Month: November 2002

To Find Out what is True

Reading a Jackson Browne interview in Nature Conservancy where he says, “I’ve heard a number of people put forth the idea that my activism or my talking about political things in my music has resulted in less success, less sales at one time or another. … But even if it were true, it wouldn’t be a hard choice to make. It’s more important to struggle for what you know is right and for what you feel to be valuable,” reminded me once again why I’ve always loved his music so much.

“Doctor My Eyes” one of the first songs I discussed in this blog, still ranks in my ten favorite rock and roll songs, but other songs like “For America” also strike me as great folk rock.

“For America” seems as relevant today as it was when it was recorded in 1986:

As if I really didn’t understand

That I was just another part of their plan

I went off looking for the promise

Believing in the Motherland

And from the comfort of a dreamer’s bed

And the safety of my own head

I went on speaking of the future

While other people fought and bled

The kid I was when I first left home

Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own

But the freedom that he found wasn’t quite as sweet

When the truth was known

I have prayed for America

I was made for America

It’s in my blood and in my bones

By the dawn’s early light

By all I know is right

We’re going to reap what we have sown

As if freedom was a question of might

As if loyalty was black and white

You hear people say it all the time-

My country wrong or right

I want to know what that’s got to do

With what it takes to find out what’s true

With everyone from the President on down

Trying to keep it from you

The thing I wonder about the Dads and Moms

Who send their sons to the Vietnams

Will they really think their way of life

Has been protected as the next war comes?

I have prayed for America

I was made for America

Her shining dream plays in my mind

By the rockets red glare

A generation’s blank stare

We better wake her up this time

The kid I was when I first left home

Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own

But the freedom that he found wasn’t quite a sweet

When the truth was known

I have prayed for America

I was made for America

I can’t let go till she comes around

Until the land of the free

Is awake and can see

And until her conscience has been found

Although I wasn’t one of those who saw the world from “the comfort of a dreamer’s bed,” unless you can call a cot in Vietnam a dreamer’s bed, I, too, joined the army naively believing “in the Motherland.” I found my own “truths” in Vietnam, but America is still “in my blood and my bones,” though I had hoped that we would have learned enough in Vietnam to find new ways of ensuring freedom and justice “for all.”

Loyalty isn’t “black or white.” I want my country to be right, not wrong. I know that the “truth” will set you free, but you certainly can’t count on the President or any of his administration to tell you what that is, can you? Worst of all, we seem to face another “generation’s blank stare.”

Like Browne, I would like to think that “I can’t let go till she comes around/Until the land of the free/Is awake and can see/and until her conscience has been found.” That ought to keep me around for quite awhile, huh?

This Fickle Heart of Mine

The weather took a sudden turn for the better here in the Northwest, with record-setting temperatures of 65 degrees. Although we’ve had very little rain for November, we have had rain off and on for the last three week. So I took advantage of the weather to get outside and work in the yard. Even sucking up leaves doesn’t seem too bad when the temperatures are in the sixties.

Needless to say, I haven’t spent much time today reading poetry or working at my computer today despite my trip to the computer store to try to find Heroes of Might and Magic IV for the Mac. Needless to say, it’s not in stock yet at COMP USA. So I had to go to the bookstore instead in order to spend my money. I ended up buying Dr. Mac: The OS X Files and Unix for Mac OSX in hopes that I can graduate to a real UNIX book so that I can talk Geek to all the people I’ve met on the internet who seem to know much more about everything Geek than I do. Perhaps I can even graduate to Shelley’s Unix book, though I imagine that’ ll take awhile.

Throughout today’s adventures I found at least two things that Skye, my faithful Australian Shepherd, truly hates. First, he cannot stand the leaf blower I use to vacuum leaves. He tries to attack it whenever I start it up. (Perhaps the motor starting up sounds like a growl to him.) Of course, he’s also been known to suddenly attack it while I’m calmly sucking up leaves.

Turns out Skye also hates for me to play iTunes in the background while I’m working on my trusty G4. I’ll bet it’s more distracting to have a 45 pound dog jumping on your lap and barking than it is to have a cat crawling up on your lap. Of course, in the past I’ve been told by family members that my off-tune humming to "imaginary tunes" was frightening, at best. So, perhaps it’s that, and not just the fact that I’m listening to iTunes that drove the crazy dog to start jumping on me and barking. Everyone envisions themself as a music critic, apparently.

I’ll Take Mine with Chutzpah

Dorothea Salo may have set the blogging movement back a year today with her simple pronouncement that “…one shouldn’t blog about politics unless one has either the historical and economic savvy to back up one’s points, or the chutzpah not to care that one doesn’t. I happen to think that this impoverishes political discourse—it makes any kind of cooperative Socratic investigation completely impossible—but there it is.”

While possibly true, this lack of knowledge certainly hasn’t prevented the warbloggers or, for that matter, a great number of reporters and commentators at news stations like Fox News from opining on recent historical events and offering advice.

Personally, I’m of the opinion that semi-informed bloggers might well present a counterweight to the massive number of bloggers, and “news” stations for that matter, who seem to be calling for the immediate invasion of Iraq and the instant destruction of any nation willing to offer refuge to terrorists.

While I would be worried about anyone who blindly accepted my views on virtually any topic, including literature, I do think that offering my opinion, particularly when accompanied by pertinent articles, is one small part of building an informed community.

I wonder if we truly dare let officials dictate “history” to us when they are so obviously willing to lie in order to ensure that their view of history is the one we are allowed to see. Desert Storm was presented to the public as an unmitigated success, a quick, “bloodless” war that emancipated Kuwait from the evil Sadam Hussein with relatively few deaths. After reading a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle, though, you have to wonder what the price must really have been, particularly if we happen to consider Iraqis “people.”

When considered in the light of Jonathon’s article on civilian deaths, you have to wonder how many Iraqi civilians really died in those much-publicized, “smart” rocket attacks on Baghdad.

Did you really believe Rumsfeld’s denials that American bombs in Afghanistan had often hit the wrong target? Who could miss that large Red Cross, after all? If so, you didn’t serve in Vietnam as I did and observe first hand how officials were more than willing to spin the truth any way but straight in order to create the impression that we were the “good guys” and they were the “bad guys.”

Scattered pieces, blowing in the wind

I spent most of the weekend picking up the leaves I so loved when they provided shelter from August’s sweltering heat and adored even more when their red, yellow and oranges dazzled in the fall. Somehow, though, they seem slightly less lovable now that they’ve turned into dusky shades of yellow and brown and are slowly but surely choking out the bright green grass below. They’re downright ugly when they must be scraped out of gutters brimming over with two years of debris. Passing rain showers and an aged-back unwilling to shoulder one more sack of soggy leaves didn’t make the job any easier.

I also began reading Archibald MacLeish’s Collected Poems: 1917-1982. I enjoyed the first section of poems written in the ‘80’s and finished them quickly in one sitting. Once I reached the poems written in 1917, though, I slowed considerably and found myself unable to read longer than an hour at a time. Determined to read all of the poems carefully in order to see them in the context of MacLeish’s whole work, I spent more time than I should have trying to understand “The Pot of Earth” which begins with a quote from Frazer’s The Golden Bough and seems reminiscent of Eliot’s "The Waste Land," which is certainly not one of my favorite poems. It’s obviously going to be a few more days before I’m going to be ready to write anything meaningful about MacLeish.

To complicate matters, I’ve started taking income tax classes at H&R Block in anticipation of working during the upcoming tax season. If I’m going to continue buying computer and woodworking toys to power my hobbies, I’m probably going to have to work at least one more year, if not two. Since I’m unwilling to substitute teach or spend the Christmas season working in the local computer store, I imagine I’m going to have spend some more time doing taxes. However, I keep putting off reading the lessons until the day before class. It reminds me a little of being back in college, except that reading about tax laws is not nearly as interesting as reading a Faulkner or Hemingway novel.

Early retirement is swell and all, but half of a teacher’s salary really doesn’t go too far, particularly when the cost of medical premiums and electricity continue to skyrocket out of control. Unfortunately, I don’t see much chance of medical reform during this administration; so, I certainly need to prepare for even higher premiums in the future. Nor is it very reassuring that my TSA account has sunk below the value it had when I originally started contributing over ten years ago. That, of course, was my inflation hedge to offset higher medical premiums. Considering last year’s throat surgery cost over $40,000, though, I’m not likely to let my premiums slip by, no matter how much I have to work to pay them.

Luckily, I am reassured by the public’s confidence in the fine job Bush has been doing. At least when the Republicans get through passing all the tax breaks for those lucky enough to still have money I will have lots of work as a tax preparer. Apparently Republicans have never found a tax break for the rich they didn’t adore. Of course, having to ensure that not too much of the tax break is passed down to the poor requires laws so carefully crafted that not even tax preparers are truly sure what they mean, at least not until the tax courts have interpreted them ten years from now.