, in Tablet Magazine (on-line), News section, under the
title The Un-Jews, The Jewish attempt to cancel Israel and Jewish
peoplehood.
Revenge is Good For The Soul: Jewish
Commandos
Any social
scientist, experts in social psychology, experts who treat us when stuff inside
our minds go wacky, the people we often turn to help us emerge from a blue funk
of various kinds, they all talk about how hating is bad for us. We are
ourselves the beneficiaries, they say, when
we give up harboring these negative feelings about people and events
that have caused us pain. They even say we should find it in our hearts to
forgive and forget. That may work for some things and for some people. But for me, there are things for
which forgive and forget just doesn’t work. That is particularly true when
opportunities exist to right the wrongs that have been experienced. And that is
particularly true for me when there are opportunities for revenge.
Some time
ago there was a movie that came out, called “Inglorious Basterds”*, which
recounts the tale of a Jewish/American commando squad sent into Europe to work
behind the lines to find and kill Nazis. Their relentless, and horrific
actions, were presented as a “what if” story, involving a plot to kill all the
top Nazi leaders, including Hitler, and thus end the war. I always wondered if
such a revenge-motivated unit ever existed. It turns out that it really did.
And their actions may really have helped shorten the war.
Declassifying records have revealed
that a commando group, designated Troop X, or officially, “No .10(Inter-Allied)
Commando 3 Group”, was set up by the British during the war. It was comprised
of 87 individual volunteers, mainly Jewish refugees from Germany or Austria,
who had seen their families and communities destroyed. Some were survivors of
incarceration in Nazi concentration camps. They were all hell-bent on exacting
revenge on the Nazis.**
Sworn to
secrecy about their true identities, they all adopted English names. After a
year and a half of intensive training, they were assigned to spearhead the
Allied forces that invaded Europe. Some, on the bicycles they brought with them
during the invasion, were the first to go into occupied territory. Using their
native knowledge of German, using advanced combat and intelligence techniques,
they infiltrated behind enemy lines. They captured and interrogated enemy
personnel, providing crucial intelligence to the Allied war effort. How many
brave soldiers’ lives were salvaged from the information these heroes provided?
How much did they help speed our efforts to a victorious solution?
This effort
did not go without cost. Many of the group did not survive the war and there is
a memorial to them in Aberdovey, Wales, where the Troop trained. There is no
detail available as to the specifics of the Troop’s activity as so generously
provided by Tarantino in his film.
I recall my days as a youngster, listening to
the grim news during the early days of the War, and then my horror and rage, as
the news leaked out as to the wholesale murder of Jews carried out by the
Nazis, I try to imagine today how satisfied it must have been for those teenagers
turned commandos to exact some measure of revenge by their actions. For the
participants, particularly the survivors, recapturing normal lives, knowing how
they had transformed themselves from victims to fighters exacting some measure
of retribution, it must have been enormously satisfying.
Recounting
this little bit of history, known by so few, I, personally draw a measure of
satisfaction, quelling somewhat the rage that burns inside me to this day. I
know that most of the perpetrators, those of the crimes I weep about, have
found shelter in their graves by this time. Nevertheless, whenever I meet
someone of my age or older, of a European origin, now very few, I instantly
speculate and wonder, what were they doing during those years. I know it is illogical,
but the instinct persists. I was eleven at War’s end.
I will never
have the solace that these brave souls enjoyed in carrying out the heroic tasks
they did. I will never enjoy their satisfactions, risking their own lives to
exact revenge in their acts of retribution. But I draw some pleasure from the
story of their exploits. Their revenge is good for my soul. Stories of IDF
accomplishments in the Middle East, and elsewhere, help me personally as well..
*Inglorious
Basterds, produced by Universal Pictures, (among others), starring Brad
Pitt, in 2009. The title was inspired by an Italian war movie of similar name
which appeared in 1978.
**XTroop:
The Secret Jewish Commandos of WWII, Leah Garrett. Ms Garett is a Professor
at Hunter College, (NYC) and The Director of the Jewish Studies Center,
“Blessed Is
The Match That Is Consumed In Kindling Flame”*
All of us
want to live fulfilling lives. That’s normal. And reasonable. That is
reasonable when things around us are normal, when the world is normal. How
about when that is not the case? How about then?
When the
world is consumed in war, and world-wide disruption, it is normal that life is
not normal. We are coerced into doing things that we would not otherwise do. Or
we choose to do things that we would not otherwise do. It becomes normal to do
the abnormal.
Hannah
Senesh, a Hungarian immigrant to Mandate Palestine as a teenager, volunteered
to be one of thirty-seven Jewish volunteers recruited by the British. Their job
was to parachute into Eastern Europe in 1943, to help the partisans fighting
the Nazis. Even when her companions withdrew because they considered it too
dangerous, she went on. She was caught, tortured and executed just before her
23rd birthday. In her own poetic words, “I heard the call and I
went, I went because I heard the call”.
How do we
define normal? When Jack Kennedy faced down the Russians in October, 1962, with
the threat of military action, and forced them to withdraw their missiles from
Cuba, was that normal? We were the ones facing the possibility of a nuclear
conflagration. Many would have lost their lives to back up that threat. We
would have been the tinder kindling the flame of freedom for all of us in North
America. It would not have been normal.
On September
11, 2001, 19 hijackers crashed four commercial airliners, bringing down the
World Trade Center Towers in New York and damaging the Pentagon in Washington.
Passengers on the fourth plane saved the Capitol by forcing it down in
Pennsylvania. Hundreds raced into the burning building hoping to save lives,
and perished. Many who answered the call died from the aftereffects. The
Jihadists involved who surrendered their lives, believed they were kindling a
flame of Islamic revolt, ended up initiating a US involvement in the Middle
East, and death plus chaos for many of its inhabitants.
Ever since
some Jews made the decision to rekindle Jewish sovereignty in their homeland,
around the river Jordan, by direct action, they have faced Islamic intolerance
of the recapture of lands ever under Islamic control. Religious hostility from
Islam against Judaism is present in Islamic history, and in its writings and
sermons, chapter and verse.
The effort
to rekindle that statehood has been unceasing for almost two hundred years.
Jihadist sentiment that was brought home to American living rooms in 9/11, has
been the Jewish reality during their struggle in that territory, and in every
place where Jews have lived in theocratic Moslem countries. We are seeing it
now in every place where Islamic extremists are present. Even in the U.S.
congress.
For myself,
in 1948, when the Israel War of Independence broke out, I was 15 years old. I
heard the call, but I stayed in school. In 1952, at the age of eighteen I
travelled to Israel for a year of study in Zionist leadership and Kibbutz work
volunteering. In 1953, hitchhiking in the Negev, I was picked up by police,
informed that an IDF captain had been found in a well with his throat cut, just
over the hill from where I stood. I had not realized I was a combatant in a war
zone.
In 1967,
when Israel was attacked by its neighbors, I heard the call. Married, with
three young children, I stayed at work. While I struggled with my conscience,
after seven days it was over. In 1973, Israel was surprised by an attack from
its neighbors. I heard the call, but at 39 years, working as an executive at a
grocery company, I felt I would be a detriment rather than an asset.
In our
seventies, my Bride, (who, when younger, spent four years in Israel with her
children,) and I, attempted to emigrate
to Israel. After two years of wrestling with bureaucratic obstacles to
achieving citizenship, we gave up the struggle. We are now very happy where we
are.
Now at the
age of eighty-seven, I have a daughter and two living grandchildren residing in
Jerusalem. My sister has a daughter and three grandchildren living near Tel
Aviv. All the children have done military service.
I remain
with the feeling that my efforts were wanting.
Like so many
of my contemporaries, we have a lot to answer for in not answering calls that
were important to us.
*A line from
a poem by Hannah Senesh, written before her assignment in Europe.
“Once More Into The Breach, Dear
Friends!”*
How
discouraging to find the things you believed would happen prove to be as bad as
you said they would be. We thought we might even be exaggerating a bit in our
enthusiasm, our rhetoric. But, no! Everywhere we turn, we are confounded by the
persistence, the creativity, of the lies we face, the lies we battle.
In a hundred
places in the U.S, people are repeating that the soundest election in history
of that country was in some way corrupted, as maintained by the liar-in-chief,
the former president who wanted, who wants to be king.
What is
surprising is that the lies are being repeated by those who relied upon these
elections for the very validity of their legislative tenancy. And they are
casting doubt on the very institution, the mechanisms, that brought them to a
safe harbor. Perhaps some of the people they dupe may not process the
inconsistency, but many of us surely do. Maybe we should be raising questions
about the validity of their status, breaching, as they are doing, their oath of
office?
In dozens of
places in the U.S., some people are attempting to make it harder for people to
vote. Here, in the cradle of democracy, where many of its promises remain
unfulfilled for many people, they are attempting to disenfranchise millions.
In hundreds
of places in the U.S, some people are trying to make it harder, or even
impossible, for women to get an abortion if they want to. There are
institutions sworn to block women from their inalienable right to have control
over their own bodies.
In hundreds
of places in the U.S black males are in danger of getting murdered , by
policemen, no less. These individuals we
armed to protect us, are killing these men just because they are Black. There,
but for the grace of GOD, goes anyone. If it can happen to Blacks, it can
happen to anyone of us at any time under diverse circumstances.
We know that
we require the help of thousands of temporary workers, carrying out tasks our
own citizens turn up their noses at. We face continuous efforts to block the
entry of those workers. We need to find
a sensible system to deal with this challenge and to ensure these folks whose
help we need are not exploited.
We know that
Canada and the Unites States were built by the efforts of millions of
immigrants. We continue to need them for our continued prosperity as our birth
rates have fallen, and continue to fall. We need to continue to benefit from
the vigor of their efforts and the humans resources they to efforts to meet the
challenges we face. We know that this must lead to a continuing change in the
composition of our body politic. There will be obvious changes in the emphasis
of our national policies. Some forces in our society seek to avoid the impact
of these changes by suppressing voter expression, even in ways that conflict
with the basic ethics on which our nations are founded. Don’t we have to raise
our voices to ensure democracy survives?
In the U.S.
Congress, even if the vast majority of the American people want something done,
legislators in the pay of lobbyists refuse, have refused for years, to do the
people’s will. Isn’t it time to ban such funds from the electoral process? Is
it time to ride the ride of Paul Revere again? We probably have a much better
system in Canada for averting these malicious effects. The lobbyists are
coming, the lobbyists are coming, and we have to find a way to shut them down!
So what is
going to be done? Do we retire from the field in despair, or fling ourselves
into the battle? Can we allow truth to surrender to the Big Lie? How many more
bodies will we see in crossing the bridge to new and better beginnings,
brighter ends?
Why as a
Canadian do I take what is happening in the U.S so much to heart? As the child
of immigrants, like millions of others in the U.S. and Canada, the American
dream is one that I share. The promises of the U.S. constitution are those by
which I measure all countries. The American reality is one that I take to
heart. The struggle to achieve a more perfect union is a struggle I ascribe to
in United States and Canada, and in the worlds as a whole.
Once more
into the breach, dear friends! Not for Harry and England, but for ourselves and
our brighter futures!
*W.
Shakespeare, Henry V, Act III, Scene1. The King is in the field, urging
his men on to victory in the battle.
Holding Back Tears On
My Sunny Days
Why does
sadness overwhelm me when life is so good? I remember too much about the
casualties that I have left behind. Gratitude has to be a part of it, that
against all odds I have been spared when so many of the worthy are no longer
here. Survivors’ guilt has to be a part of it. Do you sometimes attempt to make
your own accounting?
How many are
the children that I never got to see, that never got to see the sunny days that
I enjoy so much. The children of my Bride that I never got to see, my grandson
who gave up on the hope for a better life, these are a part of the past I dare
to re-live. The nameless of the Holocaust, whose names were known to countless
others of my co-religionists, (we seek to record them for posterity,) haunt my
dreams. I know I am greedy beyond reason.
My days are
almost too beautiful to bear in their richness. I sing songs to myself,
celebrating my small triumphs and the absence of pain. I hear the sounds of
laughter in my memories. The music I love plays in my ears. So many of the
people I love are still there in my life. When I contrast my present with what
fate has dealt to so many others, I am shattered with injustices I confront. I
have no answers to offer, no justifications to advance. Why me and you and not
him and her?
I feel like
a whirling Dervish, dancing on the head of a pin. See a science arriving too
late to save so many lives and contrast the speed with which we arrived with
solutions for COVID. Science to the rescue and yet see pseudo-science used as a
rationale for condemning a whole race to death. Greek culture, exploring the
essential nature of man, the scientific method, and the democratic ideal, many
centuries ago, and see the eons of Dark Ages and disease. Monotheism, exhorting
us to seek out our better angels, apprehensive of an all-seeing eye, and then
contemplate organized religion promoting rationales for untold crimes against
humanity.
Regard the
Marxist myth for which tens of millions died in Soviet Russia and China.
Contrast the elitist Roosevelt who fashioned modifications to Capitalism that
rescued the lives of a hundred million Americans. I remember that the Marxist
principle of from each according to his gifts and to each according to his
needs, was also used to fashion pioneer communities. The sacrifices of
believers restored a desecrated landscape, and ultimately succeeding in
building a renewed Jewish state. Unbelievably, it took so few determined people
to make the difference.
Yin and yang
and a multitude of tears is the story of human civilization. I shudder my way
from the personal to the general, and back again. The impedimenta of our
passage are gathered in our galleries, our museums, and the pot-pouris of our
living spaces, real and virtual. They are there in our graveyards, marked and
unmarked, some hidden away in our memories, to be visited when we dare.
We
constantly redefine what is art and artifact. We, all of us, sometimes
overwhelmed by it all, pick and choose what it is that has meaning for us.
Sometime we look to others to instruct us on what, by its very nature, should
be a matter of individual choice. I choose the things that are treasures in my
own eyes. They bear the weight of my personal emotional commitment and I glory
in them, bringing me to tears. You all have your own idols before which you
prostrate yourself.
How many are
those in my life that did not get the full measure of my attention they
deserved. I hang my head in the chagrin I feel. It is much too late to make
amends to so many. It must be the same for so many of you out there. I rode off
into the sunrise pursuing my dreams with hardly a backward glance at those who
sustained me during my beginning days. Too much taken for granted. My regret
finds little comfort in the recollection. I am conducting my personal ‘mea
culpa’.
Does all
this deserve some recompense? Do we who are still here owe someone, something,
some cause, a recompense? I exert so much of my efforts just to keep body and
soul together. Should I, should we, be doing something more to justify our
places in the universe? Can I listen more, speak less, empathize more, extend
again a helping hand? Can I yet alter the course of humanity’s journey in the
universe in a positive way? Is each one of us that significant an actor?
I am dancing madly on
the head of a pin.
You’re Welcome!
If you’ve
tuned in for cheery messages, press the delete button.
I don’t know
about you, but it’s getting me down. We know that we are on the right track
with how we think about the world. We know politicians are supposed to express
the will of their constituents although we see in so many places that it
doesn’t happen. We know that leaders are supposed to behave in such a way as to
support the weak and helpless, and to persuade the strong that they should do
so too. That’s why they are leaders. So why do so many seem to do the opposite?
We know that
those we have chosen to represent us must always tell us the truth because we
have chosen them to be our eyes and ears. So why is the truth too often hidden
from us in preference for lies that hurt us and our institutions? How can we
maintain our faith in our institutions in the face of all this?
Isn’t it
such a relief when we are faced with people who are not afraid to tell us the
truth? Why is it such a feeling of rarity when the person in whom we entrusted
our vote does the right thing, and we say a heartfelt thank you, and they say
“you’re welcome!” Because it is our right!
So many of
the welcomes we are facing are those that are like a slap in the face, a punch
in the gut, a dagger in the heart.
People among us are being murdered in the street and those with powers
we have granted them, huddle and hide when evil is the order of the day, acting
as if we are deaf, dumb and blind. Justice denied and we are expected to go
quietly. The racism and extremism being exhibited is labelled as a tourist
outing. What is the message being sent to racists and extremists here in the
cradle of Democracy?
Rockets and
missiles assailing civilian populations is being justified at the heart of the
planet’s most advanced civilization, with efforts at defense blindly condemned
by governments. These were countries utterly devastated by war raised from the
ashes after experiencing such travail. Yet they refuse to recognize where the
inhumanity is inherent. To those who are the victims on both sides, they say
“you’re welcome”, while no effective word of censure is directed at the
perpetrators. Why are nations not lining up to seek measures to end a terrorist
tyranny that is being widely condoned? We see it now in Gaza, in Lebanon, in
Syria, and very soon in Afghanistan.
Yazidis in
Iraq, Uigars in China, unfortunates in Myanmar, Russian aggression in the
Ukraine, starvation in Yemen under Houthi administration, all are evidence of
the failure of our international institutions to mediate the world’s trouble
spots in ways that was briefly possible at an earlier time when America’s power
was supreme. Pax Americanus is dead and the world is the poorer for that. The
disunity in America does not bode well for a better future. Who do we thank for
this? Who will say, for your many sins, you are welcome?
So where do
we go from here? Is this our world going forward, dog eat dog and devil take
the hindmost? This is the world we are leaving to our children, deficits and
disaster. When kids studying at Harvard don’t even know what NATO stands for,
can we hope they will smell the smoke rising from the fires around them? Whose
children will put out the fires of ultranationalism when their parents are in
the streets preaching White supremacy.
There are
plenty of bogeymen arising around us to encourage our young to build walls
instead of an international community. Can the Chinese get over their
well-founded grudges long enough to appreciate they need a functioning world
order that works for everybody, for their own sake? Can we find the resources
to help India help itself? Can we find the resources to give Africa a leg up?
What will Asia do if the industrial countries decide international trade is no
substitute for building expensive jobs at home? China is already switching to a
greater reliance on its domestic economy, following the U.S. model.
Lots of
people are wondering whether democracy is the best way of running a country.
Notwithstanding Biden’s enthusiasm, the American model is not looking so good
these days.
Welcome to
the fractious world our children are inheriting.
Scratching An Itch!
I don’t know
about you guys and gals, but for me one of the real pleasures in life is, when
you get an itch, having the chance to really scratch it. It can be pure
pleasure particularly if its difficult to reach.
Of course,
there are all kinds of itches. Some relate to the urges you get to depart from
the track you are on to pursue an interest you are intensely interested in. You
know that to do so may seriously affect your success on the pathway that you
have chosen, the one you are on, the one in which you may have invested untold
resources, effort and commitment. Nevertheless that itch nags at you. It is
there at the top of your wakeful mind in the still of the night. Many of us
have experienced that nagging itch.
Most of us
choose, what seems to us, the most sensible path. We continue on with what we
are doing, proceeding in the direction we are going, taking the path that fate
has laid out for us. Some of us don’t, caring to take that less-trodden path
that will scratch that itch. Come what way, we can’t resist the urge.
Looking
back, I see that I have at times risked everything to scratch that itch. And I
can contemplate the times when I backed away, and continued down a path fate
had laid out for me, resisting, at least for a while, that urge to scratch that
itch. The stakes were often very important in the way my life turned out. Many
of you must wonder where that divergent path might have led you. Those still
early on the trail of life have yet to confront the push and pull such choices
present us with.
Coming from
a family with an immigrant background, with its struggles of adjustment,
feeling the pain of living on the wrong side of the tracks, I early felt the
compulsion to find a way to achieve what seemed in early days to be the
unachievable. Of course higher education had to be the universal panacea being
embraced by all of us who could.
Choosing the
right path seemed like a life or death decision. My choice of a career in
Agriculture seems to me to have been bizarre in retrospect. My rationale was
that I was training to become a pioneer wresting food from the dry dust in the
land of Israel. But I spent every spare moment I could scrape outside my course
work attending lectures on philosophy, literature and history, scratching an
itch.
I
compromised in specializing in Economics. After a short time as a civil
servant, I abandoned specialization and became a generalist at a leading
supermarket company. My one goal was to rise in the corporate ranks and become
a vice-president by the time I was forty. And that became the path I more or
less realized. And how unsatisfying it was! Where was the glory and acclaim in
what appeared to me to be this pedestrian activity? In spite of solid
achievements, I discovered that my childhood dreams of derring-do and heroic
exploits continued eating away at me. Where were the mountains to climb, the
damsels in distress to save? Was it just going to be corporate infighting and
more and more of the same?
But how
could I abandon the security of the senior ranks of a multi-billion dollar
corporation? To do so was to take a stupid risk! Nevertheless, after twelve
years, and before pension-vesting, I abandoned my post to take a job that
no-one seemed interested in taking. The senior person in the institution I was
joining greeted me with the news, “We know you can’t help us, but at least we
will have someone to blame.”
Here I was
in a place where I had to live by my wits. Facing the constant threat that
those to whom I answered to had a personal shorter-term interest in defeating
my best efforts, I negotiated a contract dictating non-interference in the
institution’s day to day operations, and automatic salary increases for a five
year term. My Agriculture background had paid off after all.
I had to
negotiate with politicians at the highest level for whom I was their best hope
and with civil-servants who did what they could to obstruct. After a year I had
righted the ship, changed deficits to surpluses, and I was a national hero to
the beleaguered Canadian producers and intermediaries, and their families, who
had faced certain bankruptcy. Along with earning the enmity of those whose
interests had been frustrated. It is impossible for me to describe the extent
of the joy and triumph I felt when I knew I had put the crucial building block
in place to ensure success, with no-one but myself in the world the wiser. I
will not detail the fear of failure I lived with until that was accomplished.
Isn’t that what we call really living?
The balance
of my contract was business as usual. At its end I was rewarded with a one-year
contract, Board micro- management of my every decision, and a cut in pay. I
resigned as soon as my new contract allowed. The institution I put in place is
still functioning with the guidelines I established more than forty years ago.
That was one
of my departures from the straight and narrow to scratch an itch.
What’s
happening at your house?
Confronting The Ghosts Of Memory
Do you
believe in ghosts? I never thought I did. But I do find that events, even
words, sometimes open up areas of memory that were stored so deep that I never
thought to recall them. And the spark of memory could bring on a blaze that
could illuminate whole areas of my past to which I had never given the least
bit of thought. And then, ghosts really came to life. The dead might live
again, living a life I never realized they had achieved in my memory. And we
might afterward wonder if our ghosts were in fact real, or streams of memory from
a dream taking on the cloth of reality.
It came to
me recently that as a teenager I first learned that ghosts could come to life
and become a horror story. At the age of eighteen I went to Israel for a year
of study. I spent a portion of the time in Jerusalem. While there I frequented
a book store located not far from the King David Hotel. The Hotel was of
interest to me because it was blown up by agents of the Irgun (a terrorist
group led by future Prime Minister Begin,) in their ultimately-successful campaign,
with others, to drive the British from their mandate, with the aim of
recreating the Jewish State. The book store was of interest to me because it
was there I learned how memories were created in the world that led to the
demonization of the Jewish people for all time.
I came to
the book store originally because it was a place one could browse without
disturbance without actually buying any books. It had taken all my savings just
to pay for my trip and I had no money for the luxury of a book purchase. The proprietor turned out to be a German Jew,
a Holocaust survivor with a number tattooed on his arm. Conversations with him,
to my surprise, turned out to be an education in the Christian scriptures.
We don’t
really know for certain when Jesus was crucified. It is estimated that the
Jesus ministry in Jerusalem lasted about three years, and that he was crucified
by the Romans between 30 C.E and 33 C.E. The inconvenient truth is that
wandering religious groupings, with their preachers, were a dime a dozen in
that era, including those calling for insurrection because of Rome’s pagan
insults to the Jewish religion. (Sicarii)
The first
Gospel purporting to tell the story of Jesus was by Mark, appearing between 66
C.E and 75 C.E., 35-40 years after the event. The Gospel according to Mathew
appeared at about 110 C.E., more than seventy years after the crucifixion.
Mathew’s story was 90% a repetition of Mark’s report with some startling
additions. Others, except for John’s, were further repetitions. It was what was
written, attributed to Mathew, that
changed the future and the fate of the Jewish people. It led to Jewish numbers
in the world being a handful, instead of being at least two hundred million, or
more, in our days.
Mathew wrote
of a trial of Jesus by the Jewish Sanhedrin that would have been in conflict
with Jewish law during the Passover season. As well, he told a story about a
trial regarding the disturbance at the Temple, before Pontius Pilate. This also
was unlikely under the conditions of Roman practice and in conflict with the
way Pilate administered his mandate. Pilate, cruel and indifferent to the
concerns of the restive Hebrews, governed, obsessed with accumulating riches
during his tenure. He was later recalled by Emperor Tiberius when his brutal
treatment of the Samaritans got to the Emperor’s ears. He once lined the roads
leading to Jerusalem with almost two hundred crucified on crosses.
What memory
did Mathew present? He presented a dramatic scene in which Pilate washes his
hands of the decision to crucify Jesus, as if Pilate would actually care about
public opinion. And Mathew quotes the “whole” people, saying, “May his blood be
on us and on our children”. Then there is the story of Judas, whose treachery
has been said to have been exaggerated.**
The scene
now shifts to the later period when the Church was establishing itself, and the
four Gospels, of the numbers that existed, that were chosen to be included in
the New Testament. There exist no actual copies of the original drafts, only
fragments of later copies that bear evidence, to the knowledgeable, of
alteration and elaboration.
It seems
clear to some theologians* that the Church consciously shifted the blame for
Jesus’ death from the Romans to the Jews, to make their offering more appealing
to non-Jews in the Roman Empire and not threatening to Romans. By this time it
was probably clear that Jewish Christians were more and more finding their way
back to the mainstream of Judaic practice. The altered drafts chosen to be
incorporated into the New Testament text were those that supported the Church’s
objectives at that time.
Memories can
be the real events of our lives that we want to re-live. Memories can be dreams
that we want to be real. They can also be lies that we want to be real for all
sorts of reasons. These memories can become realities for all those whom we
choose to tell about them. For billions of Christians, over the centuries,
these tales, reported as memories, have become the ghosts that have been
visited upon Jews wherever they found a home. And they have turned the lives of
millions of Jews into nightmares.
*Recent sources: Studies in Mathew, Ulrich Luz; Jesus
of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI, March 2011; Who Killed Jesus?, John
Dominic Croisan; God’s Unfailing Word; Church of England, November,
2019; A more comprehensive list
of sources is available in the Acknowledgements section of The Order,
Daniel Silva, Harper, 2020.
**Judas, William Klassen, 1997.
The Roots of Memory
I have more
years than most of you behind me. I remember what seems to me all the big
events, prominent in memory. These days, I do try to pay more attention to the
daily round. Today I bought some plants to fill spaces in my garden in the sky,
seeking yellows and oranges to harmonize with the bountiful presence of the
predominately red geraniums fully in their flowering. We ate breaded chicken
for breakfast, a gift of our Jimmy, Cookie’s son, while watching the Tokyo
Olympics results-Canada is doing great! I spent Saturday morning at the
Community Center, playing with clay, creating the fantastical faces I would not
hope to meet on my street.
II think
it’s important that we pay lots of attention to the minutae of daily life,
glorying in the simple things that fill our Presents, appreciating how they add
to the pleasure of living. But I also worry about losing the detail about my
life in the past, the bits and pieces that brought the day by day elements of
that life into the Now at those times. It takes some work to ferret things out.
So I’m rummaging about in the closets of memory, poking into the corners to see
what I can find.
Can I
remember what it was like when I was a kid? I was the single boy being raised
with sisters. Didn’t I get the feeling that I was favored as the male, and my
older sister was called upon to help my mother with the housekeeping. My
youngest sister was nevertheless the spoiled one, being considered the most
vulnerable to mistreatment. I recall how I tried to keep my room neat and tidy
so that was where we had our family meetings. All this might be a figment of my
egomaniac’s self-image so we will have to check the facts with living
witnesses.
Can I
remember what it was like to be the only Jewish kid in the neighborhood when
the family moved to Jarvis Avenue in Winnipeg? The kids next door tried to make
our lives miserable by throwing stones at our windows, and parading in front
with catcalls deriding my mother’s Jewish names for us. How many times did I
fight with Mikey, down and dirty in the mud? And Tony and Danny, from three
houses over, scrapping in the schoolyard? And Eddie, who knocked me unconscious
in front of a crowd, in grade seven? I survived the blemish on my brain, and
Eddie, too. Didn’t my tiny sister protect me when Big Harry on Dufferin was
going to beat me up on our way to school? What did it smell like outside our
house, with the coal yard in front and the junk yard at the back?
And yet it
felt like we, my family, lived a totally peaceful private life inside our home
there. Dad had his job shoveling coal at the Cold Storage down the street. (He
would end up a graduate engineer after years of home study) .We ate our three
squares in our rented home, and went the four blocks to Aberdeen school each
day. We celebrated the Sabbath each Friday with a special bread and the best
meal of the week. I frequented the Library every chance I could, (maybe
escaping the then current world,) and often spent the night reading by
flashlight under my covers. We went to the neighborhood synagogue for the High
Holidays. I remember eating chicken in the back lobby on fast days. And there I
had my Bar Mitzvah wearing a suit and with a fedora on my head.
Somehow I
don’t remember much about greenery while Winnipeg had a reputation for trees. I
do remember holding round the trunk of one when we played Buck, Buck, How Many
Fingers Up? I remember sucking honeysuckles I gathered off the hedges for their
sweetness and holding dandelions, which were so plentiful, under our chins to
see the yellow there. I remember we liked blowing their heads off when they
were ripe. And collecting bull-rushes from the ditches where they grew in the
gathered water. Winnipeg had some of the deepest ditches. Winnipeg was famous
for its lilac bushes, I remember their heavenly scent.
In the
summer, gangs of kids used to gather on the street corner, I think it was
Powers St. and play road games far into the night. Sometimes we’d end the night
raiding summer vegetable gardens and have fights with the tomatoes we stole.
And yes, I do remember the mosquitos.
Winnipeg was
a city with a very diverse population. There seemed to be large communities of
people from a dozen different origins, from Iceland to the Ukraine, from France
and of course, England, Russia, Germany, the Middle East and Asia were all
represented.
While city
government was initially in “English” hands, it changed over time to represent
other ethnic communities. What I remember above all was how active the Jewish
community was, and how every political viewpoint, and every internal community
need, was represented by some Jewish organization. I got the feeling that,
although I lived in Canada, I could in some way be living within a totally
Jewish environment if I so desired. It dispelled the feeling of isolation that
I felt in my younger years. And yet, as I launched myself into the wider world,
when I left Winnipeg, I felt totally at home in my Canadian persona. I really
only appreciate that now in retrospect.
Digging into
the roots of memory and coming up golden!
Renewal 2021
Bundled,
wrapped in clothes and contemplation,
I sit on my
balcony.
Wee birds
sing for me
From bare
branches
Bristling
with buds,
Impatient to
get on with things.
Glorious
brightness dares the grey cumulus,
Tempting me
to lift a wan, weathered, face
Aspiring to
a blush.
Time and
again the golden orb
Is
extinguished by unrepentant clouds,
Bringing
remembrances of ambient February chill;
The songs go
on uninterrupted,
Undeterred,
Tho’ a quick
sprinkle dampens spirits,
The wee
ones, knowing time is on their side,
Sing on,
Like
millions of humans,
Working
ceaselessly to clear away
The detritus
left behind,
As we emerge
into a renewal
After a dark
winter when evil things grew.
We address
wounds on our body politic,
Expose
betrayals of life ascendant,
And feed
fragile tendrils of hope
That will
refresh our garden,
To ensure
blooms will flower again.
Tales of Our Wintry Times
Can I tell
you a story about some of my heroes?
My Bride has
recollections of the life experience of her mother’s family in their early days
on the Prairies. I am transfixed by her stories. They are like the fairy tales
I read when I was a child, like the stories of the heroes who lived in the
times when dragons roamed the earth.
Her
grandparents arrived in Canada when the government was encouraging settlement
in the Prairies with land grants. We always heard of those in our early
schooldays, and the talk was of land grants of sections, (640 acres), and
quarter sections, (160 acres) along with starter cattle and horses. Not so for
these Jewish immigrants.
They arrived
in the early 1900’s. Lazer Rachlin settled with others in a Jewish community
established in Narcisse, ninety miles north of Winnipeg. They may have had a
cow of their own because her mother remembered that seemingly all they had to
eat the first year were mushrooms and milk. Can we imagine their lives?
Lazer
Rachlin, applied for and received a plot of land and a hut in Narcisse. He
sought jobs in Winnipeg to earn a living, trying his hand at a variety of
tasks. He met a Ukrainian immigrant on the street and in conversation with him,
told him he was looking for a job. His acquaintance took him to a place where
he learned to install windows, but he ended up as a house painter. He would
work all week in Winnipeg and return on the weekend to Narcisse. I know some of
you have heard stories like these about
how we re-invent ourselves to meet the challenges we face. These are some of
mine.
When Lazer
brought supplies each week from the butcher for the family, the butcher papers
and newspapers were plastered on the
walls to block the winds coming through the boards of the hut they lived in.
His wife, Chaya, saved all the string from the packages so she could hang a
curtain between the boys and girls when they slept. I look around at the
surroundings we enjoy, and I marvel at what people did to survive.
Grandfather
Rachlin eventually settled the family in the city, using his painter
experience. He re-fashioned a house they bought. With the help of neighbors, he
put in a basement and a second floor to house the offspring. The family raised
five living children in Canada. Me, I have difficulty banging in a nail
straight,
My Bride’s
mother remembered she had to walk three miles from their near-Narcisse home,
each weekday, to get to school in Bender Hamlet. She carried her younger sister
on her back during her early years. Anyone who has lived through a prairie
winter in Canada will well appreciate what that meant. When a school was built
only a mile away, it was a cause for joyous celebration.
My Bride’s
aunt, Rasha, never forgot that experience. When she became an adult, she moved
lock, stock and barrel, to California. Who can blame her? I still remember the
Winnipeg winters of my youth. One reason I live far away from there. My Bride,
however, still misses the quiet of an evening snowfall!
Grandfather
Rachlin had a storied career. He was the youngest of three. Before being
conscripted into the Russian Army like his brothers, he studied in a Yeshiva
like all bright kids did. While fighting in the Russian army he was posted on
the Chinese border and learned to speak Mandarin. (In all he spoke seven
languages as a consequence of his wanderings.) As a soldier he was wounded in
the leg. He hid in ocean waters to avoid detection, with the effect that his
wound healed without infection. He walked all the way to Lithuania and freedom.
Living on
handouts at synagogues in towns on the way, he settled there and met his wife,
Chaya. They travelled to Turkey where he made his living as a vendor of the
cigarettes he made by hand. Then they went to Germany where my Bride’s mother
was born. They travelled to Israel, then back to Turkey and finally resided in
Berlin. From there they immigrated to Canada. In the life he built for his five
children in this country, he is a hero for our times
Malke
Rachlin, my Bride’s mother, registered to become a nurse when she reached her
fifteenth birthday. Although she reported her name as Malke, she was assigned
the name Millicent by the Nuns who were her teachers.
Malke met my
Bride’s father, Chaim Kushner, when she went to a dance. One of the men at the
dance began insisting that Malke dance with him, even though she refused. Chaim
saw this and came over to help her. The man, perhaps twice his size, (her
father was diminutive,) struck him and knocked him out cold. Malke, a nurse,
ministered to her fallen hero.
This was in
1926, when Chaim was visiting from work in New York. I have the strongest
regret that I never met my Bride’s father, although I knew of him from a
distance. He was all courage.
Chaim
Kushner was born in Poland, but grew up in Winnipeg. Chaim’s father was a
teacher. In High School, Chaim was a
Junior Chess Champion and the Western Canadian High School Sprinting Champion.
He played violin during silent movies in theatres to earn money for further
education. He studied at Yeshiva University in New York. Chaim supplemented his
income there by selling silk stockings from a pushcart, teaching youngsters and
driving a cab. The eternal immigrant story.
After he
returned to Winnipeg, with the urging of Malke, Chaim took Law, financed by
playing his music at events as part of a trio, and teaching Hebrew. He was
admitted to the Bar in 1931. Six months after this event, and five years after
they met, he married Malke. The groom was married wearing a borrowed suit in
his bride’s home. The rest is history.
My Bride
reports that her mother used to get her father to practice his addresses to the
Judge. Since he had a stutter, he would practice speaking to her. Every court
presentation would be done first at home. Each morning, as she recalled, her
mother would prepare her father’s outfit for the day to ensure he was properly
dressed. Meanwhile, Malke continued her career as a sought-after private nurse.
Together they had two children.
Chaim
Kushner became well-known as a pre-eminent criminal lawyer in Canada. With an
illustrious career, he lost only one capital case. He earned a long list of
accolades to his name. He filled a number of prominent positions of public
trust, including acting as an advisor to different Premiers of the province of
Manitoba. He also received a Q.C.
Among other
things, he advised on the establishment in Winnipeg of the first urban
metropolitan government in North America, and on the construction of the
Manitoba floodway that ended many decades of urban and rural flooding in
Manitoba. He also headed up the National Federation of Mayors and
Municipalities. He served as a Counselor for a number of years and then for ten
years as the Mayor of the city of West Kildonan. He was recognized for his many
contributions to his community.
Malke died,
too young, in 1966, at 59. C.N. Kushner died in 1997 at 92. They live on in the
memories of their children and grandchildren.
We stand on
the shoulders of giants. We look at our past and appreciate how easy it was for
us by comparison.
Humble
beginnings and wintry times do not always foretell the future.
Getting From Here To There!
I feel
battered and bruised,
As if sorely
abused,
Although I
lately reside
Far from
what I deride.
I’ve been
seared to the core
By the rot,
so much more,
That’s now
been revealed,
An effusion
unsealed,
Something,
always been there,
We too
little aware.
Confront it,
we must,
Feel in us
its thrust,
Feel in us
the fear,
Of the
changes that near.
With our
minds we embrace
The
evolution we face,
In our gut
we do cringe,
We whimper
and whinge,
What will it
be like,
Too “others”
at the mike?
So it does
seem,
Does this
racism scream?
Yes we do
care,
Can we live
with the “there”
MR
We
Embellish!
To embellish
is so human,
And if
we’re, perhaps, a woman
We do it
when we tell.
When,
indeed, we try to sell.
Sometimes,
when we try to win,
Often, when
we say we’re thin.
Would you
call it, then, a lie?
Why, so
harsh would you decry
Our efforts,
here, now on display,
The
aspirations to defray
Realities
full of pain
We are
seeking to contain.
Beauty can be
brought to bear
On ugliness
of things too spare,
If we
embellish just a bit,
And round
the square to make it fit.
The Bottom Line
Imagine, if you can, places you would
rather be,
How life is full of striving, seeking ways to set one free.
Doing work, enjoying challenge,
stretching out sight,
Learning stuff, fighting hard, reaching for the light.
This is what you hoped for, what
living’s all about.
Grateful and contented, tell us with a shout!
A
lover at your side, enjoy a smile, a poke, a nudge,
From this precious spot in time why would
you ever budge?
A
sunny day, a cooling breeze, precious moments without pain,
Yearning millions dream these instants,
unhappily, in vain
Rejoicing
in their sweetness, tasting juicy on the tongue,
Well-knowing they are fleeting, in our
memory’s closet hung.
CREATIVITY
Building lofty
monuments to benefit mankind,
Educate the masses,
bringing vision to the blind,
Feed a hungry planet,
save a species from demise,
For me, the ultimate,
of living’s goal, the prize,
Create a living
creature, tho’ the world’s oft defiled,
Join with another
person to create a living child.
For me no joy that can
compare, no pain more shreds the heart,
Of purpose of our
living, my one essential part.
The beauty and the
ugliness, the universe contained therein,
The essence of
experience, as round the sun we spin.
Traveled, or content,
in backwoods village, town,
Do we finally gain the
wisdom, children are life’s crown?
Let me celebrate my living, let me celebrate
my love,
Enumerate, appreciate, all the
treasures in my space,
Let me bless the happy fortune
bequeathed me from above,
Seeing evidence before my eyes, as
joyous visions race,
I laugh, I cry, I shout aloud, I
scream at length for joy,
God-like, in this life, I did some
creativity employ.
“If You Want To Know Who We
Are”
So we can dream
The dreams
we always dream,
As humans always do, For
something better.
Hoping for something better. Fighting
for something better,
To arrive at something better,
Fighting
to keep the better.
Why?
Like dogs after scraps,
We
fight
Just to keep what we have earned. We are the animals we are, Jealous
of anything our fellows may have.
Why could we
not be better?
Must
we have more than we need?
Would that work?
Or, would I still want what my neighbor has
Because I am an animal human.
Is there
something else we could really be?
Entertaining
The Troops
The
supercycles now I’m riding,
Searching
through the mist,
To find me
jewels, all in hiding.
To be a
winner on my list
Each is just
another loser,
Things I’m
sure are really right
Become yet
another doozer,
Surrender
me, a hopeless fight?
Are my
antics, through the hoops,
Just comedy
to entertain the troops?
Can I win
this jolly antic?
Punching
well above my weight,
Resist me
going truly frantic
As reality
begins to grate.
Will the
future beckon brighter,
Starry
nights and happy days,
Rousing
spirits always lighter,
Visions of
grand master plays?
The Devil’s
in the details,
Rally, as
the Market swoops,
Tempting for
the weeny Retails,
Entertaining
for the troops!
Our Pool
Who and what
am I?
Who and what
are you?
Our thoughts
flow in and out, Streams,
streaming in tendrils, Rushing
with our life force, Dark and light,
Incandescent,
Insubstantial, inarticulate, inchoate, Systematic,
somnalescent, sybaritic, Into
the pool. We
are the pool.
Actions.
What are
we without actions? Doing,
donning, dragging, digging, daring! Hauling,
hailing, hassling, halting,
Hoarding
all we can lay our hands on.
Building,
brawling, burning, basking, bungling, Bingeing on all that we can
reach,
Piling
into the pool.
Swarming,
swanning, swishing, Swimming
in the pool.
We
are the pool.
Escaping To
Delirium?
The chaos of crushing Opeds
Falling like limp noodles
Unheard by those to whom they are directed.
Our eyes, ears, minds averted,
Focusing on inner pangs
Irrelevant to current events.
I cry for tender blooms
Shuddering in the wintry waltzes
Of hoped-for warm breezes
Seeking relevance.
I dream of sweeter sounds,
Overcoming the cacophony
Shivering my timbers
From off-stage.
Can I find a place
Where I can rest insensate?
Knowing, I must rise to play my part?
Knowing, If not my blood on the line,
Who shall stand in defense
Of truth and freedom?
Recognizing how puerile
Are my utterings in the face
Of forces far beyond my control.
Raging at my
irrelevance!
The Bottom Line
Imagine, if you can, places you would
rather be,
How life is full of striving, seeking ways to set one free.
Doing work, enjoying challenge,
stretching out sight,
Learning stuff, fighting hard, reaching for the light.
This is what you hoped for, what
living’s all about.
Grateful and contented, tell us with a shout!
A
lover at your side, enjoy a smile, a poke, a nudge,
From this precious spot in time why would
you ever budge?
A
sunny day, a cooling breeze, precious moments without pain,
Yearning millions dream these instants,
unhappily, in vain
Rejoicing
in their sweetness, tasting juicy on the tongue,
Well-knowing they are fleeting, in our
memory’s closet hung.
Evaluate the
invariant to illustrate,
Speculate
and implicate the proliferate,
Far beyond
the irritants that irritate,
Far beyond
the lies that obfuscate,
Approaching,
we, a rage to obliterate.
Human’s
appetites do always complicate,
Blocking
much needed to facilitate!
We may be
now a mere novitiate,
A rising
toll of lives does indicate,
Hidden
substances we disseminate
Causing
bodies to eviscerate,
As our
airways they do infiltrate,
Risking
human’s future to decapitate!
It’s not in
us ever to capitulate!
But, hidden
weakness, we prevaricate,
And unwise
leaders did we designate,
Unwisely
chose them as a delegate.
Now, our
bravest must we emulate,
Even seeing
that our fears emasculate,
Idealism in
our peers we celebrate.
Resolve again,
again, to dedicate,
Again,
again, we in us inculcate,
Forever
courage bears our weight!
Getting Good Help!
It‘s raining on
my parade.
I don’t like it one bit.
I signed on for sunshine.
I signed on for flowers.
Who is writing the script?
I may have to take over the job
I should have taken the job.
It’s hard to get good help these
days.
It’s raining on my parade.
I don’t like it one bit.
I’m going to write the script.
My program is for sunshine.
My program is for flowers.
I’m going to take over the job
To get the job done right.
It’s hard to get good help these
days.
Dreaming Hot and Heavy in Paradise!
Have you
noticed that days getting shorter in the autumn and there is a definite chill
is in the morning air? What could be better than a winter holiday in the sun?
What better time to consider such a thing when the world around us is going
toward frigid, roads impassable with snow and ice, and even the bristles on
your face. Born and raised in Winnipeg, I know full well what that means.
Sojourning on the west coast, I learned I face months on end of rain and gloomy
days without a hint of sun. Better than Winnipeg winter, but, yes, I know when
it is time to hit the trail!
During the
years of work when I didn’t even lift my head from the well-worn path I trod, a
real vacation was never in the cards. For many wage-earners living from
pay-check to pay-check, something more than time-off didn’t exist. How the
world has changed! These days almost everybody in the northern climes runs to
the sun thanks to plastic money. Of course, it is often just a week or ten days
away, hardly enough time to catch your breath between flights.
Well, I was
a retired guy. I’ve been a retired guy for twenty years. None of this a
week-away from the grind stuff for me! When this bird goes on holiday from his
normal place on the tree branch, he wants to go away for the season like those
proverbial birds flying south for the winter. What better place to go looking
for winter vacation alternatives than in my tri-weekly exercise class. That’s
where the real travel experts and holiday consultants abound. And we struck
gold!
How about a
place in sunny Mexico on a gorgeous Pacific beach? And we could enter this paradise
for the cost of our daily Starbucks! (Well, perhaps just a little more.) What
could be more perfect? Quick, reserve the place for at least four months. Four
months? Why not five? Ok, ok, four months it is! This was going to be our first
exotic away-time from our residence in our far-west enclave after many years in
Arizona.
My Bride
looked at me awe-struck as I jumped right into the water without testing depth
or temperature. Don’t you want to ask any questions, the look on her face
seemed to ask? What’s to ask? I know a little bit of Spanish, I’ve been to
Mexico. It’s sunny all the time and the water is warm. And it’s less than half
the cost of a former US hideaway was per month. So, what’s to ask?
We booked a
two-bedroom place in Paradise for the worst winter months, and we could invite
others to join us. And, we did! Calling in all my trading chips, I managed to
get flights to this distant place off the main charter routes for my Bride and
myself. For half the normal cost! I took no insurance. If we had to change our
tickets for any reason, it would really cost us. Forget that! Why would we ever
want to come home early?
Departure
day arrived. We wanted to be at our destination in the daylight hours so we
chose a 6 a.m. departure flight. It was up at three in the morning to catch the
cab.
We had begun
by agreeing that we were going to travel light with packs. But I had to have my
computer. And there were all those drug products we needed for ourselves and
others, sun screen and beauty products. My Bride insisted on taking a frypan
just in case, etc., etc., etc. We booked in with two bags. One of our bags was
marked, heavy!
Uneventful
arrival. We remembered to discard all our food products as we had been warned.
Collected our bags and booked an official taxi. We had organized our monies and
had sufficient local currency to keep us until we were settled.
Oh, oh!
Forgot my leather jacket on the plane with money in the pocket. What the heck!
On with the show!
First thing,
we noticed that it was really HOT and HUMID. What the heck! On with the show!
We had the
address of our destination, an owner name, a phone number, and keys to the
place, with the address of a nearby hotel as a fail-safe. Then began a five and
a half hour odyssey!
Our cabbie
kept picking up friends to help, circling our neighborhood without finding our
address. Finally, as night fell, we checked into a hotel. The desk clerk on her
own initiative phoned her boss on learning of our predicament. Her boss knew
our man! A few minutes later, we met him and he took us to our place. It turns
out the locks had been changed and the keys we had would not have worked.
Never fear,
our fun had just started.
In the
morning we discovered that our place was situated just across the street from
an outdoor sports facility, busy every day ‘til late into the evening. And a
week into our stay, the landlord began a construction project in the building.
That filled the days with drilling and banging,
continuing for weeks.
Meanwhile,
the Montezuma’s revenge I had contracted raged on. I had to visit a doctor who
administered an IV against incipient dehydration and dispensed various
medicines. My fasting sugar reading plummeted to danger levels. Regular intakes
of Jello and oranges and electrolytes were required to raise it. The heavy heat
and humidity were enervating. Were we having fun, right! Or not? Getting what
we bargained for?
Eventually,
conditions stabilized. We learned to go out and shop mornings and evenings and
to nap during high-heat hours. The temperatures moderated slightly as we moved
into December. We ventured out to restaurants and beaches.
My Bride’s
attitude modified from a demand for immediate departure to the observation that
her discomfort from the arthritis experienced at home had effectively
disappeared. And, as the time for arrival of invited children drew close,
obviously we had to persist in our residency. Evenings spent by the water with
a breeze and an ice-cold “limonada” could be delicious. The people were ‘muy
sympatico’ and some of the food was interesting.
The markets
were totally fascinating. Still hot and heavy during the day, life was bearable
with fans, air-conditioning and access to the internet. My phone worked with a
local sim card. Did I mention that our TV offered HBO, Fox and NBC? I accessed
streaming MSNBC on my computer and worked my stock portfolio.
My Bride
kept herself busy with her Ipad and books, and with editing my writings.
Perhaps not a paradise, but my Bride began saying she would come back. She
continued working on keeping me alive. But no question, at that moment, I was
still a bum!
Fast forward
two months and our tune had changed even more. The temperatures had cooled. We
had made friends with a number of neighbors. We were venturing to surrounding
beaches under the tutelage of the more experienced. We had found some places
where we LOVED the food, and LOVED to lounge at the water’s edge. I earned a
lovely tan.
Happy
memories! And soon it rolled around again to winter times. Bottom line, booked
our Paradise for this coming year! This was repeated twice more before COVID
changed the game. Don’t be jealous!
Now we walk
in the rain and dream of what we have lost! Our paradise lost!
Have I made
you feel better about your COVID fate?
Sept/21
Perception And Reality
It’s a
puzzle we all have to work through. We, all of us, think that our perception of
reality is the one that exists. But just talking to other humans living through
the same experience can quickly bring us to the realization that we live in a
world where reality can be very hard to pin down. I know all about the
scientific method and its dictum, don’t believe that anything that you see is
real, really real, until you can measure it and duplicate it. But most of us
don’t live like that in the world we inhabit.
So, a lot of the time what we think of as
real, real to us, may be different for others, maybe a lot different. And
that’s about stuff we perceive when we are considering ourselves of sound mind.
That’s something that in itself may be hard to define.
Today we
went to see the Van Gogh exhibit for the second time. Again, we got to see
Vincent’s perception of the reality surrounding him. Vincent was basically of
sound mind, but he did have periods of delusion. Some of the paintings
presented on the walls and floors, along with a cascade of music, were
presentations of peaceful landscapes and staid illustrations of the daily life
of the common people in his Vincent’s environment. Some, however, were rampant
with almost violent color, sinuous-appearing in their application, in their
aliveness, they almost implied entry into an altered state. One could almost be
swept away emotionally.
I think
about events in our lives, and the different conclusions each of us might
variously conclude from the same experience. I think of some of the sensory
experiences in my life, some approaching the unbearable, ones I would not dare
to seek, and yet now could not bear to have missed. The perception and the
reality were so different. And so many lives are daily being lost in the
private, and inconsolable, search for a temporary redemption of this kind,
escaping from a reality that seems, to some, to need, nay, demand, enhancement.
Examining
the impact on the lives of humans of the various belief systems we have
experienced in our history, and how they have twisted our experiences of
perception and reality. We recognize the power of our emotions to dictate our
behaviors. Coupled with differing belief systems, we see behaviors one party
would describe as devotion to achieve an ultimate yearned-for reward, while
another would see it as self-abuse in search of an illusion.
We see some
who are taught, and see their own lives as inconsequential in the global scheme
of things, merely instruments of a higher power. And therefore they may
consider the lives of others as similarly having no value. In their zeal to
refashion the world into one they are taught should exist, there is neither
expressed nor recognized respect for life and the living of those who subscribe
to a different view. I perceive that as the height of immorality in a
supposedly religious person.
My
perception would be they are leading lives of self-indulgence during what they
view as their momentary existence, assuming an unquestionable salvation. My
reality would observe the transgressions, the rapine and murder, that may
follow from their behaviors, as incomprehensible. But, that’s only me. But,
think about it! How much suffering, death and destruction in real terms have we
experienced in the search by some believers to realize the offered belief
system, forcing it on others, as the means of attaining nirvana for humanity in
its achievement. And yet, we know that in some cases, so much good has been
achieved for so many in the same kind of cause? How can we condemn it all?
My current
focus is on grappling with the inherent puzzle we face in identifying how we
can successfully interact with the people in our lives, recognizing that
perception and reality can be so significantly different between and among us.
It seems to me that we should be paying a lot more attention to ensuring we are
on the same wave-length. How much pain and suffering would we avoid if we took
greater care in these areas of our relationships? Of course, first of all, we
would have to care about this. The truth is that some of us just don’t give a
damn!
The Van Gogh
exhibit, its beauty and brilliance, brought all these thoughts into my mind. I
have resolved to go forth and to try to sin no more.
OCT 6/21
A Jew’s View
Of The World In the Twenty-second
Century After Christ
I was born
in 1934, in Canada, a time of world economic depression. Our family prospects
spiraled downward for years. In Germany, a man named Hitler had just seized
power and began a process leading to a Second World War and the Holocaust, the
genocide of Jews on an industrial scale.
At the end
of World War I, the League of Nations, recognizing the bi-millenian dispersion
of the Jews, and their suffering , granted Britain a mandate in 1920 to create
a Jewish National Home in their ancestral territory. The British hived off 80%
of the territory to reward an ally and impeded Jewish entry while allowing a
flood of Arab immigration. In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition what
remained of that mandate, granting a fraction of the territory to the Jews who
had returned to that land.
In May,
1948, some 800 thousand Jews in an Arab sea of millions, declared their State .
It was immediately attacked by the standing armies of seven surrounding Arab
countries as well as its indigenous Arab population. Not one nation came to its
aid.
In 1949, the
war ended with armistice agreements with four governments, and more territory
for Israel than provided by the Partition. In 1967, Israel was attacked again.
When a ceasefire was agreed to seven days later, Israel had taken possession of
the whole of the truncated mandated territory, as well as occupying the
Egyptian Sinai. In 1973, Israel was attacked again and the conflict ended with
Israel in possession of the Golan territory of Syria, as well as the Egyptian
Sinai. Israel annexed the Golan, and repatriated the Sinai to Egypt in 1979 as
part of a peace agreement. It also signed a peace agreement with Jordan.
In 1993 and
1995 Israel signed the Oslo Accords which created the Palestinian Authority
giving it dominion over the major population concentrations in the West Bank
and Gaza, with Israel responsible for security internally and over borders.
Israel withdrew totally from Gaza in 2003.
In 2021,
with Israel approaching a population of ten million, with an Arab party in its
coalition government, it is recognized as a scientific, military, and
technologic powerhouse. It now has formal diplomatic relations with seven Arab
governments, with Egypt, the most populous. It has informal relations with
others, particularly, Saudi Arabia, as countries recognize how they can benefit
from Israel’s prowess in many areas. Looking back, the present seems almost
miraculous.
How did we get
here? And what is the bigger picture?
The saga
began when an escaping slave population of Hebrews left Egypt about 1350 B.C.E.
Numbering more than two million, according to their writings, with the
benevolence of their unitary Deity, and obeying His code of laws, they survived
in the desert .They took possession of their Promised Land on the eastern shore
of the Mediterranean , outlasting the indigenous. They built a unique culture
centered around their unitary deity that persisted through the rise and fall of
empires.
They fell
under the sway of the Roman Empire in 63 B.C.E., becoming the Roman province of
Iudea in 6 B.C.E. As in their prior history, they chafed under their rulers for
their lack of respect for their religion. Outright rebellion erupted in 66 C.E.
In 70 C.E., Jerusalem, and the Temple which had stood since 516 B.C.E., were
destroyed. Wholesale dispersion began but resistance persisted until 132 C.E.
Josephus,
the Roman historian , reported that in his time about one in ten of the Empire population
counted themselves Jews. The dispersion promoted their ideas, but there were
two streams. The Jews who had supported Jesus’ reforms of religious practice in
ancient Israel, now centered their message around the myth that Jesus had risen
from the dead, and that he was the heralded Messiah, and a simple belief in him
would yield a happy forever afterlife. The great majority of Jews rejected this
and many Jewish followers returned to orthodoxy over time, particularly as the
myth was elaborated in ways contrary to the main stream. A number of different
tales of Jesus’ ministry appeared in the century after his death. Stung by
Jewish rejection, some blamed the Jews for Jesus’crucifixion.
As their
numbers grew among pagans, and believers became more organized into the Church,
some of these writing were organized as Gospels to be included in a New
Testament. Some of the writings which exonerated Rome were chosen for
inclusion, more appealing to a Roman audience. By the time Constantine made
Christianity the state religion about 300 C.E., the die was cast. The Jews were
demonized forever as “Christ killers”. We dare not calculate the losses.
Centuries of
persecution followed Jews wherever Christianity held sway. And the complicity
of individuals during the Holocaust can be easily traced to the Church’s
action. After the murders became known , many nations sheltered their
complicity under a cloak of victimhood. For a time it became unpopular to be an
anti-Semite. Events, however have conspired to change this.
In 2001 the
Durban conference was convened to celebrate the end of Apartheid in South
Africa. What emerged were a condemnations of Israel as a racist, apartheid
state, and the launching of the BDS movement. A new antisemitism in the form of
anti-Israel activity spread across Europe. Left-leaning groups and individuals,
“liberal” academics, condemned Israel as a colonialist enterprise, its strength
a reason it should not defend itself against terrorist attack. All this with
passive U.S. J Street approval. Some are already fleeing from countries of long
habitation. Can new attacks on Jews be far behind?
This is how
I see the world in the year 2021.
Comprehending The Divine
Man’s conflicting
visions of what is Divine, along with reaching new frontiers in human
civilization, have, time and again, caused conflict. Believers, intolerant of
conflicting opinion, have almost always launched violent efforts to expunge
from existence those of a different view. While multiple creeds co-existed in
the distant past, warring among believers has been the constant. Akenathon of
Egypt eradicated all adherence to multiple deities in Egypt, during his reign,
in favor of the exclusive worship of the sun as the Prime Mover. He broke with
the tradition of multiple gods with territorial jurisdiction and areas of
influence governing specific human activities. A practiced monotheism almost
3300 years ago did not survive its founder’s death.
Religious
literature dates the appearance of the Hebrews and their monotheism to about
3500 years ago. Israel has been mentioned in ancient Egyptian texts. The
unitary and exclusive God of the Hebrew conception evolved from a tribal one of
war and the liberation of a homeless people, into the universal One, in the
nation state they established. They insisted in the end that their deity had jurisdiction
governing every aspect of human life for all peoples, not just the Hebrews. The
monotheistic creed of those who became the Jews was launched into the wider
world, consequent on their conquest by Imperial Rome, and eventual Roman acceptance
of a modified Christian rite ascribed to a Jew named Jesus.
Jews,
dispersed from their land, at one time reportedly (sic Josephus) constituted ten percent of the population of the
Roman world. Some were associated with the Jesus sect. They were the first
martyrs in a pagan world. The Judeo-Christian offering made by the disciple,
Paul, (adopted in modified form by the
Romans, ) also denied the existence of any other divinity, (in contrast with
the pantheon of gods then in place in Rome,) and presented a unitary God.
Paul’s innovation for the creed was his God’s promise of eternal life to
followers, (as evidenced by the idea of a Jesus risen bodily from the dead,) in
return for their faith in this doctrine. That attracted the masses of gentiles.
(Traditional Judaism insisted on much more baggage and made fewer promises.)
A Catholic
doctrinal decision around 300 AD, deified Jesus, and reviled Jews for insisting
on their own path. Divine exclusivity was demanded from millions of Christian
adherents attracted by proselytization and induced by the force of arms. Islam
in its turn arrived in 613 AD, and demanded, and demands the same, to this day.
All of the monotheistic creeds, in their turn, have been intolerant of others'
approaches to Divinity.
Humans around
the globe have sought to access the Divine since time immemorial. Asia is
replete with different approaches. Many desire a God intimately involved in our
every breath. Is He, however, an indifferent Prime Mover? Doubters of the
existence of a supreme divinity have to explain how our universe, life, the
forces we witness around us, came into existence? Wasn’t a supernatural agency
necessary to have brought all of this into being? But is He/She the caregiver
many of us wish for? Are we made in God's image, or did we create God in our
own?
Our western
society has adopted some of the ethical values of the religious mantra
philosophically to encourage an orderly and peaceful human interaction among
individuals, communities and nations. We have moved in the direction of the
separation of church and state, (an American innovation, by way of Napoleon?)
to ensure the freedom of religious choice. In most western countries, religious
observance has been divorced, in some measure, from the operations of the state
apparatus.
In those
countries where Islam holds sway, religion and its observance continues to be
dictated by the power of the state. In the last fifty or sixty years, Islam, (as
expressed by the Wahabism financed by the Saudis,) rather than following the
Reformation path of other monotheistic religions in the direction of democracy,
and freedom of choice, has persisted in maintaining theocracies, or
authoritarian governments, that do not offer this freedom. It strongly insists
on the accretion of all humans to its creed. Many Muslims, some of whom have come
to live among us, even if a minority, support coercive efforts regarding
Islamic observance, a view at variance with the principles of freedom of choice
and speech that most of us have adopted.
This is a
well-travelled road fraught with danger, raising all manner of sensitivities
among those wedded to freedom of choice. Hate and murder as a consequence of
any contradiction to an exclusive view of Divine expression, has come to our
streets around the globe. In our era, open borders in the West, the universality
of social media, together with access to lethal weapons, has permitted
extremist views to play themselves out wherever we live. And reactionary forces
of a racist expression are showing their strength.
We remain
with our questions regarding divinity, faith in, and hope of, finding a
benevolent God that we can approach. We maintain our continuing effort to
achieve a more enlightened humanity. Can we avoid despair in an existence
replete with inexplicable suffering and purposelessness? We wonder at the place
of humans in the universe. We see our sacred writings, with their
contradictions, and the evident hand of scribes rewriting histories and
aspirations with the benefit of hindsight and narrow ‘political’ self-interest.
We are full of questions.
We can
understand that our cosmos is a laboratory where anything is possible, but we
cannot rationally explain how the laboratory came into being. We may not be the
only sentient beings to exist, but why does life exist at all if there is no
higher purpose? Why is there something, why is there a universe, instead of
nothing? Can sentient beings achieve some access to the Architect? In the end,
is that search itself the purpose of our existence?
We seek, as
always, to comprehend the Divine.
Telling All About “PUTTIN’ ON THE
RITZ*”
Let’s talk about normal!
I wonder how
it was growing up around your place. I was always conscious of differences
between groups of people, particularly, us and them, whoever they were. A child
of immigrants, I grew to be super-sensitive to all the vibrations. Naturally,
we had aspirations to be upwardly mobile and we were always checking around to
see how we were doing compared to others. We tended to compare ourselves with
those who had been here a generation or two, those who already had
“connections”.
We believed
they knew code words that gave the secrets to how the system worked. We
believed that we were babes in the woods who had to learn about all that.
We had
illusions as to how the “Joneses” lived. We felt that when we had learned
enough of the secrets that the Joneses knew, we would someday be able to “keep
up with the Joneses”. And, according to our own lights, we eventually felt we
did.
The day came
when we thought a lot about doing that. We began to feel we had arrived. And we
tried to do exactly that. In how we furnished our homes, bought our clothes,
attended public affairs, joined clubs, we were very much guided in our
considerations and actions by what we thought would fit that bill. And we
looked out at the new arrivals and saw the distance we had travelled.
Now that we
had lifted our heads and looked around, we began to realize there were even
loftier aspirations to which we might presume. One could actually go to shops
and buy made-to-measure garments. Instead of buying clothes off the rack when
hand-me downs were no longer reparable, someone would measure your extremities
and design, (DESIGN!) your clothes to bring out your best features and hide
those things you wanted to hide.
Holy smoke!
That was really “putting on the Ritz” the way they did in the movies. WOWZA!
One could even consider going out to a restaurant TO DINE! What was our world
coming too?
In our
house, as soon as we were able, we had a real living room. We had a sofa,
(overstuffed, of course,) and an arm chair. The room always had to be ready for
“company”, so, of course, it could never be used. We covered in plastic, in
case, heavens forbid, something might be spilled on it, and it would become
stained.
I remember
well my days of starting out, as many of you out there may as well. If Daddy
didn’t have a profession or a business, (as some of our compatriots did,) where
was our job future to be found? It was clear in my home what we were going to
do. We were going to study hard and get good marks at school. Everybody knew
that was the road to fame and fortune.
And if we
forgot, getting too interested in school activities and sports, our parents
were there to remind us. Yep! No fooling around, and if corporal punishment was
necessary to get our attention, it was delivered in full measure. Hit the
books, kid! And we heard about how well the neighbor’s kid that was doing.
Often!
Then of
course, if you got the marks, you could go to university. That would give you a
chance to get on the “gravy train”. Well what about the cost? You knew that
your parents were counting pennies to put food on the table. Long before you
finished high school you were out there looking for a part-time job. I remember
that sometimes, I would even cut classes to earn money. I knew from the
beginning I was not going to be a big brain. I was satisfied to get as close to
an A average and I didn’t beat myself up about it.
By the time
University enrolment came around, I was financially independent except for room
and board. I didn’t realize it at the time, but as a child of the Depression,
with its lower birth rate, there was a lower number of competitors for
university spaces and jobs that I had to compete for. I never had difficulty
finding employment, even advancement, until my successes brought me into
competition with the generation ahead of me.
Marrying
early, (surely I could handle this better than the old folks!) starting out
with a young family, keeping up with the Joneses and “puttin’ on the Ritz” were
the furthest things from my mind. My recollections are of a life spent living
pretty close to the bone.
I never
learned what “puttin’ on the Ritz” really was until I met a woman who knew the
score. Earning an income beyond my wildest dreams, and spending every penny I
earned, ultimately cures one of wishing for that lifestyle. Thank heavens most
of the kids had gone away to fly on their own by the time I came down to earth.
I learned it was not the lifestyle for me.
Retired now
for more than twenty-five years, I glory in the blessings of a quiet life with
my Bride, without interest in the trappings of the upwardly mobile, or the
worship of “things acquisition”. These days, I mainly notice the flowers and
plants, friendly faces, smiles and chances for warm hugs. My greatest concerns
are the near and dear. And on tomorrow’s weather! I do so enjoy a sunny, (not
too hot,) day. I’m willing to travel some to see loved ones and to bask in
sunny days, wherever they are!
What’s
happening at your house?
*Puttin’ on
The Ritz”. This is the title of a song written by Irving Berlin in May, 1927.
It was published on December 2, 1929. The title song of an 1930 movie of the
same name, starring Fred Astaire, celebrated the lives of the rich and famous.
Telling It Like It Is!
Did you ever tell a lie?
Tell one if you really try?
Washing out the simple truth,
Avoid you being just uncouth?
Try and try, I cannot say
Simple falsehoods when I pray.
I’ve been known to tell a tale,
When joking, all to tell a whale,
But, serious, you now know this,
I’m sure to tell it like it is !
How do you know this for a fact?
It’s not because I lack in tact.
I can’t remember lies I‘ve said.
They vanish from within my head.
Forced I am to be upright
To keep my golden image bright.
Rage
I consider
myself a rational person. Most of us think of ourselves that way. But I know
that deep within my innards, maybe not so deep, lies a cauldron of boiling
magma, that could, and indeed has, boil (ed) over. The swell of emotion that
can take over our bodies and minds sweeps away all the normal inhibitions we
have learned, been programmed, to contain the raw emotions most of us contain
in our heart of hearts. We’ve all heard of people who are labelled as having
poor impulse control. Some of them end up in jail, or asylums, if we have such
anymore. Or they end up dead, at their own hand or at someone else’s. This is
the stuff of which murder and assault are made.
I know whereof
I speak, because I have felt such emotions, most often in rage. I have emerged
from such a state wondering how I could have allowed such uncontrolled emotions
to be released. To date I have not suffered the sanctions that such expressions
could bring. I know how lucky I have
been so far. Since I consider myself a run-of-the mill type, I wonder what is
happing inside the people around me. I wonder about how those around me have
managed their impulses, uncontrollable surges of emotion that shake us to the
core.
Mostly my
episodes have been solitary, expressions of rage, fully exasperated as I have
been at injustices I witnessed that I could do absolutely nothing about. I
caused harm to nobody but myself. They may have prompted me to take some
actions, but mostly I just stewed. It helps a little to write about them. And
it helps me to better understand when these things happen to others.
These days
we are witnessing so much more in the way of expressions of public rage on our
North American scene than we have been aware of before. Public brandishing of
weapons of mass-violence, threats against public servants doing the jobs they
have been chosen to, actions that disturb the disinterested of tasks underlying
the machinery of democracy, all are playing out before our eyes. And most of
all, I have seen public expressions of incoherent rage acted out on our
television screens, and reported in living color in our media streams.
This may be
happening because some of our public figures with a following see it in their
interests, for a variety of reasons, to incite public expression of violence
and rage. What we have for generations encouraged our young, and our neighbors,
to control by an act of will, the naked expression of a million triggers of our
rage and frustration, we are now being given license to act out. Once released
from the bottle, these will be hard to contain.
If these
malefactors succeed in their ends, they will face the challenge of containing
and directing them at those who might stand in their way. If, as we hope, they
fail, the rest of us will face a public cancer that we will have to root out.
Either way, the times ahead augur some unpleasant experiences for us.
Let’s face
it. Expressions of public rage, along with the bad, have sometime ushered in
radical changes that have benefitted general society. I wonder if we could have
had the American Revolution without the one in France. The economic rules of
the road in the European Economic Union could not have come about without
public protest. Are these likely to end up being the rules of the road in
America where the capitalist ethic, every man for himself and devil take the
hindmost, has, so far blocked such ameliorations of public well-being. I fear
the populist forces being unleashed by the leaders I pointed to earlier have
objectives pointing in entirely the opposite direction. They seem to wish an
undoing of the gains for the general public that have been dearly won over many
years. It may be that we need more public rage to be expressed by the majority.
ARE YOU MAD
AND NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE? How about more Whites in the streets
campaigning for everyone’s right to vote? How about protecting voting rights,
abortion rights, subsidized child care, installing negotiated drug prices,
mean’s-tested free college, universal internet access, infrastructure
investment, basic health-care access for everyone, fair taxation for all, for a
start? How about impeaching Manichen and Sinema?
Arise ye
many speaking for the majority! Into the streets! You have nothing to lose but
your chains! Let’s have rage on the right side, the side of the people’s will
so often ignored by elected officials.
RAGE ON!
Never fear,
our times of Joy will come again!
A Poem Or Two In Passing
A Cancer On The Body Politic
Who calls for world
domination?
Who calls for armed
struggle?
Who call for the death
of non-believers?
Who insists on their
way or no-way?
Who calls for Jihad,
death or victory?
Who calls for
subterfuge until power is attained?
Who calls for temporary
cultural acquiescence only
Who insists on
rejection of all cultures but their own?
Who insists on adoption
of their culture where they are guests?
Who abhors the concept
of democracy?
Who rejects free choice
of religious belief?
Who rejects the
equality of opportunity/choices for women?
Who abhors freedom of
sexual choice?
Who has proselytized
world-wide with secret financing?
Who counts on
demography to subvert democracy ?
Who/what is a cancer on
the body politic of the world?
Who will perform the
necessary surgery to root out the cancer?
When will the surgery
be carried out?
Will it come too late
to save the patient?
Will it come too late
to save us?
Dancing In Vienna
Dancing in Vienna
and in Berlin too,
not to mention Munich
where the Jews were taught it’s true
there is no place for lingering,
there is no place to stay,
there is no place in all the world
for a Jewish tune to play.
Why don’t you go to Palestine?
What are you doing here?
So what you builded here your habitat
nigh on a thousand year.
So what you’ve labored long
to build for all a space,
song and dance and high finance,
spilt blood-for you no place
How many years were you in France?
Why did you learn a Russian dance?
So what you made the Polish thrive?
Helped make a British Empire live?
So what your thought a world civilized?
So what the sciencifics prized?
Why did you come and have to stay?
We have these now, just go away!.
How about your wandering?
Three thousand years in Araby
Golden Ages
built for them
During their frenzied murder spree.
They took your best, polluted thought,
Spreading wide their vicious creed,
exalting death, demeaning life,
breeding hate-messages you read.
What-you want your Palestine?
Just because we killed you on the Rhine?
So what we promised you that place
though built your people in that space?
Go back again that bloody hole
swallowing your people whole,
chewed you up and spat you out,
you have no place, without a doubt!
Truth be told, this is our stance.
We want no place for you to dance.
Let me whisper in your ear!
We’ll shout it out to make it clear!
Our time has come to make a stand!
Like or not, we have our land.
We have place to dance and sing,
Vienna’s really not our thing.
We show our stuff where ‘ere we are,
Brains and courage take us far,
We’ve at last a blessed place,
Brothers guarding well our space.
Forevermore we build our lives
Foretold to us, our ancient scribes.
A New Frypan!
One day in Dublin I got my Bride got a new frypan. She
was as excited as if I had just bought her a beautiful new necklace, a
beautiful jewel for her finger, some highly prized article of designer clothing
or accessory. I made her day. I’m jealous-a new pot brings her more ecstasy
than having me around?
Refugees from Winnipeg, Canada, the Great White North,
we had been living in Ireland for over six years. We had fled our homeland,
seeking foreign shores, and chose Ireland, because my Bride had dreamed of
retiring here for years before I claimed her hand and her attention. She and a
close friend had even chosen where, and in what home, they would spend their
declining years. Fate and the Grim Reaper intervened. When I appeared on the
scene, reawakening old memories and buried feelings, and expressed my
wanderlust, she opted for Ireland.
Looking back, when we settled here in Dublin in 2006,
rental space was in short supply. We had to line up to compete for the most
miserable accommodation at outrageous prices. What a shock after the
spaciousness and glitz of most of the North American accommodations to which we
were accustomed! When we had a chance at an apartment on the River Liffey, and
an expansive view, we grabbed at it without a thought for rental cost for a
very small space. With time, fortunately, small became cosy in our eyes, and a
housing bubble collapse led to lower costs for our space. The declining Euro
helped as well
When we came to Ireland I impressed on my Bride, given
the unknowns, that we should consider anything we acquired for our new home in
Ireland as disposable. I believed that we should be prepared to walk out the
door at a moments’ notice, leaving behind anything we could not pack into a
purse, pack or suitcase. We were in agreement that this was sensible.
Now, my Bride is a collector; recipes, cookbooks,
crafts materials, books, whatever. There is no question she is a nester. I
would be happy with one or two articles of clothing in each category. Not my
wife. I have faced a continuing pressure to expand my wardrobe. Could I deny my
Bride the right to buy a few threads to cover her nakedness? One can easily
extrapolate from this specific.
Fast forward today and every crevice in our small
space is crammed with materials of every kind and description. Naturally we
have had to find space for furniture to contain our added possessions, shelving
and buffets and bookcases. Get the picture? We have now agreed to discard an
article from our home whenever one is added. However, I still hold to the same
dictum. I am still prepared to walk out the door, leaving behind all our
accretions, including our television set.
Now, however my Bride was making errant noises.
Our perfect marriage has always been in a state of
flux, with almost all the action going in the direction crafted by female
insurrection. Total control of finances on my part has given way to a
prescribed housekeeping allowance with me responsible for everything else. Of
course, if my Bride does not have her purse with her, the gentleman at her side
will obviously take care of matters. On the other hand, on the odd occasion
when my poor planning has led to the danger of being financially embarrassed,
she has suddenly been there with amazing savings from the household budget.
We are always aware of the precious minutes trickling
through our grasping fingers. Looking back we see the silent stream of time as
a raging torrent sweeping our lives away. Consciously, I seek to create airy
confections of laughter and warmth, and to mark the inexorable passage of our
lives with treasured nuggets of remembrance. There is very little masculine
territory that I am prepared to defend. I smile through the multiple chidings
of my irritating male insouciance, of my mindless concentration on the inner workings
of my mind, to the exclusion of life’s practicalities.
I do windows and floors on request, leap to do the
dishes and the vinaigrette, sweep the floor and make the bed, sometimes without
even being asked! (Do you believe that?) I am appointed to make the meal
sometimes, receiving bushels of positive reinforcement from my beaming Bride.
In contrast to the narrative playing in my ear, I believe I have become an
ideal husband. I stand eager to improve my performance and my standing in the
ranks.
I
am blessed with a wife who takes pleasure in feeding me. Through this territory I must weave like a
broken field runner in a football game, dodging and twisting through the issues
of healthy living and reduced calories. I climb enthusiastically on board when
called to attention, and ignore these issues when the tempting and delectable
contradictions are placed lovingly before me. I rarely say no when the regimen
is ravaged with loving kindness.
Thus there is joy and rejoicing in the land when a new
pot or pan, salad bowl, or other kitchen device, all precious accretions to our
crowded shelves we cannot live without for another day, each added to the
menagerie that we supposedly will leave behind if we terminate our Irish
adventure.
Yes,
I believe this principle will really be upheld.
Staying Alive
I am recalling how it was in our former home, how we
agreed to try and stay alive. I remember in Dublin, that we did not really see
the sun on cloudy days . When it is sunny in Dublin, scattered clouds temper
the rare heat. It is cooler than it had been for long periods that summer. One
year we had had a summer some people said had not been equalled for at least
twenty-five years. A nice little breeze usually filtered its way through our
open window overlooking the busy streets. We
heard the hiss and hush of incessant traffic on both sides of the
river, with the occasional expostulation of a truck or bus, a harsh attack on
our consciousness. We live on a busy through-street now, so that much hasn’t
changed.
An overlook of our personal stretch of the Liffey
River was where we lived. The river flows through the city, bounded by concrete
banks within which it had been caged. Stone walls were thrown up many, many,
years ago to restrain the flooding which plagued the city in ancient times.
Shades of Winnipeg!
Some days the elevator was working. When the elevator
was not working, as happened quite often, (a real nuisance when we had
suitcases to move up and down-we were on the fifth floor,) we told ourselves we
didn’t really care because we were then forced to climb the stairs instead of
doing it voluntarily. Sometimes when we used the elevator we felt guilty
that we had not lived up to our resolve to be strong and climb the stairs.
While living there, we began a regime to counter what
we saw as condition of internal rot. We tried to go out every day to do
something. Sure, we loved to just sit around and read, or watch TV, or busy
ourselves with all the stuff going on in our computers. But we decided that
wouldn’t be healthy. We had to get out and move, to find something important
enough to do that we had to go down eight flights of stairs to accomplish it.
Pretty important, right?
What was this all about? Everybody knows that sixty is
the new forty. Is eighty the new sixty? It sure didn’t feel like it! Lie in one
place for a while and it feels the blood wants to take up permanent residence
in the places where it has pooled. Why was it so hard to put on my socks? I
haven’t even got a pot. Something was going on? Something called old age?
We decided we had found the cure. We decided that the
secret to eternal life was to keep moving. If the Grim Reaper was going to
catch up with us, he was going to have to catch us in full stride. We began
trying to keep the moving parts oiled with lots of movement, less food, more
water, more vegetables, fruit, and excess only in moderation. Bend, stretch,
push, pull, carry those grocery bags, climb the stairs and walk, and to heck
with cabs.
We date our current habits to those Irish adventures
and resolve. We even get off the elevator at least one or two floors short of
our objective. We are hoping we can succeed in bullying each other into staying
alive. That’s the ticket!
Sure, we can sometimes be a pain to each other. We
have already heard all the jokes each of us know so well that we have stopped
telling them. But dammit, there are those moments when it feels so great to
share those common memories, when we don’t have to explain, we just know what
makes our partner tick. Not having to explain is worth a heck of a lot. Even
the nuisances bring on nostalgia. It does give pleasure when you can make your
partner smile. And some of us still see our partners the way they were in the
full flower of youth, and that is beautiful. It sure beats looking to spruce
ourselves up to attract a new partner. Or, being alone.
My Bride insisted we go out every day to do one chore
or another, so that we might exercise our bodies. She insisted we avoid
elevators-that can mean flights of stairs wherever we are. We are breathless
when we arrive at our door. I usually have a heavy bag in each hand to add to
the heart stress. She wants me to die with my boots on.
I take that back. She cooked the most marvellous soups
for me-and other things too-I live in a gastronomic heaven. Most of what we
watched on TV, (I love the occasional thriller,) were the cooking shows.
Sometimes, very rarely, she allows me into her hallowed space, charged with
preparing the current meal in question.
We’re living the life of O’Riley!
Choosing The Right Diet
So, we live
in North America. I have heard news that there are dislocations in the delivery
chain, and empty grocery shelves in some places at some times. But, let’s get
serious. We are not somewhere in Africa or Asia, Ethiopia, Tigray, Nigeria,
Yemen, Myanmar, in a Chinese re-education camp, in a Russian gulag, on the
streets of Delhi, India. There’s plenty of stuff in the fridge for most people.
Indeed, we have full fridges and full cupboards. And the most important health
challenge we face these days aside from COVID, and political paralysis, is an
epidemic of obesity. Even the poor usually have food, if, often, not the right
kind.
The turmoil
some of us face in our daily lives, aside, that is, from the turmoil we all
face in our public lives, may be trying to decide what the best daily diet is
for us. Coping with the job, the husband, the wife, the kids, is draining the
energy out of so many, so that sometimes it seems like we don’t have enough
left to lift our head to look around.
We live in
Canada, but we can’t help seeing what’s going on south of the border. And it
appears we were living in a dream world about that country. In many parts
things are really nasty. It makes one wonder what’s going on in our own country
under our noses. Imagine, our Facebook is a source that’s leading our kids
astray, stoking misinformation, and promoting stuff that has the potential for
killing people! We always thought that Facebook was a daily part of a healthy
diet. This time I’m referring to a healthy diet of news of the world that we
all like, perhaps need, to keep in daily touch with.
Wow, it
makes one’s head spin when we begin to question the ordinaries of daily life
that we usually take for granted. So we know there’s ransomware that can freeze
your computer until you pay up. We know there are scams phishing on your phone
everyday trying to savage your bank account. We know the Chinese and the
Soviets are actively shopping the internet to get you to mistrust your
government, and maybe, even your neighbors. And what about pleasing your
customers? Holy mackerel! Ain’t life grand?
So, on top
of all that you want to go on a diet and lose weight?
Look, COVID
hasn’t helped, restricting our freedom of movement, closing down opportunities
for regular exercise, and offering access to food from the fridge just to pass
the time. This piece will not provide a catalogue, but we know there are
bizarre (so it seems to me,) choices on offer.
So you can
choose to go vegan, pagan, keto, pescatalian, intermittent fasting, paleo, not
eating after 3 p.m., programs based on the psychology of self-control, or what
have you. I know this is serious stuff for many people, essential to future health.
Obesity has become an epidemic in America, along with all our troubles. And of
course, we want to look good to ourselves, as well as to other people. So
choosing something that will work for one for an adequate period of time can be
important.
What has
worked for me is to cut down the occasions for food consumption to two, or even
one occasion per day. I am within three kilos of my objective. The end is in
sight, down almost ten kilos from where I started a year ago. I admit that it
has been a see-saw struggle, and I sometimes have felt deprived. But then there
have been the glorious occasions when I gave it all up and had ice-cream on my
eating occasions three days running. That is when I finished the ice-cream
container in our freezer. Yes, I have made life for my Bride in her efforts
very difficult.
It is true,
we have to keep our sense of humor alive, and resist being crabby. I promise to
be very, very, good in the future. Anyway, the sale on liters of ice cream in
our neighborhood store is over. No more maple-walnut ice-cream for a while.
Choosing the right sort of diet for yourself to ensure success is very
important.
In the end,
whatever works for you is the right one. You may have to try a few different
methods to get to that. And it helps to make it a group activity, so you can
compare notes and encourage each other.
Go forth and
prosper!
CELEBRATION OF LIFE!
I understand
why people carry out memorial services celebrating the lives of those who have
passed on. What I don’t understand why more of us don’t act to carry out
celebrations of life at any age, and particularly why our valued family members
don’t have families carrying out their tributes more often while those we value
so highly are still alive. Maybe, too often, these celebrations are an
expression of political correctness. We can understand that, but that shouldn’t
prevent us from celebrating our realities, our joys, while the ones we care for
can appreciate the experience in the flesh. We do so regret the opportunities
we missed when they are snatched away from us by unexpected events.
The 9/11
experience is a case in point. Like the stroke that came out of the blue, the
sudden discovery of pancreatic disease, a concussion during fun with kids or
during a sports event, the unexpected occurs on every side. We should seize every
opportunity to celebrate our present joys of life, and our loved ones, when the
inclination presents itself. We can never take those opportunities for granted.
The regrets we will have will always be about the opportunities we missed to
make the most of our time with loved ones.
I’ve always
been a guy who was looking forward, watching my step on the current path, but
in the expectation of brighter futures to come. Today, spite aches and pains,
times when I worry about having enough physical strength to carry out the tasks
I face, (would you believe I can no longer lift my body to chin the bar, (when
did that happen?)), it’s my present that fills me with the joy of living. I
could go this way forever without a complaint. Yes, I do look forward. But it’s
all about looking forward to sharing the present with loved ones, dear friends,
who fill my heart with more joy at their presence, whether in the flesh, or
through the miracles of Zoom and Facetime. I don’t worry too much about the
future. I have delegated much of the work of caring that the world doesn’t spin
out of control to those standing more firmly on their feet.
I know all
of us are supposed to care a lot about what is going on. If we don’t like what
is going on we have to stand up and shout. Actually, I am one of those guys who
do that. Recently while out walking, I came across a loud demonstration, a
speaker with a bullhorn, dispensing all sorts of political nonsense and
spouting anti-vaxxer propaganda. I couldn’t help myself and began to shout out
through bull-horn hands, trying to drown out the speaker. Some of his co-horts
approached me menacingly, and a ring of police officers formed in front of me
in a protective barrier. I kept my shouting out until the speaker moved away.
But, now I
am more content to leave the battle to other, if only they will speak out. I
find it difficult to abide passivity in the face of abuse. We have to stand up
for ourselves, I believe. If others won’t, then I surely must while I am still
animated with the strength to do so. But, at this stage, I would happily leave
the task to others. But, we must celebrate our ability and responsibility to be
involved in the issues of the day.
Of course,
we all have to be aware that there are bills to be paid. We have to pay
attention that we have the means to maintain our life-styles. Wonder of
wonders, although I never thought about it much, paying my taxes, dutifully, if
not always happily, I am now getting a return on my investment. And it does
make a difference. Life would be more difficult without the regular dividend
the government is paying me and my Bride to continue to be alive. And the
outpouring of generosity from government bodies during COVID took us by
surprise. No doubt we will all have to pay it back in time. We certainly have
to celebrate that, nevertheless. There are many people who will have found that
a godsend during their times of distress.
I have to
compare our situation in Canada with the way things are for many people in
other places. We all have things we can criticize here at home, but we
shouldn’t let our awareness of the imperfect to blind to the blessing we enjoy
every day in this country. Just a peak across the border is enough to have us
counting our lucky stars, without looking elsewhere.
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Let’s hear it for a
shout of gratitude |
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WINNIPEG TO MY TASTE |
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I left Winnipeg in 1957. I went East to get
another Degree. But it wasn’t just about the Degree. I was launching myself
onto the path that would take me to a
New World where the important things were happening.
I believed there was nothing for me
in Winnipeg. The family had no business I could go into. Dad wasn’t a lawyer or
a doctor; there was no family trade. Obviously, I thought I had to set sail
abroad on the wide ocean to make my fortune. And it wasn’t just me. Everywhere
I went, I met the refugees from Winnipeg. Sometime they were already showing
their marks on the wall of fortune. I could see the scrabbling marks of their
shoes on the wall of fortune as they sought to rise. I called home to those I
left behind, they would never speak to me of what was happening in Winnipeg. It
was always about Allen so and so, or Monty so and so, or David so and so, or
Norman so and so, or Sylvia so and so, and their marvellous achievements in
faraway places. And I met some of those
fabulous Winnipeggers in the places that I went, in Canada, in America, in the
far corners of Europe and elsewhere. Yes, yes, I wanted to be like them.
Yet, funnily enough, when I met them,
these examples of Spartacus in the battle for ascendancy, for survival and
victory, in these different places, all we ever wanted to do was talk about
Winnipeg. We wanted to talk about St. Johns Tech and the teachers that we knew.
City Park and Kildonan Park and the good times we had there. That was time when
the North End was the place to be before we moved further North and then to the
South End. Wasn’t it terrible what has happened to North Main and Portage
Avenue?
Remember when the beautifully gilded Royal
Alexandra Hotel at the C.P.R. Station when it was the Queen of the Ball in
Winnipeg. You can hardly walk safely in that area anymore.
We wanted to talk about the Deli and
how nowhere in the world was there a smoked meat (or salami) sandwich (and dill
pickle) like we had there. Remember Joe’s at the Y.M.H.A., and the Saturday
night dances, and playing basketball. The guys and girls we knew, who was
where, what they were doing, and wasn’t that marvellous (or sad)? Who would
have thought he/her had it in them
James Joyce once said that he had to
move away from Dublin before he could really hear the sound of it. Then he
wrote all those books about it that made him world famous. We all had to move
away from Winnipeg to really savor the taste of it. Many of us ran away from
Winnipeg because we believed that it had nothing there for us. So many of us
ended up discovering how much of ourselves we owed to the beginnings we found
in that isolated place in the prairie. How curious that many of the things we
ridiculed, or even reviled, became those aspects of our background we treasure
in our memories.
So, in some ways, those of us who
abandoned our birthplace, for all the many reasons that impelled us to venture
from its warm embrace, many of us, those still alive, will now acknowledge, are
better placed than to truly appreciate the gifts we were given by having been
planted there. Those who remained, perhaps, did not, or do not, appreciate how
precious they are, the things that we may have taken for granted when we were
there.
Far and beyond everything else, am I
alone in remembering the inherent unspoken knowledge that this was a place
where we belonged? We knew we were a part of something that was always there as
a backstop, come what may. There was always someone we could turn to in
extremis. We may have fought with each other, and argued-we surely had
differing points of view-but our differences only went so far. If push came to
shove, there was someone we could turn to, someone who would help us find a way
to deal with our own personal dilemma. It was our problem, but underlying
everything was a collective caring. After all, we were all part of the same
community, each of us trying to make our way in a hostile environment thousands
of miles away from any other habitation where other “humans” lived.
So, though many of us went off to
battle in foreign wars, where no quarter was asked or given, we felt secure.
Back there in the boondocks, there was a place we could go home to, where we
would be accepted for what we were, no questions asked. All of us, each of us,
carried within ourselves our own “promised land”, an ultimate place of refuge.
Looking back, it matters not whether it was true or not, we were each armed for
battle with a kernel of security deep inside.
Not surprising then, that our
perceptions matured into a feeling of love and affection for our memories of
growing up in Winnipeg. Things that were ordinary, and were and are considered
ordinary by the then residents and the now resident, took on for us, with the
embellishment of our nostalgia, the glorious perception of the extraordinary.
With our experience of other places and other times, they may have been
extraordinary.
For us, who cannot find their like
anywhere else in the world today, they were and continue to be, extraordinary.
The Winnipeg of then that may have been for us a place to escape, has, with our
experience in life, attained the appreciation it deserves, the place from which
we launched our hopes and dreams, armed with the tools we needed to succeed. It
may not exist anymore, (it would be surprising if it does,) the Winnipeg we
remember is one to our taste.
SINGING FOR MY SUPPER
Do you sing? I’ve always fancied myself as one who had
a good singing voice. I love to sing. I’m always ready to join in when there’s
a sing-song, particularly if I know the tune and especially if I know the
words. Although I never had ambitions to be a singing star, I know myself too
well; I’ve always been first in line to make a musical noise.
For me, singing is associated with all those times
around the campfire at camps. The nostalgia for those times may be the
underlying reason for the positive response I have toward the whole idea. Those
memories carry a strong positive emotional content. When I was a kid I never
had the least idea about singing. I never was a fan of singers. I never bought
records or tapes. I was too busy reading all those delicious books.
My greatest exposure to singing was my experience in
the chorus when my high school. St. John’s Tech, in Winnipeg, annually
presented operettas by Gilbert and Sullivan. I loved that. It was a lot of
work, and we spent many hours after school in practices before we could get
things right. I was in the chorus every year I was at that school. I appeared
in H.M.S Pinafore, Yeoman of the Guard and the Mikado. Some of the tunes are
still with me after more than sixty years. The excitement, and even the thrill,
of the performance occasions, lends a rosy glow to my memories of those times.
It was only in later life in Montreal, when I tried to
repeat my vocal exploits, that I really learned to appreciate how small my
talents were in this area of endeavour. I learned that I was prone to take up
the tune of anyone who stood beside me. I learned that my capacity to keep
strictly to the notes of the part I was supposed to sing was variable. I had no
knowledge of how one could sustain a note. In short, it was a hazardous
undertaking for anyone to include me in a respectable chorus. To make things
worse, I was known to become confused as to where we were in our production,
and to launch myself forcefully into song when the rest of the chorus was
steadfastly silent. These were the only solos I ever performed.
To the detriment of those who might be concerned about
sound pollution, these small negatives have never discouraged me from forcing
myself on an unappreciative public. I leap with lusty abandon at the chance to
join in any occasion offered to show off my limited abilities.
Over time I have passed from tenor to muffled
baritone, and I continue eager to share my gifts. I have never been offered
money to do this, but I do feel it is my duty, nonetheless, to carry on,
especially when the occasion permits me to share in a buffet that can sometimes
accompany such occasions.
It is only fair that I sing for my supper. When I am
engaged in my full-throated roar, I am too busy to note the pained expressions
of those around me. This is just good fun for all of us, isn’t it? I am just
entering into the spirit of things, and covering for those lacking a musical
sense, aren’t I? Or perhaps they are just too shy, a failing from which I do
not suffer. Surely they are enjoying the noise just as much as I am? I
worry only if people start to leave.
I sometimes
sing in the rain, something like whistling in the dark, to keep up my spirits
as I venture into unknowable places. Let the winds blow the clouds away to
deliver to us another sunny day, I say.
We were fortunate enough , at one time, to have had a
second home in Arizona. Really only a trailer, it permitted us to spend the
worst winter months away from the cold and drear of Ireland , when we lived
there, and the rainy season in the rain forest where we live lately. What had
brightened our time even more, was to have fallen in with a group of Canadians,
(of course, there are Americans there as well,) fleeing the winter cold. And,
wonder of wonders, one of them played the guitar and liked to sing.
Well, was I happy? You betcha! We’re just a small
group, and at those times I was out there in the evening between the homes,
belting out songs as loud as I could. It is as if I was back at camp. And they
tolerated my enthusiasm. And sometimes they fed me. I was singing for my
supper, again.
Now, in our current hideaway, we’ve joined a group,
mostly oldsters, who meet weekly to reprise all the melodies reaching back
across recorded history. My Bride is a witness, and if I perform as required,
she will serve me a heaty brunch as a reward when we return home. I can do
this!
The Hair Cut
I do not recall ever taking much interest in my
appearance. I wore anything that came to hand. My history is replete with
stories of myself in a state of apparent disrepair, clothing awry, shoe laces
undone-the whole gamut. As for haircuts-the recipe was delay as long as
possible and then have it all off as short as possible to put off the next evil
day as long as long as possible. There may have been some spasms of attention
during my teen-age days, but that was soon put aside.
Recalling a
time I spent in Dublin, a lifetime( ten years,) ago in Dublin, in spite of the
laissez faire lifestyle, there came a time there when there was no way that I
could escape the subject of what I looked like. I was living in close proximity
to someone who took an interest in my appearance. After all, as she said, she
had to look at me.
The truth is-it must be admitted-I had become
rag-tag. I had to work to restrain the sideburns, trim the beard. I
wouldn’t dare to interfere with the course of nature on the rest of my head. I
had been brought to seek sartorial expertise when my Bride, despairing of my
appearance, had surreptitiously cut off my pony tail, and with further attacks
on my integrity, left me in such a state of disarray that powerful outside help
was called for.
I had one very close friend in Ireland. He’s the guy
with whom I would go out to the Pub when I could tear myself away from my
Bride. He had a vehicle. One day, observing my hirsute condition, he insisted
that I must necessarily attend to my condition at his own hideaway for the
hairy. This was the precious work of an obscure establishment in some distant
part of Dublin, attainable only by means of a private vehicle. He assured me of
expertise, and he was right; I was entirely pleased with the end result.
Here I was months later and my friend was nowhere to
be found. He seemed to have vanished into the landscape. I did not have the
foggiest notion of where the shop where I had last had my hair cut was located.
How was I going to carry out the maintenance work? Let’s face
it, after several months; I had again become untidy, actually shaggy. I could
almost manage the affair by applying moisture and slicking down my hair,
ignoring the errant curlicues. Fussing with my hair was becoming a
time-consuming occupation.
Normally, as I have reported, I do not give my
appearance the merest thought. I throw on my clothes and go rushing out the
door when I have chores to do. Now, with the urging of my Bride, I was checking
myself in the mirror several times before any departure. When I awoke in the
morning I would find my hair piled up on top of my head like I was a Zulu
warrior. I had to hurry to stand in front of the mirror and take corrective
action so as not to frighten my Bride when she awoke from her slumbers in the
morning.
There were compensations. Actually, I’m a poet and a
writer, aren’t I? In spite of my advancing age and a growing sparseness in the
upper regions, I was actually looking leonine. We all know what real writers
look like. They are hairy. The furious verbal activity going on in their heads
must stimulate their hair follicles. It looked like I had finally reached that
point. I was a writer and I had the hair to prove it. Wow! I was actually
looking the part! One couldn’t ask for more, I was growing into my role. Here I
was, a Writer among Writers, in the land of Writers, Ireland! Would I,
with my flowing locks, now be looked on as a seer?
My Bride would have none of it; there was no patience
for the apparition I had become. She was calling for immediate action. I
reluctantly agreed to face this threat to my image.
“But”,
I said, imploringly, “You have to stand by and supervise.”
“Right,
right,” she muttered dismissively.
We marched off directly to her hair dresser.
We entered the establishment. There was only one
person in attendance, and the shop was deserted. There would be no waiting
time. I hesitated a second. The attendant was obviously from a place on
this globe where English was not the native language. I was ushered immediately
into the chair for execution.
“I’ll
just pop around the corner to pick up something. I’ll be right back,” said my
Bride as she left me alone with this unknown person, a practitioner of the
mysterious sartorial arts. What should I say? There was no one to protect my
eminent literary persona from being ravaged. My heart leaped into my throat.
“Not
too short!” My strangled cry echoed in the air without response.
It took less than sixty seconds. The persona I had
been was spread all over the sheet covering me, around me on the floor. I
looked bleakly at the shorn animal staring back at me from the mirror. My worst
fears had been realized. Who was this inconsequential person staring back at
me? Aside from the drooping features I had earned with time, staring back
at me was the head I had seen emerging from the barber chair when I was ten
years of age. All my embellishments were gone. How could I present myself among
the literary set like this? My vaunted celestial appearance earning me a place
among the literary gods was gone and I was a common man. I would have to look
like this for months before I could regain my former glory.
My Bride entered at this instant. Looking at me
ruefully, she said not a word. I paid for the violence done to me and we
exited.
“Why
didn’t you say something to her?” She looked at me with chagrin. “ I
guess we should have waited ‘til my girl was in the shop.”
“I
did tell her not too short,” I said in my defence. “I should have said I just
wanted a trim. You mean you left me to the mercies of the second string.
I’ll never forgive you,” I fumed
“What
are you complaining about,” she hissed under her breath as we hurried down the
crowded street as if being pursued by the howling Furies behind us, “I’m the
one who has to look at you.
I wore my hat a lot more often in the next little
while.
BODY OF WORK
Well into my
eighties, if not my dotage, I am surveying the landscape of my past, examining
the pigeon tracks left by my passing this way. Mostly, I have been thinking of
the physical record I have left. Do you ever think about that? Do we leave more
behind that an obituary and our name on a gravestone?
I realize
that, apart from some self-published works of poetry, and one book of prose,
there is only an electronic record of files on the desk top of my computer that
tell something about me. We may have different ideas of the importance of this.
It may be just ego on my part, but I place some importance on leaving a
physical legacy.
So, the
output on my computer has to make up but a tiny fraction of the work I have
done on the printed page. That, along with the fading memories I may inhabit in
the minds of a few still actively functioning adults I have encountered along
my way, may be all that provides substantial evidence of my body of work.
Thinking
back, I remember that I left all records regarding my school passage with my
parents when I left my home in Winnipeg to embark on the establishment of my
first household. I then abandoned the physical products of my academic career,
an early professional life, and that as a supermarket executive, when I left,
after twenty-one years of marriage, the house I occupied with my first wife on
the Montreal North Shore. I observed the wreckage of it afterward in the
premises abandoned by my former spouse. I mourned them, but that did not
prevent me from discarding all the records of my roles as a social
change-agent, an international consultant, a public speaker and lobbyist. The
materials just took up too much space. They were consciously consigned to the
garbage heap when I sold my home of twenty-eight years in Ottawa, on the death
of my second wife.
I made a new
start with my Bride then, at the age of seventy-one. Most of what I have left
of my writings, in physical and electronic form, date from that and the
following time. I have a few scraps, clippings and photos from those earlier
periods. What remains of those discarded earlier things that I produced must be
buried somewhere in the public records of newspapers, and company and
government documents. That is where is found my widow’s mite contribution to
the public weal in physical form.
Fortunately
, or unfortunately, for us, as the case may be, we are not just about the
material reality that we leave behind on the printed page and in the television
record. The things that we may have done, or not done, that have had an impact
on other people, remain a part of the public record, recognized generally or
not. There may be plenty of people around to bear witness to our body of work
insofar as they were concerned.
The
judgement as to whether outcomes have been positive or negative remain the
subject of the historical narrative. The young may not think much about it, but
some of us folk who are longer in the tooth can’t help but ponder it. We may
have earned some measure of public appraisal whether we like it or not.
Sometimes, we wish we did not. But, most impactful for us, personally, we, all
of us, cannot escape our own private evaluation. What stuff have we brought to
the table during our lifetimes? We know there will be some bad, but, hopefully,
even more good. But where do we stand, in the end, in our own eyes.
If we have
had the good fortune to have produced issue with willing partners, there are
surviving children to flesh out the record, for good or ill. Of course, our
offspring constitute lives with their own story to tell. But if you have been
the least bit sticky, you can be a continuing part of that story too. So often
these elements can be the best part of the history you can tell about yourself.
We are all
entitled to undertake some special pleading in defense of ourselves.” If I am
not for myself, who am I.”*But we cannot escape an ultimate judgement of the
truth internally. Where do we think we really stand in appraising our body of
work, particularly when the most of what we can have accomplished lies behind
us in time, rather than before us?
We, each of
us, must render our own verdict as to our body of work. I don’t ask of yours,
but I have the temerity to share mine. Like all of you, I could have done more.
Some of my actions have been decidedly unheroic, if not worse. But my judgement
comes out on the positive side and I am content with the verdict. Mostly, I
sleep well at night.
How are
things at your house?
*Hillel, the
Elder, the Jewish sage, counselled: “If I am not for myself, who is for me? If
I am not for others, what am I?”
Chance
Do you feel lucky?
I do. But I only got to
that feeling when I had eight decades to look back on. Most of my life was
spent staring at the slope ahead of me, the incline I felt I was facing in
living my life. I don’t remember ever feeling that I was on the heights looking
down. It all seemed uphill, putting one foot in front of the other. (I hate to
mention luck even today for fear of rousing evil spirits to confound my happy
times.)
But I do feel lucky, lucky
to be alive, lucky to have a loving life-partner, lucky to be blessed with
healthy children climbing their own slopes and making good progress. I am lucky
to be able to spin my tales of life’s mysteries.
Don’t know about you, but I
think there is something of a gambler about me. I remember once in my early
years I was standing on a dock, looking to getting into a rowboat down below
me. I must have been a teenager at a camp. I couldn’t figure out a way to get
down there. So I just threw myself downward into the boat. So there I was where
I wanted to be, plus an assorted collection of bruises. When I told my Bride
about that memory, she said to me,
“That’s just like you,
always throwing yourself into the boat without thinking it through.”
The more I think about it,
the more I think she was right. There were a number of times when I got in over
my head, jumping into things without doing enough analysis. I just had
the feeling, call it confidence, or over-confidence, that, no matter what, I
would be able to figure things out. Well, in some cases, I really had to bail.
Most times, though, I stuck it out until I figured out some half-way good answers
to my situations. So, when I did succeed, was that luck or desperation? When I
didn’t, was that bad luck or absent analysis and planning? I can be impatient
to get on with things.
It isn’t as if most of us
set out to approach life on a random basis. Most of us have the intention, if
not the practice, of rationally examining our choices. I do recall once
contemplating entering into a serious relationship. I knew in my heart, felt in
my mind, that I was on dangerous ground. My mind told me that the prospect
being offered to me was being misrepresented. Yet, I went ahead anyway, feeling
that, somehow, I would be able to work things out. I was wrong. Life is what
happens while we are making plans.
Are the results we end up
with the products of chance or the consequences of faulty analysis? Outcomes
are often predictable from the life inputs in our equation. If you are
unsuccessful in acquiring a trade or an education your economic prospects may
be severely limited. If you travel in the right circles, or the wrong ones,
your future is likely to be impacted by the consequences. If you are careless
about the company you keep, you may become involved in circumstances not of
your own making. If you are heedless of your well-being, you may squander the
gifts with which you have been blessed.
I am by no means asserting
that there is no element of chance in the way life’s outcomes appear. Au
contraire! We are in tiny boats in a tempestuous sea. We face unknown
forces and an indeterminate future. Chance remains a powerful predictor of
outcomes. Being born into one family rather than another, even given the
American dream, can make a world of difference. Being born in America, rather
than Afghanistan can make a world of difference. Being born of sound mind, limb
and constitution is obviously an advantage across a vast range of life options.
The genes you inherit may be a blessing or a curse, or a little bit of both.
All these things are subject to the roulette, red or black, sevens or
snake-eyes on the dice, twenty-one in the cards.
However, there can be
things over which we may have some measure of control. Primarily, there is our
own behavior. Individual initiative, enterprise, and attitude, can make all the
difference, whether modelled or innately ordained. It is when things work out
against you, when the circumstances over which you have no control conspire to
counter your aspirations, whatever they may be, that the character you bring to
the situation remains the wild card you may have in your deck. Your futures
depend ultimately on you how you choose to play your cards.
We can still remain the
masters of our fate within the limits of the circumstances we face. We just
have to put on our thinking caps and get to work. We can choose to gird our
loins for the battle. We can resolve to never say die! We can try, try, and try
again. And when we find that we can’t seem to figure it out, well, we can just
throw ourselves into the boat, absorbing a few bruises, to get to where we want
to be. Surely we can find a way to work it out to our advantage. After all,
what have we got to lose? It’s only our life that depends on it!
A Pinch Of Spice
I have never
been as old as I am today. I suppose that is true of everybody in the world who
is alive. Nothing special, right? Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! It is special, special
for everyone of us who are alive. Why is that? Well, aren’t you the lucky
people, because I’m going to tell you that. Yes, I am. I know it’s a secret,
and nobody else had the answer to that question. I know that because I just
discovered the answer myself when I woke up from my afternoon nap. You may
think I’m joking, but I’m not. This is deadly serious stuff.
This
morning, a Friday, I went to exercises. I go to exercises three times a week,
Monday , Wednesday, and Friday. I used to kind of enjoy doing that, but I don’t
anymore. I don’t anymore because these days, I kind of hate them. And the day I
hate the most is Friday. Why? I hate exercises because they hurt, and the day
that exercises hurt the most is Fridays. So I must hate the people who are
putting me through those exercises, through that pain, right? Wrong, again.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! I love them because they are helping me stay alive.
So what’s
this all about? Am I stupid, or something? If something hurts when you do
something, you stop doing it, right? Wrong, again. Wrong, wrong, wrong! If I
stop doing exercises I will have less and less control over my body doing the
everyday things that allow me to live independently as a human being. These are
a bunch of secrets I am telling you.
So, as I
said, today I am as old as I have ever been. For most of my life I never gave a
thought to such things. I’m not that old, thinking about Methuselah and Moses,
and Sodimejo. Sodimejo claimed to be 146 years old when he died in Indonesia,
April 30th, 2017. Kane Tanaka, of Japan is reportedly 118 years old.
Bob Weighton of New Hampshire, U.S.A. is recognized by Guiness as the oldest
living person at 112. I’m only 88 on my
birthday next April, so what’s the fuss?
The fuss is
that staying alive is hard work. Some of the time it hurts, particularly if you
are trying to stay nimble and possession of your faculties. If we don’t work at
it, we just dry up and blow away, and it happens a lot sooner than it did for
the guys I mentioned above.
Let’s face
it, we are losing stuff as we fight the battle for longevity. I can no longer
lift myself up to chin the bar like I used to. (The muscle mass vanished when I
must have been looking the other way!) I need a pinch of spice to really enjoy
some foods like I used to. I need more salt with my food or it may seem
tasteless. I’m very happy my Bride still puts up with my failing powers, and
I’m certainly more of a tourist viewing all the female beauties on the streets
of my city. I sometimes need help with a name, and have to use my computer
liberally to refresh my memory of things I used to know like the back of my
hand. I’m really happy my kids remember my name and I have to be careful to
remember all the birthdays and anniversaries. And did I tell you I take a
regular regimen of pills aside from the vitamin B, C, D and E that I ingest.
Today my
Bride asked me what’s on my bucket list. Surely, she said, you must have lots
of things that you wanted to do that have not yet done. I thought about that
for a moment, then I answered, I want to spend tomorrow with you, and the next
day, and the day after that. That’s the pinch of spice I need in my life.
Every day
that we are alive we are in a place we have never been before. In our world,
everything within us, and everything outside us, is in a state of flux,
essentially offering us a new experience every day. I intend to grab life by
the throat, shake it and get the most out of it that I can with all the
strength I can muster. Exercise tomorrow? Hell, yes!
What’s
happening at your house?
Holding Back Tears On My Sunny
Days
Why does
sadness overwhelm me when life is so good? I remember too much about the casualties
that I have left behind. Gratitude has to be a part of it, that against all
odds I have been spared when so many of the worthy are no longer here.
Survivors’ guilt has to be a part of it. Do you sometimes attempt to make your
own accounting? Did we live the Hero’s life we dreamed we would?
How many are
the children that I never got to see, that never got to see the sunny days that
I enjoy so much. The children of my Bride that I never got to see, my grandson
who gave up on the hope for a better life, these are a part of the past I dare
to re-live. The nameless of the Holocaust, whose names were known to countless
others of my co-religionists, (we seek to record them for posterity,) haunt my
dreams. I know I am greedy beyond reason.
My days are
almost too beautiful to bear in their richness. I sing songs to myself,
celebrating my small triumphs and the absence of pain. I hear the sounds of
laughter in my memories. The music I love plays in my ears. So many of the
people I love are still there in my life. When I contrast my present with what
fate has dealt to so many others, I am shattered with injustices I confront. I
have no answers to offer, no justifications to advance. Why me and you and not
him and her?
I feel like
a whirling Dervish, dancing on the head of a pin. See a science arriving too
late to save so many lives and contrast the speed with which we arrived with
solutions for COVID. Science to the rescue and yet see pseudo-science used as a
rationale for condemning a whole race to death. Greek culture, exploring the
essential nature of man, the scientific method, and the democratic ideal, many
centuries ago, and see the eons of Dark Ages and disease. Monotheism, exhorting
us to seek out our better angels, apprehensive of an all-seeing eye, and then
contemplate organized religion promoting rationales for untold crimes against
humanity.
Regard the
Marxist myth for which tens of millions died in Soviet Russia and China.
Contrast the elitist Roosevelt who fashioned modifications to Capitalism that
rescued the lives of a hundred million Americans. I remember that the Marxist
principle of from each according to his gifts and to each according to his
needs, was also used to fashion pioneer communities. The sacrifices of
believers restored a desecrated landscape, and ultimately succeeding in
building a renewed Jewish state. Unbelievably, it took so few determined people
to make the difference.
Yin and yang
and a multitude of tears is the story of human civilization. I shudder my way
from the personal to the general, and back again. The impedimenta of our
passage are gathered in our galleries, our museums, and the pot-pouris of our
living spaces, real and virtual. They are there in our graveyards, marked and
unmarked, some hidden away in our memories, to be visited when we dare.
We
constantly redefine what is art and artifact. We, all of us, sometimes
overwhelmed by it all, pick and choose what it is that has meaning for us.
Sometime we look to others to instruct us on what, by its very nature, should
be a matter of individual choice. I choose the things that are treasures in my
own eyes. They bear the weight of my personal emotional commitment and I glory
in them, bringing me to tears. You all have your own idols before which you
prostrate yourself.
How many are
those in my life that did not get the full measure of my attention they
deserved. I hang my head in the chagrin I feel. It is much too late to make
amends to so many. It must be the same for some of you out there. I rode off
into the sunrise pursuing my dreams with hardly a backward glance at those who
sustained me during my beginning days. Too much taken for granted. My regret
finds little comfort in the recollection. I am conducting my personal ‘mea
culpa’.
Does all
this deserve some recompense? Do we who are still here owe someone, something,
some cause, a recompense? I exert so much of my efforts just to keep body and
soul together. Should I, should we, be doing something more to justify our
places in the universe? Can I listen more, speak less, empathize more, extend
again a helping hand? Can I yet alter the course of humanity’s journey in the
universe in a positive way? Is each one of us that significant an actor? What
does all this mean for you?
I am dancing madly on the head of a pin.
Preparing For Take-off
I recently
watched a program broadcast from the UK that told of a new initiative, the
bringing together of (six) individuals who were all facing the verdict of
terminal illness. They were to come together four times over the period of a
year, with the presence of counsellors, to explore the benefits of mutual
support, as their deteriorating individual circumstance brought them toward
what appeared to be their inevitable end. Their individual agonies were
displayed for us on the screen as they worked through the pain of facing the
unknown, leaving loved partners and young children, facing disintegrating
personal relationships with close friends, lovers, husbands, or facing the
starkness of being totally alone in these circumstances, with no human liaison.
What to do?
Shall we drink wine and make merry while we can? Tick off items on our bucket
list? Shall we spend our time exploring the infinite within ourselves in
preparation for the world to come? Shall we urge our partners on their way to
find a new partner we can vet to make sure our children will be well cared for
after we are gone? Are we that selfless? Shall we deal with the reality that
our partners are eager to find new environments now more conducive to comfort?
What of the pain and suffering to come-shall we passively await the inevitable
or take action to eliminate that prospect?
Having
reached the venerable age of four-score and counting, it has occurred to us
that we are in a position not too far different from the individuals whose
circumstances we had been viewing. Of course, we are more fortunate because our
sentence has not yet been announced. We are in a committed loving relationship.
On the other hand, we are reluctant to face the prospect of living on, one
without the other, after having found each other after so many years of life in
less pleasant circumstances.
We know our
futures are indeterminate, like these people. Like them, we face the prospect
of painful breakdowns in elements of our physical and mental apparati. It surely
goes with the territory. We are conscious of the fragility our paradise, our
magical present. We are being challenged to act heroically in the face of
unknown futures. What else do we expect of ourselves than this?
Shall we
cast caution to the winds, live only for the moment? We knowingly treasure our
moments together with a heightened sense of the winds of time rushing past our
ears. We seek to consume our intakes wisely and task our bodies in ways that
might encourage a continued efficient functioning.
We draw
closer to our loved ones and treasure the relationships we have found most
fulfilling over time. We have less patience with obligations undertaken out of
a sense of political correctness that steal our time from what we deem a more
rewarding use of our fleeting moments. We do consider whether there are places
we wish to see and do, while we still have the energy and enthusiasm to
appreciate them, and we think about elaborating some plans.
Above all we
concentrate on investing our time on those actions that are likely to yield the
most laughter and joy. We will be stern masters of this portfolio of
investments. Children and grandchildren, old friends and new friends, are
valued very highly for the dividends they pay. Pleasure delivered to the eye and
ear, a building, a street, a piece of music, the sight of a delicious meal we
will taste sparingly, an article of clothing treasured for the memories it
invokes, a photo of a bygone time, the remembrance of a person, some things
that bring a tear. We thrill at the wonders of our world, resplendent around
us, drink it all in, breathing deeply, swallowing what we can with, we admit, a
degree of feverish intensity.
We are not
too proud to spread our bets around on the roulette wheel of life. We
contemplate the divine, the comfort of a soft landing in the arms of a caring,
compassionate G-d. We argue for an inside track, negotiate for a dispensation,
the washing away of our failings, calling on any of the good will in the bank
for the sake of the Patriarchs and the Matriarchs. We will cite the devotion
and sacrifices of our co-religionists. We will point to the deep well of our
good intentions and our small efforts to repair the world. We recognize that
our acts are puny in the face of our transgressions, but we call forth the
potentials of our children and grandchildren to help balance our accounts.
We are armed
with optimism in the face of the unknown, the Unknowable. We may sometimes have
a weakness of faith-perhaps yes, perhaps no-but we believe in Life. We believe
in the conservation of energy, that the spark of life is eternal, that it may
change its form but never ceases to be. As to our loves ones, we throw our arms
around each other every day in a rapture of joy. We know that whatever may be
our ultimate fates, in this we have been blessed beyond all measure, having
found each other, experienced true love, before it was too late.
We believe
we are ready, ready to take off on our flight, whenever that time may come!
Don’t we always have to be ready for the unknowable, heroes to the end?
Growing Things!
I am
among the fortunate in the world. Having survived the travails of life in the
commercial world, (I opted for the cut and thrust of the marketplace rather
than the path of academe,) I gratefully retired to spend, now more than twenty
years, on my own, without adult supervision. I was hustled out of my last
employment with a boot in the derriere and a financial settlement. I do not
mean to imply that the academic world is devoid of fisticuffs, but they are
more overt in the business world. This period of retirement has, nevertheless, been
one where I still had to live by my wits so that I could continue to live off
the fat of the land without a weekly paycheque.
In spite
of this period of enforced idleness, I continue to judge myself as one doing my
best to grow things, leaving more in the places where I sojourn(ed) than what existed
before I arrived on the scene. More than anything else, we ourselves want to
grow, we want to be more than what we were when we started out. I am not
unique. I believe most of us want to accomplish that. We all want to be heroes.
When we
are engaged in an employment, we are presented by a variety of tasks. Usually
they are those that had been assigned to, or developed by, the individuals who
filled the job before us. Women who suddenly find themselves running households
have more difficult tasks. They are faced with inventing the job with which
they are suddenly confronted without having had substantial training. They have
to grow the thing from scratch. They are lucky if they have learned something
of this before they left the home. No wonder they often prefer endeavours
outside the home if they get the chance.
I always
found the prospect of a new job exciting, even if the experience carries with
it the fear of failure. I changed jobs four times in my work career, and some
of those jobs changed radically while I was in them. I was often scared stiff
at the beginning, wondering if I would, hoping I could, measure up. Sometimes
the job had no previous incumbent, or what had been done before obviously had
to change. That was even scarier.
I don’t
know how you out there feel, but I loved being in a job. Some people prefer
being totally on their own, doing their own thing. Not me. I never minded that
my efforts would make someone else better off. I loved the challenge of it. I
poured myself into it. I could not have worked harder if these affairs had been
my very own business with my own money at risk.
Too often
it meant that those in my personal life who should have been the focus of my
attention, often got less of me. I was possessed of this need to get the very
best possible result in my work situation that I could. I was obsessed with
growing what I had inherited. Truth be told, if the people around me were
uncommitted to the work at hand, and I couldn’t change things, I was unhappy
until I could find a way to get them out of there. I felt driven to build the
thing I was responsible for into something a little closer to perfection. I
always had this hero complex.
I feel
the same way about all the personal relationships in which I am involved. These
days, for me, they are almost the only show in town. I have left the job world
far behind, and my business is the business of getting along with the people that
inhabit my world. I accept that the world I live in is one that cries out for
improvement. A lot of those things are way beyond my control. But the people
who inhabit my circle are within the reach of my extremities, broadly defined.
With today’s technologies, I can reach people around the world, as well as
those in my neighbourhood. So I try to be Mr. Fixit. I try to grow positive
things. Don’t you do that too? Does that make us busybodies?
I have
always hoped that if I interacted constructively with the people I share things
with, I could create worthwhile results. If I somehow place this story before
your eyes, you may be affected in a positive way. (At least, I hope so!) My
email, my Facetime, my WhatsApp can reach you, the people I care for, in the
wider world, wherever you and they are. If you have an Iphone, and have
Facetime, you can even see where the message comes from and I can get your reaction
from the look on your face. By writing this story I hope I am continuing to
grow things. I might even nurture a personal relationship from which good
things will flow. Our efforts need not be in vain. Even as I fade from the
scene, I want to be seen as having still been on the job.
In the
place where I live, my whole environment is a garden. There are flowering
trees, grass lawns, and a flower garden outside almost every building. It
cannot fail to be a garden here because it seems to rain here continually
(ouch!). At least that’s the way it seems this year. Suffice it to say, I am
living through the season of spring, extending into summer, fall and winter.
I took advantage
of the planting season, filling my balcony full of colourful plants. They are
in baskets that hang on the railings, or fill the empty floor spaces not filled
by our rocking chairs. On sunny days we saw both the sail boats and the
mist-covered mountains. I enjoyed the vision and the vista. But my main
occupation was stuffing flowering plants into every available space I can find.
They are all around us, like we are, fighting for survival. And I extend this
into the raining winter season.
I like
growing things, as I am sure you do too. Isn’t that what we do all of our
heroic lives?
--
Birds
On The Wing
It is sunny today. I am on my balcony watching the
flocks of flying birds. The sky is blue everywhere, unharried by even a wisp of
cloud. There are sailboats on the water and there is snow on the mountaintops.
The gentle breeze is friendly, ruffling the tiny hairs on my exposed skin.
Although it is before the noon hour, I have indulged. I
am inspired by a smidgen of whiskey and the smoky vapor of a cigar of unknown
heritage. I drank from a new crystal beaker my Bride purchased for me to
celebrate my existence. Sensitized by their appeal to my inner me, I can see my
life experience stream like an Indie film before my eyes. Now you too can have
front-row seats.
I am watching how the birds launch themselves into empty
space, beating their wings strongly until they catch a current of air, an
unseen wave that they sense will carry them forward. Then they glide
effortlessly into the void. Onward and upward! They fly singly or in packs.
Those flying together know well the strength and advantage there is in union.
Isn’t that always a better idea if it can be managed?
I think back to my youth, recognize my life path, and
extrapolate to the lives of younger people, and those not so young. I recall
how I launched myself thoughtlessly into the unknown. We were all expected to
take off on our own. For myself, I was so eager to be off on my own that I was
heedless that there were any dangers. Some of us hung back and had to be
encouraged into flight by our near and dear. Some of us travelled in packs.
Some of us remained a long time on the home perch.
Some had their departures well-planned, orchestrated by
vision or friends and family. For those of us who took off, pressed by need,
necessity and the absence of other choices, we sometimes had to walk before we
could take to the air. We often had to work hard to get to the take-off point.
When we did make it off the ground, how proud we were to be sailing in the wind
of life under our own power. It was great to feel the lift of independence
under our wings. It gave us energy.
We were always looking for that wave, that current that
would propel us effortlessly forward. We didn’t always find it. For many of us
it was work, work, work, just to stay grounded on an even keel. We squared our
shoulders and kept on keeping on. We couldn’t help seeing others on their
flights ahead of us, wishing we could also take to the air and really soar.
How did we learn to fly? How did we know we could?
Surely we watched others, our parents, friends, people we knew. Some of us
crashed and burned. A few of us never even tried. The grapevine and the media
brought us the news of these events daily. We felt the downdrafts as well as
updrafts and we all had our share of scary moments. For some of us, more than
our share! But most of us kept on moving, looking to gain enough speed to make
it to lift-off.
A lot of us eventually did take off. We got to feel the
exhilaration of flight, to feel the current, the wave that we had caught
through our effort and attention to the tasks at hand. When we stopped to
think, (we were so busy with what we were doing, we rarely thought about it,)
it was great to recall our path, to relish and feel the momentum of the flight
we had attained, to appreciate the distance we had travelled. It was great to
contemplate the things we could look forward to if we kept on flying straight
on the course we had chosen.
Sustaining the effort on the trip was never something
one could take for granted. Not all of us are built for distance. When I have
watched those flocks flying south for the winter, I was always mindful that
each member of the flock takes a turn at the head so the leader can rest. Most
of us do not have volunteers to take a turn at the head of our effort to get
ahead, to accomplish the tasks we have set ourselves. It is almost always
totally up to us alone. It is always so special when there is a partner at the
ready with a helping hand. Lucky, lucky, lucky! Of course, we have to be open
to that.
So, I am one of the lucky ones. Coming to the end of my
journey, closer every day, I can see that now. The wounds I have sustained on
the trip, many of them self-inflicted, have not proved to be fatal to this
point. I am able now to rest on my perch more often and watch the passing
parade. The flights that remain for me to take are more measured and more
likely to be in the thick of a flock of friendly flyers. I am complacent when
overtaken and passed by the many more eager flyers. Sometimes I am more
concerned about their companions who have fallen behind in their flight. We are
spending more time in the planning for others than in the doing for ourselves.
And, yes, I do have a partner ready to give a hand, Lucky, lucky, lucky!
I know this story is for the birds, but I believe it is
a story worth telling!
Cultural Traditions
I find it
totally amazing how the cultural traditions of the individual tribes making up
the human continuum distinctly alter the way we live. Although the world’s
communities draw closer every day to a commonality as we learn more about the
lives of each of us, it is the differences between us that add so much color to
our lives. We probably don’t appreciate that as much as we should.
It is
particularly depressing to me when some of us consider those differences as
something we should try to eliminate. And I find it particularly alarming when
individual states decide their tribal norms to be of such importance that they
feel they should take action within their borders to try to eliminate the
expression of any of those that are different, feeling that, for some reason,
those differences threaten their own. When those expressions are also wrapped
up in a religious mantra, things become even more threatening, and even
dangerous, for all concerned.
It would not
be at all surprising to my readers that I am particularly attached to the
cultural traditions which were associated with my personal upbringing. It
always appeared to me that their expression offered much in the way of
positives for general community consideration. From ancient times our sages
laid out directions as to how healthy communities were to be structured. During
many centuries of wandering, long before states were structured to respond to
the needs of all individuals in the community. Jewish communities, wherever
they were, built in self-supported institutions designed to fill those needs,
maintained by community-based taxation, following the pattern established in
their ancient homeland. Inherent in the approach is a recognition that all
members of the tribe face a common destiny and have a personal interest in
helping their fellows to survive.
There was always a religious center,
a school, a philanthropic agency, and an old-age home. Often there was a
small-loan body as well. The authority rested with a Rabbi, supported by a
coterie of students, financed by the more financially able who competed for the
honor of being chosen to be the senior contributor in every occasion of need.
It is evident from these “regulations”, that there existed an ethic regarding
how people were dealt with that went far beyond pursuing mere individual
self-interest. This approach had been encapsulated in the essence of the Ten
Commandments which were the Jewish rules of the road.
Those with the means competed to
engage the top students as potential suitors for their daughters. Excellence in
studies was valued far above mere financial means in the respect parade. Jewish
mothers weighed in on their sons to aspire to academic excellence. Failing
that, a doctor, a lawyer, even a dentist, was given pride of place. Is it any
wonder that Jewish boys and girls, failing a dad to put them into business,
head for the halls of academe and scientific study. And why, out of all
proportion, Jews are represented in the list of Nobel Prize winners?
I am told that it was the tradition in the communities
that vanished with the horrors of the Holocaust, that a father would bring his
three-year-old son to the school teacher to begin his educational journey. The
teacher would begin by teaching the child the alphabet. When the child
succeeded in correctly enunciating a letter, his finger would be dipped in
honey. The child was taught that knowledge was sweet.
This was a time when the people
around then in the general population were, in the main, totally illiterate.
The Jews they may have had to associate with from time to time would have been
exposed to a complex education from the youngest age involving an historical
perspective, geography, logic and even mathematics, as well as an ethical
roadmap. Jews had tools to help offset their many social disadvantages.
We have reports of events from that
time relating that many rulers had their Court Jew to advise on weighty
matters. And how many reports are there of the presence of a Jew in ruling
circles concerned with medical matters. Deciding whether things were Kosher
would have required a knowledge of how healthy bodies appeared and functioned.
A body of practice would certainly have developed over the centuries providing
some medical knowhow. It may, or may not, have been incidental, but it surely
was a life-saver over the centuries that Jews were required for religious
reasons to wash their hands before every meal.
Things are much different today with
universal education available to so many. We never know from which corner of
the universe bright minds will spark to advance humankind. But individual
cultures still play an important role in determining the priorities of the
young in choosing their paths. There are segments of society where the tendency
leads strongly to the military, or to public service in government, or in
following a musical tradition or the Arts in one form or another. For Jews the
tendency remains for ventures in business and proprietorship, yielding
independence from racial bias. But as strong is the flow into the social
sciences and academics following so closely the cultural norms inherent in
religion and history.
The power of cultural traditions is
evident in the choices people make in deciding their life paths.
REGAINING A
FORMER SELF?
Like a
number of your neighbors I am quite a few years down the road. I am
increasingly being joined by others of my ilk. Statisticians tell us that by
2030, ten years hence, some 21% of Americans will be 65 or older. Things are
even worse in Canada, the figure being 23%. By 2060, almost one in four
Americans will be of that age or older, and over one-half a million will be
aged 100 and older. Wow! Aside from the implicit changes required in marketing
strategies, it is no wonder scientists are re-directing their efforts to
finding those secrets for long-lived healthy living and finding answers to
fight the scourge of Alzheimer’s and related conditions.
Aside from
the health implications, a whole range of economic consequences come with
having a smaller and smaller share of the population participating productively
in the economy. The plunging birth rate in the developed economies that is
elevating the percentages quoted above is one of the powerful prompts for an
energetic immigration policy. In spite of the increasing clamor for reining in
arriving numbers for fear of lost jobs, the cold economic facts argue the
opposite. Japan is the poster child for the results of a restricted immigration
policy, over ten years of economic stagnancy, the price of ethnic purity. The
latest Nobel laureate in Economics (Dufo) has disproved the theory that
immigrants take jobs from domestic workers by examining real world data.
One of the
greatest challenges associated with aging, even with health care advances, is
precisely our concern about failing mental aptitudes as we age. One of the
findings that have come to light has been evidence of hidden capabilities in
our brains we are just finding out about. For many years the collective wisdom
has been that the brains we are born with have fixed capacity. The theory was
that our brains cannot be altered after the normal age of completed brain
development in our twenties. We were told that we learn as we mature but when
we have attained our limits, all we can face is a downward slide toward dotage.
The big news is that “IT AIN”T NECESSARILY SO!”
There have
been studies made of the brains of deceased individuals who have had a stroke.
What has been found is that there is a marked difference between the brains of
those who have been seriously damaged and have accepted that, and those who
have overcome their disabilities to the point of leading a normal life. This is
proof that our brains can be retrained. Even if critical areas of our brains
have been damaged by a stroke, and cannot be repaired, if we strive vigorously,
and act with persistence to rebuild function, eventually other areas of our
brains can learn to take over the capability of the parts of this organ that
have been destroyed. The term for this quality in our brains is “neuroplasticity”.*
But the
message is much broader than just recovery from a stroke. What this reality is
telling us is that our brains never lose their ability to learn. What this is
telling us is that we do not have to accept the slow decline into dotage that
the old theories proclaimed. Surely we will lose some parts of our brain
function with aging. That seems an inevitability until we can find a way to
arrest this process.* Some of us are more susceptible, but all of us face this
threat as we age. But there are alternatives.
Recently, a broadcast on US public television, marketing a
Brain Fitness Program, cited material offered by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Phd.
Some rules were offered to take advantage of our brain’s capacity to
continually learn new things, at whatever age. The rules appear to be simple if
not always easy to follow.
1. We only learn when the brain is in
the mood.
If we are not alert and paying attention, nothing happens in our brain.
When we are alert, neurotransmitters are active. Without our active will to
accomplish a task, nothing happens.
2. Change strengthens connections
between the neurons in our brains when we are engaged by the actions we are
taking to cope. Purposeful action is
required to move from what is, to what could be, in what you need to relearn.
3. Neurons that fire together, wire
together. Repeated
actions form a connection that is strengthened by every repetition.
4. Initial changes are only
temporary. Without repeated actions,
permanent learning in the brain does not take place. Only when we are really
engaged do they become permanent.
5. Brain plasticity is a two-way street,
driving brain change either positively or negatively. We
can learn bad things like pain sensitivity or addictions, or acceptance of
declining function, as well as creating new pathways of learning to regain
functions we are losing or have lost.
6. Memory is crucial to learning.
Repetition is a mechanism for the permanent memory to be formed in the
brain. When the permanent neuron connections are forged in new areas of the
brain, the memory is retained allowing us to regain the functions we may have
lost or are losing.
7. Motivation is a key factor in brain
plasticity.
Without strong motivation, (we really have to want it,) to overcome the
discomfort that may be involved in planting the re-learned process in the
brain, we may not realize the goals we wish to achieve.
The good news is that we can teach other parts of our brains
to learn how to take over lost functions by persisting in resisting the losses
we inevitably face. Brain function loss in some areas of the brain can be
compensated for. Do we fight for our lives, do we resist, or do we give up the
ghost? Wherever we find skills slipping away we have to redouble efforts to
regain them.
Tough work, but we can do it! We have to do it! Our lives
depend on it!
*A recent Israeli breakthrough in brain research is giving us
new hope.
Life As A Blank Page
It is true,
every life starts out as a blank page. But it is also true that so much of the
content in life is affected by where the writing on that page is occurring. I
have always been struck by the reality that each birth that occurs launches a
life into a universe totally incomprehensible to the subject. Further, the
subject faces billions of alternative realities each of which will profoundly
alter the stories to be written on those pages, on the pages in the books of
those lives. Without the option of choice as to being launched, without the
option of choice as to where one will land, willy-nilly, there we are.
Imagine the
perplexity that each us of faced making some sense of where we have landed.
Partly, if not totally blind, surrounded by noises, all the nerve-endings on
our bodies sending messages we have to learn to interpret, and our gut calling
for we-know-not-what, we fill ours ears with our automatic wailing. What
happens next may determine our total attitude toward the life we have been born
into. If something, or someone, acts to soothe or comfort in response to our
protests, we learn our first lesson. Crying works to attract attention. Then
comes the second lesson- if we get a soothing reaction, we have found a
positive environment. Even better, if we
get a chance to nurse. If there is no response, we may conclude that the
environment is not friendly. That could affect our attitude to others in later
life.
As great in
its portents is the site of the place where we land, both socially and
financially. We could emerge in the year 2020 in Afghanistan, (/cap GDP-$1971*)
color and custom pre-determined, with very little in the way of options. Or,
similarly, it could be in Burkina Faso (/cap GDP $791), or Mauretania (/cap GDP
$1971), perhaps Myanmar (/cap GDP $1527. Perhaps Peru (/cap GDP $6084)? How big
a difference it would be if we were male or female? Compare that with U.S,
(/cap GDP $63,418), Canada(/cap GDP $43, 278). How about Switzerland, (/cap GDP
$86, 849)? What would those figures say to us about our likely standard of
living?
While money
certainly isn’t everything, and our relationships with the people around us can
be the most important thing of all, standard of living can count for a lot.
Most of the people who might read this piece can count their lucky stars.
So, all of
us have been writing the story of our lives on those blank pages, those blank
pages that we have stored in our memories. Most of us don’t think about
recording those stories for posterity, they are just there in our memory to the
degree that we can remember the past events of our lives. For better or worse,
wherever we landed, whatever we have lived through, page on page we have filled
those pages. It might be a good idea if we wrote something down before those
pages return to blank.
Embarrassing
as it is to recount, (and I may not be alone in this,) from a young age I concluded
that I was somebody special. Where I got that idea I am not sure, but I did
spend a lot of time in the library when I was young. I read a lot about people
that I thought were heroes. I thought I wanted to be like them. I thought I had
the stuff to be like them. I believed that I could fill the blank pages of my
life with magnificent feats of derring-do. The down side, I realize looking
back, is that I often considered others in my life with less importance because
of the superiority of my personal mission to save the world. Does that sort of
arrogance make sense to you? It did for me at some times.
Another
hazard with such lofty goals, how do you explain to yourself, your
self-important attitude, when you have very little to show in the
hero-achievement category? What do you believe others would think? You have to
be continuing with a superior performance all the time or what is your story
all about?
I turned out
to be lucky. I did fill some pages with deeds offering good things that helped
a lot of people more than once. That’s been enough to still my conscience.
Where I messed up on those pages only others can forgive. For some trespasses,
it will be too late to seek forgiveness.
I am
heartened by all the colorful pages being filled, yet to be filled, by my
progeny, these. arguably, being among the most positive elements of our passing
this way. More wonders and delights may yet await us.
We did not ask
to come here, yet we did. We landed where we landed in the lap of chance with
the potentialities with which we were blessed to do with what we could. This is
the human destiny since time immemorial, since the amphibian creature beached
and evolved into us. We can only marvel at the process and write what we can,
while we can, on the blank pages we have been granted.
Running Hot And Cold!
Have you
noticed how hard it is to get the temperature right? Too err is human, they
say. It sure seems to be true. It’s true because the future is unknowable.
Except to those who happened to get it right THIS TIME. They’ll be sure to tell
you how they had it right all along. For example, we thought we had this virus
beat and what does it do but throw us a curve that’s filling up hospitals
around the globe. And then there’s Trump who told us it would all be gone by
last Xmas. Wasn’t he the guy who went around spreading COVID to all his
followers who were told they didn’t have to vaccinate? And people don’t even call
him on the immorality of his behavior!! He should be in jail for murder!
How about
when your best friends turn out to be siding with your enemies? How about when
your enemies can’t keep their mouths shut and tell all about all the bad things
they’ve done? And when you call them on what they have said, they call it a
witch hunt, even as they continue to dance around the fire they are feeding in
full witch regalia? And how about when thousands of ordinary people are saying
things like they have absolutely lost their minds? And the people who are only
trying to do the right thing are quaking in their boots because crazy people
are threatening their lives? And the people in charge of peace, order and good
government are asleep at the switch? Maybe it’s just me, but I am amazed at the
panorama before me. Am I upsetting you when you are looking for holiday spirit?
So, I am a
Canadian and protected from a lot of this stuff by an unguarded border. But I
used to believe America was all about the good stuff. I won’t talk about our
own politics because that’s not what this is about. What’s happening in the U.S
has global implications. Crazy-time down south is immediately reflected in a
hundred places around the globe. We want to be supportive but some of the stuff
we see is hard for fair-minded people to digest. Where are those millions of
Americans who haven’t lost their heads and why aren’t we hearing from them? Is
it only a question of which cable network we listen to? There are no
journalistic standards at play anymore and it’s OK to spout lies to the public?
My head is spinning!
Has the
world changed so much from what it was when we were kids? I grew up during the
Depression. And when I was a kid this guy in Germany set the world on fire
because he believed his country was entitled to rule the world. And he
convinced hundreds of millions of people that he was right, or that he should
be allowed to get away with the rules he was setting for running the world. And
there were lots of people who helped him. So eighty million people died until
he shot himself to avoid justice. And the war machine that America created gave
it the power to set in place a Pax Americanus that has given us seventy-five
years of world peace.
But as we
have been bewailing, that America is no longer existent. Its leaders, and
apparently its people, have tired of world leadership. Indeed, Americans are
questioning whether they are prepared, in their own country, to fight for the
democratic principles that they fought a bloody war to uphold. Its people are
divided and many are running hot and cold about democracy. If it means they
have to share political power with the more recent immigrants, and freed
slaves, who have helped America build the most powerful economy in the history
of the world, they will have none of it.
Am I causing
pain by raising real issues that will be affecting our futures, instead of
waxing poetic and delving into what we are and who we are? These are issues
that seriously affect what is happening on our side of the border, on our side
of many borders. America has shunted aside one delusional leader. But his
passage has revealed some of the rot that has always been there since the
American dream was sold to the majority of its peoples and to the millions that
have crossed mountains, rivers and oceans to earn their piece of that dream.
And along with Americans, they have shed their own blood to realize those
dreams. And millions of lives around the world have been dedicated to building
some of the same in many places around the world.
So the bell
that is tolling in America over these issues, is tolling for us as well. When
Americans are running hot and cold over these issues, many of us look on and we
can’t help shivering.
--
Afloat On An Internet Sea
I’ve never
been much of a sailor, but my few trips in deep waters were weathered with no
memories of seasickness. It can leave you in a deplorable state if it does hit
you, misery galore. There’s nothing like having your sea-leg firmly on the deck
when all around are feeling poorly. My first transatlantic experience at the
age of eighteen left me feeling invincible. I felt like Odysseus,
astride my waterborne steed sailing the length of the Mediterranean. As
luck would have it, we had nary a storm, so I was never tested.
Over seventy
years on, the sea that troubles me daily, is that
of the internet, and I find that keeping my equilibrium is testing my sense of
balance. I am by no means a techie initiate. Introduced to a computer at the
age of fifty, I have been running to keep up with the technology
wave, sometimes feeling I am going down for the third and final time.
Knowing that
keeping the mind alive requires that we exercise its components, I go on with
the struggle daily. But, I am oh so ready, and oh so willing , to
hand over the reins whenever a pair of steady hands are on deck. And I admit I
pretend my full attention, and don’t roll my eyes, when being submerged in a
sea of explanation.
Don’t tell
my kids, but I think I am almost ready to pass on the baton. Ok, not yet, not
yet! But it feels so good when someone halfway knowledgeable takes over.
However, basic survival these days requires a modicum of knowledge. I now have
to display these internet readable symbols just to get into places. But
sometimes they can be read and sometimes they cannot. What do I do then? Who is
at fault? What if I am refused entry onto a plane?
A human override saved me the last time that happened.
So what
happens when you are in a place where standards of training and service are
wanting in the best of times? And what happens when waves of COVID are
disrupting even standard techie practice? So, who told you to travel?
I generally
spend two or three hours on my computer each day. There are a number of
things I like to check every day, the stock market and my email account, for
instance. I generally do a little bit of research each day. And I may be driven
to put down some ideas exuding from a restless mind. Although
not always available through my usual supplier, ninety-eight per cent internet
service is usual. Service abroad, however is a different kettle of
fish. Indeed I am surprised how poor the service can be in some US places like
California.
Currently
vacationing in Mexico, the internet can be a sometime thing. Add the language
barrier and the absence of consumer-friendly policies, and we are takingtalking
serious challenges. The best deal in town is sitting at your favorite
coffee-place with your computer and feeding ofoff
free Wi-fiFi. I
have signed up for six month service during my three -month vacation, and I am
still waiting for installation after two weeks. Now I am afraid to leave home
because I may miss my unheralded installation team while I am absent.
I
don’t always trust the storage process very much and end up duplicating some of
it on my desktop, and I know it looks crowded. I’m always worrying I may pop
off and leave some of my jewels lost forever.
We
haven’t ventured into VR or Gaming, streaming or cable-cutting. We are keeping
a low profile and tending to our knitting. And watching our pennies.
When
we look into the mysteries of what is happening in our computer innards, we
have no idea what’s going on and stick to the defaults. Once in a while we let
a youngster open the black box and do the necessary. We are usually carrying
much too much stuff that we no longer have need of and a house-cleaning is
necessary.
So
this is our brave new world and we are doing what we can to cope. We all have
some Don Quixote in us. We haven’t totally given up tilting at the windmills of
our dreams when the opportunities present themselves. We may appear a little
foolish in some people’s eyes. So what! We’ve done some good sometimes doing
that in our pasts, so it appears to be worth the price. We can always hope the
kids will clean up for us if necessary as we have done for them many times in
the past.
Can
you believe some of the things they are telling us we can do? Whoops! Watch for
scams! We are some of those victims they are phishing for! Look before you
leap!
Sailing,
sailing, off on the deep blue sea!
Doing The Right Thing!
That sounds
good, but what does it mean? Who defines what the right thing to do is? What is
the ethical system, or is there one, that underlies that decision-making
process? We are surrounded every day by this dilemma when we go about our daily
lives in our personal lives, and in our public lives. The decisions we make
daily are guided by whatever rules we have adopted. And they may differ
markedly based on the upbringing we have had. As significant, the same holds
true for the people we have delegated to make decisions for us at every level
of government, city, province, (state,) and federal. No matter how we act at
our personal level, decisions at all these other levels can make a mockery of
the ethical systems to which we personally adhere. Lots of stuff is up for
grabs.
I am having
a good deal of heartburn looking out at my world today. I believe, and I believe
many people agree with me, that we live in one of the best places in the world
to work, to form families, and have children. I believe there is ample room in
our societies to share our good fortune with others who are less fortunate. I
believe that is one of the right things to do. Traditionally, the new people
who join us, struggling to begin with, find their feet, and ultimately make an
immeasurably positive contribution to our society……..
However,
these days, we see in many places in the world, some countries in Europe, where
those newcomers actively resist integration into the societies into which they
have been welcomed. Indeed, things have reached such a state in some countries,
that, given the vastly different concepts the newcomers hold as to what the
right thing to do is, that the social order of the indigenous people is
disrupted. Law an order in no longer universally enforced, social welfare
systems breakdown, and no-go areas for the indigenous come into being. When I
see this I begin to worry whether my support for doing the right thing in this
respect is the right thing for our society.
Does that
mean I am racist, or just using my head? A friend of mine sponsored an
immigrant, setting him and his family up with government support, a place to
live, and a job. The man opted to go on welfare. Different strokes for
different folks. Different ethics than the kinds we were taught. Enough of that
and our systems break down.
Looking at
what is happening south of our Canadian border, our faith in our democratic
system of government is being shaken. Analagous in some ways with the above
developments, a political party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, is overtly
seeking to undermine democracy by preventing the increasingly numerous people
it believes will not support it from exercising their right to vote. I do not
think that is the right thing to do. But many elected officials in that country
are presuming the support of their constituents for these anti-democratic
measures. And they are resisting the normal peaceful transfer of power to those
who have been democratically elected. And it appears that these action have
broad, if minority, support.
Why is this
worrisome? It is worrisome because many in the world have looked to America to
do the right thing on the world scene. How can we continue to do this when so
much is happening in the country that we believe is not right. And in our world
today we have bad actors like China, Russia, and Iran, who are countries that
we do not believe are likely to “do the right thing”.
To make
matters worse, I am not at all sure that the other party is not focused on
putting in place measures that may endanger the golden goose that has made
America the most powerful economic creation in the world, one on which so many
countries’ economic well-being depends on. At the same time they are signaling
a withdrawal from the leadership role in the world America has played for many
decades.
So, what is
the right thing to do? Have we parted company yet?
Speaking as
a senior citizen, why should we have these problems when this should be our
time for fun and games? Didn’t we hand the future tough stuff to the kids to
handle? That was the right thing to do. So how come they are asking us what
they should do?
Drinking The
Elixir, Imbibing The Poison!
Herewith the
disclaimer of the writer, proceed with caution.
Devoid of
any professional instruction, without the benefit of any benevolent mentoring,
I have the temerity, the daring, to share my untutored observations on the
nature of the human animal I have experienced during my passage through our
life together.
We are
issued through the cave of life into this world armed with the potentialities
authored in the DNA we inherit from the partners who gave us life. Then there
is the period during which we learn to care for ourselves among strangers we
come to know. It seems to me that the persons we become are the product of the
interplay between the potentialities we inherit and our early life experiences
in the crucible of our upbringing. There can be no doubt that the final result
can be affected by the events encountered during our further experiences. I
believe that the mold is most profoundly shaped during our early life times
when our fate is most firmly in the hands of those during the times when we are
the most vulnerable. There, I believe, it will most likely be determined
whether we are to grow up to be psychopaths or generous human beings sensitive
to the needs of others beyond ourselves, or something in between.
So often, it
seems to me, that we see, in the character of our parents, the tendencies that
play themselves out in our own characters as their offspring. Like it or not,
we, as parents, play an unwitting role in this transformation. And, I believe,
one of the important elements in this interplay, is whether we have the good
fortune to experience, at some time in our formative years, a state of
unconditonal love from another person. Fortunately, for most of us, that can
come naturally from our mothers. That is the all-healing elixir that I believe,
can color our lives. If we are very lucky, we may find that again in our
further experiences. Failing that, all bets may be off in developing into that
fully rounded personality we all have the potential to forge.
Human
capacities vary. So often we see the failures, and the positives of the
parents, witting or unwitting, repeated in the children. In the interaction
between one’s parents, how they, treat, or mistreat, each other, is, so
often cast a shadow dictating how offspring, as parents, treat their own
children. And the children cannot remain unaffected by what they see and what
they feel during the experience.
We can rise
above early negative experiences, but so often, also seen, behaviors are
repeated by the children in their own personal life experiences. Without even
realizing it, they have imbibed some poison from their early experiences.
Whether they are conscious of it or not, or in spite of that, they have been
damaged. Some is reflected early in childhood behaviors. It can take courage,
and self –awareness, to come to terms with it, and accept responsibility. But
that is unlikely, given the nature of the beast. We inherit the blindnesses
along with the poison.
We have seen
the Mandela’s and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s rising above the potential
hatreds likely to be aroused by their experiences of adversity, charting a path
of reconciliation in the face of unremitting hatred. Something in their early
upbringing gave them the strength to return generosity for hate. We have seen
the emergence of a Hitler who built on his adversity to gather the like-minded
damaged ones, succeeding in sponsoring genocide and death for over eighty
million other humans. Where did this arise if not from what they found in their
early childhood experiences, and spreading the poison through their educational
systems.
Experiences
in America today are giving evidence of the widespread nature of these ills in
our society. The disaffected in our midst did not get that way by accident. The
particular has its parallel in the general. All is not well in the nature of
the family experience that so many of us take for granted because we have
benefited from drinking of the elixir when so many have imbibed the poison of
their early life experiences. There is an epidemic of a different kind
bestirring the body politic.
Some of the
logic of inception and progression has been sloppily handled here, but I
believe the thesis holds.
Why do we do
these things to ourselves? Because we are not always fully competent in the
management of our affairs. We are never fully aware of how we have
unconsciously been groomed ourselves, by the behaviors around us, particularly
from those of our parents. Having a partner who cannot help but act out his/her
failings in a continuous pattern of aggression, for a particularly damaging
example, against others in his/her lives. This cannot fail to strongly impact
the children as well as the primary victim.
Children may
absorb this as an acceptable behavior, or develop an aversion. One way or
another, these things are stored away. Sometimes they may show themselves in
problematic behavior by the child. Regardless, there is a legacy for the child.
Of course, the mechanisms can be occurring to reinforce behaviors on the
positive side. But, it is the negative that we worry about.
There you
have it without the benefit of bibliography and biographical citations to
uphold the argumentation. Why all this? I grapple with this in assessing my own
criminalities and the likely fates awaiting my near and dear. How are things at
your house?
SUN TIMES
Golden rays
are widely streaming, astronomic, round the globe,
Pulsing
light and bands of dark, time and time, and yet again.
Thoughtless
humans, eons passing, sheltered safely fortune’s robe,
Mid
universe’s chaotic dance steps, planet’s ending who knows when.
Why and
wherefore this fierce existence, fighting always to the light,
Species come
and then they go, earth we seized and it we run,
Ascended
from a random cell, endlessly consuming as might is right,
To what end
we have no clue, ‘til our fateful story is fully spun.
These are
then our sun times, know we all will come some dark,
Will we
swallow all our assets and be forced to flee this place?
Will some
frantic being come to find this earth a glowing spark?
Will some
hungry virus flourish, erase us cruelly from this space?
We should
spend more time in leisure, hold our children by the hand,
We should
spend more time with others, to talk, and dance and laugh,
We should
spend more time in pleasure than ever we have planned,
Enjoy the
bright and light of sun times, life gone much more than half.
Eventide In Zihua
The light
has faded from the sky,
The sun has
said its fond goodbye,
The frantic
time has had its day,
The tropic
heat retains its sway.
Up to the
roof to seek a breeze,
And solitude
with my main squeeze.
Sparkling
lights climb up the hill,
Where the freshest
air is present still.
Smoking
cigar, tight in my mitt,
At rest like
any tourist twit.
Thinking,
perhaps a thought profound,
Born of
someone’s errant sound.
Something
good can come of this?
An answer
for what’s gone amiss?
Something
that can bolster pride,
Coming from
this eventide?
Even though
we’re far in space
The ties
that bind are still in place.
We’re ever
there, a tiny piece
Of something
whole. Never cease
To play a
part in someone’s life
To lessen
pain, diminish strife,
Kindness
bring to meet a need,
Ever
blessings is our creed.
Wrestling With Our Pasts
Some people,
looking back, reconstructing their past, present as their inspiration images of
beauty drawn from nature, or the height of human invention in art, thought or
architecture. The fount of their inspiration and their motivations to inspire
in their own right came from edifying images offered by the Creator or the best
that the human spirit can produce. Therefrom they drew their impetus to excel,
to achieve, to recreate a world made up of images of the future exploding in
their brains. I was drawn to other images that fostered what creative energies
I possess.
Time and
again I am drawn back to the streetscape I experienced when my imagination took
flight. That was when I resolved I would insert, infuse, the hero of my
imaginings into the flesh and blood of my own person. Although located where
prairie sun and brightness was the rule, the scene through the eyes of my
memory was always one of greyness, sootiness, grittiness.
It may be
that the reality I believed I was experiencing did not exist for others, that
my companions on that journey through time, saw images through glasses entirely
different from mine. But for me, I was
passing through time in a place which would forever describe for me the nadir
of my existence. It was the place that I swore to myself I would escape. Not
only that. I would become a “master of the universe”, performing feats of
derring-do.
Our
neighborhood at that time was on the downward slope of becoming a slum, in
spite of the courageous efforts of some to prettify the street. We dwelt cheek
by jowl with industry and dirty retail. On the street in front of our house I
fought with the neighborhood boys, intolerant of their Jewish neighbor.
Across the
street was a coal and lumber yard and a cold storage facility. Behind that were
acres and acres of railyards. Steam engines and moving freight cars offered a
backdrop of cacophony day and night. The area was the “happy hunting ground”
for the street rabble , of which I was a part, scavenging for bits of coal for
our furnaces, and discarded ice for our ice-boxes in those pre-refrigerator
days.
Behind our
house was the landlord’s junk yard. Our house shared the lot with his. This was
my backyard. I considered anything I could find there as accessible to my
ownership. It was there I found a sodden copy of the works of one William
Shakespeare, destined for pulping, but rescued by me. It provided me with a
treasure-house of heroes I could put my name to, and villains to be wary of.
In this
working-class neighborhood, with many on welfare, including ourselves, drunken
unemployed men beat their wives and children, perhaps out of frustration, and
there was more than one suicide. One woman drank hydrogen peroxide.
The
children, primarily boys, came together to play under the lights at the street
corners on summer evenings, formed gangs to battle rivals, learning from one
another about “the birds and the bees”.
Schools were
our place of armistice, temporary though it was, from the rigors of our daily
lives. School, for me, was about the future when I would be that “master of the
universe”. Having failed Grade Two, consequent on the absences caused by
continuous childhood diseases, I had the year’s advantage on my classmates, and
it showed in my performance. I reveled in my leadership. That may have been
where I initially donned my Messiah complex.
Like many
others, I expect, I had a rich internal life. There, I was insulated from much
was going on around me, even family. I had all these stories I was telling
about myself, mirroring the derring-do of the heroes I was reading about. I was
a family member, doing the required. But, thinking back, always a book in my
hand, I remember how divorced I felt from what was going on around me from a
family point of view, even though I did partake of , and absorbed ideas from,
the richness of Jewish ritual that we shared.
I was on the holy course to sainthood that
could not be distracted from. Just passing through, thank you, ma’am! My
thoughts, unspoken, never articulated, were focused on escape.
In the end,
my Dad got a job shoveling coal at the storage on our street, when the plant
started making egg powder for Britain, during the War. Without any formal
education, he earned an engineering degree through home study. Eventually, he
ran the whole plant. Mom used his wages for a down-payment on a house far
removed from this street. In changing their own future, they changed mine.
So, what’s
the story here?
Where do we
draw the inspiration that, looking back, was the source of the drive that
carried us forward to tackle the impossibilities in our lives. I have read of
other’s stories of inspiration, but they were not there for me. I was driven by
the Devil that I saw residing in my backyard, the specter of being trapped into
a life I was then leading, no exit available. That was not going to be me, by
gum!
I had a
friend who felt he should hide his humble past, like it was something shameful.
I feel totally the opposite. This was where the spur that drove me forward was
created. Humble beginnings are what America is all about. If you are traveling
in circles where class matters, you are always hiding something.
Some have
accused me of talking only about myself. Should I talk about others whose
internals I cannot possibly fully appreciate? I counter that it is only in
myself that I can HOPE to find what was the truth for me. And yet, I truly
believe that what I share can sometimes unearth parallels for others who wish
to examine the truth in their own lives. Doesn’t that make some of this
worthwhile for you?
Life Has Danced Me Around
Our lives
are convoluted without end,
And the end
does not always justify the means,
But we
soldier on.
That’s what
people do.
Will my
tomorrows teach me why?
I wanted my
life to be heroic,
And I did
extra-ordinary things that were heroic
For the good
they did for many
Who have
forgotten my name.
I am content
because I have children
Who will
remember.
Life has
danced me around
Through
unhappiness for fifty years,
For myself
and others,
Unhappiness
of my own making.
Life has
brought me to a time of delirium,
Happiness of
my own making.
Life is
convoluted.
Stuck At Sea!
Doesn’t it
seem like that to you? It does to me. We’re adrift on a sea of events, and try
as we might we can’t see land. Every day we get more reports of what this
pandemic is doing to the every-days of our lives, people getting sick in
droves, particularly the unvaccinated. In the less advanced countries without
the vaccine supplies, the pandemic advances and creates new mutations which we
will have to cope with tomorrow.
For we lucky
few, scientific advances are bringing better and better means to cope, fourth
boosters are improving resistance in the multiples and new pills are available
to stop the disease dead. But billions out there don’t have a look-in and
that’s where the mutations breed that may be much worse than what we have now.
And on the
world scene we have a power-hungry China looming with every indication of
malevolent intent. Iran is on the verge of nuclearization and the West seems to
have lost its nerve. Russia is trouble-making as it is wont to do under Putin
when the West is in disarray. Shiite Arab countries continue to go to hell in a
handbasket and the Sunni’s are cuddling up to Israel for protection, having
lost faith in America. Picture that!
And America?
What can we make of our favorite guy turning into a gelding. Those who should
be protecting its democracy are taking a wrecking ball to its constitution in
the hope wresting an illegitimate claim on power. And the majority party is so
riven with division that cannot get it together to do the right thing. And the
one guy who could do something about it, and it isn’t the President, is worried
only about being re-elected.
Most of us
are pretty busy worrying about paying the bills, ensuring our kids get an
education so they can fend for themselves, keeping a job, getting a job, and
staying healthy together with those we care for. All these winds whirling
around our heads are not the kinds of things we want to worry about. Didn’t we
elect some guys to do the worrying for us. Aren’t we paying them enough to look
after themselves as well as us? What the heck is going on? What is the leaders
in America can’t seem to walk and chew gum at the same time? How is it that so
many people have all of a sudden gotten stupid? Is everybody drinking the
Kool-Aid of Reverend Jones?
We can’t do
much about the pandemic. A lot of people are working their butts off trying to
find answers, getting the good stuff out, and saving lives. But Omicron is with
us now, fiercely contagious. It’s no wonder our health people on the front line
are worn to a frazzle. Services everywhere suffer as front-line people are
falling victim to the virus, vaccinated and unvaccinated.
Can’t blame
the guys trying to decide on health policy. We are caught in a catch-22. How do
we protect ourselves and still avoid setting back the education of our kids
back by years, destroying livelihoods with restrictions while the vast majority
of us will do just fine if we follow mitigation efforts. What an awful job
trying to find the proper balance! Whatever the
decision you are going to be a bum for some people, even some very
important people dealing only with the politics of it.
What is the
proper line to draw? And sending out stuff to all the have-not countries? How
can we ensure they will have the competence and the will to do their jobs
ensuring that this pandemic doesn’t go on and on. It kind of looks now like we
will have this thing forever like the Flu.
And how the
ordinaries have changed? In so many places people engaged in the faithful
performance of the jobs they have taken on are being threatened. Some are being
replaced with people who promise to perform their tasks in a corrupt manner.
Elected officials, despairing of re-election after refusing to engage in
corrupt practices, are indicating their intention to withdraw from public
service. Others who hope to continue, either surrender to pressure to support a
corrupt former president, or totally mute any condemnation of what is occurring
as the price of retaining their election aspirations. A lie repeated a thousand
times has captured the belief and support of millions of Americans.
We want to
say stop the world, I want to get off. But it doesn’t work that way. So many of
us feel we are at sea and can’t get off this cruise to nowhere. When does this
all end, and where will we be when it does?
It’s no fun
at the Captain’s table, no fun with the crowd, and surely no fun in the
scullery, with the sea continuing as rough as ever.
Cinnamon Buns
Isn’t there
a really an important parable to be drawn from this modest creation, yet it is
one of the heights of human achievement. And the raisins, oh the raisins! Let’s
have some fun!
Back where
we spend most of our time, when I go out shopping for bake-stuff, my buns are
usually square, and if they are the type I like, they a goopy with cinnamony
syrup. I don’t often indulge because these sorts of things are a no-no for a
diabetic. I know I am taking my good times at this end and will pay for all my
transgressions at the farther end.
But now I am in a different place.
Every Saturday there is a pop-up food fair. One of the things on offer are a
variety bake goods created by this Central European man who used to own a
bakery, and now only dabbles. Among his offerings are a cinnamon bun, featuring
powdered sugar and raisins, raisins, raisins. They are light as a feather when
eaten that very day, and mostly, they are. But
some days valor overcomes discretion, and there are buns to be left overnight.
The saving grace on these rather solid delectable the next day are raisins,
raisins, raisins. They vanish like all good things, too soon, too soon!
We are beset in our world with oh so
many occasions that can set us all aweeping, gnashing our teeth, asking of the
heavens, why, why why? We all know that! There have to be things in our lives
that will rally our spirits. I am, too often, quick with curmudgeonly accounts
to assail your bright spirits. Yes, I know I am among those who make you cry
out, “Oh no, not him again!” “What a wet blanket!” Sad but true.
Why can’t I talk about smiling
children happily playing at their games? Lovers walking by the seaside? Why not
talk about bees buzzing about the multi-colored flowers blooming in our
neighborhood, planted by our selfless volunteers? Childress digging in the sand
at water’s edge, happily mucky, isn’t that joyful? Pet dogs and masters taking
their promenade, each of those stalwarts with little green bags for scooping
poop! Those sentinels of good order astride these enormous creatures cantering
slowly down our streets, clip-clop, make me feel all’s right with the world.
And sun, sun, sun, instead of the rain. Rain, rain, rain, and grey, grey, grey,
drove me off to southern climes.
So, it is only right that we put
aside the tasks that confront us to put our world right and concentrate on
something sweet, even if it may not be all that good for us in the long run. In
the long run we are all dead, and today we are alive to pleasure our good times
with our cinnamon buns. Did I tell
you about the hamburger I had for lunch, topped with cheese, tomato, avocado,
and bacon with lettuce, on a toasted sesame bun, French fries on the side? Well
I just did! My companions were sure I could not get all that into my tiny
mouth, but I did. Teeth are not primarily for gnashing! Diet be damned!
On a more sober note, it has mostly
been water, a soft drink or two, a rare beer and no tequila. One must keep
hydrated in the climate wherein we have chosen to while away our idle hours.
With no internet for another two or three weeks, we are relishing the joys of
reading some of those books we promised ourselves we would read from cover to
cover. Without television, the world crises we were keeping on top of, (those
people can’t be trusted to get things right without our close attention,) seem
to have abated in seriousness. With plans to spend much more time at the beach
and actually in the water, I think we are beginning to work our priorities into
just about the right balance.
Yes, and then there is exercise. My
intention was to be up there on the roof top every morning maintaining the top
shape I have achieved over the last years without vacations. Well, first the
rooftop has to be put back in proper shape. And it has to be cleaned of the
droppings of our overhanging mango tree branches each day. I bought a broom and
scoop. The area has to be swept every morning. Some trimming has to be done to the trees and the
physical layout in preparation for group parties we hope will ensue later in
the season. I have to put up the Hummingbird feeder and install replacement
bulbs for those that have burned out. I have managed to smoke a cigar or two up
there, but so far, after a week, no exercise sessions.
Did I mention that I occasionally
smoke hand-rolled cigars of a manufacture peculiar to the location where we
are? What a job it was to find a supplier. Of course, no inhaling!
Yes, there is no question we are
getting our priorities right on this vacation.
Drinking The
Elixir, Imbibing The Poison!
Herewith the
disclaimer of the writer, proceed with caution.
Devoid of
any professional instruction, without the benefit of any benevolent mentoring,
I have the temerity, the daring, to share my untutored observations on the
nature of the human animal I have experienced during my passage through our
life together.
We are
issued through the cave of life into this world armed with the potentialities
authored in the DNA we inherit from the partners who gave us life. Then there
is the period during which we learn to care for ourselves among strangers we
come to know. It seems to me that the persons we become are the product of the
interplay between the potentialities we inherit and our early life experiences
in the crucible of our upbringing. There can be no doubt that the final result
can be affected by the events encountered during our further experiences. I
believe that the mold is most profoundly shaped during our early life times
when our fate is most firmly in the hands of those during the times when we are
the most vulnerable. There, I believe, it will most likely be determined
whether we are to grow up to be psychopaths or generous human beings sensitive
to the needs of others beyond ourselves, or something in between.
So often, it
seems to me, that we see, in the character of our parents, the tendencies that
play themselves out in our own characters as their offspring. Like it or not,
we, as parents, play an unwitting role in this transformation. And, I believe,
one of the important elements in this interplay, is whether we have the good
fortune to experience, at some time in our formative years, a state of
unconditonal love from another person. Fortunately, for most of us, that can
come naturally from our mothers. That is the all-healing elixir that I believe,
can color our lives. If we are very lucky, we may find that again in our
further experiences. Failing that, all bets may be off in developing into that
fully rounded personality we all have the potential to forge.
Human
capacities vary. So often we see the failures, and the positives of the
parents, witting or unwitting, repeated in the children. In the interaction
between one’s parents, how they, treat, or mistreat, each other, is, so
often cast a shadow dictating how offspring, as parents, treat their own children.
And the children cannot remain unaffected by what they see and what they feel
during the experience.
We can rise
above early negative experiences, but so often, also seen, behaviors are
repeated by the children in their own personal life experiences. Without even
realizing it, they have imbibed some poison from their early experiences.
Whether they are conscious of it or not, or in spite of that, they have been
damaged. Some is reflected early in childhood behaviors. It can take courage,
and self –awareness, to come to terms with it, and accept responsibility. But
that is unlikely, given the nature of the beast. We inherit the blindnesses along
with the poison.
We have seen
the Mandela’s and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s rising above the potential
hatreds likely to be aroused by their experiences of adversity, charting a path
of reconciliation in the face of unremitting hatred. Something in their early
upbringing gave them the strength to return generosity for hate. We have seen
the emergence of a Hitler who built on his adversity to gather the like-minded
damaged ones, succeeding in sponsoring genocide and death for over eighty
million other humans. Where did this arise if not from what they found in their
early childhood experiences, and spreading the poison through their educational
systems.
Experiences
in America today are giving evidence of the widespread nature of these ills in
our society. The disaffected in our midst did not get that way by accident. The
particular has its parallel in the general. All is not well in the nature of
the family experience that so many of us take for granted because we have
benefited from drinking of the elixir when so many have imbibed the poison of
their early life experiences. There is an epidemic of a different kind
bestirring the body politic.
Some of the
logic of inception and progression has been sloppily handled here, but I
believe the thesis holds.
Why do we do
these things to ourselves? Because we are not always fully competent in the
management of our affairs. We are never fully aware of how we have
unconsciously been groomed ourselves, by the behaviors around us, particularly
from those of our parents. Having a partner who cannot help but act out his/her
failings in a continuous pattern of aggression, for a particularly damaging
example, against others in his/her lives. This cannot fail to strongly impact
the children as well as the primary victim.
Children may
absorb this as an acceptable behavior, or develop an aversion. One way or
another, these things are stored away. Sometimes they may show themselves in
problematic behavior by the child. Regardless, there is a legacy for the child.
Of course, the mechanisms can be occurring to reinforce behaviors on the
positive side. But, it is the negative that we worry about.
There you
have it without the benefit of bibliography and biographical citations to
uphold the argumentation. Why all this? I grapple with this in assessing my own
criminalities and the likely fates awaiting my near and dear.
How are
things at your house?
Fortune Belongs To the Brave!
You’ve heard
the slogan! And it’s true, You can’t accomplish the impossible if you don’t at
least try. But you and I both know that the trail is littered with the bodies,
the dashed hopes and dreams of multitudes, who tried and failed. Even those who
tried and tried and tried again. But the numbers of those who didn’t even try
are much, much greater.
My story is
about Barry Davis, a Master Sergeant in the American Army. It is a story within
a story. This story goes back to World War II, toward its end, when Allied
troops were assaulting Germany itself, on what was called the Siegfried line in
1944. It was thought that the war was drawing to a close, when a surprise
attack in the Ardennes Region of Belgium pushed Allied forces back about 60
miles. Some 250,000 German troops battered the 80,000 men facing them. The
Allies lost 19,000 dead, and suffered 47,000 wounded. There were some 23,000
reported missing. The Germans suffered 100,000 killed, wounded and captured.
The battle lasted from December 16th, 1944 to January 25th
1945, when the German troops withdrew to avoid encirclement.
Some 9,000
Allied troops were captured.
Americans in
the battle were organized into the 117th Infantry Regiment. Some of
them were among the Allied prisoners encircled and captured. The German tactic
was to separate the officers from the enlisted men. The rules of war required
that prisoners be dealt with through their officers. With this tactic the bulk
of prisoners were leaderless. Among the enlisted men, Jewish prisoners were
identified, and sent off to a concentration camp where most of them perished.
This occurred among all the Allied troops.
Among the
officers, the same tactic was employed, successfully among the other Allied
forces. But among this group of Americans, the ranking officer, Master Sergeant
Barry Davis, insisted that all the 1200 troops under his command were Jewish.
He would not allow the some 200 Jewish officers in the troop to be identified.
The Germans knew this could not be true. The German officer in charge placed
his loaded pistol at the Sergeant’s forehead, and commanded him to order his
Jewish officers to step forward from the ranks. “We are all Jews!”, insisted
the Sergeant. He also said that the war was almost over and that there would be
a reckoning for “war crimes”. The German officer withdrew.
Later, as
the Allied forces approached the encampment, the German officer insisted that
Davis order his subordinates to prepare to march with the retreating Germans.
Davis refused, saying his men did not have the strength. Despite repeated
attempts to get Davis to order the Americans to join the retreat, as had the
other Allied prisoners, Davis was adamant that he would not order his officers
on the march. The Nazi officer gave up and left the American prisoners behind.
Two days later they were liberated by American forces.
What Davis
did was beyond courageous. Yet he never told anyone of his story, returning to
civilian life and obscurity. When his son later asked him to relate his
experiences during the war, he declined to talk about it. This story only came
to light after his death when one of the Jews whose life had been saved told
the story to a New York Times reporter. The only recognition he has received
was when the Government of Israel invited his son to Israel and recognized his
courageous actions by inscribing his name among the Righteous Gentiles of the
World, honoring those who risked their own lives to salvage Jewish lives.
The Devil Made Us Do It!
So what are
Jews really like? Are we the rebellious Hebrews that required 12 Roman legions
to pacify? Or are we the passive Jews of the diaspora, like the Jews of the
Shtetl, and the ghetto, shunted from pillar to post according to the prevailing
winds in the countries we sojourned? No simple answers.
It seems
clear that when efforts were made to separate us from the body of religious
thought that define Jews at their core, that the reaction was explosive. That
prompted reactions that united the whole body of the people. When we were
dispersed and divided, the reaction by a Jewish public to adverse events was
episodic.
Then there
is the history of individual diversions from the mean which extrapolates an
entirely different pattern. Behaviors by individual Jews, sometimes in
substantial numbers, but as individuals, and in small groups, tell us an
entirely different story than one exhibited in the rules-bound religiously
–focused community structure that characterized Jewish life in Europe. There
the prevailing attitude was “keep quiet, maybe it will blow over.”
There were
probably other errant expressions of diversity, but one of the most well-known
is told in the story of the Jews of Odessa. A seaport town, sharing the
characteristics of others of its kind, in Jewish mythology the town is
identified as one where many Jews were active participants as criminals,
swindlers, and practitioners of depravity. Some Jews reacted to hostile environments by breaking the rules*.
According to
the story, for a period of time, it was well known that Odessa was a place
where the “livin’ was high and easy”. Jews were engaged in all the activities
one would expect from the lowest of the low, activities so often found in
international seaport cities. These reports of Jewish behavior in such harsh
contrast with the ordered lives Jews traditionally lived, was the talk of the
Jewish universe.
When the
Bolshevik revolution occurred, this criminal tradition survived and was even invested in some major
Russian cities, as Odessan Jews expanded their operations. The contradictions
within that system provided ample opportunities for the unscrupulous to profit.
Thereafter,
a stream of these people found its way to America, when its practitioners found
the means of escape. I am reading into this all the manifold unconventional
activities that Jews have got into on the North American continent, and
elsewhere, that were outside the existing mold in the general population, and
different than the case for the majority of Jewish immigrants. Some Jews,
however, may have drawn their inspiration from the unconventional thinking
imported by these refugees from life in Odessa. Non-conventional behaviors
metamorphosed over time from the criminal to trying out approaches more
acceptable in environments that proved to be more permissive. But, fierce
competitors for survival, one way or another, nothing was permitted to block
their aspirations.
With
prohibition in America, they became smugglers and bootleggers. Fast forward to
Jewish-owned Night Clubs and Casinos. Blocked by discrimination from the
regular trades, many became peddlers, bringing the merchandise to the customer,
and extending credit, creating the credit system, to finally, for a few,
becoming department store magnates. They ended up destroying the livelihoods of
many of those who wouldn’t give them a job.
The Borscht belt, Jewish entertainment for
Jews, became attractive resorts, leading the way to Broadway, Hollywood and
Television. They ended up destroying the businesses of the exclusive resorts of
those who would not permit them entry to their premises. These Jews were the
purveyors of the unconventional, following the Odessan tradition.
Another
stream fled Russia to other places, among them Palestine, as part of a movement
to re-establish a Jewish State. They rejected the idea of communist
universalist solution that eliminated all states, but adapted the communal
principle as a basis for establishing the Kibbutz, their tool advancing their
occupation. When the British failed to honor their Mandate, they went
underground to build a state within a state. And they were ready to break all
the rules imposed by the occupying power to advance their cause. Smuggling was
the name of the game, but people were the product. And terror was the weapon
for some to drive the British from their Mandate. They were bound by no rules,
in accordance with the Jewish Odessan approach.
Those who
wish to malign the Jewish people tell tales of a people for whom no depravity
is too low. In the Odessan myth, some Jews did live out the “impossible dream”.
But the experience did foster a persistent stream of thinking among Jews, if
the rules get in the way of survival, of achieving the ends you seek, or if the
rules are unreasonable, either discard the rules, or find a way around them.
*Tanny,
Jarrod, City Of Rogues And Schnorrers, Indiana University Press,1992
“Art Is Useless”
Before we
get exercised by this statement by Wilde, we have to understand the proposition
he was putting forward. What he was saying is that “Art” has no utilitarian
purpose. It exists for itself alone as an expression of beauty, thought, what
have you.
Art is not
for digging ditches or building houses. And that may be very true, but who can
deny that it can inspire men to do things, to take action, to change history.
The statement is true and at the same time it is not true. It is not true for
the same reason it illustrates another thesis advanced by Wilde. What you see
in art, whatever form it takes, does not reflect what you are seeing, hearing,
taking in with all your senses. The life it has is what you yourself bring to
it with all the potentialities you have. If you see beauty, it is your own
capacity to appreciate that, that is awakened in your viewing. If you see evil,
it is that capacity in yourself that you recognize in viewing/hearing/ tasting
the work of art.
No-one can
deny, nevertheless, the capacity of art to inspire all the actions that human
beings are capable of.
Needless to
say his ideas caused a great deal of heartburn among his contemporaries. The
behavior of Dorian Gray in the book, and in a 1945 movie, expressions of
homosexuality, Wilde was arguing, was
not in the actions of the characters portrayed in the presentation , but in the
confabulations in the minds of the viewers. When Wilde was brought up four
years later on charges for acts of “gross indecency”, it put the lie to his
assertions.
Yet, what
Wilde asserts is patently true. Presentations of art forms achieve their
substance and clothing in the perceptions of the viewers. They are works of
imagination whatever the fount of inspiration that brought them into being.
Unless the author, him or herself acknowledges them as literal products of
experience, they achieve their life only in the perceptions of the recipients
of the messages being transmitted. They can only have a life if we ourselves
have the imagination to conceive what we see and hear.
I think
about so much that I have written in the first person and I wonder if I
wouldn’t have been much better to have taken Wilde’s thesis to heart. Then I
would have had deniability for all my sins.
While I
accept the literality of Wilde’s thesis, I believe, along with most of you, in
the utility, not to say, the imperative necessity of art to lift us out of
ourselves. Yes, and to literally lift us out of our seats of complacency,
inertia, and inaction, to defend and advance those things of crucial importance
to us when they may be threatened. Time and again, Art, in all its manifold
forms, has played a key role in that process. We see this playing out around
the world, when people follow symbols, at the risk of their lives, to defend
valued things that they believe are threatened.
*This is the final statement made by Oscar Wilde in the
Preface of his seminal work The Picture Of Dorian Gray, published in
book form in 1891.
Holding
Back Tears On My Sunny Days
Why does sadness overwhelm me when life is so good? I
remember too much about the casualties that I have left behind. Gratitude has
to be a part of it, that against all odds I have been spared when so many of
the worthy are no longer here. Survivors’ guilt has to be a part of it. Do you
sometimes attempt to make your own accounting?
How many are the children that I never got to see, that
never got to see the sunny days that I enjoy so much. The children of my Bride that
I never got to see, my grandson who gave up on the hope for a better life,
these are a part of the past I dare to re-live. The nameless of the Holocaust,
whose names were known to countless others of my co-religionists, (we seek to
record them for posterity,) haunt my dreams. I know I am greedy beyond reason.
My days are almost too beautiful to bear in their
richness. I sing songs to myself, celebrating my small triumphs and the absence
of pain. I hear the sounds of laughter in my memories. The music I love plays
in my ears. So many of the people I love are still there in my life. When I
contrast my present with what fate has dealt to so many others, I am shattered
with injustices I confront. I have no answers to offer, no justifications to
advance. Why me and you and not him and her?
I feel like a whirling Dervish, dancing on the head of a
pin. See a science arriving too late to save so many lives and contrast the
speed with which we arrived with solutions for COVID. Science to the rescue and
yet see pseudo-science used as a rationale for condemning a whole race to
death. Greek culture, exploring the essential nature of man, the scientific
method, and the democratic ideal, many centuries ago, and see the eons of Dark
Ages and disease. Monotheism, exhorting us to seek out our better angels,
apprehensive of an all-seeing eye, and then contemplate organized religion
promoting rationales for untold crimes against humanity.
Regard the Marxist myth for which tens of millions died
in Soviet Russia and China. Contrast the elitist Roosevelt who fashioned
modifications to Capitalism that rescued the lives of a hundred million
Americans. I remember that the Marxist principle of from each according to his
gifts and to each according to his needs, was also used to fashion pioneer
communities. The sacrifices of believers restored a desecrated landscape, and
ultimately succeeding in building a renewed Jewish state. Unbelievably, it took
so few determined people to make the difference.
Yin and yang and a multitude of tears is the story of
human civilization. I shudder my way from the personal to the general, and back
again. The impedimenta of our passage are gathered in our galleries, our
museums, and the pot-pouris of our living spaces, real and virtual. They are
there in our graveyards, marked and unmarked, some hidden away in our memories,
to be visited when we dare.
We constantly redefine what is art and artifact. We, all
of us, sometimes overwhelmed by it all, pick and choose what it is that has
meaning for us. Sometime we look to others to instruct us on what, by its very
nature, should be a matter of individual choice. I choose the things that are
treasures in my own eyes. They bear the weight of my personal emotional
commitment and I glory in them, bringing me to tears. You all have your own
idols before which you prostrate yourself.
How many are those in my life that did not get the full
measure of my attention they deserved. I hang my head in the chagrin I feel. It
is much too late to make amends to so many. It must be the same for so many of
you out there. I rode off into the sunrise pursuing my dreams with hardly a
backward glance at those who sustained me during my beginning days. Too much
taken for granted. My regret finds little comfort in the recollection. I am
conducting my personal ‘mea culpa’.
Does all this deserve some recompense? Will my tale
change someone’s course of action? Do we who are still here owe someone,
something, some cause, a recompense? I exert so much of my efforts just to keep
body and soul together. Should I, should we, be doing something more to justify
our places in the universe? Can I listen more, speak less, empathize more,
extend again a helping hand? Can I yet alter the course of humanity’s journey
in the universe in a positive way? Is each one of us that significant an actor?
I
am dancing madly on the head of a pin.
A Time Past!
Sometimes
when I think about our lives, the mysterious and the mundane, it makes my head
spin. There are seasons in our lives, but we are impacted, at the same time, by
the larger events in our world which sweep us in one direction or another.
These can and do shape the context within which we exist. We, of our immediate
generation, were spared the dislocation that wider events brought for the times
of our parents. I am thinking about how very fortunate we were in that, and
underlining that, I am tempted to tell tales out of school.
Recently, we
fled the gloom of approaching winter that hangs over our hideaway on the shore
of the western ocean during that season. Accustomed, even addicted, to sunny
days, associated with our upbringing on the Canadian Prairies, we have gloried
in the shining light peeking through the sheltering foliage that graces the
fifth-floor aerie we have found and furnished in our new abode. Our joys in the
new life we have found there, and their recounting to anyone who will listen,
risk the malevolent attention of the evil eye.
But the sun
is not there for this period of time. So, for the next few months, we will be
living in the desert. In the beginning, the mornings and evenings will be cool
enough to approach the temperatures that we left behind. However, during the
day, we will be able to bake our bodies in the sun until they have roasted to a
color more appropriate to our new surroundings. Little in the way of water,
little in the way of lush greenery, palm trees and cactus adorn our
environment.
This is a
different time in our lives. We are part of that aging cohort, an increasing
fraction of the population, not only in North America, but around the world.
(Birth rates have fallen in the developed world.) We have, through our efforts,
with our savings, personal and government-induced, earned a leisure that
enables us to choose the climate we prefer. We can see around us, back home, but,
particularly in our adopted community, that we, ourselves, are among the more
fortunate. So many of our age bracket continue to work for their daily
sustenance.
When we
return home to re-capture the beauties of our Canadian springtime, we will be
fleeing too much of a good thing from a temperature point of view. We
appreciate and pleasure in the leisure we have to pursue the interests that
fill our times with busyness and a sense of purpose.
We were,
like most of you out there, at one time, fully bound up with the struggle to
fashion a lifestyle, for ourselves, and for our children, that would satisfy
our needs and aspirations. Educational attainments, career goals,
child-rearing, (didn’t we seek to duplicate ourselves, and wasn’t that more
complicated than we imagined,) each, segmented our lives into different times.
Time after
time, we adjusted to the new rhythms that informed the patterns of our changing
lives. So often, we felt driven by the imperatives that commanded our actions.
In a sense, we felt we were the servants of those drives rather than the
masters of our own fate. It made us look forward to time when we might indulge
our own particular interests, without too much concern for how it might affect
others.
All of this
is so mundane, …………. even boring. What else is new? What am I fussing about? A
mountain out of a molehill? All this against a backdrop of a universe without
end, worlds beyond our imagining, sentient life forms not of our own image, a
history with no beginning which we do not have the resources to fully
comprehend. A time after time, of which our own time is less than a tick of the
clock? Beginnings and endings abound far beyond the conception of human time
scales.
Think about
that! And we speculate about dark matter we can’t see that makes up most of our
universe. And parallel universes that may make even our own irrelevant. And I
have not yet gotten over the miracle of the eyes we have through which we see.
And what about cell division and DNA? How come they mostly work the way they
should? Forget the rest, where does all this come from?
The tiny
bits of time that occupy so much of our consciousness pale to insignificance
when considered against the panorama of the larger picture. Yet, we are what we
are and hang on tight to the things we can get our arms around, our minds
around. Do the ants building their nests, and assembling their hills, think
about who is tending the garden? Do they think about time? Dollars to doughnuts
they don’t.
It’s raining
outside at the moment, so we will forgo the plans we had for a night out at a
restaurant in favor of a light snack at home. We will go for an early night,
read a book in our comfortable bed, and maybe watch a little TV. If we will
feel at all adventurous, we may call one of the kids, and, maybe, talk to one
of the grandkids. Tonight, I may dream of flying in space, dodging meteorites
and discovering new worlds and new life forms. I am always the hero in my
dreams and I make sure things turn out well. We are sure to have a good time.
TIME AND TIME AGAIN*
Come with me
as we travel through time! Not in the physical sense, of course, because we
don’t know how to do that. But we can do that through memory and imagining, if
we are so inclined; and if we have a built-up store of memories that we have
the wit and wisdom to examine, to analyze, and to try to understand. I don’t
know about you, but I think we can become, we are different people, as we
thread through the different times of our lives. And even more important, I
believe, when we do think about that, we can begin to better understand the
behaviors of others wending their way forward in time along the paths of their
lives that may parallel ours.
I try to
examine the past, to sort out the kind of person I was at different stages,
stripped of wishful thinking. I may not remember all the whys and wherefores,
but I think I can assess what I think the behaviors were, and how they might
have impacted the people around me. That part we cannot really know unless we
can ask them, interview them. In most cases that’s not really possible. We can
only attempt to draw conclusions from our own consciousness, guided by the
values we ourselves have accumulated during our particular passage through
time.
Did you ever
think about what you are about? Did you ever decide what you are about and act
to realize it. Did you ever tell anybody about it? Did you note how who you
were changed over time?
What I
remember most was the fierceness of the passions I brought to the objectives I
set for myself in my life. In my mind, I would brook no opposition to achieving
the goals I set for myself. If people and events happened to get in the way,
they would just have to be got around somehow. I did not verbalize any of this.
It was just a knot of resolve inside of me. There was little consideration in
my mind of the feelings of others. They were just pawns in my path, to be used,
dealt with as necessary, avoided if possible, insofar as they blocked the path
to the objectives that I set, and was determined to attain, one way or another.
Another
feature of my passions at an early stage of my life was a willingness to go so
far as to self-immolate, if necessary to achieve the higher goals I wanted to
see attained. My own life, if necessary, I was ready to sacrifice if it
furthered goals I believed was necessary for my causes to attain. I can
understand the motivations of suicide-bombers, seeking to attain what they have
been brain-washed to believe were goals worthy of sacrificing their lives for.
I was ready for that to advance some of the causes that were dear to my heart.
One of my
fiercest motivations was the attainment of a professional status by earning a
university degree. In the culture in which I was raised there is no higher goal
than the attainment of higher education. Progeny are judged on the basis of
whether they have the capacity and the discipline to earn an academic
distinction. In our community, you, and even your parents, are judged by the laurels
one attains in this arena. For me, this goal had the added impetus of appearing
to offer a path to economic security. (Probably, no different from many!) Our
low economic status as a family during my early years seared in me the drive to
ensure that my future, and those fated to be my life companions, would not
suffer what I believed was an intolerable fate. So fixed was I on this goal in
the early years of my first marriage that I must have been very difficult to
live with.
Fatherhood
and marriage, with its economic demands, was a challenge to overcome beyond the
academic requirements to be met. And all this had to be done on my sole
resources. I would have refused assistance if it had been offered. I had as
many as three jobs at one time during those years to ensure the means to pay my
way through university. I am sure many shared my fate, but I hope, with better
humor, and less self-righteous fierce intensity. I was going to do this by
myself, by gum!
I have the
recollection that I felt entirely alone in these ventures. I had felt that all
my thinking years. I had never had a friend, or even a family member, with whom
I had felt able to share who I was, what
I was, and that continued to be the case through most of my life. Are most
people living lives like that? What a very lonely place that is! It has been my
good fortune to find a relationship where I could be totally open, but that
occurred only in my seventies. A lot of time to spend alone, time that could
have been much sweeter with the right person, or if I had been the right
person. I know I have changed a lot over time.
Does any of
this strike a responsive chord?
What do we
make of all this? Are we proud of the life we have led, are leading? Are we
satisfied with what we have accomplished, what we hope to accomplish? Have we
been blessed with parenting children, rejoicing in their good times, consoling
them, being with them over the rough spots? Above all, maintaining the
connections, finding and keeping those we treasure and can be open with. That
sometime takes courage. I don’t have to tell you that being open can carry
risks.
Time and
time again we have the potential to re-make our lives.
*Also the
title of a novel by Ben Elton, available on Amazon
Time After Time
Each instant
of our being alive is precious to us, but we spend them lavishly. Particularly
so, when we are young, and our life stretches out before us, seemingly without
end. We pay more attention when we are older, doling out our time with a
greater sense of establishing priorities for its expenditure. I have reached an
age when I am downright parsimonious. I finger each moment carefully, asking
myself if I have squeezed out every bit of juice from the time slipping away
from me with such speed. I may look as if I am sitting here doing nothing, but
take my word for it, I am massaging each instant as I breathe in and out.
I get a
sense of how much time has already passed, multiplying my moments by all the
human creatures that are alive around me now. And all the creatures who have gone
out before, whose husks have been swept out with the trash. Each of our moments
are exquisite to us, precious jewels, but placed on a scale which encompasses
our vast universe they amount to little more than wisps in the wind, if even
that. Looking back, we see time after time after time.
It seems
incredible to me that we are the only sentient creatures in this limitless
space. Could it be that we are the only experiment in the lab that has been
established for the amusement of the Prime Mover? Are we the first time this
has happened? Is our space just a grain of sand in some titan’s pocket? Even
so, can we even imagine the meticulous multi-tasking going on to take care of
all this while still having the time to infuse each and every one of us with that
life spark that keeps us scurrying about? Do you think the system operates on
automatic? I find that hard to believe, given the personal attention I have
received.
I can
understand how jealous we can be about taking personal credit for our
individual perfection. We are self-made, aren’t we? We did it all by ourselves,
the crowning achievement fashioned from the raw clay we were when we started
out. But within the larger picture, where did the perfection come from within a
reductionist evolutionary plan? It just won’t wash. We find it hard to
appreciate a timescale beyond our comprehension, as we inhabit our few instants
hardly registering in a cosmic calendar.
Coming To Terms With
Evil
We have
lived through the year 2021. Will 2022 be better? It is eighty years since
1941. Eighty years ago we were in the midst of World War II. But at that time
we were also in the midst of the Nazi effort to annihilate the Jewish race. In
the years after 1933 the Nazi party succeeded in engineering a change in the
world view of millions of people that some individuals that made up the human
race were sub-human and did not deserve to be treated any differently than we
treat the animals we consume for food. Such sub-humans could be tolerated only
to the extent that they had some utility. Otherwise they did not deserve the
least consideration. Indeed, they did not deserve to live. As the government of
Germany and later Austria, they brought such a viewpoint to be the law of the
land. They had a long list for inclusion, most particularly Jews. But they also
included the old and sick and those born with infirmities that might be
difficult to treat.
What was
even more important, they persuaded millions people around the world where the
Nazis were not the government, that such a view could be legitimate. By the
time they had successfully extended their reach, many of the subject peoples
they ruled were willing participants in the project the Nazis had launched to
eliminate Jews from the face of the earth.
This was not
a new concept. It was unique in that it was not based on a perceived direct
benefit, but was inherent in an ideology alike to a religious doctrine. We know
that all religions have at some time been totally intolerant of the existence
of differing views. We all know that the idea behind slavery has this concept
at their base, and this has played itself out in Africa, Asia, the Middle East,
and in America. It was in 1619 that America decided to engage in the practice of
slavery, of human bondage. Since then, almost, human bondage, and racial
inequality has been inherent in its laws, its courts and in its practice. Its
persistence in America has been a shocking contradiction of the founding
principles of that democracy. Fighting the dehumanization of its colored
population has taken generations, and is evidenced in the toll of corpses on
American streets appearing to this very day.
When we see
evil, we have to call it out, whatever the price!
Like a
virus, the idea that other humans could be considered sub-human, can be spread
like a disease. With this as a founding principle, all the worst evils inherent
in the human experience can be envisaged. Now, only eight decades after the
horrors of the Holocaust reaching its fullest expression, with the struggles of
colored peoples in America to achieve full equality seeing better beginnings,
we are facing a renaissance of the worst evils of this virus infecting millions
in America.
In America,
the nature of the body politic is evolving. Differing attitudes to family
planning, or lack thereof, have resulted in Whites in the U.S.A. having lower
birth rates than do those who may be termed Colored. Immigration to America
from countries less favored from an economic or social stability point of view,
has tended to favor origins populated by Colored peoples. The result has been
that population shares are tending more and more to equality in numbers with
Whites in the U.S.A. This has a political dimension because the current
majority is becoming, has become fearful of losing the political power it has
always assumed it had. Given the evil intentions some of the more nationalist
among us have, and fearful that they will be repaid in kind, they are bending
every effort, while they can, to undermine the democratic process that might
express the political priorities of those who have been discriminated against
by the majority for years.
In an
atmosphere fraught with fear, particularly that on the part of the less
educated, and perhaps, the less economically advantaged, those with a political
agenda tend to seek out scapegoats at whose door the fears of these elements
can be directed. Immigrants will be targeted, people of color will be painted
as sub-human, as a prelude to raising fears for the safety of loved ones.
Anti-semitism has been commonly-used to rail against economic exploitation
really authored by those leading these elements toward subversion and violence
for their own purposes. Former president Trump has used this vehicle, as his
support among even traditional Republicans has melted away consequent on his
failures. He has sought to make common cause with those among the disaffected
who either traditionally supported the Democrats or have never voted. He has
struck a chord among the Neo-Nazis and conspiracy theorists open to the wildest
of imaginings. The fringe has become mainstream among one-third of the
electorate.
Threats of
violence are being used against citizens engaged in the ordinary tasks
associated administering an orderly society. Those who seek to undermine law
and order accuse those seeking improved policing of undermining law and order.
And many in the ranks of the police are taken in by the rhetoric, particularly
among those who have a track record of abusing police powers. Abusers of the
law have faced inaction by those in authority, further encouraging those
abusers. Law abiding citizens are beginning to feel insecure owing to this
development and fearful in pursuing their law-abiding roles.
The face of
evil that we thought was rampant only in a few far-away places is obvious again
on America’s streets. Some would say it has never gone away. What is obvious is that the lies are winning
over converts who do not question the filth they are fed. Repeated often enough
the lies become truth to many who do not question even when what they hear is
irrational. What are Americans going to do about it? What is the world going to
do about it?
Coming
To Attention!
Life
comes at us from all directions. The nitty-gritty of daily living demands our
primary attention, earning a wage, satisfying the boss, meeting a partner’s
needs, raising the kids when it’s your turn to show up and be a parent. Then
there is the job of keeping up to date with all you need to learn just to do
all that. It’s a wonder we take the time to eat and sleep. When do we pay
attention to what is going on all around us outside the narrow horizons of our
lives? Shouldn’t that be an important element, what we do to impact the larger
picture, in determining our fate even though our direct effect on events is
often very small? And yet what is going on around us can have an impact on us
that can be very large.
I am
in a very different place right now, having in many ways opted out of the
typical “rat race” at this stage of my passage. Being retired allows me a
perspective on the position most of the human race is in making their way
through life. I marvel at how people in the midst of all that can handle it.
It’s no wonder that some of us get “shell-shocked”. It’s a tribute to the
resilience of humans, faithfully putting one foot in front of the other without
giving it so much as a second thought. I can empathize with many of you finding
the going a little rough. I have had my share. There were times, even years,
when I never lifted my head from the tasks before me. I now begin to appreciate
that it is a wonder so many of us survive the process with a whole skin. We
were just programmed to keep on keeping on.
Looking
back, I realize that from time to time I must have lifted my head from my focus
on the trail in front of me. Every few years I radically changed my profession,
and went off in a different direction. I must have come to attention, and
concluded that, for one reason or another, circumstances in the wider world
were dictating that what I was doing was no longer appropriate for me. That
tells me that coming to attention and surveying the landscape around us is
absolutely an imperative part of living the lives we lead. Yet, doing the
familiar is so comfortable, so hypnotic, that some real discomfort must appear
to awaken us from our trance.
For
me, I always had an interest in what was happening in the wider world. I didn’t
much read books during my working years, but I was a news junkie. There was
always something in the news that was enraging me. Being Jewish, I came to the
scene with the attitude of an outsider. Feeling picked on by the general
society, with an indoctrinated background dictating right and wrong for me,
there was always plenty of stuff in the news to enervate me. So perhaps I was
not typical, and my antennae were always tingling. Maybe that was why I was so
ready to jump from one thing to another when I encountered discomfort.
Fast
forward today and to what is going on in the present scene. Things are
happening so quickly to change our societies that it is breathtaking. Every day
I realize that I am becoming more and more obsolescent. I have an interest in
the stock market so I am always on the prowl to find new ventures where my
attention might lead to profit opportunities. A week does not pass without my
discovering whole new areas of business venture already well established. Where
was I when all this was happening? Asleep at the switch was where I was.
What
about our working people relying on their jobs of longstanding to carry them
until retirement? We all know what happened in the rust-belt areas of America,
jobs that went and never came back. We know that innovation is threatening the
status quo now over wide swathes of our economies. Politicians and business
leaders talk about efforts we must make to mitigate these effects, and bring
back jobs. And every day we hear of thousands of job losses, most recently from
the impact of on-line buying, and ride-sharing. But we have yet to see any
concrete action to respond to these events because we do not have the answers.
What I have been hearing more of is that basic income payments will be required
for those displaced, putting large numbers of people on the dole. Who is going
to pay for that? Some of those people coming back to the job market after COVID
are insisting on higher wages as the price. Labor costs have risen.
Well,
now, what about our young people? What do we tell them? Everybody cannot be an
engineer, an electronics expert, an internet whiz. These days all our young
people have to come to attention in the face of the rapid change we are facing.
They need to have their heads up all the time. They may not have the luxury we
enjoyed of getting an education and just going with that. They will have to be
re-training all the time. They will have to be aware of how the changing waves
of innovation are altering their prospects on much shorter time horizons than
we enjoyed, or their parents enjoyed. Our social engineers have not even begun
to draw up the plans we will need to cope with our presents, much less our
futures.
AH-TEN-SHUN!
--
What’s On The Telly?
I remember
the times when parents worried about the kids watching too much television. It
seems like that was long ago in a past century. Things have gotten a lot more
complicated since that time. Now it’s all about everybody being on their phone,
even when they are walking (or driving, for God’s sake.) Or it’s about gaming!
But the truth is, it’s hard to get through life these days without counting on
the proper functioning of some sort of electronic device for us grown-up folks.
And often, we need the help of the youngsters just to get us through the day as
these devices confound us with their temper tantrums.
For myself,
I am among the old-fashioned in enjoying the blessings of merely having a dear
old television set. Oh yes, I have a computer, and my Bride has an Ipad. And we
spend a lot of time doing all sorts of stuff with those things. We get news, (I
don’t get a newspaper anymore,) and send messages, and do research, (goodbye,
encyclopedias,) on these fabulous machines all the time. But I don’t do
streaming, and not much You Tube. Facebook is only incidental in my life, but I
carry on a lively correspondence on my machine with two hundred or so of my
closest friends.
But for
television, it’s an entirely different thing. We’ve learned that our machine
will record the things we want to watch whenever they are broadcast. Then we
can watch these gems whenever it suits us. We have even spent complete nights
bingeing on our favorite collections of series. It’s hard for the movie houses
to compete with that for us. Our movie-going days have seriously diminished. We
can hide away without leaving our bedrooms. (Of course, they only re-opening,
having benn closed for months,)
The mass
audience is going in an entirely different direction, with people unhooking
from cable and turning to streaming services for their favorite pastimes,
available on phones and other electronic devices. Similar disruption is
occurring in the music business. Downloading of music from the airwaves,
Itunes, and other sources, has seriously impacted sales of albums, records and
tapes. It is now difficult to find the tape and record players that were the
staples of yesteryear. The Ipod and the phone jack are the universal vehicles
for the moment. Young people, and some not so young, seem to be permanently
divorced from the world around them. They are either listening to music,
studying messages on their device, furiously thumbing replies, or in
conversations with persons out of sight. We used to think people seemingly
talking to themselves were off their rocker. Now it is hard to tell one from
the other.
There’s no
question that our lives have been changed in remarkable ways by technological
advances. We keep hearing about the internet of things where all the devices in
our lives will be linked, probably to our phones. We will turn things off and
on with the click of a button. Security systems, visual surveillance, the kids
where-abouts, our toasters and coffee pots, perhaps even our driver-less cars.
And, of course, the telly! How about our clothes being wired in some way, maybe
changing colors to match outfits, or warming us if the weather changes. Egad!
Exciting but
scary. I remember my first days with a computer forty years ago. It was almost
considered a toy, but it got serious pretty quickly. Year’s later when I was
trying my hand at real estate, it was made clear to me that there was no job available
for me if I couldn’t handle a computer. Now, our wee kids are playing with the
darn things.
My computer
still gives me the “willies”. All of a sudden it will start changing font types
or sizes. Merely by moving my cursor, it takes on a life of its own, a life
over which I seem to have no control. I am almost completely at its mercy. When
I am totally lost, I abdicate control to my youngest offspring. He can remotely
fix whatever ails me.
So that gets
me back to the telly. They keep trying to totally destabilize my life, offering
me all sorts of fancy alternatives, choices I’m not looking for. Along with
that come a variety of devices that will do different things for me I may or
may not want. I do not want them. Just one remote device please. That’s all I need in my life. And with a pandemic
roaring round our ears out there, the now humble telly is a godsend!
I have
become a Luddite at heart, in terror of the approaching waves of technological
advance I know are coming. I welcome the marvels that are improving controls
over our bodies, (and eradicating disease and some of the agonies of aging,)
and the positives regarding improved control of the excesses of natural forces.
We learn more of these good things every day. But I would not, repeat NOT, like
my telly going the way of the tape deck and my record collection, the film
camera, and photo albums.
What shall
we watch tonight, Sweetie, snug in our beds?
Travelling Through Time
Have you
thought about travelling through time? There have been those who have exercised
their minds, dreaming of the capacity to travel to the future, returning to
tell tales of what the future looked like. So many of us try to imagine what
that would be like. Many of the tales told fail to anticipate how rapidly the
present surpasses what we can imagine.
Some of us dream of what it could be
like to be able to pop into the future, find out what the winning lottery
ticket could be, then pop into the present to take advantage of such
foreknowledge. What gains we could make with such a capacity if we were
knowledgeable about events in the stock market! So far, we have to rely on
prognosticators who are wrong as often as they are right.
What has
been occupying my mind is how we actually can travel through time, only
backward, exploring the past events of our lives. In this we can see where we
have done things right, and done things wrong. And, I suppose, there are
valuable lessons we can learn, potentially, about alternative behaviors we
could follow to improve our track records in the future. Aren’t we trying to do
that all the time in matters of public policy?
Actually, I
sometimes use my travels through time to alter some of the things I have
written. When I study those historical texts of mine, I sometimes alter the
things I have written to make them more pertinent, more incisive, more
relevant. Indeed, they can result in stories which can be more useful to
readers in the newer version. Is that cheating, overcoming some of the
limitations we face on our ability to travel through time?
So many
things are happening in our current environment, technology is advancing so
rapidly, our capacity to understand what is happening in the world around us is
advancing so quickly, that just keeping abreast of these developments can give
us an invaluable peek into the future.
There is
such a flood of news every moment of the day, some of it incredibly
specialized, requiring a wealth of technical knowledge, that most of us,
limited in the breadth of understanding we have been able to absorb, inevitably
fail to appreciate its import as the information whistles past our ears. We
just don’t have access to those who might translate all that gobbledygook into
something that might be intelligible to us.
Nevertheless,
I personally, wish that I was capable of riding astride some hypothetical
vehicle that would enable me to ride that crest of that wave of knowledge
thrusting us forward to a dimly viewed future. Driverless cars, personal flying
machines, rocket flight in the atmosphere, that’s nothing! Let’s take a flying
jump into the future!
If quantum
mechanics proves (in spite of Einstein,) that an object can actually be in two
places at the same time, can’t this mean that someday we can transport matter
from one place to another like they did in Star Trek?
How about
some practical stuff in our own screwed-up world? Universal basic income for
every individual displaced by technology, world government eliminating
nationalist competition so we don’t self-destruct, publically financed
entertainment centers to busy idle hands, necessary industry taking place in
space so we can extend the humans race’s time on this planet by eliminating the
danger of overheating our atmosphere.
What would
hyper speed mass transit do to change our world? How about free health care and costless food
around the world through advanced technology? We probably have the capacity now
to deliver cheap protein to the masses if that was a world goal. Steak can
already be made from vegetable protein. No more cattle, no more chicken!
Are we going
to do something real about robots to permit such benefits to be universal? Is
that how we free humans from work for pay to create some of what we are
speculating about? Mechanization in agriculture drove people from farming to
the cities, providing cheap labor to create our industrial system. If we carry
that to the ultimate will work as we know it disappear? How do we get from here
to there?
What would
our economic systems and government look like? What would be our mechanism for
educating and choosing those who service the masses with all the necessary
skills to ensure things work? What would that look like in that kind of future?
How would we reward people for their efforts if we didn’t need money to meet
our needs? We would have to build a whole new system of values, wouldn’t we?
What would our cities look like? Would we still have them?
Would these
things have to be imposed by a world dictatorship? It might mean abandoning the
capitalist system and instituting world governance to ensure advancing the
benefits of technology to all as a human right. What would personal freedoms
look like under such a regime? Would we have to re-invent Orwell’s world?
Travel
through time with me and imagine the unimaginable!
VITAMINS!
So, we are facing a world of threats to life and limb.
We are struggling with a world-wide epidemic. The media are screaming about the
threat to continued human habitation on this planet, and the fate of our
children and grandchildren. But most of us are taken up with the day to day
battle to keep ourselves healthy. Those who want to live forever, line up at
the right!
My Bride is wading among a multitude of internet
presentations extolling the beauties and taste delights of a million
concoctions that will test our resolve to pursue a healthier diet. When
presented with these offering in the real world, it takes someone with a great
deal more courage than I have, bulking up my moral fibre, to raise objections
to consuming what’s presented.
But calories are not what it is all about in my
readings of the literature we seniors are awash in. Yes, surely it’s about a
balanced diet which will provide us with the wherewithal to realize our
potential to challenge Methuselah. And aging as well as we can without pain and
serious illness. And it’s about ensuring we consume all those crucial trace
elements that we may in fact be missing in spite of the abundance of delicious
entrees on our tables. And they are all haranguing us about less being more.
What to do to square the circle?
So it’s vitamins, vitamins are what it is all about.
That involves an encyclopaedia of research.
I can’t believe we are consumed with this stuff when
the world is falling down around our heads. This must be selfish and
unpatriotic! But if we talk about vitamins maybe we can gracefully avoid the
deluge of calories we are faced with.
So, what are the facts in all this? Over 50% of
Americans take at least one vitamin supplement. And a study showed that that of
adults over 60, some 70% take a regular vitamin supplement. Multi-vitamins
usually contain ten or more. Research has shown that B6 and B12 are important
for fitness enthusiasts in converting sugar and protein into the energy they
will need. It has also shown that folic acid and B vitamins can be important in
reducing the incidence of strokes.
There are 90,000 of these products that consumers in
America spend $30 billion on. But, there is only limited evidence that they can
be beneficial, and too much anything can be bad for you. Everybody agrees they
are never a substitute for a balanced diet.
Ok, let’s hear it for food, real food!
Latest bulletin: I can report that I am getting close
to my objective of a 70 Kilo weight, that’s about 155 pounds in layman terms.
(Actually, I slipped back a little after that!) Three years ago I weighed in at
183. Yippee! The secret! We eat about 1.5 meals a day, drink lots of water and
take vitamins. Exercise is on the agenda at least three times a week.
I am writing a postscript to the above story. We are
now in Mexico. As mentioned, while in Vancouver we exercise at least three
times a week. We were eating less than twice a day. Now, I, at least, am a lazy
bum. I nap every day after noon, and walk to the market and into town,( a few
blocks,) everyday, go to the beach for a walk in the water, and eat anything,
anytime, depending on what comes to hand.
We drink lots of fluids, with fruit salad at least
once a day. Bulletin, we are getting more Vitamin D than we can handle every
day, and there’s lime juice Vitamin C in everything and on everything we eat or
drink. After two months all my trousers are falling off of me. I can hardly
wait to stand on the scales again. And I’m getting my lowest fast-based sugar
values for my type 2 diabetes of the last year. Vitamins, what are those?
So, I don’t know what’s happening! We feel great!
Whatever the story is, we will face reality in another month or so when we
complete the analysis of our latest experiment. I’ve no doubt we will return to
our vitamin regimen whatever the outcome, but it has felt great to throw
caution to the winds for at least a little while.
See you at the vitamin store! We will go there just
after our session at the gym.
One Jew’s View Of World History
I’m not in
any way biased at all, at all. Totally focused on the facts.
We know
about the Neanderthals and how they were replaced by Homo Sapiens. It is
thought that one of the big differences between the two was the latter’s
capacity to tell stories. With that comes the capacity to elaborate larger
regimes, many supporting the ideas of a leader to elaborate large projects like
kingdoms.
Archeologists
tell us about the ancient regimes, in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. In the
latter we know about the Sumerian civilization leading to the Akkadian
(Assyrian and Babylonian) supremacy. The Pharaohs of Egypt were to the south.
When the
persecuted Jews bolted from Egypt, settling ultimately on both sides of the
river Jordan, they persisted as a minor ethnic entity at the pleasure of the
giant empires of the region. The glue that distinguished them was their devoted
monotheism in the surrounding pagan world. Ahkenaton of Egypt offered the Sun
God to the Egyptians during his reign, but was soon buried without a trace
remaining of his belief among the
Egyptian people. When Assyrians dispersed the population of the separated
northern kingdom of Israel, the ten tribes vanished into the melting pot. Only
Judah and Benjamin remained, of the twelve original tribes, in the southern
Kingdom of Judea, to carry on their message.
Much later
came the Greeks. The Jews of Judea had only a brief period of real independence
under the Maccabees’ religious fervor, before falling under the tutelage of
Rome. Unable, in the end, to tolerate the pagan intrusion into their religious
life, in full revolt, they were subdued and ultimately dispersed as well,
throughout the Roman Empire. Three hundred years later, it was Rome that
surrendered to a version of Judaism renamed Christianity.
During the
period of Roman rule, one of religious and political turmoil in then Judea, a
preacher with a substantial following, one we know of today under the name of
Jesus, challenged some of the traditional forms of religious worship of the
time. Although his goals were religious, and he may have seen himself as the
embodiment of a Messiah, come to redeem his people, the Roman Administration
under Pontius Pilate saw him as a threat on a political level. They arrested
him and crucified him in their traditional form of execution.
What
followed has some mystery, but although the family claimed the corpse, it was
reported that his body had disappeared. Followers reported seeing him alive and
claimed he had ascended bodily to heaven. His Disciples, and many Jews who
followed his teachings, played an important role in spreading the myth. One,
labelled Paul, abandoning the traditional and arduous path to Judaism, was
particularly active, and offered supporters a guaranteed path to salvation, and
an eternal afterlife, by merely accepting the belief that Jesus had returned
alive after his death before rising bodily to heaven.
Those
calling themselves Jews were eventually a significant element in the Roman
Empire. Josephus, the Jewish historian, wrote that during his time they made up
ten percent of the population of the Empire. They had persisted in their
Promised Land for almost two thousand years, and their established community
structure led to their survival as a scattered nation in exile.
Jews had
special status within the Empire, since they were the only ones who did not
have to acknowledge that the Roman Emperor was a God. For this privilege they
had to pay a special tax to Rome. This led to conflict between Jews who were
avowed followers of Jesus, and traditional Jews. The followers of Jesus refused
to pay the tax, and when Roman authorities checked their status with Jewish
community leaders and found the tax had not been paid, these Jews might be
arrested and sentenced as victims for games in the Coliseum. As time went on,
the majority of Jews returned to traditional practice.
Jesus’
followers, despairing of blanket Jewish adhesion, sought to make their offering
more appealing to potential pagan followers, particularly Romans. Jesus was deified,
a God-inspired virgin birth declared, and Saints and miracles became the order
of the day. When the organized Roman Catholic Church formulated a New
Testament, they chose to include the Gospel of St. Mathew, written some hundred
years after Jesus’ death. In this tale, responsibility for Jesus’ crucifixion
was shifted from the Romans to the Jews. The demonization of Jews was effected
for all time.
There
followed more than 1500 years of Jewish persecution and exclusion. Tolerated
when and where their knowledge and abilities were useful, Jews were seen
universally as a source of the cardinal sin, Christ-killers, to be persecuted
and punished for their adjudged collective crime. A million slaughtered in the
Rhineland during a Crusade to free Jerusalem, blamed for the Black Death
plague, ghettoized everywhere, pogroms for any reason, expelled from how many
countries, Church followers active in elements of the Holocaust, let me count
the ways
Is this what
Jesus would have wanted from his followers?
Shall I now
recount the miracle of rebirth? Israel, as always, is tiny among the Empires.
But, as the Jews around the world, and through history, have contributed to
humanity, out of all proportion to their numbers, so Israel is counted among
the mighty in so many fields, out of all proportion to its numbers.
With an Arab
party, many of whose adherents are sworn enemies, as part of its government, it
is a stalwart of Democracy, when in many countries it is shaky. Science and
medicine, technology and defense, agriculture and politics, new and better
answers are being produced from this tiny place every day.
Jews in the
world take heart and feel new strength in every other country they inhabit
because of Israel. Anti-Semitism and anti-Israel campaigns, we barely have time
for that stuff, we’re so busy! Who hasn’t got problems? Less than two-tenths of
one percent of the world’s population, what is the magic potion they are being
served to yield such results? It almost makes one believe in GOD. Could it be a
Hebrew God after all?
--
MYSTERIES OF GOOD AND EVIL
I am
ruminating on these serious and heavy topics. This is not a good time to be
considering these subjects, confronted as we are at this time in 2022 with some
very serious challenges on a global scale. But it is appropriate at the same
time.
Evil is not
new in this world. Many who were purported to be godly in human history performed acts of
evil, as did men who were evil in conception. I will not attempt a litany. One
may surprise you, in that I believe that a man I believed was godly, let us
say, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had evil in his heart. I don’t need to mention
Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot, or shall I suggest, Putin. We have yet to see
about the Chinese leader. I think I know about the one in Iran. I am not
interested in their motivations, just their cold-blooded lack of compassion for
other human beings, or humans they believed were, or believe are, sub-human.
In this time
of pandemic, in this context, I have to remember Trump, how can people who have
any feeling for the fate of others, discourage vaccination, and refuse to be
vaccinated. Or deny others that opportunity? Even if I believe that there is
some danger to me in being jabbed, how can I risk being the agent for another
person’s death?
We believe
that people are by their nature good. But events conspire to show us that some
of us turn out to be evil. We believe that the rural life is somehow purer and
a more desirable existence for human beings, but in so many ways it turns out
to be a much worse place than we can imagine, in spite of its proponents. We
believe that our cities have the potential to be the New Jerusalem, but for
many of us it can turn out to be a kind of Hades. So many factors enter into
the equation, factors that take so much care to define and deal with, that it
is dangerous to make generalizations.
We have to
conclude that context is everything. I am reading a book about Jews in the city
of Old Odessa*. We have a traditional image of Jews in Europe wrapped up in
their communities, tightly regulated by a religion that dictated rules about
everything important in their lives. The environment around them was also
designed to isolate them. We have the horrible image of passive Jews who were
herded like cattle to their deaths during the Holocaust.
Then we have
the stories about the Jews of Old Odessa. A sea-port town on the Black Sea, it
was reported, like many other seaport towns, to be a den of iniquity.
Commercially active in trade in the nineteenth century, and later, and growing,
goods flowing in and out, far from the central government, open to the
Mediterranean, it attracted many seeking to make their fortunes, legally or
otherwise. It was also reported to have attracted a numerically important
number of Jews active in the many kinds of criminal activity, from prostitution
and gambling to robbery and murder, so the story went. There were sure to be
many Jewish swindlers to separate you from any money you might have.
The story
goes that when the Bolshevik revolution occurred, many of these practitioners
moved their activities to Moscow and other major Russian cities. It seemed the
new regime offered many more opportunities for the practitioners of the arts
learned in Odessa. And many of them moved to America and Israel when the
opportunities presented themselves.
These are
not the kind of stories you like to tell about your own people. But we had our
terrorists in Israel when the situation called for it. And we had guys in
Murder Inc. and some very successful bootleggers, in America. Some of them
helped ship illegal arms to Israel during its early years. Does this explain
some of the dynamism of Jewish entrepreneurs as risk takers in so many areas of
American life in those early times? This was an entirely different breed of
Jew.
Like the
Mafia bosses, they got their kids into legal businesses, and legitimate trades
as soon as they could. And the terrorists in Israel became part of the
government in the new state. Good can turn into evil and evil can sometimes
turn into good. Should we wring our hands that we had bad guys among us too? We
still have a few, don’t we?
*City of
Rogues and Shnorrers. Russia’s Jews and The Myth of Old Odessa, Jarrod
Tanny, Indiana University Press, 2011
Wannabees
Why can’t we be what We want to be?
When we are young we may want to be just what our parents want us to be, just
to please them. When we are older, we may change our minds and want to be
whatever we think will aggravate them. Maybe we want to be tall, when we are
short, or thin, when we are fat. We want to be musical when we are tone deaf.
Be good in math, dance like a dream, have rugged good looks or wavy hair, you
name it! There’s no end to the aspirations we may have when we run up against
the realities of life that contradict the fate we may fervently desire.
But, life, to some extent, at least,
is what we can make of it. We can wear high heels or platform shoes to earn
those extra inches. Some of us succeed in remaking our bodies through will
power. We can devote ourselves to a rigorous education so that we can store
lots of information in our heads to substitute for a lack of smarts. We wear
make-up to be prettier and work-out to improve our appearance. We can do risky
things to bulk up our courage, swallowing our fears. Isn’t that what courage is
all about?
I think the wannabees are what this
world is all about. The people who aspire to be something, do something, that
appear out of reach; the ones who try, fail, and then try harder; they are the
ones who make the world we see all around us. Some end up as movers and
shakers. They don’t get there without someone paying a price, and often, those
paying their part of the price are the people around them who may care for
them. And part of that price may be being left behind. Doesn’t that hurt?
But we can’t do without them. We need
those wannabees to advance the frontiers of human endeavor in every area of
human activity. I think of those young people taking ballet lessons, even
distorting their limbs to achieve the perfection they desire. The committed
writer faces a million rejections, and many may never achieve an acceptance. He
cannot help but write, driven by an inner impulse; it just keeps pouring out!
Creativity knows no bounds and no master. Many of us find small ways to cater
to that inner urge, fully content in the doing for our own satisfactions.
My mother wanted me to be a
violinist, just like all those famous ones. I remember my struggles to master
the violin as a youngster; I did not win through to achieve that desired goal.
But I did put myself through university on the back of my determination to let
nothing stand in my way regardless of the price to be paid by myself and those
around me. We know there are often sacrifices to be made, and there are victims
left on the trail to achieving our successes. So many just quit and accepted
any job to put food on the table. We don’t have to tell you about their fate.
So, what is it that separates the
winners from the losers? Is it that some people just never quit? Is it blind chance
and circumstance that crown some with success while many face failure? Many of
the successful speak of being an overnight success after facing many years of
hopeless travail. More than anything it seems to involve a persistent faith in
the worth of one’s ideas, talents, causes, in the face of every obstacle.
And how many had their worth recognized only
after they had departed the battlefield. How much do we owe those that toil in
obscurity, whose ideas, put together with those of others, permit the breakthroughs
made by other individuals that change the lives of humans all over this planet?
All of these individuals were wannabees who each contributed a small piece to
solving a puzzle. Only the puzzle-master achieves most of the accolades.
What’s our job, parents, teachers,
leaders? How do we keep the fire of daring blazing in the hearts of our young?
Try as we might, we always have the tendency to instruct in ways that
discourage enterprise and daring in the young wannabees, when we should be
doing exactly the opposite. Maybe we fear that impulse, worried it may
overwhelm us and expose our own limitations. We would be exposing to ourselves
the times when we quit rather than having have kept trying to achieve a better
result. The young feel impeded by the status quo and threaten to overturn our
idols, those things we believed were signal achievements. We must be alert not
to say no to the search for alternative possibilities.
Fortune favors the bold! Be open to
being forgiving rather than insisting that our Wannabees ask for permission.
MYSTERIES OF GOOD AND EVIL
I am
ruminating on these serious and heavy topics. This is not a good time to be
considering these subjects, confronted as we are at this time in 2022 with some
very serious challenges on a global scale. But it is appropriate at the same
time.
Evil is not
new in this world. Many who were purported to be godly in human history performed acts of
evil, as did men who were evil in conception. I will not attempt a litany. One
may surprise you, in that I believe that a man I believed was godly, let us
say, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had evil in his heart. I don’t need to mention
Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot, or shall I suggest, Putin. We have yet to see
about the Chinese leader. I think I know about the one in Iran. I am not
interested in their motivations, just their cold-blooded lack of compassion for
other human beings, or humans they believed were, or believe are, sub-human.
In this time
of pandemic, in this context, I have to remember Trump, how can people who have
any feeling for the fate of others, discourage vaccination, and refuse to be
vaccinated. Or deny others that opportunity? Even if I believe that there is
some danger to me in being jabbed, how can I risk being the agent for another
person’s death?
We believe
that people are by their nature good. But events conspire to show us that some
of us turn out to be evil. We believe that the rural life is somehow purer and
a more desirable existence for human beings, but in so many ways it turns out
to be a much worse place than we can imagine, in spite of its proponents. We
believe that our cities have the potential to be the New Jerusalem, but for
many of us it can turn out to be a kind of Hades. So many factors enter into
the equation, factors that take so much care to define and deal with, that it
is dangerous to make generalizations.
We have to
conclude that context is everything. I am reading a book about Jews in the city
of Old Odessa*. We have a traditional image of Jews in Europe wrapped up in
their communities, tightly regulated by a religion that dictated rules about
everything important in their lives. The environment around them was also
designed to isolate them. We have the horrible image of passive Jews who were
herded like cattle to their deaths during the Holocaust.
Then we have
the stories about the Jews of Old Odessa. A sea-port town on the Black Sea, it
was reported, like many other seaport towns, to be a den of iniquity.
Commercially active in trade in the nineteenth century, and later, and growing,
goods flowing in and out, far from the central government, open to the
Mediterranean, it attracted many seeking to make their fortunes, legally or
otherwise. It was also reported to have attracted a numerically important
number of Jews active in the many kinds of criminal activity, from prostitution
and gambling to robbery and murder, so the story went. There were sure to be
many Jewish swindlers to separate you from any money you might have.
The story
goes that when the Bolshevik revolution occurred, many of these practitioners
moved their activities to Moscow and other major Russian cities. It seemed the
new regime offered many more opportunities for the practitioners of the arts
learned in Odessa. And many of them moved to America and Israel when the
opportunities presented themselves. Some of those who went to Israel,
Jabotinski among them, helped found the Kibbutz movement.
These are
not the kind of stories you like to tell about your own people. But we had our
terrorists in Israel when the situation called for it. And we had guys in
Murder Inc. and some very successful bootleggers, in America. Some of them
helped ship illegal arms to Israel during its early years. Does this help
explain some of the dynamism of Jewish entrepreneurs as risk takers in so many
areas of American life in those early times, and the radicals in Israel? This
was an entirely different breed of Jew.
Like the
Mafia bosses, they got their kids into legal businesses, and legitimate trades
as soon as they could. And the terrorists in Israel became part of the
government in the new state. Good can turn into evil and evil can sometimes
turn into good. Should we wring our hands that we had bad guys among us too? We
still have a few, don’t we?
*City of
Rogues and Shnorrers. Russia’s Jews and The Myth of Old Odessa, Jarrod
Tanny, Indiana University Press, 2011
The Wolf At The Door
So, I am
constantly looking over my shoulder, not like Yogi Berra, who urged us not to
because THEY might be gaining on us.
I am looking back over my shoulder because I am afraid THEY ARE gaining on us. I think about Nietzsche, whose writings and
thoughts had such a profound effect on the ideas so many of the thinkers who
have shaped our views of today’s world. Because the Nazis twisted his words to
suit their own ends, he was given a bad name for so many. The Nazis did that.
They provided chapter and verse on how to repeat lies often enough that so many
in the crowd begin to accept the oft-repeated lies as the gospel truth.
(There’s a contradiction in terms, when we know that the Gospels were full of
lies.)
Today we see
the airwaves full of oft-repeated lies by Trump and his minions, those who
knowingly abase themselves and submerse themselves in the filth he peddles,
just to curry his favor. And as many as one-third of the American public have
bought in. The Russian media are full of Putin’s lies about Ukraine, and how
many Russians have accepted his words as truth. The kleptocracy in that country
is now being sanctioned by the world, clarifying at last what has been true
about that country for decades, its people are being treated like mindless
sheep, keeping quiet so there will continue to be food in the trough. These
people have learned well from the Nazi’s minister of propaganda, Goebbels.
These
realities, realities brought home to us with the stark image of a devastated
Ukraine, while we stand by wringing our hands, making mewling sounds to imply
sympathy. The Nazi references are appropriate because the same was true of our
world in 1933.How many countries were swallowed before the victims began to
fight for their lives. AND THERE WERE EIGHTY MILLION DEAD before the wolf was
laid to rest, and six million Jews directly targeted.
The ultimate
result was the illusion of the United Nations and the reality, ultimately, of
the Pax Americanus .The PAX AMERICANUS is long dead, and all of us potentially
face a wolf at the door.
There was no
policeman, not even America under Truman, in 1948, when the armies of seven
Arab countries surrounding Israel descended on the new state (population
648,000) as a rich carcass to be dismembered and feasted upon. And the major
powers responded by banning arms shipments to Israel. The Jews there had only
their secret weapon. They had nowhere else to go. They had ten per cent
casualties, but they threw back the enemy.
The
Ukrainians are fleeing their borders by the millions. Will Ukrainians from
abroad rush in to defend their former homeland? Many hundreds of Jews did that
in 1948.
Today there
is no guarantee that what we are being told is the truth. In our era there are
multitudinous sources of news. You can choose the flavor that appeals to your
biases and trumpet to all of your neighbors on social media. How will we know
our neighbor is not a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Can we be alert enough to
distinguish one from the other?
Will Putin’s
actions strengthen the resolve of the Chinese Supreme Leader to reach out for
Taiwan. Will the Ayatollah in Iran see this as the time to unleash the Iranian
Guards in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen? Will Putin occupy Moldova and Belarus? Will
he dare challenge NATO? Are there others eyeing their neighbors for a rich
prize? Will there be a wolf at every door when there are no longer any
international policemen? Truth and Democracy are at risk everywhere.
It is a
small thing in the scale of things at play. But when we have lived for the last
two thousand years without a policeman we can call to for help, it is
important. When lies about us are being told by those with evil purposes in
mind are met with no defense, it is important. There are one hundred thousand
Jews left in the Ukraine. I have had personal experience that many people of
that origin did not take a kind view of my Jewish background. The experiences
of Jews in that country have not been of the best, to put it mildly.
Nevertheless
these numbers of Jews have clung to their Ukrainian heritage, one rich in
Jewish history, song, and literature. The wolf is at the door, and this not a
good time for Ukrainians, least of all, Jews of Ukrainian origin. Jews in the
Ukraine will be in danger from both their immediate neighbors and the invaders.
One thing they can count on, there will be Israelis on the ground sent there by
the government of Israel to assist them where they can. There is no other
source of help Jews can count on. That is a truth you can take to the bank.
This and That:
Your Key To The Secrets!
What will
happen next? You have been going along, living your life, doing the things you
feel you have to. All of a sudden things seem to be spinning out of control.
Your life has been turned into a turmoil of events. Governments are making
decisions about what is best for you, what your priorities should be, where you
can go, what you should be doing. People are dying of something you can’t see,
or taste, or feel, as if the Black Death of the Middle Ages has come back. And
this thing is changing from day to day, along with the rules of the road.
We are being
poked and prodded, have to carry identification as if we are crossing borders
just to get into a restaurant. We are hiding our features behind a mask to
carry out the ordinaries of our daily lives. People can’t see if we are smiling
or angry, and it’s the same for us looking at them. How can we socialize? It’s
isolating!
Some people
are rebelling and we understand that. But if they resist and don’t follow the
science our officials are telling us about, they may be endangering our lives.
So, even if we understand and sympathize, how can we stand for them risking our
lives along with their own. So their anger just makes me angry with them. I
want them out of my life because I believe in the science. But that is not the
way it is. That’s the secret; we just have to lump it.
We are the
lucky ones, living as we do in a place where society is ordered. We have public
servant who seem to appreciate that they have responsibilities, chief among
them doing things that serve the interests of the public that it paying them.
Unfortunately, we also have politicians we pay, and they don’t always behave,
or speak, like their interests are aligned with ours. There is definitely too
much lying going on in too many places from too many people and it’s giving the
truth a bad name. Think about how bad it can be in so many other places when
truth never even gets a chance to be heard.
What a
miraculous job our scientists and administrators have done with getting us the
protections so many of us our benefitting from. From a standing start we have
quickly received these protective medicines which in the past have taken years
and years to develop. And our administrators have developed the distribution
mechanisms to bring them quickly to our neighborhoods so we can access them.
All this without paying a dime so every one of us can benefit, whether rich or
poor. Think about all that! Those people responsible can never be rewarded
generously enough but we likely won’t do a thing about it.
As for those
evil ones who are playing politics, (for their own narrow ends,) with this
human tragedy that has killed millions and may cripple more millions before we
are done, they should be shot, but I would settle for civil actions in the
courts that will render them penniless. Those who have suffered losses as a
consequence should launch actions in the courts. These malefactors should
receive their just deserts. That’s the secret; one way or another, we’re going
to make them pay for what they did. We just have to get together to make it
happen. Our time will come and we won’t quit. That’s another secret we have to
learn over and over again.
What of our
economic actors who have their prospects turned inside out through no fault of
their own? We have little in the way of answers to offer.
We are
beginning to see that the virus we have been dealing with is moderating in
important ways with each passing day. It appears that we will have to cope with
it as something endemic like our flu virus, with preventive vaccinations every
year. Each day we hear more and more good news that will enable us to better
cope with this new challenge.
We know it
will take years for the poorer nations of the world to cope with it
nevertheless. It is obvious that we have much to do to strengthen our
international institutions so that they can do a better job. It is clear that
none of us are safe unless all of us are safe. The way the virus spread so
quickly around the world has proven that for all of us. And leaving the virus
to mutate freely among the unvaccinated endangers every single of us.
What’s the
secret? We are going to have to treat everyone as our neighbor, even the one’s
we still hate for what their dead relatives did to our dead relatives. I know
it’s hard, but we are going to have to get over it for our own sakes, ‘cause we
are all swimming in the same bathtub. Maybe my swim suit will still have
something in the pocket we can protect ourselves with. SHHHH! That’s a secret!
So, maybe
the sky is not so dark after all. We can see light just over the horizon.
Dreamers
I am
dreaming in the failing light, Streaming flashes brighten
the horizon For eyes too accustomed to
darkness
In my heart, in our hearts. Our
horizons shed glowings,
Shed hopes for better tomorrows , Less weeping,
Less bloody realities,
Dreams of more courage To
strengthen our resolve To do
the right things
Whatever the cost.
Pennies in the wishing well, Pennies from
our pockets, Knowing in our
souls History
teaches us
Our wiser, braver, actions
Will yield
savings in future costs For
heads held high!
Can we dream that is true? Who will
dream along with me? If we will
it, it is no dream! It has
been done by humans before!
“Brent A
Fayeral”A Small Fire Is Burning!
I was born
in Winnipeg in 1934 at the height of the Depression. For our family, things
apparently got worse, and our accommodations mirrored our descent to dependence
on welfare and residence beside a junk yard near the railway tracks. In spite
of counting our pennies, looking back, what I remember was regular attendance
at a synagogue and a Bar Mitzva, with attendant instruction, and regular
after-school cheder. And Sabbath was special every week.
I learned
English as soon as I got out in the street, but the language at home was
Yiddish. I could read in Yiddish as well as Hebrew, and I had my share of
Sholem Aleichem and Mendel Mocher Sforim, and others. My external world was all
in English, but I was aware that I lived in a Jewish village with an ongoing
vibrant Jewish culture leavening the life we had in our corner of the Diaspora.
There was
always a fire of Jewish activism burning in Winnipeg. With the advent of Israel
independence in 1948, every size, shape and shade of opinion was present in the
form of fierce adherents seeking recruits to join the crusade to rescue, defend
and develop the new Jewish state. We didn’t give a thought to “double-loyalty”
regardless of where our bread was buttered. The fire burned in every Jew I
knew. At eighteen I arrived in Israel. Daughter and grandchildren, sister,
nephews and a niece reside there now.
During the
years 1948 to 1951, 636,597 Jews* arrived in Israel, mainly from Europe, and
Arab countries. From 1952 to 1967 some 582,000 followed, mainly from Morocco
and other North African countries. But some 109, 000 came from Romania. Between
1968-88, 534,000 followed, primarily Europeans, majority from Russia, but 109,
000 came from the Americas, (50% U.S.). Between 1989 and 2000, more than one
million arrived, again, primarily from Russia. Since then, until 2021, over
518, 000 have arrived from around the world.
Israel is coming close to a total population
of 10 million, including its Arab citizens, who make up about twenty-five per
cent of the population. Annual Jewish immigration is running about 20,000 per
year, but will obviously rise in 2022 with the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.
We are all
aware that assimilation is a threat to Jewish numbers in the Diaspora. Although
many Jewish communities are welcoming, inter-marriage has historically meant
the loss of next-generation adherents. Faltering attendance at religious and
community institutions is the order of the day. Sharp declines in census
numbers of those identifying themselves as Jews in Diaspora countries tell part
of the story. We continue as best we know to keep the fire burning, but only in
Israel is there total assurance of ethnic survival. Diaspora Jewish populations
are tending to shrink with each passing year. Like some other nations, a
majority of its peoples have found other homes, but in the case of Israel, it
is in the in-gathering phase.
Below are
listed estimates of the major concentrations of Jewish population on January 1,
2022. These figures are not based on Israel criteria of Jewishness, at least
one grandparent of Jewish origin. Totals would be much higher on this basis.
Israel’s population includes many non-Jews as Jewish on this basis.
Country Jewish Population, January I, 2022 (est.)**
U.S. 7.3 million
Israel 7.0 million
France 446 thousand
Canada 394 thousand
U.K. 292 thousand
Argentina 175 thousand
Russia 150 thousand
Germany 118 thousand
Australia 118 thousand
Brazil 92 thousand
South
Africa 52 thousand
Hungary 47 thousand
Ukraine 43 thousand
Mexico 40 thousand
Netherlands 30 thousand
Around the
world, there are small numbers rediscovering their heritage. There has been a
substantial movement of immigrants from Ethiopia of peoples (Beta Israel,)
recognized as Jewish by some religious authorities. Estimates range as high as
25,000 remaining there. We know there are numbers in Belgium and smaller
numbers in other European countries, like Belorussia and Moldova.
There are small communities in Africa where a Jewish
connection is claimed. We know of communities in India, (Bene Israel,) who
follow some Jewish practices. There are individuals in Europe who were
sheltered by Christian families during the Holocaust who are discovering their
Jewish origins. There are individuals in Mexico and other South American
countries with Jewish communities, like Uruguay, nominally adhering to other
religions, who continue practices which are inherently Jewish. Individuals are
being occasionally reclaimed.
Continued
community vitality in the diaspora is evidenced by strong ties with Israel,
revitalization of the interest in Yiddish, and the acceptance of Hebrew as a
language study choice, in many Institutions of learning. Jewish organizations
continue to fight the good fight in centers of substantial Jewish population.
Political activism and aggressive action to counter overt anti-Semitism are the
order of the day. As in the Ukraine, representatives from Israel appear ready
to intervene whenever situations seem to call for action.
Differences
in policy approaches internally, and with the government of Israel, are an
unfortunate source of heart-burn. Individual differences in viewpoint among
Jews in the Diaspora aggravate the pain. We have never learned how to circle
the wagons.
The
re-constitution of the Jewish people as a physical nation, dispersed as they
were, (and are,) planted again in their ancient homeland, is a modern miracle
made possible only as a consequence of a world where the major powers in the
world have allowed small nations to pursue their own destinies as they see fit.
But this can occur only when the fire of desire is strong enough within those
nations to persist with their dreams. And the struggle never ends. (We will
have to see whether that will be true for the Ukrainians.) Knowledge has been a
mighty new force in realizing that dream in a land with little in the way of
material resources.
The fire in
the Jewish nation burns brightly. We never give up trying!
*Statistical
Bulletin of Israel
**Jewish
Virtual Library.org
Profiting From ADVERSITY
No-one wants
to have hard times assigned to them as a matter of course. We all want our
daily lives to be the essence of normality. Living with parents and siblings,
dad, or/and, mom going on to perform the daily tasks they have chosen. The kids
going to school and preparing themselves for careers they find appropriate to
the talents and skills they discover they have. Don’t we look on that sort of
pattern as what we want for all peoples around the world? We know that that
reality is not one that we can take for granted.
Distress is
not something we want to wish on people. We want to do whatever we can to avoid
putting people into difficult situations that will cause them distress. Yet, it
is a feature of human nature that when people find themselves placed in
difficult situations, some sometimes come up with actions and behaviors in
dealing with them that result in benefits not only for themselves, but for many
other people around them. The stress that is created by such situations can
stimulate a level of creativity that benefits not only the individual, but many
people around them.
These
situations are not the ones that most of us would want to see happen. But when
they do happen, we can, looking back, discern that the phenomenon we are
describing does in fact appear. Good things, in historical terms, in fact,
sometimes arise out of evil events, even if most of those involved may suffer
the ultimate in distress. Some grains of good can arise from bushels of bad.
I am
convinced there are examples of these phenomena to be found in the stories of
many peoples making up the panorama of human history. My better acquaintance
with history of my own people enables me to draw forward a few examples to
illustrate the truth of the thesis.
The Hebrews
established a nation state on a small territory near the eastern edge of the
Mediterranean. They were a vassal state to larger powers for most of their
existence. The northern (larger) half was ultimately absorbed by one of these
and its population was dispersed. We can only speculate if any remnants
survived with an identity. Judea persisted into the Roman era, but it was
itself erased as an independent entity and its population also dispersed. The
monotheistic credo they espoused in that land, however, survived. One strain
became Christianity. Another, the original, is what we call Judaism.
The nerve
center of the latter remained initially in the Galilee of the original
territory. The communities of Jews in the Diaspora took their direction from
leaders there. Confronted with the elimination of the Temple priesthood
primarily responsible for religious observance, the leaders dictated that the
Jews henceforth would express their religion by daily observance and study of
biblical writings. Jews were henceforth to engage in individual prayer and
continuous study of biblical writings, and to educate their children to do the
same from the earliest age. The burden of such observance in an agrarian
society is thought to have turned the majority toward conversion to other
beliefs, to Christianity in many cases. But for those that remained, Jewish communities
became islands of literacy in an ocean of illiteracy.
Most do not
appreciate how challenging intellectually some of those studies can be.
Imperative community attitudes toward education remain to this day. An
intellectual superiority relative to their neighbors, over the centuries,
militated toward their survival. This decision by Jewish leaders created an
environment where educational attainment was highly valued. Those with means
competed to marry the brightest among the students to their daughters. These
were the offspring who had to use their wits to survive in an external
environment that was increasingly hostile as time went on. The majority of the
people they had to deal with on a daily basis had little or no education and
experienced little incentive toward mental stimulation in their lives.
How these
elements played out we can trace to some extent. Jews were demonized in
Christian societies when the Church shifted the direct responsibility for
Jesus’ death from the Romans to the Jews. By adopting the Gospel of St. Mathew,
(written some hundred years after Jesus’s death,) into the New Testament, they
placed his execution at the door of Jews instead of the Romans, as was the
case, seeking to attract Romans and their followers to the new religion.
This led to
persecution, expulsions and exclusion. Jews could not own land and were
excluded from Guilds. They had to find occupations that others shunned. They
became moneylenders, peddlers and small shopkeepers. They could find employment
only with their own co-religionists. But when the climate changed, they were
often well-placed to take advantage of new opportunities that their neighbors
were slow to pursue, clinging as they did to the traditional occupations that
had served them well.
When Napoleon
changed access to citizenship from religious belief to residence, Jews in
Europe flooded out of the closed communities they occupied. The intellectual
capacities many had developed in their communities equipped them to participate
successfully in the sciences and in medicine, law and business. Out of all
proportion to their numbers they made their mark in a wide variety of
activities.
As America
opened its doors they emigrated there in the millions. With much less in the
way of restrictions, Jews have sometimes dominated whole industries newly
developing. Their leading role in banking, supermarkets, department stores,
Broadway and Hollywood is a matter of public record. Their interest in entering
universities for the study of medicine and law was so strong that there were
early efforts to limit Jew’s entry into these professions.
Contributions
to the welfare of humanity , particularly in science and medicine, have been
made by Jews out of all proportion to their numbers.
These
instances of profiting from distress cannot in any way compensate for the
inconsolable losses Jews have suffered over the centuries. These gains remain,
however, as historical realities.
Making
Investments, Collecting Dividends
Just rolling
into 2022, long, long after beginning to record and tell the stories I have
been telling. A good number of the companions with whom I began this trail have
passed on to greener pastures. Those remaining are all the more precious.
I can
celebrate the achievements of my offspring, my near and dear, having been
around to witness the cavalcade firsthand, all flags flying. A longtime
investor, I am able to see where investments I made have paid off with
dividends, and where I missed the boat and have little to take any credit for.
As for all of us, these are the stories of a life lived. Some of the details
will have been exposed, much will remain for speculation.
We began
this trail along with our fellow travelers, innocents abroad, with no
conception of where we came from, and why, and no inkling of where we were
going. All of us came aboard the bus of life with empty pockets and no idea
that our job, in the end, would be to fill those pockets with the things we
regarded as most precious.
It is only
as we are nearing the end of our journey that we may begin to fully appreciate
the import of the decisions we have made, the fate our destinies have
delivered, and what we have produced in the way of dividends from the
investments we have made, or not made. They will have taken many forms, and it
is only we, in the light of the judgement we are able to make at this stage,
assessing whether what we remain with is precious or only so much dross. The
pain or pleasure is ours to inherit. We hoped for pleasure, strove for gain,
and must accept the pain of failed hopes as part of the bargain.
I will
experience those in private.
But I can
make the observation that there was a certain body of ethics that guided the
trajectory of my passage. Looking back, I perceive that I did make an effort to
ensure that the product of my strivings served a purpose that was positive in
my eyes, aside from merely providing me with some recompense for my efforts. I
believe that I may have served this master in my head to such an extent that I
may have ignored the reality that those who were in my care shared in the
sacrifices I was prepared to make to achieve those ends I believed were worthy.
Of course,
those parties were never consulted as to whether their concomitant sacrifices
were ones they were prepared to tender to my tasks. It may be that that reality
is always present in the nature of the work that the principle wage-earner in a
family undertakes, but it does weigh on my conscience. I undertook risks and
acted within an ethical framework that had its costs. These costs would have
been onerous for those not consulted if I had met with failure when they were
totally dependent on my successful performance. The innocents were the
unheralded partners in our enterprises, unknowingly investing their futures in
our efforts.
I ask myself
where that body of internal rules came from. I do not recall that I was ever
subjected to a form of instruction as to what the rules of the road that would
guide my actions should be. I can only surmise that I absorbed them from the
behavior of my parents, and from the teachings inherent in the culture of my
community. Wherever they came from, it was unconsciously clear to me that I
could not pursue the ends I desired in ways that would seriously disadvantage
others. Indeed, I had a responsibility, I knew, to ensure that my work would
offer benefits to others as well as myself.
Whenever I
found myself in a situation where this was no longer true, it seems that I
moved on to other activities. I don’t believe I was always conscious of the
reasoning, but I can see that behavior clearly looking back.
I certainly
was conscious that I also had a responsibility to ensure that my work offered
sufficient benefits in the way of dividends that I could care for those for
whom I was responsible. And I was always aware of the need for adequate
accumulation of assets so that I, and those for whom I was responsible, would
not become a charge on the public purse. And we must all decide how much is
enough.
I cannot
claim that I was always commanded by virtue. All of us have those episodes
wherein we do not live up to the dictates of our better angels. I probably have
difficulty remembering those. Or maybe we remember them all too well, and feel
the hidden guilt. Others who are more disinterested will have to make the final
judgements on my account.
This is not
yet the end of my story, but the end of my retelling for the moment. Whether
there will be other chapters remains yet to be seen. I began with no conception
of where it would end but with only the knowledge that it would inevitably end.
This then is that end at this time. I am content. My hope is that others may
have found some satisfaction in my telling of my tales.
What’s the Plan?
The leaders
we have chosen are children in the wilderness,
No moral
motivation prompts the actions that we’ve seen,
The masters
that they serve will someday all to us confess
The criminal
conspiracies that human lives and rights demean.
Given that
we know the truth,
The question
now that’s so uncouth,
What’s the
plan?
They tell us
that our time on earth is running out its term,
Poisoning
sea and sky and living things for all their very worth,
Making many
promises, signing words to say we it confirm,
Wind and
fire and flood now our earn-ed legacy on earth,
Given that
we know the truth,
The question
now that’s so uncouth,
What’s the
plan?
Maddened
wild animals, we hunger for each and every crumb
We see upon
a neighbor’s plate that we so long to own,
Let loose
upon the world, death, destruction, we are numb
To all the
misery and pain into which our lifetime’s thrown.
Given that
we know the truth,
The question
now that’s so uncouth,
What’s the
plan?
Now I’ve
detailed for the conscious what life is all about,
Thinking of
our loved ones, sweet children at our feet,
We need no
other useless words to fume about and spout,
Just some
talk and action seek when next we get to meet.
Given that
we know the truth,
The question
now that’s so uncouth,
What’s the
plan?
What Are We Going To Do?
We were in
the midst of a struggle against COVID- a world-wide pandemic that attacked us
all. Of course it hit hardest where people were not aware of what was going on.
And then it became politicized, when some people thought they could exploit the
issue for narrow political ends. More people died than had to. More people are
dying than should have, many millions would not have, if we had gotten it
right. On top of all the normal challenges in life, we have got all this
turmoil, how do we fight it, how do we protect ourselves, how do we do this
without destroying the livelihoods of billions?
We know that
just over the horizon there are all those people who are having it much tougher
than we have it, putting bread on the table, taking care of their kids, even
struggling to stay alive. We’re not thinking too much about it most of the time
because, let’s face it, we have our own row to hoe. We are more than fully
occupied.
Then BOOM,
we have this Ukrainian thing, with the Jewish president who dances with the
stars. Now Putin becomes the villain we always thought he was with those
tricky-Dickie mannerisms and sly smile, riding a horse bare-chested. Only now
he’s riding a tank and throwing bombs and missiles at helpless civilians
because he wants his neighbor’s mineral wealth to steal and exploit the way he
has done in Russia.
Claiming
he’s in danger from the big bad Americans who have proved to the world that
they are wimps, he wants to make sure he has a bigger land barrier from his
neighbors, those countries that used to be Russia’s vassals and are shivering
with fright behind a thin line of U.S. soldiers.
But now this
is on our televisions screens every night, and on our computers and Ipads and
phones. There’s no way we can escape it, this moment they say is threatening
our way of life everywhere. Join a demonstration, volunteer, send a check. The
apartment that has just been blasted with a missile in Kyiv, could be yours
tomorrow. Those kids lying dead on the street could be yours or your grandkids.
Mount- up and join! Do something! Watch the prices rising in your grocery
store. Maybe we should stock-up a little?
Hold the
phone! We know Putin is nasty. We know what nasty is, having had a taste of
Trump. IF we really don’t like what he is doing, how come we don’t organize a
U.N peace-keeping force like we’ve done on other occasions? We have UN troops
on the Lebanese border with Israel. How come that is not happening like it did
when Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait? Nobody has said a word about that? It
doesn’t have to be NATO! How come this has not happened already? We can avoid
the Security Council and make it happen in the General Assembly or by an
agreement among the willing.
Have we
suddenly lost our memories? We sent an international force into Cambodia, Viet
Nam, etc.? Is it because America has wimped out? What’s going on? It doesn’t
have to be just western nation? And all this because Russia, a country with an
economy the size of Spain’s, complains they are feeling claustrophobic!?! We
are just standing by and letting this happen? I can’t believe my eyes and ears.
So, back to
the perplexing present. We still have to thread our way through our daily
grind, preparing breakfast, or dinner for our crowd, showing up on the job,
meeting our crew for walks, exercising, and/or a schmooze. What are we going to
do about all this? Still wearing a mask just in case, phoning the kids, who
died, who is sick, who is coming to visit, where are we going this weekend.
Have we been
moved to take some definitive action about what is swirling about our heads, or
are we just trying to shut it all off as a distraction from the stuff we are
just determined to get done, come what may? Goddamnit! Why do I feel so guilty
about wanting to shut all that off like a bad program on TV? Maybe I’ll send a
note to my MP about what I think somebody else should do! Let’s go down to the
pub or Starbucks and complain about things together!
Now that we
have figured it all out isn’t that doing something constructive and public
spirited?
Hate to be
acting cavalier but it’s clear to me that the powers that be have been doing a
whole lot of nothing compare to the kind of actions that took place when Russia
was in Afghanistan. The big problem is that America has wimped out in a way we
would never have believed America could.. Either we find a way to find other
leaders or it will be Munich all over again when America came in three years
late.
Who is going
to play guts football against this killer?
Take your Pick!
Dollars, Rubles, Yuan or Gold?
What’s that
all about? Did you know there is a struggle going on for world domination?
Probably you did. Did you know that the currency being used in international
trade is a principle thing at the heart of it? Did you know that the way this
turns out can affect many of us in the Western world? Did you know the many
countries are lining up on one side or another in this titanic battle that can
change the way things have been operating in the world for the last fifty years?
Who knew?
About fifty
years ago the Saudis and the U.S made an agreement that all oil trade in the
world would be contracted in U.S. dollars. The agreement, called SWIFT, has
resulted in the total of all energy transaction, (about one-third of all international
trade in value terms,) being priced for payment in U.S. dollars. This has
solidified the position of the U.S. dollar as the pre-eminent world currency.
It gives the U.S. government enormous power in world affairs, much to the
chagrin of Russia, China and Iran, and other outliers who wish to challenge it.
It explains the degree to which American policy has been muted toward Saudi
Arabia in spite of some of the policy positions that country has taken in the
human rights area.
Fast forward
to the Russia-Ukraine war, and current Russian aggression against a peaceful
neighbor, and current efforts by many countries to punish Russia. The Swift
system is a bone in the throat of Russia, China and Iran. I am sure that this
has long been an issue these countries would like to see discarded. The action
by Western nations to throw Russia out of the SWIFT system as a means of
exerting economic pressure does, at the same time, strengthen the efforts and
aspirations by some of these countries to bring SWIFT to an end.
Russia, the
third largest oil exporting nation, is now insisting on payment for its oil in
rubles, as Russia no longer has dollars to pay for its many imports. Most
countries are refusing this, and where their urgent needs for oil force them to
continue trade with Russia, (many seek to fill their needs elsewhere,) they are
paying, rather, in gold, and insisting on the same for any Russian purchases.
China and India, and others who are not able, or willing, to replace Russian
goods from other sources, are continuing to deal with Russia on this basis.
All this is
weakening world reliance on the U.S dollar, and raising questions about the
future of the SWIFT system. This has been an unexpected outcome of world
efforts to punish Russia for its aggression in Ukraine. How the oil Sheikdoms
will ultimately act in this struggle is the big question. How quickly the
Europeans can wean themselves off Russian oil is another imponderable. We can
be sure the U.S administration is very much absorbed by any effects their
policies will have on this important element of U.S. power in the world.
Someone has said that 70% of U.S. dollars are held outside of the U.S. Others
have said that the “petro-dollar” is the key to maintaining America as a
pre-eminent world power.
Canada is
faced with opportunities in this area that have not been foreseen. Many of us
will welcome these new opportunities for Canadian enterprise. What about recent
efforts to maintain lock-in Canadian oil/gas production. The renewal of U.S.
shale oil production is another potential element of the situation, something
that may demand an emergency effort.
The North
American effort to move quickly to a non-fossil fuel world, that has been
dictated by the real environmental threat the world faces, is in conflict with
any efforts to quickly fill European deficits from other than Russian sources.
If we hope to seriously free Europe from its dependency, we must now put off
these efforts. Some would argue that the replacement of Russian oil, reducing
their output, might leave the world balance sheet unchanged. I would imagine
environmentalists would remain unconvinced.
The whole
issue that permitting Russian aggression to succeed would open the world to
aggression by China, Iran, North Korea, and other potential bad actors, is
inevitably part of the equation. If excluding Russia from SWIFT, threatening
U.S. financial hegemony, is the price we have to pay, many would feel that that
is a price we should be willing to pay. There is certainly the possibility that
the U.S. government may not be in accord with that position.
Russian
aggression, which many among us are now saying has long been on the agenda and
could have foreseen. European dependence on Russian oil has been a crisis
waiting to happen that many have been aware of. Russian and Chinese abhorrence
of the SWIFT system has long been known. U.S. absence from the management of
world affairs for the past decade, which has been a feature of U.S. policy in
more distant past, is being paid for in the current situation.
We are
facing a more complicated regime today in world monetary affairs. Take your
pick, rubles, dollars, yuan or gold! Who will be the winner? We know who we
want to be the winner. Otherwise, we could be the losers!
The U.S
dollar is soaring, but we have been going for the gold!
Can I Forget Thee?
I am Jewish,
a descendant of the Judeans who inhabited a scrap of Middle-eastern territory
called Judaea some three thousand years ago. I am also a descendant of
dispersed people whose members wandered the face of the earth, yet retaining a
cohesion in sufficient number to create a unique culture that marked them so
they could identify their brothers and sisters wherever they found their abode.
During their initial passage, the message they shared with the peoples of the
world has impacted the lives of billions on this planet. What was created by
Jews during this dispersion has so marked its members that they have often been
recognized by other peoples as a nation although they occupied no physical
territorial space. Wherever they have gone, both as individuals and as
communities, their impact on their surroundings has been out of proportion to
their relatively small numbers.
Nevertheless,
their devotion to the idea of their homeland, (If I forget thee, O Jerusalem!”)
has led, in the end, to the establishment of the Jews as a physical nation in a
portion of their ancestral territory. Now that something more than one-third of
their surviving numbers, (the dispersion had painful consequences for the
wanderers,) inhabit their ancient territories, they are presenting, in many
ways, a new face, particularly as it relates to their history during the
dispersion.
The nation’s
devotion to study and learning in a religious context, which so strongly
contributed to its survival, and assisted the successful integration of many of
its members into more open societies, presents an entirely different face in
the current physical re-incarnation. The business of physical nationhood makes
entirely different demands. The religious element, while strongly present, is
less important than the demands of survival as a territorial entity. Ancient
Israel faced similar challenges, effectively a vassal state to larger powers
during most of its existence. Current day Israel, while fully independent, must
carry on a similar diplomatic dance to remain on good terms with the world’s
major military and economic powers.
But Israel
is an entirely different creature than the dispersed communities that were, and
are, the Jewish communities of the diaspora. Whereas before, individuals from
the community would have to beg the powers-that-be for assistance in the face
of member distress, now a national government acts directly to protect its
interests, and the interests of distressed Jews wherever they are required to.
And other nations know this. The reach of Israel’s intelligence services is
well known, as well as their lethality. They are already legend.
Lacking in
major sources of natural resources, Israel has invested heavily in science and
technology across a wide range of activity. Facing physical threats from some
of its Arab neighbors, it has become the go-to place for the technologies of
defense on the ground and in the air. It has become a major exporter of such
materials to countries around the world. When The U.S licenses some of their weaponry
to them, Israeli researchers improve them for production in that country. From
cyber security to missile defense, to equipment for soldiers or policemen, to
agricultural productivity, to advances in the health field, this is the place
where buyers come, sometimes to the chagrin of Israel’s allies. Jews living in
other countries are sometimes embarrassed when Israel’s policies upset
governments where they live.
Many
technology companies have established branch offices in Israel to take
advantage of the breakthroughs being made in Israel in many fields. Israeli
start-up companies are being purchased by American enterprises every day, and
some are being launched on American markets. Through the recent Abraham
Accords, a number of Arab countries are now doing the same thing in Israel.
Attractive
as all this is, and Jews are arriving from other counties every day, there is
still the heritage of two thousand years of history in the diaspora. While we
may have learned to speak the modern Hebrew that has been revived, those of us
in the older generation still glory in the culture bequeathed to us by our
parents from the “old country”. We still enjoy the Yiddish literature and the
Yiddish songs. We still enjoy the Jewish holiday traditions as they were once
performed, and take pleasure in a weekly Sabbath observance and synagogue
attendance. They seem far away from our thoughts about the modern Israel we
know, even though it was in this crucible that the hunger for a return was
nurtured and realized. Every year at Passover, we intone “next year in
Jerusalem. And then we call our children and grandchildren, and the relatives
who live there. We listen for the latest news, and hope for peace and
tranquility.
This feeling
of dichotomy may be more real to me, being a first generation resident of the
New World. New immigrants from other countries, and the children they bear in
their new surroundings, may feel this same feeling of being torn by conflicting
loyalties. We have seen in America how warm the associations of new immigrants
and their children can be with their former homes. But in our case this home
existed only in our minds for many generations. And in our case our former
homes carried too many tragic memories and histories. This new land we treasure
speaks of liberation along with struggle, of victory as a part payment for so
many deaths.
If I forget
thee O Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning!
A Good Round Age
A good round
age is the age eighteen,
A poem I
wrote when I was then a teen,
Not foreseen
the whole of what a life could bring,
Gains and
losses for us playing out the living string,
Lonely
triumphs, bleeding some upon the street,
Silent
glories, the public agony of a defeat.
Joys crowd
out the losses forever stored in my fevered mind,
Looking back
at all the bric a brac, a half-century of daily grind.
Standing now
much closer, curtain time for exiting the stage,
Thinking now
that eighty-eight is more likely a good round age.
Jewish Lives Matter MORE
There it is,
now I’ve said it. I’ve said the thing that many Jews say in their hearts but
never say out loud. Naturally, every ethnic group will say the same thing in
their hearts. We don’t express these things out loud because it is not polite,
and because we do not publicly want to admit that our particular group deserves
some priority in the public mind.
Of course,
the Black Lives mantra is a reaction to the unjustified treatment Blacks have
been exposed to historically. But isn’t that true for Jews as well? Don’t we
know that Jews are the ones that suffer to the greatest extent from reported
incidents of all kinds of attacks? And that’s not counting all the incidents
that are not labelled for what they really are. And how many Holocausts have
Jews suffered over the centuries of their dispersion? But when was the time
that there were public demonstrations with signs proclaiming Jewish lives
matter?
NEVER!
But to the
distress of my Jewish co-religionists, I will go even further. Jewish lives not
only matter, but they matter more. Why? They matter more because their
existence contributes more to the public good than the lives of other ethnic
groups. Wow! That statement will set the cat loose among the pigeons!
First let me
say that millions of Jews, perhaps hundreds of million of Jews, (if we count
their descendants,) have been integrated into the general populations,
particularly in the Middle East and what we might call the West. Through
assimilation and forced conversion Jews have been integrated into the general
population in incalculable numbers. We could prove that through generalized DNA
testing. We cannot identify what contributions they have made to the public
good without great difficulty. But where Jews have retained their identity such
things can be better evaluated.
We all know
the story about the presence of Jewish principals among the Nobel laureates out
of all proportion to Jewish numbers in the world. We need only examine the rise
of Jews to positions of prominence in the West when they began to leave the
ghettoes as Middle Ages restrictions began to disappear. We have heard stories
of Jews rising to positions of importance even in the Middle East in spite of
religious intolerance in that region. We can examine the public record in
America and even in Europe, particularly in pre-Hitler Europe. It is no secret
that even before these times Jews were valued as immigrants to help stimulate
business activity in moribund economies.
We can look
around us in North America, where there was less opposition to Jewish
integration than in Europe, and count the record of Jews in business, the
sciences, education, medicine, and even entertainment. They are there out of
all proportion to Jewish numbers in the population. We have made less of a
splash among the criminal elements, but even there we have a few stars. Is it a
coincidence that the leader of Pfizer, the company that rapidly produced the
most widely used, and the most effective vaccine for COVID-19, was a Jew?
What shall
we make of what we have seen come out of the national rebirth of a sovereign
Jewish state? Beginning its life almost stillborn as the armies of seven Arab
countries massed on its borders, Israel didn’t have any country rally round,
(as the Ukrainians have had in their struggle with Russia,) it stood alone and
paid the bloody price of victory. And it more than tripled its population,
taking in Holocaust remnants and homeless refugees from around the world.
Casting off stultifying socialism, and in spite of a strangling bureaucracy,
deep divisions on religious grounds, one-third of its population denying its
existence, and a constant terrorist threat, it has achieved a per capita
domestic product among the highest in the world. Lacking natural resources, it
has built its economy on the technological achievements of its best and
brightest.
It invests
the world’s highest per cent of its budget every year in research and
development. Only The United States exceeds it in the number of new patents
registered per year. Its research has permitted the crippled to walk, the deaf
to hear and the blind to see. It provides devices that produces water out of
the air for those without water, devices that conserve water for dry country
irrigation, and produces drinking water from sea water on a grand scale. Constantly
threatened militarily, it has produced effective anti-missile defense systems
for population centers, for airplanes and for military vehicles. Its company
start-ups are launched on the world’s exchanges and being purchased by
corporate buyers every week.
We do not
know exactly what it is that is the origin of this comparative out-performance.
Maybe there is an element of survival of the fittest at work. Maybe it is the
cultural imperative to strive for educational attainment that yields benefits.
Maybe it comes from centuries of belief in a common destiny that has driven
Jews to a sense of responsibility for the well-being of their fellows that has
metamorphosed into an interest in service to humanity as a whole. That might
explain the emphasis in career choices that speak to this. Maybe it is the
tradition of persistence in the face of obstacles knowing that we often have
not had a choice but to keep trying when we faced obstacles to our survival?
Who knows?
What I know
is that humanity benefits from a precious resource that is almost a necessity
for the world’s common good, the existence of the Jews. This dynamism of this
tiny fraction of the world population deserves to be recognized for what it is
and what it could be if properly appreciated. It has been interesting to note
that a number of Arab countries, formerly sworn enemies, have signed the
Abraham Accords so they can draw some benefits from this resource. A word to
the wise!
Building Better Humans
We are
talking physics here, not morality. With all this talk of Artificial
Intelligence and robots and the like, where are we at? The field is advancing so
rapidly it is hard to keep track. But at the same time, the challenges are so
great that progress in terms of immediate benefits is slow.
Our
aspirations are so great, so ambitious, that it is important to define our
terms. On the one hand we have the task of making our existing bodies work
better, repairing them when, for any number of reasons, they don’t work as well
as we would like them to.
Then there
is our ambition to create machines that can do what we do as well as we do, or
even better.
In some ways
the tasks coincide. If a machine can carry out a function as well as a human,
we can use those same technical achievements to work for us if one or other of
our parts don’t function as well as they should.
We are
tackling these challenges in a number of different ways. Research has
identified ways in which we can enter into the very design center of our
bodies, i.e. the DNA, which dictates all the elements of the particular humans
that we are.
There are
hundreds of trials, on-going as we speak, where scientists and medical
practitioners are seeking to tweak our genetic inheritance to eliminate
elements that relate to ailments that limit the lives of individuals in some
way. From cancer to Alzheimers to ALS, or even aging, studies are seeking to
excise disease-related, or damage-related, genes from our bodies. We are
waiting breathlessly for positive results.
Then there
is all the work being done to manufacture spare parts. We have heard of
attempts using animal spare parts. But there is a great deal of work being done
with stem cells and the printing of tissues with organic materials in this
area. Some have been used on humans but most are still at the mice and rabbit
stage.
We have
mini-brains, hearts and kidneys, lungs, stomachs, as well as a penis and ears
in rabbits, a vagina, fallopian tubes and an esophagus in humans. We have
printed skin-like materials for burn victims. There is a portable pancreas to
manage an individual’s insulin needs.
We now have
prosthetic limbs that can be hooked up to nerves in our upper arms so that
humans can operate them of their own will. The Israelis have Rewalk, which
enables formerly paralyzed individuals to walk under their own steam. And there
are devices which allow the blind to see. There are artificial hearts as well.
A few thousand have been sold, but we would need over one hundred thousand each
year just for the U.S alone.
Mimicking
the dexterity of the human hand remains a work in progress. Nor is there a
human-sized brain yet in prospect. A
wireless brain-computer interface is the best we can manage so far. Of course,
many of the advances being made lie, in cost terms, far beyond the capacity of
most of us to afford.
The 3-D
printing of human vascular systems has greatly advanced research efforts. And
tissues being produced are being used by commercial interests to test cosmetic
products, and by researchers in the bio-medical and pharmaceutical fields.
We have all
heard about advances in artificial intelligence, AI, as it is called. Much of
that has to do with imbuing machines with the capacity to detect and appreciate
sight, sound and touch, as well as exercising logic. It is expected that it
will be a good number of years before machines will be able to match humans.
They can see or hear, even taste better than we do, providing better
information, but that does not equal intelligence. Self-driving vehicles have
yet to be fully achieved. But we do have Smart cars and smart homes in our
future.
It is not at
all surprising that those of us who are at a more advanced age have a level of
interest in all these goings-on than may be the case for the general
population. We may be more likely to be interested customers on an immediate
basis for the promoted benefits of these advances we hear about. And, we may be
more likely to have the means to aspire to be first in line. Unfortunately, we
may also be more likely to be among those to have an urgent need of them to
keep our bodies and souls together.
It may have
nothing at all to do with technology, (I do believe it does,) but life
expectancy between 2000 and 2019 increased by 8% from 66.8 to 73.4. Good news!
We are building better and better, what will the result be after taking account
of the pandemic.
It is all
very exciting, with amazing new developments coming to light on a daily basis.
I for one, can’t restrain myself from cheering them on!
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