A story from my mother's childhood (hang on: there's a moral at the end).
My grandfather, a lawyer, died when my mother was twelve. My grandmother sold their large country house outside St. Joseph, Missouri, moved herself and her young daughter into a smaller but still-large house in the heart of town, and began taking in boarders. To keep the boarders in fresh eggs, she raised chickens in the back yard.
The gruff old man next door also raised chickens. Read More
I wrote this short-short story in 2000. It has become more relevant with every passing year, and I think it's time to share it with a wider audience. Read More
We have two cats who graciously permit us to live with them. One, Rosie, is a Siamese-tortoiseshell mix with short, smooth fur; the other, Maggie, is a Norwegian forest cat with long, shaggy fur. Shaggy Maggie. The length of Maggie's fur is particularly striking in the muff around her neck - a characteristic of that breed - but it actually grows long all over her body. Unfortunately, that includes her rear end Read More
I dreamed about Rita Hayworth last night.
In the dream, I ran into her at a party in New York City. "Hi, Rita," I said.
"You recognized me," she said. "Did you do anything for Canada Day yesterday?"
"No."
"I didn't, either. I live in a small town in Illinois. It doesn't matter."
"I suppose I could have ordered a pizza with Canadian bacon on it," I said. She laughed, and the dream abruptly shifted, as dreams do, to something entirely different and not nearly as pleasant.
I told my wife about it after we were both awake. She wasn't impressed. "Rita Hayworth was before our time," she pointed out.
"That doesn't matter in dreams. In the dream, we were both about 60."
"If you'd dreamed about Ginger Rogers, it might have at least made sense."
"I once danced with Ginger Rogers," I said. "At least, I think it was Ginger Rogers."
"I know."
"She lived around here." I stopped. Melody was getting that look spouses get when you're about to launch into a story they've heard a thousand times or so, and it felt prudent not to burden her with it any further.
You haven't heard it a thousand times or so, however.
Here's the whole tale. Read More
Conservative: of or constituting a political party professing the principles of conservatism, such as (a) tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions (b) marked by moderation or caution; [or] (c) marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners.
- the Merriam-Webster online dictionary
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When did conservatives stop being conservative?
When did a political philosophy that used to stand for preserving the old order and demanding respect for existing institutions begin trying to overthrow the old order and destroy existing institutions? When did acting with prudence morph into acting with reckless disregard? How did "freedom" manage to become synonymous with "to hell with you, buddy, I've got mine"?
Read the Merriam-Webster definition above. Can anyone still pretend that these words come anywhere close to describing today's principal claimant to the conservative banner - the modern Republican Party?
So what happened? Read More
In mid-November, 1969, several movements against the war in Vietnam coalesced to stage a series of massive demonstrations called, then and now, the November Moratorium. More than half a million people descended on Washington DC, filling the Mall and overflowing into the surrounding streets; smaller but still massive demonstrations in New York, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco drew well over 100,000 each. Numerous other cities and towns held their own versions, large and small, on various days close to the middle of the month: Seattle's took place the day before DC's, on November 14. Somewhere between 3,000 and 10,000 people (histories of the movement today are usually content to simply say "over 3000") gathered at the city's Central Library at Fourth and Madison and marched the mile and a half from there to Seattle Center, where they were treated to a concert at the base of the Space Needle by blues singer Taj Mahal, who was playing a Seattle club that evening and was willing to put his art to work for the cause.
Melody and I happened to be staying with her parents in Bellevue, across Lake Washington from Seattle, at the time, Read More
I want my summers back. Green summers, summers when creeks ran fresh and full, summers when the snow stayed on Mt Ashland into August (and sometimes into September). Summers when I could water the garden and wash the car without fear that we might be forced into water rationing before September. Summers when the air wasn't filled with smoke for half the season: summers when we could send the kids out to play without worrying about heat stroke or particulate counts, summers when we wouldn't wake up regularly to the news that yet another beautiful, loved place in the forest was smoldering into ruin. Read More
Most people who will read this will undoubtedly know the tale of Abraham and Isaac. It is one of the foundational stories of all three of the major Abrahamaic faiths (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam - although Muslims will often argue that the child involved was Ishmael rather than Isaac). The Christian version is found in Genesis 22. God challenges Abraham to prove his devotion by sacrificing his firstborn son, Isaac, on a specific mountain top. Abraham journeys to the mountain with his son and carries out all the preparations, up to and including binding the child to the pyre and picking up the sacrificial blade. At that point, God interrupts in the form of an angel, who stays Abraham's hand and points to a ram caught in a nearby thicket. Abraham, the angel says, has adequately demonstrated his obedience, and should now save his son by sacrificing the ram instead. Which Abraham proceeds to do.
In all three faiths, The Binding - as it is known in Judaism - is held up as a premiere example of the rewards to be obtained by radical obedience to the love of God. But now comes along Wilfred Owen, writing from a battlefield in France in the summer of 1918, shortly before his own death in battle. Owen's version sticks close to the language of Genesis. But it has a different, much darker ending.
The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
I have been thinking a lot about this lately. Where does our current culture stand in relation to The Binding? We clearly still abhor child sacrifice: our battles over abortion relate to that, as does our focus on child sex trafficking, and the emphasis opponents of Trump's border wall have placed on the separation of children from their parents by immigration authorities. We are Bibically correct - as long as the children are concrete. But when they are abstract - children in the future, children as a whole in the present - we seem far more likely to embrace Wilfred Owen's dystopian version of the old tale than we do the original.
It's not just war that I am talking about.
We are faced - all of us, right here, right now - with Abraham's choice. We have bound our children, and our children's children, to the pyre of climate change. The angel has arrived, in the form of irrefutable scientific evidence that change is happening and that it is human-caused. The sacrificial ram - our addiction to fossil fuels - has been pointed to. We have been implored to switch. But the knife continues to descend.
There is another story of child sacrifice in the Bible: the tale of Jepthah, found in Judges 11-12. There, the sacrifice is actually carried out. Jepthah is not nearly so highly regarded today as is Abraham. But it is his example, rather than Abraham's, that we apparently choose to follow.
We still abhor child sacrifice. We particularly abhor mass child sacrifice. A story in the February 2019 issue of National Geographic recounts archaeologists' discovery of a site in Peru where hundreds of children and young llamas were slain in what was clearly a single large-scale ritualistic offering by the ancient Chimù culture to try to stave off the calamity that would soon end their civilization. Most Americans will properly recoil in horror at the idea of murdering that many children in a vain attempt to keep a dying culture alive, but we are worse than the Chimù. We are extending the life of our dying petroleum-based culture by sacrificing the future of every child on the planet. And our resemblance to the Chimù extends beyond the sacrifice itself. Available evidence points to an extended period of heavy rain as the primary cause of the Chimù's demise. They cut off their children's future in a failed attempt to continue business as usual in the face of climate change.
As do we.
Abraham made the proper choice. When the angel appeared, he listened. The child was liberated; the ram was sacrificed instead. Our time is short - it grows shorter every day - but we can still do the same. We can still turn from dismantling our children's future to dismantling our dependence on fossil fuels. Renewable energy is a viable alternative; taking Abraham's choice does not require the sacrifice of our comfort instead of our children. We should rejoice in the opportunity we have been given to shift victims. Will we be wise enough to take it? If not, the fire awaits.
Warning: Rant.
I have been up since 5:30 this morning. I'm a night person, but I couldn't sleep for the anger. Anger at the travesty that currently passes for politics in Washington, D.C. Anger at the Kavanaugh "hearing" and "investigation" (quotes around both of those, please). Anger at party-line politicians who just "go along". Anger at Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell.
Anger, mostly, at "Republicans".
No, NOT "anger at Republicans." I want to make this clear. Anger at "Republicans". Quotes around the name only. Those using that name in Washington right now are not really Read More
