To all of my well-intentioned friends, right or left to many different degrees:

We don’t have the answer. You don’t have the answer. The sweeping, all-inclusive approach to the terrible problem which confronts us is not the answer.

The answer is not simply love, empathy, and goodness, hoping it will spill over and inoculate the world. It certainly is not the grand sweep of labeling all groups not of your ilk or your upbringing as evil.

Regardless of where we/they come from, the religion to which they were exposed, their skin color, their education, their country, their financial situation, there are good people, bad people, and in-between people everywhere.

All i can say is if our response to such terrible tragedies as what occurred in Paris is based on hate and self-protection, or sympathizing with the misunderstood, we will not reach a satisfactory conclusion. We need to figure out the proper amount of support, sympathy, and appropriate use of force, including eliminating the guilty who wish to dominate, to move forward toward a better world.

Yet, the overriding feeling i have with all of the responses and comments about what has occurred is sadness: sadness that many of my friends have chosen hate and blind prejudice as their path. It will consume them, if it hasn’t already.

i hope you realize that hate and prejudice will only make matters worse.

Co-Captains Jimmy Gamble and the goofy guy who had about as much sense then as he has now with the Lebanon Junior High Colts Homecoming Queen, Jennifer Brewington, 1957. If i remember correctly, she wore his ring around her neck. We won the game, finished 8-1.

Durante…for those who remember

he sang inka dinka do;
i thought inka dinka don’t
cut it,
yet
i was crazy about the old bald man
with the big nose and gravely voice
and
i laughed at his antics
and
thought his kicking the bucket
was the highlight of
mad, mad, mad world,
but
i always wanted to meet
mrs calabash
wherever she was.

i think of this poem i wrote about eight years ago. Almost every morning i walk out to get the newspaper in the morning. i often stop and pause,  looking at the mountain, a steep hill really, with the sun peeking over her apex, and i imagine this land, this high desert nestled by the Pacific when Richard Henry Dana entered the bay on the Boston brig Pilgrim in 1935, an area with a population of about 200.

Mount Miguel on a February Sunrise

East north east of my front door,
Mount Miguel wore a shroud this morning;
The low clouds draped across her shoulders
below the peak at sunrise.

By circumstance, the front door of my home faces east,
greeting the sun god
like the Navajo’s hogan door has done for centuries
over in the Four Corners a mountain or so
east of here.

Man’s antennae now reach skyward on Mount Miguel’s peak,
black in silhouette against the rising orange orb, which will later
sling its white hot heat and light low to the south,
moving through the day,
bowing to the Baja lands of Mexico,
as it is wont to do in the winter months
here in the high desert.

The instruments of new fangled transmission look foreboding:
Spanish castle towers of the inquisition;
I wonder if the Kumayai sat atop,
above the cloud shroud,
lifting their own clouds of smoke,
transmitting their own news of the day.

The city folks implanted here
tend to forget what this land beneath them was;
really is.
We have learned to just add water
to get paradise,
now overrun with those that forget
to look East at the sunrise
silhouettes of the ghost talkers.

Bonita, California

February 25, 2007

Today is a big day for Veterans. Every year this time, i think about my father being the Grand Marshal of Lebanon’s Veterans Day Parade for his service in the Southwest Pacific as a Seabee in World War II.

i also think about many friends who stood in harm’s way, some of whom never made it back.

My overriding thought was well stated by my friend and shipmate. Al Pavich, a hero in his own right, both during and after active service. This morning, Al stated simply, “Thank you, Veterans; proud to have served with you.

Al and those folks i think about deserve such honor. i am a little embarrassed to be included. Oh sure, i drove ships around the ocean for more than 14 years of active service. And sure, i had a freighter blown up directly aft of my ship on the Delong pier in Qui Nhon, Vietnam. And i did a lot of support and a lot of training.

But i was doing a job i had chosen, quite frankly for financial reasons with a brand new beautiful daughter. And i loved it. If they would let me drive, i would be on a Navy ship today. I loved the camaraderie, the adventure, the ports of call, the moving every two or so years to another port (most of my moves were across the country or world).

It was service, but i don’t think of it in the same way as i think of my friend Dave Carey’s service who spent 5 1/2 years as a POW for his service, or Marty Linville who received the Silver Star for his heroic action in Vietnam, or Pete Toennies, a Navy SEAL who did a whole bunch of things i am not allowed to mention.

i am embarrassed. But proud. Serving our country is a rewarding career. It makes me feel good that i did it. i do like to think i contributed to the Navy’s mission providing support of the country’s policies at sea.

As Al so well put it: Thank you, Veterans. i am proud to have served with you.