BY Edwin Cooney
I don’t even have to ask -- I know, because I’m one of you, that you’ve wondered! Yah, I know you’re a critic and a realist, that you’re educated and sophisticated, terrific and scientific, cool and hip – me, too! -- but you’ve wondered! What’s it gonna be like, when suddenly life, as you know it, permanently changes?
The end of our time on earth is, of course, as natural as was our beginning, but most of us have spent our entire lives in fear of it. Those among us raised in Christian homes have been told of two possible occurrences which will mark the close of our familiar earthly existence. These are (1) our physical death or (2) the second coming of Christ during our lifetime here on the Planet Earth.
Millions of people have witnessed the occurrence – and, of course, the results of -- physical death. As starkly real as it is, death seldom if ever simply leaves its physical calling card. It also leaves in its wake such emotional feelings and reactions as horror, loss, anger, sadness, and loneliness. Occasionally it even leaves a feeling of satisfaction or accomplishment. (As evidence of this last point, consider those who recently took part in the hanging of Saddam Hussein!) We also can inherit from death’s visitation a feeling of wonder as well as legend.
Since no one has experienced the second occurrence mentioned above, its likelihood for most of us seems exceedingly remote. Yet, I confess, that I’ve always found even its possibility very gripping.
That is why I was quite fascinated the other night when I received what appears to be one of those email chain letters describing what could conceivably take place on that fate-filled day.
Of course, that day is just like any other summer’s day. You’re driving home and suddenly you hear a rather high-pitched sound like trumpets or a choir. The sound is so unusual and persistent that you pull your car over to the edge of the road or freeway. (The one factor the author doesn’t take into consideration is the possibility that you might be a teenager or young adult whose boombox is on so loud you couldn’t possibly hear the approach of a fire truck or ambulance siren -- let alone the sound of trumpets or a choir)!
Okay! I’ll let the author tell you the rest:
So you pull over, get out of your car, and look up. As you do, you see you aren't the only curious one. The roadside has become a parking lot. Car doors are open, and people are staring at the sky. Shoppers are racing out of the grocery store.
The Little League baseball game across the street has come to a halt.
Players and parents are searching the clouds. And what they see, and what you see, has never before been seen.
As if the sky were a curtain, the drapes of the atmosphere part. A brilliant
light spills onto the earth. There are no shadows. None. From whence came the light begins to tumble a river of color spiking crystals of every hue ever seen and a million more never seen. Riding on the flow is an endless fleet of angels. They pass through the curtains one myriad at a time, until they occupy every square inch of the sky.
North.
South.
East.
West.
Thousands of silvery wings rise and fall in unison, and over the sound of
the trumpets, you can hear the cherubim and seraphim chanting, Holy, holy, holy. The final flank of angels is followed by twenty-four silver-bearded elders and a multitude of souls who join the angels in worship.
Presently the movement stops and the trumpets are silent, leaving only the
triumphant triplet: Holy, holy, holy. Between each word is a pause. With
each word, a profound reverence. You hear your voice join in the chorus.
You don't know why you say the words, but you know you must.
Suddenly, the heavens are quiet. All is quiet.
The angels turn, you turn, the entire world turns and there He is. Jesus.
Through waves of light you see the silhouetted figure of Christ the King.
He is atop a great stallion, and the stallion is atop a billowing cloud.
He opens his mouth, and you are surrounded by his declaration:
I am the Alpha and the Omega.
The angels bow their heads.
The elders remove their crowns.
And before you is a Figure so consuming that you know,
instantly you know: Nothing else matters.
Forget stock markets and school reports.
Sales meetings and football games.
Nothing is newsworthy...
All that mattered, matters no more....
for Christ has come...
From this point the author requests that you let him or her know when you received this message. Assuring you that your reception of this message was no accident, you’re requested not to break the chain and to send it to at least four people. Additionally, you’re promised that if you do send it on, you’ll get a wanted phone call or be contacted by someone whom you’ve been longing to hear from. Finally, you’re assured that you’ve just seen evidence of the beginning of God’s love but that you’ll never see the end of it.
So, what’s this chain letter really all about? Does it have value beyond its plausibility or even lack of plausibility? Even more, is it relevant to non-Christians?
I believe the answer to the last two questions is: yes, indeed!!
My guess is that silvery angel’s wings and Christ returning on a stallion are strictly symbolic to make God fathomable to humankind. The author might have been even more persuasive if Christ were standing in an open Mercedes atop that cloud. Besides, it’s silly to think Jesus would return riding a stallion: the Congressional Women’s Caucus would be outraged!
Clearly, the author is a Believer. He or she believes that Christ will one day return. What is likely to happen once He returns, the author does not say. Nor I think does it matter much what happens. What this does tell us is that the day will come when there will be an end to human control on the earth. Presumably, the arrival of Jesus will mark the end of all wars, and bring to a close all human conflict via the force of an all-abiding love.
We Christians, of course, like to think that we understand God better than anyone else does. However, it’s just possible that not even we understand -- really understand -- much of anything God ever has done or will do. We Christians don’t even take orders particularly well. For example:
It’s written in scripture that God asked His followers to build God’s Church. Instead, we have built many churches, thereby demonstrating our capacity to be political even in worship. Insofar as I’m aware there isn’t anything written in scripture giving us permission to have done this! The good news, so written in scripture and surely implied in the message above, is that God’s love is sufficiently powerful enough to forgive even this self-centered and self-important human tendency on the part of us Christians.
For those of other religious faiths, this Christian isn’t sufficiently smug to be absolutely sure that Christ hasn’t infiltrated your faith. If Christ can return on a horse or perhaps even in a Mercedes, it’s just possible that at some point long ago he could have appeared as Muhammad or Buddah or…! (Please, please don’t tell Billy Graham I said that!)
As for the atheist or agnostic, there’s a message here for you as well. You’ll find that message in the power of its symbolism. Surely you know that in order to appreciate a good mystery or science fiction thriller, the first thing you have to do is suspend belief. If you can do that for Captain James T. Kirk as well as for your enjoyment of other science fiction novels and movies, can’t you do it to save your own soul?
Even if logic must be king, why let the spiritual have an absolute monopoly on faith? If scientific logic is your first love, then by all means enjoy it. Why let the possibility that science may have been conceived and created by an even more powerful force or mind spoil your fun. If you can’t suspend belief for your own benefit, why not do the opposite—suspend disbelief. It may well matter to you and those who love you for a long, long time!
The bottom line is that I like this piece of writing despite its rather tacky plea to spread the word. The reason I like it is because it’s symbolism takes us to the edge of the unfathomable—the awsome power of God’s Love.
We fear the unfathomable because we can neither comprehend or control it. This piece of writing reminds us that just as our individual presence on earth ends, our collective earthly responsibilities will one day end. We need not fear death. Fear is made and perpetuated by humankind. We needn’t fear death any more than we feared the dawning of life on the day we were born.
From the moment we take our first breath, as much as air, water, food, clothing and shelter, we must have love.
What this message tells me is that we were born of God’s and humankind’s capacity for love and that, if we allow it to be so, an eternity of love awaits us.
As to whether or not angels really have or need silver wings — it beats the “you know what” out of me!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Originally published January 5, 2007
Monday, December 27, 2010
Thursday, December 23, 2010
'TIS THE SEASON!
By Edwin Cooney
Deck the halls with boughs of holly, Fa la la la la, la la la la,
Tis the season to be jolly, Fa la la la la, la la la la
It’s that time again—and I love it. Perhaps a little of the magic dwindles over the years, but only the tiniest bit of it.
I don’t anticipate where Santa might be at any hour on Christmas eve anymore—but I know he’s surely somewhere.
Mary, Joseph and the Christ child, Christmas carols, Santa Claus, stockings, Christmas cookies with hot chocolate or fruit juice are as much a part of my boyhood as the turkey on Thanksgiving, Jack O’Lanterns, doughnuts and apple cider on Halloween, and the importance of the baseball World Series. So since I believe that the history of a nation is the sum of all of our life experiences, I thought it might be entertaining as well as instructive to visit, however sketchily, the history of Christmas in America.
Most of us like to think that Christmas is as American as Christopher Columbus, (who isn’t at all American), the Pilgrims, Ben Franklin and George Washington. However, such is not the case!
As you’ll recall, Massachusetts was settled first by the Pilgrims or Separatists -- who wanted to separate totally from the Anglican Church -- and then by the Puritans -- whose aim was to purify rather than leave the Anglican Church.
The Puritans, who became dominant in Massachusetts over the Separatists, eventually took over in England under Oliver Cromwell during the 1650s. They banned the celebration of Christmas partly because it was practiced by the former royalists and partly because they considered it a symbol of Popery, a leading characteristic of the much unreconstructed and therefore maligned Roman Catholic Church of that day.
By the 1660s, the Puritans had lost power in London and throughout the rest of England, but they were very much in power in Boston as well as throughout the rest of Massachusetts. Thus, Christmas was officially banned in Boston between 1659 and 1681. It should be noted however that while Christmas was banned in Massachusetts, it was celebrated in both the Virginia and the New York colonies.
After the British monarchy was restored, Christmas was once again celebrated in England although its restoration in Massachusetts took another twenty one years. Once William and Mary took over as more or less equal partners as British monarchs in 1688 and Catholicism was on the decline there, Christmas began to be practiced in a more secular way in Britain.
One of the casualties of our Revolutionary War at the hands of our founding fathers, incidentally, was Christmas. Christmas in the era of Patrick Henry, Ben Franklin, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et al, was considered an English holiday and was, publicly at least, unwelcome in the hallowed halls of liberty until the mid-nineteenth century.
Three writers, Washington Irving and Clement Clarke Moore -- both Americans -- and Charles Dickens -- an Englishman -- were primarily responsible for introducing Christmas as a family holiday to the American people.
Washington Irving, who traveled and wrote extensively from both Europe and Britain, published short Christmas stories in “The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon” as well as a story entitled “Old Christmas” during the late 1820s and early 1830s.
Most significant was the 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” attributed to Clement Clarke Moore and Charles Dickens’ 1842 story “A Christmas Carol”.
Americans, with their eternal love of the underdog and sympathy for the reformed, fell hard for Mr. Dickens’ Bob Crachit and the crippled Tiny Tim, and readily forgave old Ebenezer Scrooge once he’d seen the error of his ways and showered the Crachit family with gifts and plenty of Christmas cheer.
As for Clement Moore’s Santa Claus, everyone could identify with a little old white bearded man whose little round belly “shook when he laughed” and whose pipe smoke “encircled his head like a wreath” as he joyfully delivered toys to little children.
Santa was everyone’s idea of Grandpa!
By the 1850s, German and Irish immigration had changed the face of America’s largest cities and had, most notably, tapped the strongest American incentive: the profit motive.
Thus, Christmas was truly on its way in America—led, of course, by Santa Claus!
Information describing how American presidents historically have celebrated Christmas is a bit sketchy. Apparently, Thomas Jefferson, despite his contempt for Britain and all its institutions and traditions—including Christmas—did privately celebrate Christmas at the White House in 1805. Andrew Jackson was said to have held private family Christmas celebrations as well.
The first president to set up a Christmas tree in the White House was Franklin Pierce. Franklin Pierce, the once handsome and energetic Democratic presidential candidate known as “Young Hickory of the Granite Hills”—after the great Democrat Andrew Jackson—was by then a listless, defensive, melancholy and defeated incumbent President. The year was 1856. Franklin and Jane Pierce were spending their last unhappy months in the White House. Tragically childless by now--and heavily burdened by political and administrative misjudgments—President Pierce purchased the first White House Christmas tree for the children of his Sunday school class.
Christmas was declared a federal holiday in 1870. It would be hard to imagine that President Ulysses S. Grant didn’t have something to say about that, but so far I haven’t found any reference to President Grant in the accounts of the establishment of Christmas as a federal holiday.
In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison installed a tree lit with candles on the second floor of the White House. He also purchased turkeys and gloves for members of the White House staff.
In 1895, First Lady Frances Cleveland attached the first electric lights to the White House Christmas tree.
In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge began the tradition of a National Christmas tree on the White House lawn. The following year, sadness prevailed at the White House despite President Coolidge’s re-election, due to the death from blood poisoning of President and Mrs. Coolidge’s sixteen year old son Calvin Jr. the previous July. Nevertheless, the ceremony was held with the participation of Calvin and Grace Coolidge.
Jacqueline Kennedy began the Christmas theme for the National Christmas tree in 1961 by decorating it with figures from Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker”.
In 2001, Laura Bush’s theme was “Home For the Holidays” which used replicas of the homes of previous presidents.
What, do you suppose, this all means? What do the forces of religion, politics and commercialism say about what we do? Which one of these forces have had the greatest beneficial effect on our celebration of Christmas? Which one of these forces have had the most detrimental effect?
The answers to the above questions I’ll leave up to you. However, I’ll close this week’s effort with my favorite presidential Christmas story.
It was December of 1921 and President Warren G. Harding faced a dilemma, a struggle between his conscience and his need to be politically effective. A small town Republican, he was sensitive to and even shared the suspicions of his fellow townsmen of what might be called foreign ideologies.
As president, possessing the pardoning power as he did, Warren Harding had received pleas for the release of Socialist party presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs from federal prison. Debs had been convicted during the “Great War” of sedition for public opposition to the war once it had been declared by Congress and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson.
Now the war was over. Since the League of Nations had been rejected by the Senate in 1919 and again in 1920, the U.S. government, under the direction of Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes had negotiated a separate peace treaty with Germany which President Harding had signed during a golf game the previous July.
Thus, Mr. Debs was no longer a threat to America’s national security. However, many of the president’s closest friends and political advisors were dead set against any sympathy for Debs whom they strongly believed had deliberately undermined the patriotic efforts of those who had made the “supreme sacrifice” in France during the war. To them, Debs as a labor leader, was little more than a life long trouble maker inspired lately by foreign ideologies and interests. One of those who drove home that point most vigorously was the president’s personal hometown buddy Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty. (Note: Mr. Daugherty himself would need presidential tolerance within a few years once he was indicted in the Teapot Dome scandal).
For President Harding, however, the question was whether or not justice would be further served by keeping a 66 year old pacifist in jail or whether the spirit of Christmas required him to be charitable. Earlier in 1921, outgoing President Woodrow Wilson had bitterly rejected pleas for Debs’ pardon.
Christmas was on a Sunday in 1921 thereby giving the celebration of the birth of Christ a special intensity. About the 20th of December, President Harding had made up his mind. Attorney General Daugherty was called in and told to prepare the necessary papers. They were prepared and sent to the federal prison in Atlanta.
By lunch time on Friday December 23rd, Eugene Victor Debs was in President Harding’s office. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Debs was home.
When asked why he had pardoned Debs, the President is said to have replied in words similar to these: “At Christmas time, a peaceful man ought to be home with his wife.”
While it is true that the pardon didn’t reinstate Mr. Debs’ citizenship to allow him to vote or seek public office as before, he could act as a political consultant, write, and lecture. Most significant, thanks to the conscience and humanity of Warren Gamaliel Harding, Eugene Victor Debs was once again a free man.
If any president has given a gift more noble and worthy of the spirit of Christmas, I haven’t heard of it.
Christmas, wow! What a season!!!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Deck the halls with boughs of holly, Fa la la la la, la la la la,
Tis the season to be jolly, Fa la la la la, la la la la
It’s that time again—and I love it. Perhaps a little of the magic dwindles over the years, but only the tiniest bit of it.
I don’t anticipate where Santa might be at any hour on Christmas eve anymore—but I know he’s surely somewhere.
Mary, Joseph and the Christ child, Christmas carols, Santa Claus, stockings, Christmas cookies with hot chocolate or fruit juice are as much a part of my boyhood as the turkey on Thanksgiving, Jack O’Lanterns, doughnuts and apple cider on Halloween, and the importance of the baseball World Series. So since I believe that the history of a nation is the sum of all of our life experiences, I thought it might be entertaining as well as instructive to visit, however sketchily, the history of Christmas in America.
Most of us like to think that Christmas is as American as Christopher Columbus, (who isn’t at all American), the Pilgrims, Ben Franklin and George Washington. However, such is not the case!
As you’ll recall, Massachusetts was settled first by the Pilgrims or Separatists -- who wanted to separate totally from the Anglican Church -- and then by the Puritans -- whose aim was to purify rather than leave the Anglican Church.
The Puritans, who became dominant in Massachusetts over the Separatists, eventually took over in England under Oliver Cromwell during the 1650s. They banned the celebration of Christmas partly because it was practiced by the former royalists and partly because they considered it a symbol of Popery, a leading characteristic of the much unreconstructed and therefore maligned Roman Catholic Church of that day.
By the 1660s, the Puritans had lost power in London and throughout the rest of England, but they were very much in power in Boston as well as throughout the rest of Massachusetts. Thus, Christmas was officially banned in Boston between 1659 and 1681. It should be noted however that while Christmas was banned in Massachusetts, it was celebrated in both the Virginia and the New York colonies.
After the British monarchy was restored, Christmas was once again celebrated in England although its restoration in Massachusetts took another twenty one years. Once William and Mary took over as more or less equal partners as British monarchs in 1688 and Catholicism was on the decline there, Christmas began to be practiced in a more secular way in Britain.
One of the casualties of our Revolutionary War at the hands of our founding fathers, incidentally, was Christmas. Christmas in the era of Patrick Henry, Ben Franklin, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et al, was considered an English holiday and was, publicly at least, unwelcome in the hallowed halls of liberty until the mid-nineteenth century.
Three writers, Washington Irving and Clement Clarke Moore -- both Americans -- and Charles Dickens -- an Englishman -- were primarily responsible for introducing Christmas as a family holiday to the American people.
Washington Irving, who traveled and wrote extensively from both Europe and Britain, published short Christmas stories in “The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon” as well as a story entitled “Old Christmas” during the late 1820s and early 1830s.
Most significant was the 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” attributed to Clement Clarke Moore and Charles Dickens’ 1842 story “A Christmas Carol”.
Americans, with their eternal love of the underdog and sympathy for the reformed, fell hard for Mr. Dickens’ Bob Crachit and the crippled Tiny Tim, and readily forgave old Ebenezer Scrooge once he’d seen the error of his ways and showered the Crachit family with gifts and plenty of Christmas cheer.
As for Clement Moore’s Santa Claus, everyone could identify with a little old white bearded man whose little round belly “shook when he laughed” and whose pipe smoke “encircled his head like a wreath” as he joyfully delivered toys to little children.
Santa was everyone’s idea of Grandpa!
By the 1850s, German and Irish immigration had changed the face of America’s largest cities and had, most notably, tapped the strongest American incentive: the profit motive.
Thus, Christmas was truly on its way in America—led, of course, by Santa Claus!
Information describing how American presidents historically have celebrated Christmas is a bit sketchy. Apparently, Thomas Jefferson, despite his contempt for Britain and all its institutions and traditions—including Christmas—did privately celebrate Christmas at the White House in 1805. Andrew Jackson was said to have held private family Christmas celebrations as well.
The first president to set up a Christmas tree in the White House was Franklin Pierce. Franklin Pierce, the once handsome and energetic Democratic presidential candidate known as “Young Hickory of the Granite Hills”—after the great Democrat Andrew Jackson—was by then a listless, defensive, melancholy and defeated incumbent President. The year was 1856. Franklin and Jane Pierce were spending their last unhappy months in the White House. Tragically childless by now--and heavily burdened by political and administrative misjudgments—President Pierce purchased the first White House Christmas tree for the children of his Sunday school class.
Christmas was declared a federal holiday in 1870. It would be hard to imagine that President Ulysses S. Grant didn’t have something to say about that, but so far I haven’t found any reference to President Grant in the accounts of the establishment of Christmas as a federal holiday.
In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison installed a tree lit with candles on the second floor of the White House. He also purchased turkeys and gloves for members of the White House staff.
In 1895, First Lady Frances Cleveland attached the first electric lights to the White House Christmas tree.
In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge began the tradition of a National Christmas tree on the White House lawn. The following year, sadness prevailed at the White House despite President Coolidge’s re-election, due to the death from blood poisoning of President and Mrs. Coolidge’s sixteen year old son Calvin Jr. the previous July. Nevertheless, the ceremony was held with the participation of Calvin and Grace Coolidge.
Jacqueline Kennedy began the Christmas theme for the National Christmas tree in 1961 by decorating it with figures from Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker”.
In 2001, Laura Bush’s theme was “Home For the Holidays” which used replicas of the homes of previous presidents.
What, do you suppose, this all means? What do the forces of religion, politics and commercialism say about what we do? Which one of these forces have had the greatest beneficial effect on our celebration of Christmas? Which one of these forces have had the most detrimental effect?
The answers to the above questions I’ll leave up to you. However, I’ll close this week’s effort with my favorite presidential Christmas story.
It was December of 1921 and President Warren G. Harding faced a dilemma, a struggle between his conscience and his need to be politically effective. A small town Republican, he was sensitive to and even shared the suspicions of his fellow townsmen of what might be called foreign ideologies.
As president, possessing the pardoning power as he did, Warren Harding had received pleas for the release of Socialist party presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs from federal prison. Debs had been convicted during the “Great War” of sedition for public opposition to the war once it had been declared by Congress and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson.
Now the war was over. Since the League of Nations had been rejected by the Senate in 1919 and again in 1920, the U.S. government, under the direction of Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes had negotiated a separate peace treaty with Germany which President Harding had signed during a golf game the previous July.
Thus, Mr. Debs was no longer a threat to America’s national security. However, many of the president’s closest friends and political advisors were dead set against any sympathy for Debs whom they strongly believed had deliberately undermined the patriotic efforts of those who had made the “supreme sacrifice” in France during the war. To them, Debs as a labor leader, was little more than a life long trouble maker inspired lately by foreign ideologies and interests. One of those who drove home that point most vigorously was the president’s personal hometown buddy Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty. (Note: Mr. Daugherty himself would need presidential tolerance within a few years once he was indicted in the Teapot Dome scandal).
For President Harding, however, the question was whether or not justice would be further served by keeping a 66 year old pacifist in jail or whether the spirit of Christmas required him to be charitable. Earlier in 1921, outgoing President Woodrow Wilson had bitterly rejected pleas for Debs’ pardon.
Christmas was on a Sunday in 1921 thereby giving the celebration of the birth of Christ a special intensity. About the 20th of December, President Harding had made up his mind. Attorney General Daugherty was called in and told to prepare the necessary papers. They were prepared and sent to the federal prison in Atlanta.
By lunch time on Friday December 23rd, Eugene Victor Debs was in President Harding’s office. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Debs was home.
When asked why he had pardoned Debs, the President is said to have replied in words similar to these: “At Christmas time, a peaceful man ought to be home with his wife.”
While it is true that the pardon didn’t reinstate Mr. Debs’ citizenship to allow him to vote or seek public office as before, he could act as a political consultant, write, and lecture. Most significant, thanks to the conscience and humanity of Warren Gamaliel Harding, Eugene Victor Debs was once again a free man.
If any president has given a gift more noble and worthy of the spirit of Christmas, I haven’t heard of it.
Christmas, wow! What a season!!!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, December 20, 2010
SOLAR SHOCKS: HUMAN SOLUTIONS
By Edwin Cooney
As a former sweetheart of mine used to say: take a squint at this!
“NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft surround sun. On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.”
The article goes on to describe how solar activity can affect the environment as well as our capacity to operate our increasingly vital satellite communication systems. What exactly this solar holocaust might ultimately mean to you and to me, they either can’t or don’t say, although they’ll certainly insist that explosions and shocks on the sun need to be monitored for our ultimate benefit.
I can’t say for certain, but my guess is that shocks (or earthquakes) and explosions affecting one of our earthly hemispheres would be a bigger story than 9/11! However, since the sun is constructed of little more than eternally flaming gases, it is unlikely to sustain such vital activities as competitive sports, romance, religion and politics. Explosions and shocks are all that can happen on the sun! Such activities have no doubt been going on there for years, but now we know about them, and thus we worry and wonder about their significance.
So, as I often do when flummoxed, I went down to my local watering hole to talk this over with my two buddies Lunkhead and Dunderhead.
They were in their usual places at the bar. Lunkhead, as usual, was chewing a dead cigar and stirring his neat scotch with a swizzle stick. Dunderhead was drinking an exotic Mexican beer while stuffing his face with salted peanuts.
“What do you say, fellows?” I asked as each finished reading copies of the article I just described.
“Those liberals are at it again,” said Lunkhead. “It’s all about scaring the taxpayers over the environment. Then they can spend our money on themselves due to a situation none of us can do anything about!”
“Nuts!” shot back Dunderhead, “Who expects you to do anything about it? The purpose of the article is to inform the taxpayer as to what the government and private industry can accomplish when there are no politicians, editorialists and talk show hosts around. Besides, there’s no mention of anything that’s Republican, Democratic, or even Tea Party in this piece,” Dunderhead insisted.
“The problem with you, Lunkhead, is that you see politics where there isn’t any to be seen!”
“Okay, Hot Shot! You tell us what significant effect solar activities have on you, me, and this here guy,” said Lunkhead, pointing his dead cigar at me.
“Well, let’s see now,” said Dunderhead. “August first—hmmmm. There were five Sundays in August of 2010—-that could be significant.” He paused for a moment. “Oh, I know, the San Francisco Giants began taking off in August. Those solar shocks and explosions made the Giants a team of destiny—-that’s it! Don’t laugh! Lunar and solar activities mean a lot in baseball. Did you know that former Giants’ pitcher Gaylord Perry predicted after hitting a home run in 1963 he wouldn’t hit another one until we landed a man on the moon? Believe it or not, that’s exactly what happened. On July 20th, 1969, just after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, Perry hit a home run against Atlanta. So, you’ve gotta take both solar and lunar activities seriously.
“Aw, come on!” said Lunkhead, “You’re putting me on. That story about Gaylord Perry may be true, but the reason we landed a man on the moon was because, as President Nixon said on board the U.S.S. Hornet, “God intended that week to be the greatest week since the Creation—so we definitely had to do something! Now that I think about it,” continued Lunkhead, draining the last of his scotch, “How much do these scientists dare to tell us? If there are explosions on the sun, couldn’t it blow up? If it blows up, then it’s going to get damned cold down here, isn’t it? Maybe they know more than they’re telling us. Here’s a hell of an idea: let’s waterboard them and find out what they really know!
“I just thought of something,” said Dunderhead, his voice getting strangely quiet and mysterious. “Maybe it’s up to us to make solar activity mean something! If the sun is a tool, it might not be a bad idea to spend a little money in order to learn how to use it.”
“Not bad, Dunderhead,” said Lunkhead as he took the first sip from his recently refreshed drink. “Just the other day, Bertha made me get solar paneling installed on our house. Hmmm! Maybe what takes place on the sun matters as much as who won this year’s World Series! Is that possible, Dunderhead?”
“I suppose,” said Dunderhead, “That depends on how much money you had on the World Series!”
“Ya,” said Lunkhead, “Let’s not make too much sense; after all, we might destroy our hard-earned reputations!”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
As a former sweetheart of mine used to say: take a squint at this!
“NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft surround sun. On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.”
The article goes on to describe how solar activity can affect the environment as well as our capacity to operate our increasingly vital satellite communication systems. What exactly this solar holocaust might ultimately mean to you and to me, they either can’t or don’t say, although they’ll certainly insist that explosions and shocks on the sun need to be monitored for our ultimate benefit.
I can’t say for certain, but my guess is that shocks (or earthquakes) and explosions affecting one of our earthly hemispheres would be a bigger story than 9/11! However, since the sun is constructed of little more than eternally flaming gases, it is unlikely to sustain such vital activities as competitive sports, romance, religion and politics. Explosions and shocks are all that can happen on the sun! Such activities have no doubt been going on there for years, but now we know about them, and thus we worry and wonder about their significance.
So, as I often do when flummoxed, I went down to my local watering hole to talk this over with my two buddies Lunkhead and Dunderhead.
They were in their usual places at the bar. Lunkhead, as usual, was chewing a dead cigar and stirring his neat scotch with a swizzle stick. Dunderhead was drinking an exotic Mexican beer while stuffing his face with salted peanuts.
“What do you say, fellows?” I asked as each finished reading copies of the article I just described.
“Those liberals are at it again,” said Lunkhead. “It’s all about scaring the taxpayers over the environment. Then they can spend our money on themselves due to a situation none of us can do anything about!”
“Nuts!” shot back Dunderhead, “Who expects you to do anything about it? The purpose of the article is to inform the taxpayer as to what the government and private industry can accomplish when there are no politicians, editorialists and talk show hosts around. Besides, there’s no mention of anything that’s Republican, Democratic, or even Tea Party in this piece,” Dunderhead insisted.
“The problem with you, Lunkhead, is that you see politics where there isn’t any to be seen!”
“Okay, Hot Shot! You tell us what significant effect solar activities have on you, me, and this here guy,” said Lunkhead, pointing his dead cigar at me.
“Well, let’s see now,” said Dunderhead. “August first—hmmmm. There were five Sundays in August of 2010—-that could be significant.” He paused for a moment. “Oh, I know, the San Francisco Giants began taking off in August. Those solar shocks and explosions made the Giants a team of destiny—-that’s it! Don’t laugh! Lunar and solar activities mean a lot in baseball. Did you know that former Giants’ pitcher Gaylord Perry predicted after hitting a home run in 1963 he wouldn’t hit another one until we landed a man on the moon? Believe it or not, that’s exactly what happened. On July 20th, 1969, just after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, Perry hit a home run against Atlanta. So, you’ve gotta take both solar and lunar activities seriously.
“Aw, come on!” said Lunkhead, “You’re putting me on. That story about Gaylord Perry may be true, but the reason we landed a man on the moon was because, as President Nixon said on board the U.S.S. Hornet, “God intended that week to be the greatest week since the Creation—so we definitely had to do something! Now that I think about it,” continued Lunkhead, draining the last of his scotch, “How much do these scientists dare to tell us? If there are explosions on the sun, couldn’t it blow up? If it blows up, then it’s going to get damned cold down here, isn’t it? Maybe they know more than they’re telling us. Here’s a hell of an idea: let’s waterboard them and find out what they really know!
“I just thought of something,” said Dunderhead, his voice getting strangely quiet and mysterious. “Maybe it’s up to us to make solar activity mean something! If the sun is a tool, it might not be a bad idea to spend a little money in order to learn how to use it.”
“Not bad, Dunderhead,” said Lunkhead as he took the first sip from his recently refreshed drink. “Just the other day, Bertha made me get solar paneling installed on our house. Hmmm! Maybe what takes place on the sun matters as much as who won this year’s World Series! Is that possible, Dunderhead?”
“I suppose,” said Dunderhead, “That depends on how much money you had on the World Series!”
“Ya,” said Lunkhead, “Let’s not make too much sense; after all, we might destroy our hard-earned reputations!”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, December 13, 2010
LOVING THE LEAST AMONG US—IS IT NOBLE OR OUTRAGEOUS?
By Edwin Cooney
As I’ve asserted numerous times in these musings, I don’t love anyone because they are perfect and, as far as I’m aware, no one else does either.
I recall many times as a youth being publicly punished and wondering -- as I obeyed the teacher’s command to “stand in the corner, Eddie” -- whether my friends would still be my friends at lunchtime. Fortunately, they usually were. Still, most of us feel best about ourselves when we’re publicly acknowledged for our heroic deeds.
Nevertheless, there have been occasions when I’ve felt sympathy for someone even when that person has been rightly punished for outrageous behavior.
Christian scripture reminds us that Christ spent more time with the dregs of society than He did with the righteous. After all, the righteous didn’t need Him.
This was forcefully brought home to me a few years ago by an article in the New York Times. Times reporter Dan Barry introduced me to a man by the name of Roy Ratcliff. Mr. Ratcliff was then the sixty-year-old pastor of the Mandrake Road Church of Christ in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was like most ministers you meet or read about: reflective, spiritual, and possessing that special capacity for tolerance that comes with his profession. There was only one thing that marked him from any other preacher you’d ever meet. That difference was that since 1994 he’d dwelt in that special place of the outrageous.
As he told Dan Barry of the Times, he had never been to a prison before April 1994. Now, as Christ and his Disciples often did, Reverend Ratcliff visits prisons all the time.
While visiting his first prison, Reverend Ratcliff was introduced to a rather tall, blonde, and good-looking prisoner who wanted to be baptized. He’d sinned the worst of sins. He was among the most despised of his time. He knew that baptism wouldn’t cleanse him of his earthly crimes against humanity. However, he’d heard that, were he to be accepted into God’s realm, even he could start over.
The young man was just 34 years old that May 21st. He was sentenced to spend the equivalent of fifteen life sentences at the Columbia State Prison in Portage, Wisconsin. He believed that he should have received the death penalty for his crimes and the Reverend Ratcliff agreed. However, there was no death penalty in Wisconsin.
Still, the prisoner told Roy Ratcliff that he was increasingly aware that there is something beyond life on earth. In order to experience that meaningful place, he would have to be baptized and, indeed, he was anxious for the experience.
So the good Reverend Mr. Ratcliff did baptize the still youthful looking Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer. Within months, Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison and thus the “taxpayer” was relieved of having anything whatsoever to do with his upkeep. For that, most were quite grateful, it would seem.
However, herein lies a powerful irony! The “taxpayer,” were he to express his gratitude, would have to express that gratitude to a triple murderer by the name of Christopher Scarver. Scarver was not only in jail for a brutal murder -- I’ve yet to hear of a gentle murder! -- but he killed Jesse Anderson, another inmate, at the same time he dispatched Dahmer. Is that not both outrageous as well as ironic?
The really outrageous thing is, of course, the willingness of Reverend Ratcliff not only to baptize Jeffrey Dahmer, but even more to let it be known that the least among us remained Roy Ratcliff’s friend.
As Reverend Ratcliff told the Times’ Dan Barry, he has been both embraced and ostracized within his church and throughout the religious community for having baptized and befriended Jeffrey Dahmer. However, Reverend Ratcliff had the temerity to say that he believes that he is a better man for having done so.
Of course, it’s much easier to love the pretty and the righteous. However, the forces which cause all of us to do what we do and be who we are, very often are beyond our control. That there might be those among us possessed of sufficient power to love the least among us is, it seems to me, the most fortunate of blessings.
The Reverend Roy Ratcliff has not, like me, merely visited that outrageous place — he lives there, I believe, in heroic humbleness.
Furthermore, by the title of the book he has written describing his relationship with young Dahmer, one can tell that the Reverend Mr. Ratcliff fully comprehended the significance -- and the ultimate power -- of God’s greatest gift to you and me, the most imperfect of beings.
The book is entitled: “DARK JOURNEY, DEEP GRACE.”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
As I’ve asserted numerous times in these musings, I don’t love anyone because they are perfect and, as far as I’m aware, no one else does either.
I recall many times as a youth being publicly punished and wondering -- as I obeyed the teacher’s command to “stand in the corner, Eddie” -- whether my friends would still be my friends at lunchtime. Fortunately, they usually were. Still, most of us feel best about ourselves when we’re publicly acknowledged for our heroic deeds.
Nevertheless, there have been occasions when I’ve felt sympathy for someone even when that person has been rightly punished for outrageous behavior.
Christian scripture reminds us that Christ spent more time with the dregs of society than He did with the righteous. After all, the righteous didn’t need Him.
This was forcefully brought home to me a few years ago by an article in the New York Times. Times reporter Dan Barry introduced me to a man by the name of Roy Ratcliff. Mr. Ratcliff was then the sixty-year-old pastor of the Mandrake Road Church of Christ in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was like most ministers you meet or read about: reflective, spiritual, and possessing that special capacity for tolerance that comes with his profession. There was only one thing that marked him from any other preacher you’d ever meet. That difference was that since 1994 he’d dwelt in that special place of the outrageous.
As he told Dan Barry of the Times, he had never been to a prison before April 1994. Now, as Christ and his Disciples often did, Reverend Ratcliff visits prisons all the time.
While visiting his first prison, Reverend Ratcliff was introduced to a rather tall, blonde, and good-looking prisoner who wanted to be baptized. He’d sinned the worst of sins. He was among the most despised of his time. He knew that baptism wouldn’t cleanse him of his earthly crimes against humanity. However, he’d heard that, were he to be accepted into God’s realm, even he could start over.
The young man was just 34 years old that May 21st. He was sentenced to spend the equivalent of fifteen life sentences at the Columbia State Prison in Portage, Wisconsin. He believed that he should have received the death penalty for his crimes and the Reverend Ratcliff agreed. However, there was no death penalty in Wisconsin.
Still, the prisoner told Roy Ratcliff that he was increasingly aware that there is something beyond life on earth. In order to experience that meaningful place, he would have to be baptized and, indeed, he was anxious for the experience.
So the good Reverend Mr. Ratcliff did baptize the still youthful looking Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer. Within months, Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison and thus the “taxpayer” was relieved of having anything whatsoever to do with his upkeep. For that, most were quite grateful, it would seem.
However, herein lies a powerful irony! The “taxpayer,” were he to express his gratitude, would have to express that gratitude to a triple murderer by the name of Christopher Scarver. Scarver was not only in jail for a brutal murder -- I’ve yet to hear of a gentle murder! -- but he killed Jesse Anderson, another inmate, at the same time he dispatched Dahmer. Is that not both outrageous as well as ironic?
The really outrageous thing is, of course, the willingness of Reverend Ratcliff not only to baptize Jeffrey Dahmer, but even more to let it be known that the least among us remained Roy Ratcliff’s friend.
As Reverend Ratcliff told the Times’ Dan Barry, he has been both embraced and ostracized within his church and throughout the religious community for having baptized and befriended Jeffrey Dahmer. However, Reverend Ratcliff had the temerity to say that he believes that he is a better man for having done so.
Of course, it’s much easier to love the pretty and the righteous. However, the forces which cause all of us to do what we do and be who we are, very often are beyond our control. That there might be those among us possessed of sufficient power to love the least among us is, it seems to me, the most fortunate of blessings.
The Reverend Roy Ratcliff has not, like me, merely visited that outrageous place — he lives there, I believe, in heroic humbleness.
Furthermore, by the title of the book he has written describing his relationship with young Dahmer, one can tell that the Reverend Mr. Ratcliff fully comprehended the significance -- and the ultimate power -- of God’s greatest gift to you and me, the most imperfect of beings.
The book is entitled: “DARK JOURNEY, DEEP GRACE.”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, December 6, 2010
SO—WHAT DO YOU KNOW?
By Edwin Cooney
A few days ago, someone sent me a piece that appears designed to reinforce my sense of outrage with our modern “socialistic and secular society.”
The piece repeatedly inquires “did you know?” and states that the Supreme Court building is bedecked with religious icons depicting Moses receiving the Ten Commandments. It also states that the Ten Commandments are engraved on the lower portion of the court’s two front oaken doors. In addition, it notes that there are Bible verses engraved on buildings and statues all over Washington, D.C. and that 52 of the 55 signers of the Constitution were members of the orthodox churches of their colonies. Further, it reminds us that the taxpayers have paid the clergy to open and close Congress on a daily basis since 1777.
The next little zinger was a quote from James Madison which tersely reminds posterity (that’s you and me) that: “We have staked the whole of all our political Institutions upon the capacity of mankind for Self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” Thus, big government is immoral and local or state government is moral government!
Finally we’re reminded of the following: Thomas Jefferson worried that the courts would overstep their authority and, instead of interpreting the law, would begin making law -- thus establishing an oligarchy, the rule of the few over the many.
The piece closes asserting that if I agree with its sentiments, I should pass it on and if I don’t, I could delete it. My dilemma is that if all of the above is true, there’s little to argue about -- except that 39 not 55 men signed the completed Constitution in Philadelphia on September 17th, 1787.
The obvious question is -- is that all there really is to know about American history?? For example, did you know that in 1797 President John Adams assured the Moslem nations of North Africa that the United States was not officially a Christian nation because it allows for the practice of all religions?
Did you know that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson emphatically denied the divinity of Christ?
Did you know that Thomas Jefferson -- using a razor blade -- systematically cut out all references in the Bible to Christ’s divinity and works as a healer and that in fact there exists a Jefferson Bible?
Did you know that Theodore Roosevelt considered “In God We Trust” on our money as blasphemous? His explanation was that it was sacrilegious to associate God with money.
Did you know that American capitalists, not the poor, were the original proponents of “big government”? Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and even John C. Calhoun sought federal money all their political lives to finance the transportation and moneymaking institutions in their states.
What I object to in pieces such as the one from which I extrapolated the above quotations is the righteously angry tone in them. Even worse is the suggestion that America was founded by wise, selfless and righteously moral men to whom our current leadership can’t even begin to compare. I could enumerate some of the personal sins of Madison, Jefferson -- and certainly the sins of the Supreme Court from its inception, but to what end?
Too many people teach history as though they’re teaching theology and, in this observer’s opinion, that’s reckless instruction. Additionally, they appear to really be telling you something about today when they cite yesterday’s idealism and let yesterday’s slumbering sins lie. Among many truths is that neither America’s past nor future will ever be ideal because, like the rest of humanity, Americans are imperfect.
Whatever may be your fate or wherever you find your eternal home, you can be absolutely certain of one thing: you’ll never get there on your American passport! After all, “Providence” -- as Adams and Jefferson would identify our “Creator” -- created and continues to love all the rest of humanity!
I’m trying to recall whether I deleted that little gem or passed it on.
Whoops! I may soon have a very long nose!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
A few days ago, someone sent me a piece that appears designed to reinforce my sense of outrage with our modern “socialistic and secular society.”
The piece repeatedly inquires “did you know?” and states that the Supreme Court building is bedecked with religious icons depicting Moses receiving the Ten Commandments. It also states that the Ten Commandments are engraved on the lower portion of the court’s two front oaken doors. In addition, it notes that there are Bible verses engraved on buildings and statues all over Washington, D.C. and that 52 of the 55 signers of the Constitution were members of the orthodox churches of their colonies. Further, it reminds us that the taxpayers have paid the clergy to open and close Congress on a daily basis since 1777.
The next little zinger was a quote from James Madison which tersely reminds posterity (that’s you and me) that: “We have staked the whole of all our political Institutions upon the capacity of mankind for Self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” Thus, big government is immoral and local or state government is moral government!
Finally we’re reminded of the following: Thomas Jefferson worried that the courts would overstep their authority and, instead of interpreting the law, would begin making law -- thus establishing an oligarchy, the rule of the few over the many.
The piece closes asserting that if I agree with its sentiments, I should pass it on and if I don’t, I could delete it. My dilemma is that if all of the above is true, there’s little to argue about -- except that 39 not 55 men signed the completed Constitution in Philadelphia on September 17th, 1787.
The obvious question is -- is that all there really is to know about American history?? For example, did you know that in 1797 President John Adams assured the Moslem nations of North Africa that the United States was not officially a Christian nation because it allows for the practice of all religions?
Did you know that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson emphatically denied the divinity of Christ?
Did you know that Thomas Jefferson -- using a razor blade -- systematically cut out all references in the Bible to Christ’s divinity and works as a healer and that in fact there exists a Jefferson Bible?
Did you know that Theodore Roosevelt considered “In God We Trust” on our money as blasphemous? His explanation was that it was sacrilegious to associate God with money.
Did you know that American capitalists, not the poor, were the original proponents of “big government”? Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and even John C. Calhoun sought federal money all their political lives to finance the transportation and moneymaking institutions in their states.
What I object to in pieces such as the one from which I extrapolated the above quotations is the righteously angry tone in them. Even worse is the suggestion that America was founded by wise, selfless and righteously moral men to whom our current leadership can’t even begin to compare. I could enumerate some of the personal sins of Madison, Jefferson -- and certainly the sins of the Supreme Court from its inception, but to what end?
Too many people teach history as though they’re teaching theology and, in this observer’s opinion, that’s reckless instruction. Additionally, they appear to really be telling you something about today when they cite yesterday’s idealism and let yesterday’s slumbering sins lie. Among many truths is that neither America’s past nor future will ever be ideal because, like the rest of humanity, Americans are imperfect.
Whatever may be your fate or wherever you find your eternal home, you can be absolutely certain of one thing: you’ll never get there on your American passport! After all, “Providence” -- as Adams and Jefferson would identify our “Creator” -- created and continues to love all the rest of humanity!
I’m trying to recall whether I deleted that little gem or passed it on.
Whoops! I may soon have a very long nose!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, November 29, 2010
WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT? -- IT COULD MATTER, YOU KNOW!
By Edwin Cooney
“What can I do for you?” asks the pretty sales clerk.
“How can I help you?” asks the telephone receptionist.
“What-do-ya need, mac?” chirps the local bar tender.
Usually we know the answers to these questions, because the answer to each of these consists of some kind of transaction. The more intimate or personal these kinds of inquiries, the more powerful they inevitably are.
Most of us consider it reasonably easy to determine what we want from relationships, but that determination is often dependent on factors that have a way of occurring suddenly. A romantic relationship can be especially tricky since each of us brings to a very emotional and, perhaps, even a volatile situation, a lifetime of conflicting hopes, fears, needs, and expectations that defy clear communication.
Forthright communication is the strongest bulwark against disappointment, but forthright communication (some would call it “straight talk”) is invariably governed by conflicting forces and needs from deep within that may be continuously shifting. In other words, what we want from one another or what we have to offer each other often changes -- occasionally with the suddenness and power of an 8.0 earthquake.
All of us have, at some point in life, surprised ourselves by our personal behavior. The forces that lead us to such behavior often slowly grow yet may suddenly appear.
When I was young, I made three promises to myself. I decided I would conduct my life so as to avoid three things: I’d never get drunk, never be fired from employment and, most of all, never be divorced. Since I made that pledge at age twenty-one (when I was young and very idealistic), I have experienced all three of these states of being.
The first, inebriation, was quite deliberate. Heartsick over the loss of my college sweetheart one Friday night in February of 1973, I went to our college rathskeller (which I understand no longer exists) and chug-a-lugged five or six beers. Although I had a buzz on, I wasn’t certain that I was really drunk except that my walk back to the dormitory on the ice was much easier than my earlier trek to the rathskeller on that very same ice. What surprised me was the degree to which I enjoyed the experience. It caused no anger or resentment nor feeling of personal sorrow — rather, it relaxed me. I remember visiting the room of my resident advisor, David (who had recently broken his leg in a skiing accident) to ask him what he thought of my state of sobriety. “You’re quite drunk, Ed,” he laughingly pronounced. So, off to bed and to sleep I went.
As for my “firing,” my former employer once told me that it was her impression that I wanted to quit — so, she fired me. She had good reason to think that, so “Christians, one, Lions, one,” as they say.
As for my divorce, that’s a story laden with the hopes, fears, needs, and efforts of two people who meant to do nothing but the best for one another and for their children. Neither of us really wanted it; however, we came to believe that it was the best solution to the conflicts we were experiencing.
Yesterday, November 28th, 2010, I reached a milestone in life—the great age of sixty-five years. I can vividly recall when the very idea of reaching such an age was unfathomably distant. Even worse, men and women I knew of that “great age” seemed to be either permanently crotchety, feeble or both. Now, some of them -- especially the ladies --combine energy with lightheartedness and are quite attractive. Hence, age sixty-five is what I am if not who I am and beckons me to make the most of it.
Since yesterday was the first day of a new age, I am asking myself what do I want from the rest of my life?
Over the years, my emphasis has shifted from the sins I was determined to avoid to who I would like to be.
May God grant me the energy to serve and be served, the willingness to need and be needed and, above all, the strength to realize that all forms of human affection are not what people owe me but rather a gift to me. After all, the more I serve, the more I offer, the better prepared I’ll be to face whatever eternity requires of me.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
“What can I do for you?” asks the pretty sales clerk.
“How can I help you?” asks the telephone receptionist.
“What-do-ya need, mac?” chirps the local bar tender.
Usually we know the answers to these questions, because the answer to each of these consists of some kind of transaction. The more intimate or personal these kinds of inquiries, the more powerful they inevitably are.
Most of us consider it reasonably easy to determine what we want from relationships, but that determination is often dependent on factors that have a way of occurring suddenly. A romantic relationship can be especially tricky since each of us brings to a very emotional and, perhaps, even a volatile situation, a lifetime of conflicting hopes, fears, needs, and expectations that defy clear communication.
Forthright communication is the strongest bulwark against disappointment, but forthright communication (some would call it “straight talk”) is invariably governed by conflicting forces and needs from deep within that may be continuously shifting. In other words, what we want from one another or what we have to offer each other often changes -- occasionally with the suddenness and power of an 8.0 earthquake.
All of us have, at some point in life, surprised ourselves by our personal behavior. The forces that lead us to such behavior often slowly grow yet may suddenly appear.
When I was young, I made three promises to myself. I decided I would conduct my life so as to avoid three things: I’d never get drunk, never be fired from employment and, most of all, never be divorced. Since I made that pledge at age twenty-one (when I was young and very idealistic), I have experienced all three of these states of being.
The first, inebriation, was quite deliberate. Heartsick over the loss of my college sweetheart one Friday night in February of 1973, I went to our college rathskeller (which I understand no longer exists) and chug-a-lugged five or six beers. Although I had a buzz on, I wasn’t certain that I was really drunk except that my walk back to the dormitory on the ice was much easier than my earlier trek to the rathskeller on that very same ice. What surprised me was the degree to which I enjoyed the experience. It caused no anger or resentment nor feeling of personal sorrow — rather, it relaxed me. I remember visiting the room of my resident advisor, David (who had recently broken his leg in a skiing accident) to ask him what he thought of my state of sobriety. “You’re quite drunk, Ed,” he laughingly pronounced. So, off to bed and to sleep I went.
As for my “firing,” my former employer once told me that it was her impression that I wanted to quit — so, she fired me. She had good reason to think that, so “Christians, one, Lions, one,” as they say.
As for my divorce, that’s a story laden with the hopes, fears, needs, and efforts of two people who meant to do nothing but the best for one another and for their children. Neither of us really wanted it; however, we came to believe that it was the best solution to the conflicts we were experiencing.
Yesterday, November 28th, 2010, I reached a milestone in life—the great age of sixty-five years. I can vividly recall when the very idea of reaching such an age was unfathomably distant. Even worse, men and women I knew of that “great age” seemed to be either permanently crotchety, feeble or both. Now, some of them -- especially the ladies --combine energy with lightheartedness and are quite attractive. Hence, age sixty-five is what I am if not who I am and beckons me to make the most of it.
Since yesterday was the first day of a new age, I am asking myself what do I want from the rest of my life?
Over the years, my emphasis has shifted from the sins I was determined to avoid to who I would like to be.
May God grant me the energy to serve and be served, the willingness to need and be needed and, above all, the strength to realize that all forms of human affection are not what people owe me but rather a gift to me. After all, the more I serve, the more I offer, the better prepared I’ll be to face whatever eternity requires of me.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, November 22, 2010
AMERICA--STRIPPED OF HER INNOCENCE
By Edwin Cooney
Exactly forty-seven years ago today, John Fitzgerald Kennedy sat in the rear right-hand seat of his presidential limousine. His right hand was raised to about the level of his forehead as he began another of the many waves he’d been sending the excited crowd in Dallas, Texas. Suddenly, his smile turned to a grimace as the first bullet passed through the right side of the back of his neck and exited near the knot of his tie. “My God, I’m hit!” said America’s thirty-fifth president. Those were his final words. Seconds later he was blown away forever.
Ah! But not quite. Instantaneously, he became America’s greatest martyr since Abraham Lincoln. His shocked widow Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, who had been caked in her husband’s blood on that traumatic day, urged the public to think of Jack Kennedy’s presidency as Camelot, a time and a domain of grace and nobility. For over a decade following that heart wrenching weekend, John F. Kennedy was for most Americans the ideal president. He was young, vigorous, intelligent, brave, and handsome. His legacy included the Peace Corps, the Alliance for Progress (the aid program for Latin America) and victory over Nikita Khrushchev in the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. His signature on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Great Britain and the Soviet Union in October 1963 made him a champion of peace. Finally, he was, along with Dr. Martin Luther King, a gallant leader for civil rights.
To listen to his spontaneous responses to reporters’ questions during news conferences is both informative and entertaining. His combination Boston/Harvard accent suggested essential learnedness and polished eloquence; more significantly, however, the manner and tone of his responses clarified the issues and humanized the presidency.
Up until the 1930s and the extensive use of radio and newsreel film by Franklin Roosevelt, the personality of the President of the United States was largely unknown to most Americans. Even then, most Americans were totally unaware of the effect of FDR’s 1921 attack of polio, which was undoubtedly a significant factor affecting FDR’s outlook on life—-public and private. What they did learn, however, was what they needed to know. They learned that he was knowledgeable and that he knew where he wanted to take the nation. His rich, warm, cultured radio voice made him a national lodestar guiding America through the depression. Although obviously a politician, he was the people’s politician and most of them grew to love him.
FDR was followed by “give ‘em hell Harry” Truman: plain looking, plainspoken and a feisty politician. He was a proud father who once wrote to music critic Paul Hume (who was critical of daughter Margaret’s on-stage singing performance) that if he ever met him he’d “need a new nose and plenty of beefsteak.”
Next came Dwight Eisenhower — affable, devoted to the golf course, and a lover of westerns. Ike, America’s most celebrated World War II hero, could be your grandfather as easily as he could be your president and leader of the free world.
Then came Jack Kennedy: young, “vigorous,” glamorous, with a very attractive family who were fun to watch, listen to and even poke fun at. Most everyone who wanted to know the personable chief executive was sure they knew him. After all, like many others he’d gone to war, married a lovely lady, fathered children, loved sports and good cigars. He was a patriot who appeared not to take himself too seriously. Although his performance during the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco showed he wasn’t perfect, all of us understood that nobody’s perfect. So, without quarreling with him, we let him lead us into outer space and through the Berlin Crisis of late 1961. We went to the Berlin Wall and to Ireland with him in 1963. Then, we were in Dallas, Texas with him when so suddenly and irrevocably -- he was gone!
Someone once observed that America awakened on the morning of Saturday, November 23rd, 1963 “stripped of her innocence!” Hence, America and its leaders became real rather than innocent. First up was LBJ and the turmoil of Vietnam. Next came the resentful and deceptive Nixon administration. Then, Jerry Ford pardoned the “chief deceiver.” After that, Jimmy Carter gave away our Panama Canal. Ronald Reagan, who could smell the mistakes of others a mile away, couldn’t recognize his own when he aided the Contras in Nicaragua and broke the very law he signed, George H. W. Bush broke his promise not to raise taxes. Bill Clinton was too self-centered to realize when he was misusing the Oval Office. George W. Bush deceived himself and his fellow citizens with a war to prevent the use of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Finally, President Barack Obama apologized to the “Third World” for mistakes most Americans don’t believe America really made.
If America, stripped of her innocence, is now living more realistically… pardon me, but I’m headed straight back to Camelot!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Exactly forty-seven years ago today, John Fitzgerald Kennedy sat in the rear right-hand seat of his presidential limousine. His right hand was raised to about the level of his forehead as he began another of the many waves he’d been sending the excited crowd in Dallas, Texas. Suddenly, his smile turned to a grimace as the first bullet passed through the right side of the back of his neck and exited near the knot of his tie. “My God, I’m hit!” said America’s thirty-fifth president. Those were his final words. Seconds later he was blown away forever.
Ah! But not quite. Instantaneously, he became America’s greatest martyr since Abraham Lincoln. His shocked widow Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, who had been caked in her husband’s blood on that traumatic day, urged the public to think of Jack Kennedy’s presidency as Camelot, a time and a domain of grace and nobility. For over a decade following that heart wrenching weekend, John F. Kennedy was for most Americans the ideal president. He was young, vigorous, intelligent, brave, and handsome. His legacy included the Peace Corps, the Alliance for Progress (the aid program for Latin America) and victory over Nikita Khrushchev in the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. His signature on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Great Britain and the Soviet Union in October 1963 made him a champion of peace. Finally, he was, along with Dr. Martin Luther King, a gallant leader for civil rights.
To listen to his spontaneous responses to reporters’ questions during news conferences is both informative and entertaining. His combination Boston/Harvard accent suggested essential learnedness and polished eloquence; more significantly, however, the manner and tone of his responses clarified the issues and humanized the presidency.
Up until the 1930s and the extensive use of radio and newsreel film by Franklin Roosevelt, the personality of the President of the United States was largely unknown to most Americans. Even then, most Americans were totally unaware of the effect of FDR’s 1921 attack of polio, which was undoubtedly a significant factor affecting FDR’s outlook on life—-public and private. What they did learn, however, was what they needed to know. They learned that he was knowledgeable and that he knew where he wanted to take the nation. His rich, warm, cultured radio voice made him a national lodestar guiding America through the depression. Although obviously a politician, he was the people’s politician and most of them grew to love him.
FDR was followed by “give ‘em hell Harry” Truman: plain looking, plainspoken and a feisty politician. He was a proud father who once wrote to music critic Paul Hume (who was critical of daughter Margaret’s on-stage singing performance) that if he ever met him he’d “need a new nose and plenty of beefsteak.”
Next came Dwight Eisenhower — affable, devoted to the golf course, and a lover of westerns. Ike, America’s most celebrated World War II hero, could be your grandfather as easily as he could be your president and leader of the free world.
Then came Jack Kennedy: young, “vigorous,” glamorous, with a very attractive family who were fun to watch, listen to and even poke fun at. Most everyone who wanted to know the personable chief executive was sure they knew him. After all, like many others he’d gone to war, married a lovely lady, fathered children, loved sports and good cigars. He was a patriot who appeared not to take himself too seriously. Although his performance during the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco showed he wasn’t perfect, all of us understood that nobody’s perfect. So, without quarreling with him, we let him lead us into outer space and through the Berlin Crisis of late 1961. We went to the Berlin Wall and to Ireland with him in 1963. Then, we were in Dallas, Texas with him when so suddenly and irrevocably -- he was gone!
Someone once observed that America awakened on the morning of Saturday, November 23rd, 1963 “stripped of her innocence!” Hence, America and its leaders became real rather than innocent. First up was LBJ and the turmoil of Vietnam. Next came the resentful and deceptive Nixon administration. Then, Jerry Ford pardoned the “chief deceiver.” After that, Jimmy Carter gave away our Panama Canal. Ronald Reagan, who could smell the mistakes of others a mile away, couldn’t recognize his own when he aided the Contras in Nicaragua and broke the very law he signed, George H. W. Bush broke his promise not to raise taxes. Bill Clinton was too self-centered to realize when he was misusing the Oval Office. George W. Bush deceived himself and his fellow citizens with a war to prevent the use of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Finally, President Barack Obama apologized to the “Third World” for mistakes most Americans don’t believe America really made.
If America, stripped of her innocence, is now living more realistically… pardon me, but I’m headed straight back to Camelot!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, November 15, 2010
WHEN WAR GLORY PREVAILS
By Edwin Cooney
Last Thursday being Veteran’s Day, it was almost inevitable that I would hear once again Sergeant Barry Sadler’s big 1966 hit “The Ballad of the Green Berets.”
As I listened to Sergeant Sadler’s description of these men with “silver wings upon their chests,” I was both stirred and saddened. I was stirred by my memory of the time the song was popular and by its description of men of patriotism. However, I was saddened by the idea that the fighting man represents “America’s best.”
Those of us born between 1940 and 1960 were raised on the glorious deeds of those who fought and died for our freedom during World War II. We revered the flag and loved the soldier, most of all perhaps, the handsome and daring marine. We were thrilled with the memory of FDR’s and especially Winston Churchill’s wartime eloquence. We only hoped that as the Soviet menace threatened to engulf us, we would be as well protected by our current leaders as we were by those of yesterday.
Then came the war in Vietnam. Suddenly, what President Eisenhower once identified as the “Military-Industrial Complex” joined forces with our political establishment to convince an increasingly dubious younger generation that unquestioning military service was a patriotic obligation that went along with one’s American birthright! Thus, as the war dragged on and the number of casualties increased, many Americans began to see the military mindset as being coldly indifferent to young America’s legitimate anguish regarding the wisdom, legality and even the morality of that war.
Hence, many Americans invariably vented their frustration and anger with the Vietnam War on Vietnam veterans whether they reluctantly or enthusiastically answered the calls of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon to fight Vietnam’s civil war. For the brave soldiers of the mid and late 1960s and 1970s there would be fewer benefits and much less appreciation than their World War II fathers and uncles enjoyed.
One has to be 50 years old to have experienced the anguish of Vietnam. Most people today believe that President Reagan’s willingness to play nuclear stick-em-up more than the decay of the Soviet system ended the cold war. Today’s veterans recall with pride President George H. W. Bush’s glorious adventures into Panama and the Persian Gulf. President Clinton even gets a grudging pat on the back for limited casualties during the 1999 conflict in the Balkans. As for President George W. Bush, criticism of his Iraqi conquest is somewhat muffled due to the comparative sizes of the Iraqi versus Vietnamese war casualty lists. Additionally, our national political leadership has become savvy enough to devise ways to keep the horrors of war off television. Presidents today don’t have to wonder as did LBJ and RMN how well the war news as edited by independent evening network news broadcasters is being digested at America’s supper tables.
While listening to the lyrics of Sergeant Sadler’s forty-four year-old hit, I wondered: were the men of the Green Berets really “America’s best?” Was it then and is it now wise to believe that men whose mission is internationally sanctioned murder, even in the defense of freedom, are delivering the “best” America has to offer? Even more, isn’t it sad that Sergeant Sadler’s Green Beret hero’s fondest wish for his son is that he too may wear “silver wings upon his chest” and thus perhaps suffer his father’s fate!
Surely, modern America stands for political, social, economic and religious freedom to a greater degree than any other nation in the world. However, I find the following perspective compelling even when considering how legitimate and necessary our military establishment is to protect our national sovereignty. The need for fighting men and women really and truly represents human failure more than it does human glory! Certainly, we are right to honor the bravery, patriotism and “supreme sacrifice” of what Dwight D. Eisenhower used to refer to as “the regular soldier.” Ike used to insist that “…a soldier is an agent of his government to do a very necessary and desperate task.”
Unlike the doctor who cures illness, the teacher who dispenses knowledge or the preacher who instills religious faith, the courageous soldier’s skills and tasks are at the command of often willful, greedy, suspicious and egocentric national leaders of numerous ideologies. Remember, during wartime, cruelty, courage and valor visit all sides.
Even as the individual soldier’s glory legitimately shines in all of our hearts, we can be sure of two realities. The “regular soldier” never starts a war—and thus all honor is due to his name. However, excessive glorification of his suffering and death invariably fuels the righteous anger that makes future wars almost inevitable.
Of course, we should celebrate Memorial and Veterans Days so long as we’re determined to honor the memory of all veterans by making the future safer than the world we called on them to “please, please save!”
As for “America’s best,” I nominate the men and women of the American Red Cross!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Last Thursday being Veteran’s Day, it was almost inevitable that I would hear once again Sergeant Barry Sadler’s big 1966 hit “The Ballad of the Green Berets.”
As I listened to Sergeant Sadler’s description of these men with “silver wings upon their chests,” I was both stirred and saddened. I was stirred by my memory of the time the song was popular and by its description of men of patriotism. However, I was saddened by the idea that the fighting man represents “America’s best.”
Those of us born between 1940 and 1960 were raised on the glorious deeds of those who fought and died for our freedom during World War II. We revered the flag and loved the soldier, most of all perhaps, the handsome and daring marine. We were thrilled with the memory of FDR’s and especially Winston Churchill’s wartime eloquence. We only hoped that as the Soviet menace threatened to engulf us, we would be as well protected by our current leaders as we were by those of yesterday.
Then came the war in Vietnam. Suddenly, what President Eisenhower once identified as the “Military-Industrial Complex” joined forces with our political establishment to convince an increasingly dubious younger generation that unquestioning military service was a patriotic obligation that went along with one’s American birthright! Thus, as the war dragged on and the number of casualties increased, many Americans began to see the military mindset as being coldly indifferent to young America’s legitimate anguish regarding the wisdom, legality and even the morality of that war.
Hence, many Americans invariably vented their frustration and anger with the Vietnam War on Vietnam veterans whether they reluctantly or enthusiastically answered the calls of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon to fight Vietnam’s civil war. For the brave soldiers of the mid and late 1960s and 1970s there would be fewer benefits and much less appreciation than their World War II fathers and uncles enjoyed.
One has to be 50 years old to have experienced the anguish of Vietnam. Most people today believe that President Reagan’s willingness to play nuclear stick-em-up more than the decay of the Soviet system ended the cold war. Today’s veterans recall with pride President George H. W. Bush’s glorious adventures into Panama and the Persian Gulf. President Clinton even gets a grudging pat on the back for limited casualties during the 1999 conflict in the Balkans. As for President George W. Bush, criticism of his Iraqi conquest is somewhat muffled due to the comparative sizes of the Iraqi versus Vietnamese war casualty lists. Additionally, our national political leadership has become savvy enough to devise ways to keep the horrors of war off television. Presidents today don’t have to wonder as did LBJ and RMN how well the war news as edited by independent evening network news broadcasters is being digested at America’s supper tables.
While listening to the lyrics of Sergeant Sadler’s forty-four year-old hit, I wondered: were the men of the Green Berets really “America’s best?” Was it then and is it now wise to believe that men whose mission is internationally sanctioned murder, even in the defense of freedom, are delivering the “best” America has to offer? Even more, isn’t it sad that Sergeant Sadler’s Green Beret hero’s fondest wish for his son is that he too may wear “silver wings upon his chest” and thus perhaps suffer his father’s fate!
Surely, modern America stands for political, social, economic and religious freedom to a greater degree than any other nation in the world. However, I find the following perspective compelling even when considering how legitimate and necessary our military establishment is to protect our national sovereignty. The need for fighting men and women really and truly represents human failure more than it does human glory! Certainly, we are right to honor the bravery, patriotism and “supreme sacrifice” of what Dwight D. Eisenhower used to refer to as “the regular soldier.” Ike used to insist that “…a soldier is an agent of his government to do a very necessary and desperate task.”
Unlike the doctor who cures illness, the teacher who dispenses knowledge or the preacher who instills religious faith, the courageous soldier’s skills and tasks are at the command of often willful, greedy, suspicious and egocentric national leaders of numerous ideologies. Remember, during wartime, cruelty, courage and valor visit all sides.
Even as the individual soldier’s glory legitimately shines in all of our hearts, we can be sure of two realities. The “regular soldier” never starts a war—and thus all honor is due to his name. However, excessive glorification of his suffering and death invariably fuels the righteous anger that makes future wars almost inevitable.
Of course, we should celebrate Memorial and Veterans Days so long as we’re determined to honor the memory of all veterans by making the future safer than the world we called on them to “please, please save!”
As for “America’s best,” I nominate the men and women of the American Red Cross!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, November 1, 2010
THE WORLD SERIES—AMERICA’S TRADITION OF UNPREDICTABILITY
By Edwin Cooney
As excited San Franciscans and Dallas/Arlingtonians wrap themselves in the passion of the 106th World Series, they’re merely carrying on a tradition -- and tradition is as American as cherry pie.
Teddy Roosevelt was President when the Boston Americans (now known as the Red Sox) took on the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first modern fall classic. The date was Thursday, October 1st, 1903. The place was the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston, Massachusetts.
Boston’s starter was Cy (Denton True) Young who would retire with a career record of 511 wins and 316 losses. His opponent was Deacon (Charles Louis) Phillippe whose career totals would be a mere 186 wins and 108 losses. One would naturally expect that the great Cy Young would win the first World Series game, except that Deacon Phillippe was the unpredictable 7 to 3 victor. The series would go for eight games and be determined when Boston clinched their fifth win in the best five out of nine series. Again, it wasn’t Cy Young who brought the glory to Boston, but “Big Bill” William Henry Dinneen who picked up three of Boston’s triumphs—Young getting the other two. The series would conclude on Tuesday, October 13th. In case you wondered, Bill Dinneen would actually have a losing career record of 170 wins and 177 losses.
On the opening day of the 1918 World Series, baseball spontaneously began a tradition. In the middle of the seventh inning, a military band played “The Star Spangled Banner.” Ever since that Thursday, September 5th (the earliest ever date for a World Series opener), the “Star Spangled Banner” hasn’t missed a major league game. That day’s tribute to Americans fighting and dying on the battlefields of World War I might well have been a factor in the decision by Congress and President Herbert Hoover to make Francis Scott Key’s poem and John Stafford Smith’s British men’s social club drinking song the National Anthem for America. Once again tradition and unpredictability became World Series partners.
As this is written, the San Francisco Giants appear to have a solid 2 games to nothing grip on the series outcome, but then again, numerous times teams down 2 games to nothing have triumphed as “World Champs.” For example:
The 1955 World Champion Brooklyn Dodgers were down 2 games to nothing before beating the Yankees for their first World Series triumph after eight tries. They’d lost to the Red Sox in 1916; to the Indians in 1920; and to the Yankees in 1941, 47, 49, 52 and 53.
The 1965 Los Angeles Dodgers had to come back from a 2/zip deficit to beat the Minnesota Twins in seven games.
The 1971 Pirates and the 1996 Yankees dropped their first two games to their opponents (the Orioles and the Braves, respectively) before bringing home the World Series bacon.
Then there are the sideline unpredictabilities about the World Series: how about the 1989 earthquake series between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A’s? The A’s would sweep the Giants, but it would take two weeks rather than five days. At 5:04 p.m. on Tuesday, October 17th, Candlestick Park was rocked by a 6.9 earthquake resulting in a loss of power to the stadium and a shaken community. Ten days later, on Friday, October 27th,, the series resumed and the A’s completed their sweep.
Who’d have predicted the “impossible dream” Red Sox of 1967? They never expected to get into the series and yet they took the favored Cardinals to seven games. Who would have predicted “The Miracle Mets of 1969” who, after losing the opener to the heavily favored Orioles, would win the next four in a row.
Then there was the spectacle in the 2002 World Series with Giants’ first baseman J. T. Snow, scooping up the team’s tiny bat boy, Manager Dusty Baker’s 3 year-old son, as he scored from second base on an extra base hit. The little fellow had wandered from the dugout onto the field while his father was otherwise occupied. Had there been a violent play at home plate consisting of a throw from the outfield and a home plate collision, there could have been a disaster.
Sports writers and fans will attempt to balance Giants’ pitching against the speed and power of the Rangers. Home field advantage will be weighed against momentum—which many insist doesn’t exist in baseball. Some will anguish for the Giants who haven’t won a World Series since they left New York 52 years ago. Others insist that justice requires a Rangers’ victory because they’ve never even been in a World Series. (Besides, in Texas, The Texas Rangers always get their target!) Therein lies the heart of the World Series story, Baseball’s traditional unpredictability. It’s about hope and disappointment. If “underdogs” only occasionally win (like the 1960 Pirates over the Yankees exactly 50 years ago), it’s all the sweeter to their fans.
Victory brings hope for more victory, yet loss is never quite strong enough to quench hope.
As for hope, it’s as traditional to Americans as the World Series and cherry pie!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
As excited San Franciscans and Dallas/Arlingtonians wrap themselves in the passion of the 106th World Series, they’re merely carrying on a tradition -- and tradition is as American as cherry pie.
Teddy Roosevelt was President when the Boston Americans (now known as the Red Sox) took on the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first modern fall classic. The date was Thursday, October 1st, 1903. The place was the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston, Massachusetts.
Boston’s starter was Cy (Denton True) Young who would retire with a career record of 511 wins and 316 losses. His opponent was Deacon (Charles Louis) Phillippe whose career totals would be a mere 186 wins and 108 losses. One would naturally expect that the great Cy Young would win the first World Series game, except that Deacon Phillippe was the unpredictable 7 to 3 victor. The series would go for eight games and be determined when Boston clinched their fifth win in the best five out of nine series. Again, it wasn’t Cy Young who brought the glory to Boston, but “Big Bill” William Henry Dinneen who picked up three of Boston’s triumphs—Young getting the other two. The series would conclude on Tuesday, October 13th. In case you wondered, Bill Dinneen would actually have a losing career record of 170 wins and 177 losses.
On the opening day of the 1918 World Series, baseball spontaneously began a tradition. In the middle of the seventh inning, a military band played “The Star Spangled Banner.” Ever since that Thursday, September 5th (the earliest ever date for a World Series opener), the “Star Spangled Banner” hasn’t missed a major league game. That day’s tribute to Americans fighting and dying on the battlefields of World War I might well have been a factor in the decision by Congress and President Herbert Hoover to make Francis Scott Key’s poem and John Stafford Smith’s British men’s social club drinking song the National Anthem for America. Once again tradition and unpredictability became World Series partners.
As this is written, the San Francisco Giants appear to have a solid 2 games to nothing grip on the series outcome, but then again, numerous times teams down 2 games to nothing have triumphed as “World Champs.” For example:
The 1955 World Champion Brooklyn Dodgers were down 2 games to nothing before beating the Yankees for their first World Series triumph after eight tries. They’d lost to the Red Sox in 1916; to the Indians in 1920; and to the Yankees in 1941, 47, 49, 52 and 53.
The 1965 Los Angeles Dodgers had to come back from a 2/zip deficit to beat the Minnesota Twins in seven games.
The 1971 Pirates and the 1996 Yankees dropped their first two games to their opponents (the Orioles and the Braves, respectively) before bringing home the World Series bacon.
Then there are the sideline unpredictabilities about the World Series: how about the 1989 earthquake series between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A’s? The A’s would sweep the Giants, but it would take two weeks rather than five days. At 5:04 p.m. on Tuesday, October 17th, Candlestick Park was rocked by a 6.9 earthquake resulting in a loss of power to the stadium and a shaken community. Ten days later, on Friday, October 27th,, the series resumed and the A’s completed their sweep.
Who’d have predicted the “impossible dream” Red Sox of 1967? They never expected to get into the series and yet they took the favored Cardinals to seven games. Who would have predicted “The Miracle Mets of 1969” who, after losing the opener to the heavily favored Orioles, would win the next four in a row.
Then there was the spectacle in the 2002 World Series with Giants’ first baseman J. T. Snow, scooping up the team’s tiny bat boy, Manager Dusty Baker’s 3 year-old son, as he scored from second base on an extra base hit. The little fellow had wandered from the dugout onto the field while his father was otherwise occupied. Had there been a violent play at home plate consisting of a throw from the outfield and a home plate collision, there could have been a disaster.
Sports writers and fans will attempt to balance Giants’ pitching against the speed and power of the Rangers. Home field advantage will be weighed against momentum—which many insist doesn’t exist in baseball. Some will anguish for the Giants who haven’t won a World Series since they left New York 52 years ago. Others insist that justice requires a Rangers’ victory because they’ve never even been in a World Series. (Besides, in Texas, The Texas Rangers always get their target!) Therein lies the heart of the World Series story, Baseball’s traditional unpredictability. It’s about hope and disappointment. If “underdogs” only occasionally win (like the 1960 Pirates over the Yankees exactly 50 years ago), it’s all the sweeter to their fans.
Victory brings hope for more victory, yet loss is never quite strong enough to quench hope.
As for hope, it’s as traditional to Americans as the World Series and cherry pie!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, October 25, 2010
PRIVACY — A LEGITIMATE PRIORITY!
By Edwin Cooney
A couple of weeks ago, a dear friend of mine sent me a most interesting article from the New York Times under his own subject, “A Telling Observation.”
The “telling observation” was a commentary by Brown University Professor John Edgar Wideman who teaches Africana Studies and Literary Arts twice a week at Rhode Island’s most prestigious venue of learning. A resident of “the Big Apple,” Professor Wideman travels to and from his job via Acela train. His route takes him through, as he expresses it, “one of the most educated, affluent, sophisticated and enlightened” areas of population in the northeast.
Over the last two years, he’s made something of a sociological study in which he is both the subject and the observer. A “man of color,” he’s noticed that the seat next to him inevitably remains empty unless the train fills to its capacity. What he didn’t say was whether the empty seat next to him is always the last seat to be occupied when the train fills up. That, it seems to me, would be more convincing than the information he offers us in his October 7th, 2010 commentary.
Nevertheless, Professor Wideman seems to be convinced that his color is why he enjoys the delights and conveniences of extra space along with the occasional pang of loneliness which appears to this observer as the force of energy behind his commentary.
Notably, Professor Wideman points out he suffers not from such maladies as “body odor,” “bad breath,” or, interestingly enough, a deformity of any kind. Hopefully, one would have had to choose the seat right next to the learned gentleman to notice those first two maladies, but “deformity”? Does the good professor really consider physical “deformity” legitimate grounds for social isolation?
My guess is that if one were to put this question directly to Professor Wideman, he would respond “of course not,” yet in this most erudite sociological commentary he uses the very absence of deformity in defense of his own acceptability!
Still, it’s very possible that color is a factor in his twice a week high speed combination of convenience and abandonment.
Many years ago, when I would ride the Greyhound or Trailways buses of upstate New York, I frequently hoped that an attractive lady would choose the seat next to me. After all, despite my disability (which is most notable because I carry a cane and wear dark glasses on the darkest day and in the darkest bus), I was sure that I looked sufficiently handsome and sophisticated in my trench coat, sport coat and newly purchased briar pipe to draw the attention of a most sophisticated, attractive, and sensitive lady. (Yes, indeed, back in the 1960’s, one could even smoke a pipe on long distance bus trips).
Gone today from almost every social situation is the lure of any briar or smoking pipe. I’m still comfortable in a sport coat and, during cold weather, an overcoat. No longer do I particularly care about attractive or sophisticated ladies occupying the seat to my immediate right or left. Still, like most people, when I get on a conveyance of transportation, I have only one primary thing in mind besides my safe and timely arrival.
What Professor Wideman seems to have let get by his notice is the realization that the first thing he and his fellow passengers insist on is their own personal comfort. Such comfort generally requires maximum space, a window seat and, above all, privacy.
A quick glance up and down the aisle of a sparsely occupied train, bus or even a plane will demonstrate that most people prefer the window seat. Furthermore, many people need the time, especially during an hour or two hour commute, to prepare for the day ahead, analyze the day just concluded, or to read or reflect on matters affecting their lives.
It’s my experience that few people commute, even on public transportation, to socialize. Thus, their private sense of well-being inevitably (and I assert legitimately so) has priority.
As for Professor Wideman’s assessment of his twice weekly social status, he is, of course, more than welcome to his private conclusions. Nevertheless, had he taken into consideration the power and the legitimacy of purely private and personal comfort, his conclusion that he’s being isolated because of his color might be, at the very least, altered.
Unless someone’s actions affects another person’s rights or well-being, that individual’s right to privacy ought always to prevail.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
A couple of weeks ago, a dear friend of mine sent me a most interesting article from the New York Times under his own subject, “A Telling Observation.”
The “telling observation” was a commentary by Brown University Professor John Edgar Wideman who teaches Africana Studies and Literary Arts twice a week at Rhode Island’s most prestigious venue of learning. A resident of “the Big Apple,” Professor Wideman travels to and from his job via Acela train. His route takes him through, as he expresses it, “one of the most educated, affluent, sophisticated and enlightened” areas of population in the northeast.
Over the last two years, he’s made something of a sociological study in which he is both the subject and the observer. A “man of color,” he’s noticed that the seat next to him inevitably remains empty unless the train fills to its capacity. What he didn’t say was whether the empty seat next to him is always the last seat to be occupied when the train fills up. That, it seems to me, would be more convincing than the information he offers us in his October 7th, 2010 commentary.
Nevertheless, Professor Wideman seems to be convinced that his color is why he enjoys the delights and conveniences of extra space along with the occasional pang of loneliness which appears to this observer as the force of energy behind his commentary.
Notably, Professor Wideman points out he suffers not from such maladies as “body odor,” “bad breath,” or, interestingly enough, a deformity of any kind. Hopefully, one would have had to choose the seat right next to the learned gentleman to notice those first two maladies, but “deformity”? Does the good professor really consider physical “deformity” legitimate grounds for social isolation?
My guess is that if one were to put this question directly to Professor Wideman, he would respond “of course not,” yet in this most erudite sociological commentary he uses the very absence of deformity in defense of his own acceptability!
Still, it’s very possible that color is a factor in his twice a week high speed combination of convenience and abandonment.
Many years ago, when I would ride the Greyhound or Trailways buses of upstate New York, I frequently hoped that an attractive lady would choose the seat next to me. After all, despite my disability (which is most notable because I carry a cane and wear dark glasses on the darkest day and in the darkest bus), I was sure that I looked sufficiently handsome and sophisticated in my trench coat, sport coat and newly purchased briar pipe to draw the attention of a most sophisticated, attractive, and sensitive lady. (Yes, indeed, back in the 1960’s, one could even smoke a pipe on long distance bus trips).
Gone today from almost every social situation is the lure of any briar or smoking pipe. I’m still comfortable in a sport coat and, during cold weather, an overcoat. No longer do I particularly care about attractive or sophisticated ladies occupying the seat to my immediate right or left. Still, like most people, when I get on a conveyance of transportation, I have only one primary thing in mind besides my safe and timely arrival.
What Professor Wideman seems to have let get by his notice is the realization that the first thing he and his fellow passengers insist on is their own personal comfort. Such comfort generally requires maximum space, a window seat and, above all, privacy.
A quick glance up and down the aisle of a sparsely occupied train, bus or even a plane will demonstrate that most people prefer the window seat. Furthermore, many people need the time, especially during an hour or two hour commute, to prepare for the day ahead, analyze the day just concluded, or to read or reflect on matters affecting their lives.
It’s my experience that few people commute, even on public transportation, to socialize. Thus, their private sense of well-being inevitably (and I assert legitimately so) has priority.
As for Professor Wideman’s assessment of his twice weekly social status, he is, of course, more than welcome to his private conclusions. Nevertheless, had he taken into consideration the power and the legitimacy of purely private and personal comfort, his conclusion that he’s being isolated because of his color might be, at the very least, altered.
Unless someone’s actions affects another person’s rights or well-being, that individual’s right to privacy ought always to prevail.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, October 18, 2010
THE MISSION THAT COULD HAVE MATTERED
BY EDWIN COONEY
As one observes with foreboding the conflict in the Middle East, it’s only natural to wonder sometimes if this current “sorry pass” might have been averted with a little diplomatic ingenuity. It’s probable that historians (one of which I am not!) will disagree with me, but I believe that it nearly was.
It is Saturday night, February 10th, 1945. Winston Churchill, the cherubic “English bulldog” with his dramatic elocution and ever-present cigar, is hosting a dinner at Vorontsov Palace in the Russian Crimea Peninsula for his two world leader colleagues, Joseph Stalin and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Everyone knows that World War II will soon be over in Europe and they believe that it will probably take another year and a half to defeat Japan.
Big decisions have been made during the last seven days by the “Big Three” powers. They include such weighty matters as: a reluctant Russia’s membership in the United Nations; the granting of world power status to China and France; the governance of a defeated Germany; the disposition of property and geography in China (although minus the consent of the Chinese government); the issue of free elections in Poland (which President Roosevelt knows full well is not enforceable although he hopes for Stalin’s good faith); and, finally, participation in the war against Japan by the Soviet Union.
All these issues have been debated and concluded. Some of these decisions are secret. Some of these decisions, when made public, will be seen as weak and even deceitful by many. But they have been made and each leader believes that although the price has been very high, he has attained the best outcome he could possibly hope for.
Mr. Churchill has ordered a large rib roast and asked his chef to prepare some Russian delicacies. The champagne, vodka, and other libations are flowing and the toasts are coming thick and fast. FDR is seated in one of his light mobile wheelchairs which fits easily into his automobile. He’s holding a drink and puffing on a cigarette through his long ivory cigarette holder as Joseph Stalin, the short, stubby-fingered mustachioed little man whose power and capacity for cruelty is easily and often masked by his quiet speaking style and demeanor, is bent over the president’s wheelchair. He is inviting FDR to spend a little more time on the Crimea. Roosevelt replies that he’d like to, but he has three kings waiting to see him.
The three kings are King Farouk of Egypt, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. It’s about the Palestinian question FDR tells Stalin. Then he tells the Russian dictator: “I am a Zionist,” and he then asks Stalin if he’s a Zionist. Stalin replies that he is one in principle, but that there are difficulties.
On January thirtieth, only eleven days before this dinner, FDR had celebrated his sixty-third birthday. Although he is the youngest of the Big Three in age, he is the oldest in body. Advanced arteriosclerosis has left his polio-ravaged body exhausted. Although he is neither psychotic nor neurotic, he is irritable at times, non-attentive now and then, and occasionally —although not too often—can be observed staring off into space. Lord Moran, Winston Churchill’s physician, has already told the Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius that the President is obviously suffering from arteriosclerosis of the brain and that he gives him only a few more months to live. Even Stalin has been moved enough to comment that had he known how ill FDR was, he would have agreed to meet somewhere in the Mediterranean. His condition is even obvious to one of the maids assigned to service his bed room at Livadia Palace, the American headquarters at the Crimean conference. At one point she bursts into tears and sobs out: “That sweet, sweet man -- he’s so ill!”
In short, FDR would like to go straight home from the conference of the Big Three, but this most democratic of men must first converse with three royals. The plight of the Jews is on his mind. Some would hope it was on his conscience believing as they do that he was far too slow to recognize the wanton slaughter of Jews by the Nazis throughout the war. Some bitterly resent the fact that he let an old colleague, Breckenridge Long from the Wilson administration, get away with blocking Jewish immigration at a time when their very existence was in mortal peril.
Thus it was that as his plane left Russian soil on the day following the Big Three’s final clinking of glasses, its wheels touched down in Cairo, Egypt, rather than in Washington, D.C. His destination was the U.S.S. Quincy which was anchored on the Indian Ocean side of the Suez Canal. There, on Tuesday, the 13th and Wednesday, the 14th, he would confer with the three monarchs.
Neither Secretary of State Stettinius nor the president’s old and trusted friend Harry “the Hop” Hopkins had any idea what FDR hoped to achieve by meeting this triumvirate of mid-east royalty. Perhaps FDR himself wasn’t sure either. But meet them he did.
His meetings with Farouk and Selassie were anticlimactic at best. Staple cotton and American tourism were the only subjects he discussed with the twenty-five-year-old Farouk whose portliness was very apparent from behind sunglasses and within an admiral’s uniform.
The president’s meeting later that Tuesday with Haile Selassie, the five foot three “Lion of Judah,” was even of less substance. FDR began the conversation by comparing his dark blue Navy Cape with the monarch’s off-white one. Next he thanked Salassie for donating land and buildings for the American Legation in his capital of Addis Ababa. Finally, he expressed the hope for continuing Ethiopian domestic improvements as well as for smooth Ethiopian American diplomatic relations.
His meeting with Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia was more substantial. As exhausted as he was, FDR had enough energy to put on his famous charm. Prior to Ibn Saud’s arrival aboard the Quincy, FDR had given his daughter Anna a choice of remaining in her state room during Saud’s visit or shopping in Cairo. He explained to Anna that as a Moslem King, Saud forbade the presence of women when conducting business. He also told her that his religion required of him that if he saw an attractive young lady while conducting business, he must confiscate her. Anna chose to go shopping in Cairo.
Ibn Saud--who was so physically heavy as well as weakened by arthritis that he had to be lifted aboard the Quincy in a whale boat to the salute of American artillery—was a medieval monarch. He brought along such officials as his privy counselor, leader of the palace prayers, his astrologer and fortune teller, his chamberlain, his purse bearer, his food taster, his ceremonial coffee taster and assistant coffee taster, nine slaves, porters, and scullions—to name only a few.
Diplomatic compliments and oil were first on the agenda. Next came “the Palestinian question”. The president knew that Ibn Saud wasn’t happy about the settlement of Jews in Palestine. He took along a map to demonstrate to the Saudi Arabian King just how small the territory that was being set aside for a Jewish homeland really was. Additionally, he tried to convince King Saud how industrious Jews were and what good neighbors they would make by appealing to the king’s domestic concerns. Wouldn’t the king like to see his deserts bloom? The king responded that he was a warrior—nothing more and nothing less. He had conquered the ten other tribes of Arabia and had some of their ranking members with him. No one was sure whether they were guests or hostages.
To FDR’s surprise, the king was ready for him. Sure, the Jews were transforming desert into farmland, but if the English and French gave Arabs as much money as they gave Jews, “Arabs would do the same.” He complained bitterly to FDR that Palestinian Jews were forming militias, not to fight the Germans but to fight Arabs. When the president appealed to him as a farmer (FDR. always thought of himself as something of a farmer), the king responded that the world needed deserts as much as it did farms and besides—once again--he was a warrior. In short, all of the president’s charm and powers of persuasion couldn’t budge him.
The king said that if the Jews confined themselves to the area FDR had pointed to, perhaps war could be prevented—although he gave no assurances. FDR told the king that he liked Arabs and wouldn’t encourage the Jews to go beyond the current boundaries of Palestine.
As with King Farouk and Emperor Haile Salassie, there were gifts of planes and automobiles—along with mementos of FDR’s recent fourth inauguration. For Ibn Saud, however, there was a special gift. The king admired the lightweight wheelchair the president was using. FDR ordered his spare aluminum wheelchair to be brought and presented to His Majesty. The bulky arthritic old warrior liked it for its maneuverability—it would be most useful to him and the president would have three additional wheelchairs delivered for the king’s pleasure. In parting, FDR told the king that he had learned more about the true situation in the Middle East from the king in five minutes than he had known in an entire lifetime. This assertion stunned Harry “the Hop” because, after all, Roosevelt had only been told what everyone else already knew—that Arabs didn’t want Jews settling in Palestine.
So, that was it and Anna avoided confiscation. As for King Farouk, he would reign for nearly eight more years before being overthrown and executed by his colonels in 1953. Haile Selassie would come to the United States numerous times, but most memorably during President Kennedy’s 1963 funeral when his dignity and manner stood out among international leaders as they paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue.
February 1945, was, of course, near the end for the president. Gone was the righteous leader of the past. He could now sit and listen to the opposition and grant that their position had some merit. Yet, he was still the most powerful individual leader on earth. He, more than anyone else at the meeting of the “Big Three” perhaps, saw the importance of the Palestinian question—if peace were to really and truly last. Stalin was indifferent to it, and as for Churchill, it was strictly a British problem. He couldn’t imagine why Roosevelt even wanted to bother with it.
Perhaps, had the president lived, or at least if he had passed on to Vice President Truman the ideas he might have possessed regarding a more diplomatic way to establish a Jewish homeland, things might have been different. Suppose, for example, the newly established Jewish state had been sufficiently pressured to exist for a period under direct United Nations mandate with Jerusalem also under United Nations mandate as an international city. Perhaps, just perhaps, Arabs might have kept their powder dry. Perhaps, just perhaps, if FDR had made the Palestinian question a part of the Crimean Conference Agenda, Stalin might have joined with Roosevelt in agreeing to withhold armaments from both sides in the foreseen conflict. After all, both the United States and the Soviet Union would be targets for financial pocket-picking by all sides in future international conflicts!
FDR’s instincts for the peace and prosperity of humanity were still present even though his energy for political gamesmanship had waned. As a young man he had been almost as enthusiastic as his distant cousin Teddy Roosevelt for glory on the battlefield. But polio and the needs of the poor and the hungry had made their mark on his soul.
Thus, even as his own life was ending, Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew that the pain of past outrages would ultimately only be soothed by the blessings of those things which nourish both body and soul. He had traveled beyond the conference at Yalta to confer with three kings. Two of them, Farouk and Selassie, he must have sensed were ineffectual. To the most powerful and potentially most dangerous, he appealed as a farmer.
Sadly however, Ibn Saud was a warrior and, what is more, he insisted on being thought of as a warrior. FDR’s mission might have mattered if he could only have convinced the old king that the peace and security of all that he cared for could most assuredly be protected by the most outstanding warriors of them all—farmers, soldiers in the eternal war against hunger!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Originally posted October 18, 2006
BY EDWIN COONEY
As one observes with foreboding the conflict in the Middle East, it’s only natural to wonder sometimes if this current “sorry pass” might have been averted with a little diplomatic ingenuity. It’s probable that historians (one of which I am not!) will disagree with me, but I believe that it nearly was.
It is Saturday night, February 10th, 1945. Winston Churchill, the cherubic “English bulldog” with his dramatic elocution and ever-present cigar, is hosting a dinner at Vorontsov Palace in the Russian Crimea Peninsula for his two world leader colleagues, Joseph Stalin and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Everyone knows that World War II will soon be over in Europe and they believe that it will probably take another year and a half to defeat Japan.
Big decisions have been made during the last seven days by the “Big Three” powers. They include such weighty matters as: a reluctant Russia’s membership in the United Nations; the granting of world power status to China and France; the governance of a defeated Germany; the disposition of property and geography in China (although minus the consent of the Chinese government); the issue of free elections in Poland (which President Roosevelt knows full well is not enforceable although he hopes for Stalin’s good faith); and, finally, participation in the war against Japan by the Soviet Union.
All these issues have been debated and concluded. Some of these decisions are secret. Some of these decisions, when made public, will be seen as weak and even deceitful by many. But they have been made and each leader believes that although the price has been very high, he has attained the best outcome he could possibly hope for.
Mr. Churchill has ordered a large rib roast and asked his chef to prepare some Russian delicacies. The champagne, vodka, and other libations are flowing and the toasts are coming thick and fast. FDR is seated in one of his light mobile wheelchairs which fits easily into his automobile. He’s holding a drink and puffing on a cigarette through his long ivory cigarette holder as Joseph Stalin, the short, stubby-fingered mustachioed little man whose power and capacity for cruelty is easily and often masked by his quiet speaking style and demeanor, is bent over the president’s wheelchair. He is inviting FDR to spend a little more time on the Crimea. Roosevelt replies that he’d like to, but he has three kings waiting to see him.
The three kings are King Farouk of Egypt, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. It’s about the Palestinian question FDR tells Stalin. Then he tells the Russian dictator: “I am a Zionist,” and he then asks Stalin if he’s a Zionist. Stalin replies that he is one in principle, but that there are difficulties.
On January thirtieth, only eleven days before this dinner, FDR had celebrated his sixty-third birthday. Although he is the youngest of the Big Three in age, he is the oldest in body. Advanced arteriosclerosis has left his polio-ravaged body exhausted. Although he is neither psychotic nor neurotic, he is irritable at times, non-attentive now and then, and occasionally —although not too often—can be observed staring off into space. Lord Moran, Winston Churchill’s physician, has already told the Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius that the President is obviously suffering from arteriosclerosis of the brain and that he gives him only a few more months to live. Even Stalin has been moved enough to comment that had he known how ill FDR was, he would have agreed to meet somewhere in the Mediterranean. His condition is even obvious to one of the maids assigned to service his bed room at Livadia Palace, the American headquarters at the Crimean conference. At one point she bursts into tears and sobs out: “That sweet, sweet man -- he’s so ill!”
In short, FDR would like to go straight home from the conference of the Big Three, but this most democratic of men must first converse with three royals. The plight of the Jews is on his mind. Some would hope it was on his conscience believing as they do that he was far too slow to recognize the wanton slaughter of Jews by the Nazis throughout the war. Some bitterly resent the fact that he let an old colleague, Breckenridge Long from the Wilson administration, get away with blocking Jewish immigration at a time when their very existence was in mortal peril.
Thus it was that as his plane left Russian soil on the day following the Big Three’s final clinking of glasses, its wheels touched down in Cairo, Egypt, rather than in Washington, D.C. His destination was the U.S.S. Quincy which was anchored on the Indian Ocean side of the Suez Canal. There, on Tuesday, the 13th and Wednesday, the 14th, he would confer with the three monarchs.
Neither Secretary of State Stettinius nor the president’s old and trusted friend Harry “the Hop” Hopkins had any idea what FDR hoped to achieve by meeting this triumvirate of mid-east royalty. Perhaps FDR himself wasn’t sure either. But meet them he did.
His meetings with Farouk and Selassie were anticlimactic at best. Staple cotton and American tourism were the only subjects he discussed with the twenty-five-year-old Farouk whose portliness was very apparent from behind sunglasses and within an admiral’s uniform.
The president’s meeting later that Tuesday with Haile Selassie, the five foot three “Lion of Judah,” was even of less substance. FDR began the conversation by comparing his dark blue Navy Cape with the monarch’s off-white one. Next he thanked Salassie for donating land and buildings for the American Legation in his capital of Addis Ababa. Finally, he expressed the hope for continuing Ethiopian domestic improvements as well as for smooth Ethiopian American diplomatic relations.
His meeting with Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia was more substantial. As exhausted as he was, FDR had enough energy to put on his famous charm. Prior to Ibn Saud’s arrival aboard the Quincy, FDR had given his daughter Anna a choice of remaining in her state room during Saud’s visit or shopping in Cairo. He explained to Anna that as a Moslem King, Saud forbade the presence of women when conducting business. He also told her that his religion required of him that if he saw an attractive young lady while conducting business, he must confiscate her. Anna chose to go shopping in Cairo.
Ibn Saud--who was so physically heavy as well as weakened by arthritis that he had to be lifted aboard the Quincy in a whale boat to the salute of American artillery—was a medieval monarch. He brought along such officials as his privy counselor, leader of the palace prayers, his astrologer and fortune teller, his chamberlain, his purse bearer, his food taster, his ceremonial coffee taster and assistant coffee taster, nine slaves, porters, and scullions—to name only a few.
Diplomatic compliments and oil were first on the agenda. Next came “the Palestinian question”. The president knew that Ibn Saud wasn’t happy about the settlement of Jews in Palestine. He took along a map to demonstrate to the Saudi Arabian King just how small the territory that was being set aside for a Jewish homeland really was. Additionally, he tried to convince King Saud how industrious Jews were and what good neighbors they would make by appealing to the king’s domestic concerns. Wouldn’t the king like to see his deserts bloom? The king responded that he was a warrior—nothing more and nothing less. He had conquered the ten other tribes of Arabia and had some of their ranking members with him. No one was sure whether they were guests or hostages.
To FDR’s surprise, the king was ready for him. Sure, the Jews were transforming desert into farmland, but if the English and French gave Arabs as much money as they gave Jews, “Arabs would do the same.” He complained bitterly to FDR that Palestinian Jews were forming militias, not to fight the Germans but to fight Arabs. When the president appealed to him as a farmer (FDR. always thought of himself as something of a farmer), the king responded that the world needed deserts as much as it did farms and besides—once again--he was a warrior. In short, all of the president’s charm and powers of persuasion couldn’t budge him.
The king said that if the Jews confined themselves to the area FDR had pointed to, perhaps war could be prevented—although he gave no assurances. FDR told the king that he liked Arabs and wouldn’t encourage the Jews to go beyond the current boundaries of Palestine.
As with King Farouk and Emperor Haile Salassie, there were gifts of planes and automobiles—along with mementos of FDR’s recent fourth inauguration. For Ibn Saud, however, there was a special gift. The king admired the lightweight wheelchair the president was using. FDR ordered his spare aluminum wheelchair to be brought and presented to His Majesty. The bulky arthritic old warrior liked it for its maneuverability—it would be most useful to him and the president would have three additional wheelchairs delivered for the king’s pleasure. In parting, FDR told the king that he had learned more about the true situation in the Middle East from the king in five minutes than he had known in an entire lifetime. This assertion stunned Harry “the Hop” because, after all, Roosevelt had only been told what everyone else already knew—that Arabs didn’t want Jews settling in Palestine.
So, that was it and Anna avoided confiscation. As for King Farouk, he would reign for nearly eight more years before being overthrown and executed by his colonels in 1953. Haile Selassie would come to the United States numerous times, but most memorably during President Kennedy’s 1963 funeral when his dignity and manner stood out among international leaders as they paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue.
February 1945, was, of course, near the end for the president. Gone was the righteous leader of the past. He could now sit and listen to the opposition and grant that their position had some merit. Yet, he was still the most powerful individual leader on earth. He, more than anyone else at the meeting of the “Big Three” perhaps, saw the importance of the Palestinian question—if peace were to really and truly last. Stalin was indifferent to it, and as for Churchill, it was strictly a British problem. He couldn’t imagine why Roosevelt even wanted to bother with it.
Perhaps, had the president lived, or at least if he had passed on to Vice President Truman the ideas he might have possessed regarding a more diplomatic way to establish a Jewish homeland, things might have been different. Suppose, for example, the newly established Jewish state had been sufficiently pressured to exist for a period under direct United Nations mandate with Jerusalem also under United Nations mandate as an international city. Perhaps, just perhaps, Arabs might have kept their powder dry. Perhaps, just perhaps, if FDR had made the Palestinian question a part of the Crimean Conference Agenda, Stalin might have joined with Roosevelt in agreeing to withhold armaments from both sides in the foreseen conflict. After all, both the United States and the Soviet Union would be targets for financial pocket-picking by all sides in future international conflicts!
FDR’s instincts for the peace and prosperity of humanity were still present even though his energy for political gamesmanship had waned. As a young man he had been almost as enthusiastic as his distant cousin Teddy Roosevelt for glory on the battlefield. But polio and the needs of the poor and the hungry had made their mark on his soul.
Thus, even as his own life was ending, Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew that the pain of past outrages would ultimately only be soothed by the blessings of those things which nourish both body and soul. He had traveled beyond the conference at Yalta to confer with three kings. Two of them, Farouk and Selassie, he must have sensed were ineffectual. To the most powerful and potentially most dangerous, he appealed as a farmer.
Sadly however, Ibn Saud was a warrior and, what is more, he insisted on being thought of as a warrior. FDR’s mission might have mattered if he could only have convinced the old king that the peace and security of all that he cared for could most assuredly be protected by the most outstanding warriors of them all—farmers, soldiers in the eternal war against hunger!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Originally posted October 18, 2006
Monday, October 11, 2010
THE BELIEVER AND THE TAXPAYER
By Edwin Cooney
I know you’re not going to believe this but one night not long ago, I overheard a conversation between a Believer and a Taxpayer. They both claimed to be men satisfied with their distinct roles of Believer and Taxpayer.
“My most important responsibility is that of safeguarding the fiscal and military security of the United States of America,” asserted the Taxpayer.
“How do you accomplish that?” asked the Believer.
“Well,” responded the Taxpayer, “by controlling the most powerful instrument at my command. In wartime, my gun, rocket launcher, or bomber are my most powerful weapons. During peacetime, in a free society, the most powerful instrument I possess is my money. The only thing too many elected representatives really and truly understand is money. I hate to say this, but after over two centuries of liberty, the coin of the realm is far more precious than a man’s word!”
“Hmmm,” responded the Believer, “as a Believer, my first priority is my accountability to God. The most powerful instrument in my possession is love. I mean love for
Humankind born of my love for my God. Hence, if I love my God and follow His commands, then people’s welfare has to be my top priority,” said the Believer, contemplatively scratching his chin.
“Wait a minute,” said the Taxpayer,” I’m a Believer, too, you know. After all, it says in scripture that every true Believer is required to give no more than ten percent of his wages for the sustenance of the poor and far more than ten percent of my taxes goes to the poor!”
“So,” asked the Believer, “how do you feel about that?”
“I resent it,” said the Taxpayer, a bit of heat creeping into his voice. “It’s a redistribution of wealth. We call it socialism these days, because that’s what it is!”
“So,” asked the Believer, “do you resent giving away more than ten percent of your wages because you’re a Believer, or because you’re a Taxpayer, since you insist that you’re both?”
“Well,” responded the Taxpayer, “now that you ask, I resent it most as a Consumer because the more of my money the government takes, the less powerful I am in either the marketplace or as an individual citizen.”
“Wait a minute,” asked the Believer, “are you more of a Consumer than you are a Taxpayer? At the outset of our conversation, you asserted that you are a Taxpayer and I asserted that I’m a Believer. As a Believer, I haven’t asserted that I’m either a Taxpayer or a Consumer. I’m standing alone as a Believer. Paying taxes or purchasing goods and services are things I must do, but purchasing and paying are not who I am. Now, which are you?”
“Look, if I don’t demand respect as a Taxpayer, I won’t have any influence. Influence is everything. If you don’t have influence, you’re powerless,” said the Taxpayer as he shoved his hands deep into his pockets.
“Well,” replied the Believer, “what influence I have comes from my faith, not from my power. My power isn’t my own. If one demands power unto himself where does he go during times of stress? If, for example, politicians, who -- despite their political ideology ultimately work for the government -- didn’t depend on you for your money, what influence would you have if your taxes were sufficiently low? Do you suppose the politicians who got you the low taxes would ask you for less money during the political season?”
“Good God! I don’t know,” said the Taxpayer, glancing heavenward. All I know is that as a Taxpayer, politicians, real estate magnates, bankers, stockbrokers, and even mighty talk show hosts clamor for my attention. Who clamors for your attention?” asked the Taxpayer, suddenly realizing he was about to be overwhelmed by the answer.
“God,” responded the Believer “Who’s more powerful or merciful than God?” As a Taxpayer, your ultimate power and influence is dependant upon politicians who get themselves elected to government. My faith is dependant upon the Almighty. Your strength depends upon what you do and mine depends first and foremost on what I believe. What I do is what I believe. What you do, it seems to me, is what is required of you.”
“Wait a minute!” shouted the Taxpayer, “Don’t you forget for one moment that it is we the Taxpayers of this country who voted to exempt Believers like you from having to pay taxes on funding your religious activities!”
Suddenly, it was happening again. My lady has sharp elbows and they were in my ribs.
“Look dear,” she said, “because I love you I’m willing to put up with a man who thinks too much even when he’s sleeping, but if this doesn’t let up pretty soon, I’m going home to mama for at least a week so I can get some rest!”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
I know you’re not going to believe this but one night not long ago, I overheard a conversation between a Believer and a Taxpayer. They both claimed to be men satisfied with their distinct roles of Believer and Taxpayer.
“My most important responsibility is that of safeguarding the fiscal and military security of the United States of America,” asserted the Taxpayer.
“How do you accomplish that?” asked the Believer.
“Well,” responded the Taxpayer, “by controlling the most powerful instrument at my command. In wartime, my gun, rocket launcher, or bomber are my most powerful weapons. During peacetime, in a free society, the most powerful instrument I possess is my money. The only thing too many elected representatives really and truly understand is money. I hate to say this, but after over two centuries of liberty, the coin of the realm is far more precious than a man’s word!”
“Hmmm,” responded the Believer, “as a Believer, my first priority is my accountability to God. The most powerful instrument in my possession is love. I mean love for
Humankind born of my love for my God. Hence, if I love my God and follow His commands, then people’s welfare has to be my top priority,” said the Believer, contemplatively scratching his chin.
“Wait a minute,” said the Taxpayer,” I’m a Believer, too, you know. After all, it says in scripture that every true Believer is required to give no more than ten percent of his wages for the sustenance of the poor and far more than ten percent of my taxes goes to the poor!”
“So,” asked the Believer, “how do you feel about that?”
“I resent it,” said the Taxpayer, a bit of heat creeping into his voice. “It’s a redistribution of wealth. We call it socialism these days, because that’s what it is!”
“So,” asked the Believer, “do you resent giving away more than ten percent of your wages because you’re a Believer, or because you’re a Taxpayer, since you insist that you’re both?”
“Well,” responded the Taxpayer, “now that you ask, I resent it most as a Consumer because the more of my money the government takes, the less powerful I am in either the marketplace or as an individual citizen.”
“Wait a minute,” asked the Believer, “are you more of a Consumer than you are a Taxpayer? At the outset of our conversation, you asserted that you are a Taxpayer and I asserted that I’m a Believer. As a Believer, I haven’t asserted that I’m either a Taxpayer or a Consumer. I’m standing alone as a Believer. Paying taxes or purchasing goods and services are things I must do, but purchasing and paying are not who I am. Now, which are you?”
“Look, if I don’t demand respect as a Taxpayer, I won’t have any influence. Influence is everything. If you don’t have influence, you’re powerless,” said the Taxpayer as he shoved his hands deep into his pockets.
“Well,” replied the Believer, “what influence I have comes from my faith, not from my power. My power isn’t my own. If one demands power unto himself where does he go during times of stress? If, for example, politicians, who -- despite their political ideology ultimately work for the government -- didn’t depend on you for your money, what influence would you have if your taxes were sufficiently low? Do you suppose the politicians who got you the low taxes would ask you for less money during the political season?”
“Good God! I don’t know,” said the Taxpayer, glancing heavenward. All I know is that as a Taxpayer, politicians, real estate magnates, bankers, stockbrokers, and even mighty talk show hosts clamor for my attention. Who clamors for your attention?” asked the Taxpayer, suddenly realizing he was about to be overwhelmed by the answer.
“God,” responded the Believer “Who’s more powerful or merciful than God?” As a Taxpayer, your ultimate power and influence is dependant upon politicians who get themselves elected to government. My faith is dependant upon the Almighty. Your strength depends upon what you do and mine depends first and foremost on what I believe. What I do is what I believe. What you do, it seems to me, is what is required of you.”
“Wait a minute!” shouted the Taxpayer, “Don’t you forget for one moment that it is we the Taxpayers of this country who voted to exempt Believers like you from having to pay taxes on funding your religious activities!”
Suddenly, it was happening again. My lady has sharp elbows and they were in my ribs.
“Look dear,” she said, “because I love you I’m willing to put up with a man who thinks too much even when he’s sleeping, but if this doesn’t let up pretty soon, I’m going home to mama for at least a week so I can get some rest!”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, October 4, 2010
MEET LADY PEACE
By Edwin Cooney
Label the following pronouncement any way you must, but I encountered “Peace” last week and she’s very much a lady.
No, I’m not suggesting that women are peaceful and men are warlike. The female of many species, especially when protecting those she loves, can be quite fierce. Taking it a step further, peace has far more to do with one’s values than it has to do with a state of war. Peace is about immeasurable strength, a nurturing strength that’s about
self-assuredness and moral certainty. Peace speaks in many, many ways and through many media.
I’ve probably met peace many times but simply didn’t recognize her. Suddenly, there she was in a place I never suspected. The fall of 1983 was, to say the least, an unsettling time in international politics. Ronald Reagan and Yuri Andropov sat at the apex of the world’s two foremost nuclear forces. The Soviets had recently shot down a Korea bound plane that had strayed over Soviet territory. Now President Reagan was opting to station American nuclear cruise missiles in Europe and I was very, very frightened.
One day, I was visiting a friend in San Francisco and for some reason we took a bus to Ocean Avenue from where we proceeded to the beach. There was a chilly breeze (although not overwhelmingly so) and the waves were up. Standing there as I did for about 15 minutes, I could feel the immense power of “mother nature.” The smell was primitive but by no means unpleasant. It was an environment of wind, water, plants and the very seed of all living things. One could feel, simultaneously, birth and death. The waves were loud but not raucous. Their rhythmic beat spoke of a power greater than nuclear force. As nature overwhelmed my senses, my anxiety dissipated and for the first time in days, perhaps weeks, I felt reassured. I suddenly knew that if the world situation got out of hand, I would bring my little family to the apex of God’s awesomeness where, whatever happened, there would be a sense of eternal belonging.
As I’ve observed on a couple of occasions in these writings, peace (as author Herman Wouk points out at the beginning of “The Winds of War,” one of the best historic novels I’ve ever read) “is not the absence of war. Peace is a state of mind.” Nor, as I see it, is real peace the business of world politics. World peace is allusive because, ultimately, it’s not the statesman’s business, it is our business.
As I define it, peace is a sick child singing. Peace is a little boy showing you his frog. Peace is a man sharing his popcorn. Peace is a newly minted Boy Scout. Peace is a little girl who announces that she wants to become a nurse. Peace is a mother reading to her daughter or a father playing catch with his son. Peace is a lady baking cookies. Peace is a curious little boy or a wondering little girl. Peace is a couple being silly together. Peace is a gentleman who admits that he is in love. Peace is a lady’s tears of joy.
I recently reencountered peace and this time I did recognize her. She’s the best lady I ever knew. I met her for the first time when I was seventeen where, calmly and with incredible poise and dignity, she nurtured a dormitory full of anxious and sometimes rowdy teenage boys. From that venue, she invited me, homeless and sometimes both a little rude and crude, into her family. There she taught me tact (well, okay, what little tact I possess), that heroes are peacemakers, and, most of all, that as long as we allow for it, love can appear in one’s life when one least expects it.
As her wondrous life came to its close a few days ago, though suffering from the infirmities of great age, an aura of serenity surrounded her. Although she suffered from diminished hearing, one nevertheless knew that she was still listening. Not even faltering eyesight and nonfunctioning legs caused her to lose her dignity or made her afraid. Her insight into the future always brought forth only calm.
Just as the power of God’s awesome Pacific Ocean did for me so many years ago, Edith Rachel (Meek) Gassman’s presence soothed even the most nagging or heart-wrenching fears. Her legacy is serenity, the main ingredient of peace. Her way of life demonstrates that peace on earth is a living reality. All we have to do is insist that it must prevail.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
Edwin Cooney
Label the following pronouncement any way you must, but I encountered “Peace” last week and she’s very much a lady.
No, I’m not suggesting that women are peaceful and men are warlike. The female of many species, especially when protecting those she loves, can be quite fierce. Taking it a step further, peace has far more to do with one’s values than it has to do with a state of war. Peace is about immeasurable strength, a nurturing strength that’s about
self-assuredness and moral certainty. Peace speaks in many, many ways and through many media.
I’ve probably met peace many times but simply didn’t recognize her. Suddenly, there she was in a place I never suspected. The fall of 1983 was, to say the least, an unsettling time in international politics. Ronald Reagan and Yuri Andropov sat at the apex of the world’s two foremost nuclear forces. The Soviets had recently shot down a Korea bound plane that had strayed over Soviet territory. Now President Reagan was opting to station American nuclear cruise missiles in Europe and I was very, very frightened.
One day, I was visiting a friend in San Francisco and for some reason we took a bus to Ocean Avenue from where we proceeded to the beach. There was a chilly breeze (although not overwhelmingly so) and the waves were up. Standing there as I did for about 15 minutes, I could feel the immense power of “mother nature.” The smell was primitive but by no means unpleasant. It was an environment of wind, water, plants and the very seed of all living things. One could feel, simultaneously, birth and death. The waves were loud but not raucous. Their rhythmic beat spoke of a power greater than nuclear force. As nature overwhelmed my senses, my anxiety dissipated and for the first time in days, perhaps weeks, I felt reassured. I suddenly knew that if the world situation got out of hand, I would bring my little family to the apex of God’s awesomeness where, whatever happened, there would be a sense of eternal belonging.
As I’ve observed on a couple of occasions in these writings, peace (as author Herman Wouk points out at the beginning of “The Winds of War,” one of the best historic novels I’ve ever read) “is not the absence of war. Peace is a state of mind.” Nor, as I see it, is real peace the business of world politics. World peace is allusive because, ultimately, it’s not the statesman’s business, it is our business.
As I define it, peace is a sick child singing. Peace is a little boy showing you his frog. Peace is a man sharing his popcorn. Peace is a newly minted Boy Scout. Peace is a little girl who announces that she wants to become a nurse. Peace is a mother reading to her daughter or a father playing catch with his son. Peace is a lady baking cookies. Peace is a curious little boy or a wondering little girl. Peace is a couple being silly together. Peace is a gentleman who admits that he is in love. Peace is a lady’s tears of joy.
I recently reencountered peace and this time I did recognize her. She’s the best lady I ever knew. I met her for the first time when I was seventeen where, calmly and with incredible poise and dignity, she nurtured a dormitory full of anxious and sometimes rowdy teenage boys. From that venue, she invited me, homeless and sometimes both a little rude and crude, into her family. There she taught me tact (well, okay, what little tact I possess), that heroes are peacemakers, and, most of all, that as long as we allow for it, love can appear in one’s life when one least expects it.
As her wondrous life came to its close a few days ago, though suffering from the infirmities of great age, an aura of serenity surrounded her. Although she suffered from diminished hearing, one nevertheless knew that she was still listening. Not even faltering eyesight and nonfunctioning legs caused her to lose her dignity or made her afraid. Her insight into the future always brought forth only calm.
Just as the power of God’s awesome Pacific Ocean did for me so many years ago, Edith Rachel (Meek) Gassman’s presence soothed even the most nagging or heart-wrenching fears. Her legacy is serenity, the main ingredient of peace. Her way of life demonstrates that peace on earth is a living reality. All we have to do is insist that it must prevail.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
Edwin Cooney
Monday, September 27, 2010
BEYOND THE REASON WHY
BY EDWIN COONEY
Like most everyone else, almost any time I hear of a tragedy, the first reaction that enters my mind or crosses my lips consists of the word—why? Very often, however, the question why just isn’t enough.
The tragedy that has recently gripped my attention happened during the third week in January in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania about six miles from Center City, Philadelphia. Fifty-three year-old Barbara Killian -- blinded from an accident when she was a baby -- and her little white lap dog A-Rod died in the basement of their home by the hand of Barbara’s eighty-four-year-old father Robert Killian who then turned the gun on himself. Mr. Killian had just been released from a local hospital having been treated for advanced cardiovascular disease. Convinced that he didn’t have long to live, Mr. Killian apparently believed he had to provide a permanent solution for what he perceived would be Barbara’s troubles in his earthly absence. Thus, believing, as he did, that Barbara would be both alone and helpless in the world, he decided that her life should end with his. So, sometime between Tuesday, January 15, 2008 when Killian was released from the hospital, and the following Saturday evening at six pm, Robert Killian shot Barbara, their little dog, and himself to death in the basement of their home on Cheswold Road.
According to the sum of all reports out of Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania: Barbara and Robert Killian had lived alone since the death of Shirley, Barbara’s mother and Robert’s wife, in 2001; the Killians “minded their own business”; Robert Killian was extremely protective of Barbara; and, finally, there was a lot of love in the Killian home as evidenced by Mr. Killian’s constant devotion to Barbara.
So there you have it: the who, the what, the where, the when, and, superficially, the why of the story. Surely, however, knowledge of these guidelines which every news reporter knows brings one no satisfaction. If you’re anything like me, perhaps you need to pause and take it all in before reading on.
In the emotional wake that occurs as one learns of this tragedy, there is the natural tendency to be outraged, not only with Killian’s murder of his daughter, but even more with what was clearly his demeaning attitude about Barbara’s very existence as a person with blindness. There are reports that neighbors called area social services from time to time to complain that Barbara was being “held captive” by her parents in her home, the response to which caused the Killians to retreat further into seclusion with their daughter. Inevitably, one wonders what exactly went on in that household upon Mr. Killian’s January 15th return from the hospital. How long had Robert Killian contemplated this irrevocable deed? What religious or moral matters did Mr. Killian consider before taking Barbara to the basement of their home to meet her death? Did Killian tell Barbara in advance of his intention or was there a reasoned or even gentle pretext to the basement visit? Did Robert Killian see his act as one of love or one of despair?
Information out of greater Philadelphia regarding Barbara Killian’s existence is sketchy but still revealing. A 1973 graduate of Overbrook School for the Blind, Barbara was shy, intelligent and fun loving. She was a baseball fan of the Yankees, especially Alex Rodriguez whom she had met through an organization for the blind. Thus, she named her little dog A-Rod.
What happened to Barbara Killian has to be very personal on some level to everyone who lives with a disability—especially those who live with blindness. All of us, whether born able-bodied or disabled, are vulnerable to our parents’ individual environments, values, and attitudes. Even more relevant to the Killian family tragedy is the strong parental instinct, the overwhelming need to protect our children from the world’s many outrages.
While we’re certainly justified in our righteous anger toward Robert Killian, that anger alone is as destructive to you and me as Killian’s thirty-eight caliber pistol was to Barbara. It would be more helpful, I think, for us all to re-examine what it means to love and protect one another as well as one’s children.
It would be arrogant for any of us to question Mr. Killian’s love for his daughter. However, Robert and Shirley Killian’s love for Barbara was clearly misdirected as evidenced by their decision to reject a college scholarship, choosing to have her stay at home instead of broadening her horizons. Their legitimate mission was to protect her life and to empower others to ensure her security after they were gone. It’s quite apparent that Mr. Killian was more overwhelmed by his fears than he was sustained by “the better angels of his nature.”
Nothing we can say or write, no wish we can wish, no prayer we may pray can undo what was done to Barbara Killian by her father. Love is a powerful force. As such it can nurture, sustain, encourage, and therefore foster growth and even greater love. However, if love is administered with jealousy or fear, it can destroy. It appears that the Killians’ powerful love for Barbara went awry and, hence, it destroyed.
Sadly, Robert Killian believed that the world wasn’t sufficiently trustworthy to match his love for Barbara, hence he took her with him for her own protection.
Happily, most of us know that the world is worthy because you and I are worthy of the kind of love that sustains and nurtures.
Thus the question is: what’s our love for one another all about? If our love is laden with fear or controllingly possessive, perhaps it’s best to keep it to ourselves. However, if our love is about nurturing and trusting, even at times when others’ needs are beyond our full comprehension, then in the words of a popular song of the mid-seventies, by all means “let your love flow!”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Updated: originally published February 18, 2008
Like most everyone else, almost any time I hear of a tragedy, the first reaction that enters my mind or crosses my lips consists of the word—why? Very often, however, the question why just isn’t enough.
The tragedy that has recently gripped my attention happened during the third week in January in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania about six miles from Center City, Philadelphia. Fifty-three year-old Barbara Killian -- blinded from an accident when she was a baby -- and her little white lap dog A-Rod died in the basement of their home by the hand of Barbara’s eighty-four-year-old father Robert Killian who then turned the gun on himself. Mr. Killian had just been released from a local hospital having been treated for advanced cardiovascular disease. Convinced that he didn’t have long to live, Mr. Killian apparently believed he had to provide a permanent solution for what he perceived would be Barbara’s troubles in his earthly absence. Thus, believing, as he did, that Barbara would be both alone and helpless in the world, he decided that her life should end with his. So, sometime between Tuesday, January 15, 2008 when Killian was released from the hospital, and the following Saturday evening at six pm, Robert Killian shot Barbara, their little dog, and himself to death in the basement of their home on Cheswold Road.
According to the sum of all reports out of Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania: Barbara and Robert Killian had lived alone since the death of Shirley, Barbara’s mother and Robert’s wife, in 2001; the Killians “minded their own business”; Robert Killian was extremely protective of Barbara; and, finally, there was a lot of love in the Killian home as evidenced by Mr. Killian’s constant devotion to Barbara.
So there you have it: the who, the what, the where, the when, and, superficially, the why of the story. Surely, however, knowledge of these guidelines which every news reporter knows brings one no satisfaction. If you’re anything like me, perhaps you need to pause and take it all in before reading on.
In the emotional wake that occurs as one learns of this tragedy, there is the natural tendency to be outraged, not only with Killian’s murder of his daughter, but even more with what was clearly his demeaning attitude about Barbara’s very existence as a person with blindness. There are reports that neighbors called area social services from time to time to complain that Barbara was being “held captive” by her parents in her home, the response to which caused the Killians to retreat further into seclusion with their daughter. Inevitably, one wonders what exactly went on in that household upon Mr. Killian’s January 15th return from the hospital. How long had Robert Killian contemplated this irrevocable deed? What religious or moral matters did Mr. Killian consider before taking Barbara to the basement of their home to meet her death? Did Killian tell Barbara in advance of his intention or was there a reasoned or even gentle pretext to the basement visit? Did Robert Killian see his act as one of love or one of despair?
Information out of greater Philadelphia regarding Barbara Killian’s existence is sketchy but still revealing. A 1973 graduate of Overbrook School for the Blind, Barbara was shy, intelligent and fun loving. She was a baseball fan of the Yankees, especially Alex Rodriguez whom she had met through an organization for the blind. Thus, she named her little dog A-Rod.
What happened to Barbara Killian has to be very personal on some level to everyone who lives with a disability—especially those who live with blindness. All of us, whether born able-bodied or disabled, are vulnerable to our parents’ individual environments, values, and attitudes. Even more relevant to the Killian family tragedy is the strong parental instinct, the overwhelming need to protect our children from the world’s many outrages.
While we’re certainly justified in our righteous anger toward Robert Killian, that anger alone is as destructive to you and me as Killian’s thirty-eight caliber pistol was to Barbara. It would be more helpful, I think, for us all to re-examine what it means to love and protect one another as well as one’s children.
It would be arrogant for any of us to question Mr. Killian’s love for his daughter. However, Robert and Shirley Killian’s love for Barbara was clearly misdirected as evidenced by their decision to reject a college scholarship, choosing to have her stay at home instead of broadening her horizons. Their legitimate mission was to protect her life and to empower others to ensure her security after they were gone. It’s quite apparent that Mr. Killian was more overwhelmed by his fears than he was sustained by “the better angels of his nature.”
Nothing we can say or write, no wish we can wish, no prayer we may pray can undo what was done to Barbara Killian by her father. Love is a powerful force. As such it can nurture, sustain, encourage, and therefore foster growth and even greater love. However, if love is administered with jealousy or fear, it can destroy. It appears that the Killians’ powerful love for Barbara went awry and, hence, it destroyed.
Sadly, Robert Killian believed that the world wasn’t sufficiently trustworthy to match his love for Barbara, hence he took her with him for her own protection.
Happily, most of us know that the world is worthy because you and I are worthy of the kind of love that sustains and nurtures.
Thus the question is: what’s our love for one another all about? If our love is laden with fear or controllingly possessive, perhaps it’s best to keep it to ourselves. However, if our love is about nurturing and trusting, even at times when others’ needs are beyond our full comprehension, then in the words of a popular song of the mid-seventies, by all means “let your love flow!”
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Updated: originally published February 18, 2008
Monday, September 20, 2010
FRIENDSHIP: THE FOUNDATION OF ALL THAT REALLY MATTERS
By Edwin Cooney
It’s true, I’m neither a psychologist nor a sociologist -- although I very briefly considered majoring in sociology in college. Still, as I see it, anyone who spends sixty plus years on this planet of ours and pays careful attention to the lives of people around them ought to be eligible, at the very least, to receive a certificate in sociology. Even more than family, the most precious earthly institution is “friendship.”
Some people will tell you that they have lots of friends. Others will say that they don’t have a lot of friends, but the ones they do have are very close indeed. Of course, some of us are by nature very self-analytical while others don’t really feel comfortable with
self-reflection. Thus, the non self-reflective would probably insist that their lives are more decorated by friendship than the self-reflective types would assert.
Since everyone considers U.S. presidents fair game for critical analysis, let’s examine two self-reflective vs. non self-reflective presidential personalities.
On the night of Monday, November 1, 1976 -- election eve -- CBS political commentator Eric Sevareid made the following observation about the two major party presidential candidates, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. Carter, said Severeid, seemed always to be re-examining his psyche as a progressive white southerner, a nuclear engineer/businessman and born-again Christian, while President Ford didn’t seem to realize that he even possessed a psyche! He further suggested that Jerry Ford followed a combination of his experiences and instincts and thus left his mind alone. Jimmy Carter was far from friendless and comfortable in his own skin, but one could reasonably assume that Jerry Ford probably had more “friends” than the self-probing Jimmy Carter.
Like people, friendships are born and die everyday. However, it is my experience that the deaths of most real friendships are seldom peaceful. Sometimes all it takes is one genuinely principled decision or act to destroy the intellectual and emotional bond that has been in existence between two people for decades. Invariably, that occurs when the root of a misunderstanding is poorly handled by one of the parties in the conflicted friendship. Usually, the sense of having been betrayed is what triggers the conflict.
Friendships are invariably of different types and levels. Like the foundation or scaffolding of a physical structure, friendship invariably bears the weight or pressure of human relationships brought about by both internal and external forces.
It has become fashionable in recent years here in America to proclaim that the “family is the foundation of our society.” (This is one of the many “politically correct” assertions that Conservatives, who insist that only Liberals suffer from “political correctness,” themselves insist on.) Yet this proclamation has many holes in it.
If the family unit has been handed down to us from our “Founding Fathers” as the absolute moral core of our national worthiness, it’s indeed remarkable that George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had very little regard for their mothers. Mary Ball Washington complained too much about her son’s financial parsimony. (According to author Kenneth C. Davis of the “Don’t Know Much About…” series, as an adult, Washington never introduced his mother to his wife or invited her to his home.) Susanna Boylston Adams was too fiery tempered for her son’s comfort and she is little mentioned in the voluminous Adams’ family papers. Jane Randolph Jefferson was said to have a “zero existence” in Jefferson’s life. Also, there are numerous multifaceted social, religious, and even financial conflicts within many families. Invariably, children quarrel over inheritances, brothers struggle for the most powerful position at the top of the family corporation, and widows often bear the jealousies of stepchildren. Absent genuine friendship within families, the family loses its ability to be a nurturing force in people’s lives.
Those who find themselves orphaned or rejected from the family unit definitely must rely on friendship if they are to realize the tenderness and nurturing gifts of the human heart. For such people, the possibility of abandonment is ever present. If the ever present possibility of rejection is their prevailing lot, so too is the ever present opportunity to dare to build friendships.
By definition, rich lasting friendships are sanctuaries in which one’s personal assets and liabilities may find loving acknowledgment and gentle adjustment, where tolerance prevails over temper, and where encouragement enhances even the sternest advice.
Individually -- as the product of our mutual social, emotional and spiritual dependence -- friendship is the haven of caring we offer one another in which we may safely, however haltingly, strive and ultimately fulfill all of the things about which we’ve ever dreamed.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
It’s true, I’m neither a psychologist nor a sociologist -- although I very briefly considered majoring in sociology in college. Still, as I see it, anyone who spends sixty plus years on this planet of ours and pays careful attention to the lives of people around them ought to be eligible, at the very least, to receive a certificate in sociology. Even more than family, the most precious earthly institution is “friendship.”
Some people will tell you that they have lots of friends. Others will say that they don’t have a lot of friends, but the ones they do have are very close indeed. Of course, some of us are by nature very self-analytical while others don’t really feel comfortable with
self-reflection. Thus, the non self-reflective would probably insist that their lives are more decorated by friendship than the self-reflective types would assert.
Since everyone considers U.S. presidents fair game for critical analysis, let’s examine two self-reflective vs. non self-reflective presidential personalities.
On the night of Monday, November 1, 1976 -- election eve -- CBS political commentator Eric Sevareid made the following observation about the two major party presidential candidates, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. Carter, said Severeid, seemed always to be re-examining his psyche as a progressive white southerner, a nuclear engineer/businessman and born-again Christian, while President Ford didn’t seem to realize that he even possessed a psyche! He further suggested that Jerry Ford followed a combination of his experiences and instincts and thus left his mind alone. Jimmy Carter was far from friendless and comfortable in his own skin, but one could reasonably assume that Jerry Ford probably had more “friends” than the self-probing Jimmy Carter.
Like people, friendships are born and die everyday. However, it is my experience that the deaths of most real friendships are seldom peaceful. Sometimes all it takes is one genuinely principled decision or act to destroy the intellectual and emotional bond that has been in existence between two people for decades. Invariably, that occurs when the root of a misunderstanding is poorly handled by one of the parties in the conflicted friendship. Usually, the sense of having been betrayed is what triggers the conflict.
Friendships are invariably of different types and levels. Like the foundation or scaffolding of a physical structure, friendship invariably bears the weight or pressure of human relationships brought about by both internal and external forces.
It has become fashionable in recent years here in America to proclaim that the “family is the foundation of our society.” (This is one of the many “politically correct” assertions that Conservatives, who insist that only Liberals suffer from “political correctness,” themselves insist on.) Yet this proclamation has many holes in it.
If the family unit has been handed down to us from our “Founding Fathers” as the absolute moral core of our national worthiness, it’s indeed remarkable that George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had very little regard for their mothers. Mary Ball Washington complained too much about her son’s financial parsimony. (According to author Kenneth C. Davis of the “Don’t Know Much About…” series, as an adult, Washington never introduced his mother to his wife or invited her to his home.) Susanna Boylston Adams was too fiery tempered for her son’s comfort and she is little mentioned in the voluminous Adams’ family papers. Jane Randolph Jefferson was said to have a “zero existence” in Jefferson’s life. Also, there are numerous multifaceted social, religious, and even financial conflicts within many families. Invariably, children quarrel over inheritances, brothers struggle for the most powerful position at the top of the family corporation, and widows often bear the jealousies of stepchildren. Absent genuine friendship within families, the family loses its ability to be a nurturing force in people’s lives.
Those who find themselves orphaned or rejected from the family unit definitely must rely on friendship if they are to realize the tenderness and nurturing gifts of the human heart. For such people, the possibility of abandonment is ever present. If the ever present possibility of rejection is their prevailing lot, so too is the ever present opportunity to dare to build friendships.
By definition, rich lasting friendships are sanctuaries in which one’s personal assets and liabilities may find loving acknowledgment and gentle adjustment, where tolerance prevails over temper, and where encouragement enhances even the sternest advice.
Individually -- as the product of our mutual social, emotional and spiritual dependence -- friendship is the haven of caring we offer one another in which we may safely, however haltingly, strive and ultimately fulfill all of the things about which we’ve ever dreamed.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, September 13, 2010
REMEMBERING ARCHIE
By Edwin Cooney
Saturday, May 5th, 1945 was a lovely spring day in southern Oregon. Reverend Archie Mitchell, the newly appointed pastor of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in nearby Bly, was on an outing with his pregnant wife Elsie and five members of the church’s Sunday school class. The hiking and fishing picnic was a “getting to know you” activity. Suddenly and tragically, without warning, Elsie Mitchell and the five children would make history by becoming the only casualties on the U.S. mainland during World War II.
Anxious to get into the woods to start exploring, Elsie and the kids got out of the car while Archie searched for a good place to park. By the time he was pulling their lunches and fishing gear from the back of the vehicle, Elsie and the children were well into the woods.
Suddenly, Elsie called out to Archie that they’d discovered something. It was a balloon-like machine in the middle of the woods. Archie yelled back that they shouldn’t touch it, but someone, one of the kids perhaps, did.
Before Archie was within a hundred yards of them, there was a powerful explosion. Large clumps of earth and branches from trees were hurled through the air. By the time Archie and a road crew working nearby reached them, the five children were dead and Elsie, lying in her flaming clothes, would live, mercifully, hardly a minute longer.
During the 9/11 tragedy, you’ll no doubt remember that much of our incredulity stemmed from the insistence on the part of our leadership (from the president on down) that this was the first time Americans had suffered violence from foreign attack since the British burned the White House and the Capitol in 1814.
During World War II, the Japanese government had sent thousands of balloon bombs into the atmosphere. They were designed to explode on impact into American cities, towns and villages to create panic. However, the explosion mechanism on these vehicles was faulty and the bombs were ultimately too heavy for the balloons. Most of these balloon bombs landed in the Pacific or on Pacific islands and several hundred were sighted and destroyed by our military. However, at least one was neither lost nor destroyed. (Note that not until June 1, 1945, nearly four weeks after the incident, did the U.S. government identify the source of the balloon bomb.)
Even if the source of the explosion had been immediately identified, events on Saturday, May 5, 1945 were rapidly superseded by the news the following Tuesday (May 8th) of Victory in Europe and the whole world celebrated.
In comparison to the worldwide scourge of war, the deaths of Elsie Winters Mitchell, age 26, Sherman Shoemaker, 10, Jay Gifford, 11, Edward Engeen, 13, Joan Patzke, 13, and Dick Patzke, 14, seemed to be personal rather than national tragedies. Thus, as long as they were considered so, the full comprehension of the tragedy’s significance was hidden from Archie, the children’s families, and the world.
Of course, loss of life is always devastating, but one has to wonder if the revelation of the cause of this accident affected the feelings and perspectives of the victims’ families.
I became familiar with this incident a little less than two years ago when the late Paul Harvey told of it on one of his last “Best of the Story” broadcasts. Although Mr. Harvey told you “the rest of the story,” he didn’t come anywhere close to telling you Archie Mitchell’s entire story. Paul Harvey’s point was that it’s only realistic to understand that innocent people increasingly will be the victims of war.
Two and a half years following Archie’s first tragedy, on December 23, 1947, Archie Mitchell and his second wife Betty Patzke (older sister of Joan and Dick Patzke who were victimized by the Japanese balloon bomb), set sail for Vietnam where they would start the first of three tours of duty as missionaries for the Christian Missionary & Alliance Church. Their goal was, of course, to spread “the good news” and to do God’s work by improving the living conditions of the poor and sick of Southeast Asia.
On the night of Wednesday, May 30, 1962, while working at the Ban Me Thuot Leprosarium, Archie, the Reverend Daniel Gerber and Dr. Eleanor Vietti along with a generous supply of medicines and equipment for the benefit of their sick and wounded were removed from the clinic by a 12 member unit of the Vietcong.
According to Betty Mitchell, it was the Vietcong’s original intention to take her and her children captive along with Archie, but the plan changed when Archie insisted that he wouldn’t cooperate with them if they did that. (Keep in mind that this was well before large numbers of American troops were sent to Vietnam.) Surely Archie’s non-cooperation would have doubtless resulted in everyone’s instant death.
Although U.S. intelligence over the next several years had a pretty good idea where Archie and his two companions were located, however, they were guarded too well to be rescued. In 1969, negotiations for their release were near completion when they were suddenly broken off. None of the three have been seen since.
Thus, the fate of Archie Mitchell is unknown. Were Archie and his fellow companions murdered by the Vietcong? Or might they have been the innocent victims of our bombing? Who knows? Neither Betty Mitchell nor any of their four children have the slightest idea of Archie’s fate, or that of Gerber and Vietti.
Archie Mitchell was twice the victim of war; one has to wonder why this good man had to suffer so. We know that the Japanese government’s decision to send balloon bombs was, in part, revenge for the April 1942 firebombing of Tokyo by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle. We know also that the reason for the seizing of Mitchell, Gerber and Vietti was largely due to the healing they could bring about for the Vietcong.
What is hard to grasp is what it took for Reverend Mitchell to keep on giving to a world that had taken so much from him. Even more amazing to this observer is the kind of strength required to handle these two potentially soul-destroying trials! What must life have been like during the final seven plus years of Archie’s life? Were any tender moments left for Archie Mitchell and his co-prisoners? Did they ever smile or laugh again? What, beside the threat of death, fueled Archie’s energy to keep on keeping on? What sustained his faith?
My point in telling you this story is that, as I see it, aggressive war is humankind’s greatest crime. Too often, too many good people make excuses for it. We explain it away as “legitimate national security,” but that’s where we’re all wrong regardless of our nationality or our political or religious convictions. As far as I’m concerned, human sin didn’t begin when Adam ate an apple; it began the second we decided it was legitimate to kill one another.
Archie Mitchell’s story is powerful for me because his suffering was brought about by humankind’s most impersonal act: war. Yet, he kept giving back in a very personal way. Too often when man chooses to expand or defend even the legitimate writ of his authority, he invariably destroys not only his enemy, but his enemy’s innocent brothers, sisters and children. The great statesmen of the world, even with all of the guidance mechanisms on their instruments of destruction, have no more control of their destructive force than did Hurricane Katrina or the December 2006 tsunami. Still the Archie Mitchells of this world appear to live their best dreams even amidst the uncontrollable outrages brought about by both man and nature.
Archie Mitchell, I’ve only just met you, but I’ll never forget you!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Saturday, May 5th, 1945 was a lovely spring day in southern Oregon. Reverend Archie Mitchell, the newly appointed pastor of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in nearby Bly, was on an outing with his pregnant wife Elsie and five members of the church’s Sunday school class. The hiking and fishing picnic was a “getting to know you” activity. Suddenly and tragically, without warning, Elsie Mitchell and the five children would make history by becoming the only casualties on the U.S. mainland during World War II.
Anxious to get into the woods to start exploring, Elsie and the kids got out of the car while Archie searched for a good place to park. By the time he was pulling their lunches and fishing gear from the back of the vehicle, Elsie and the children were well into the woods.
Suddenly, Elsie called out to Archie that they’d discovered something. It was a balloon-like machine in the middle of the woods. Archie yelled back that they shouldn’t touch it, but someone, one of the kids perhaps, did.
Before Archie was within a hundred yards of them, there was a powerful explosion. Large clumps of earth and branches from trees were hurled through the air. By the time Archie and a road crew working nearby reached them, the five children were dead and Elsie, lying in her flaming clothes, would live, mercifully, hardly a minute longer.
During the 9/11 tragedy, you’ll no doubt remember that much of our incredulity stemmed from the insistence on the part of our leadership (from the president on down) that this was the first time Americans had suffered violence from foreign attack since the British burned the White House and the Capitol in 1814.
During World War II, the Japanese government had sent thousands of balloon bombs into the atmosphere. They were designed to explode on impact into American cities, towns and villages to create panic. However, the explosion mechanism on these vehicles was faulty and the bombs were ultimately too heavy for the balloons. Most of these balloon bombs landed in the Pacific or on Pacific islands and several hundred were sighted and destroyed by our military. However, at least one was neither lost nor destroyed. (Note that not until June 1, 1945, nearly four weeks after the incident, did the U.S. government identify the source of the balloon bomb.)
Even if the source of the explosion had been immediately identified, events on Saturday, May 5, 1945 were rapidly superseded by the news the following Tuesday (May 8th) of Victory in Europe and the whole world celebrated.
In comparison to the worldwide scourge of war, the deaths of Elsie Winters Mitchell, age 26, Sherman Shoemaker, 10, Jay Gifford, 11, Edward Engeen, 13, Joan Patzke, 13, and Dick Patzke, 14, seemed to be personal rather than national tragedies. Thus, as long as they were considered so, the full comprehension of the tragedy’s significance was hidden from Archie, the children’s families, and the world.
Of course, loss of life is always devastating, but one has to wonder if the revelation of the cause of this accident affected the feelings and perspectives of the victims’ families.
I became familiar with this incident a little less than two years ago when the late Paul Harvey told of it on one of his last “Best of the Story” broadcasts. Although Mr. Harvey told you “the rest of the story,” he didn’t come anywhere close to telling you Archie Mitchell’s entire story. Paul Harvey’s point was that it’s only realistic to understand that innocent people increasingly will be the victims of war.
Two and a half years following Archie’s first tragedy, on December 23, 1947, Archie Mitchell and his second wife Betty Patzke (older sister of Joan and Dick Patzke who were victimized by the Japanese balloon bomb), set sail for Vietnam where they would start the first of three tours of duty as missionaries for the Christian Missionary & Alliance Church. Their goal was, of course, to spread “the good news” and to do God’s work by improving the living conditions of the poor and sick of Southeast Asia.
On the night of Wednesday, May 30, 1962, while working at the Ban Me Thuot Leprosarium, Archie, the Reverend Daniel Gerber and Dr. Eleanor Vietti along with a generous supply of medicines and equipment for the benefit of their sick and wounded were removed from the clinic by a 12 member unit of the Vietcong.
According to Betty Mitchell, it was the Vietcong’s original intention to take her and her children captive along with Archie, but the plan changed when Archie insisted that he wouldn’t cooperate with them if they did that. (Keep in mind that this was well before large numbers of American troops were sent to Vietnam.) Surely Archie’s non-cooperation would have doubtless resulted in everyone’s instant death.
Although U.S. intelligence over the next several years had a pretty good idea where Archie and his two companions were located, however, they were guarded too well to be rescued. In 1969, negotiations for their release were near completion when they were suddenly broken off. None of the three have been seen since.
Thus, the fate of Archie Mitchell is unknown. Were Archie and his fellow companions murdered by the Vietcong? Or might they have been the innocent victims of our bombing? Who knows? Neither Betty Mitchell nor any of their four children have the slightest idea of Archie’s fate, or that of Gerber and Vietti.
Archie Mitchell was twice the victim of war; one has to wonder why this good man had to suffer so. We know that the Japanese government’s decision to send balloon bombs was, in part, revenge for the April 1942 firebombing of Tokyo by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle. We know also that the reason for the seizing of Mitchell, Gerber and Vietti was largely due to the healing they could bring about for the Vietcong.
What is hard to grasp is what it took for Reverend Mitchell to keep on giving to a world that had taken so much from him. Even more amazing to this observer is the kind of strength required to handle these two potentially soul-destroying trials! What must life have been like during the final seven plus years of Archie’s life? Were any tender moments left for Archie Mitchell and his co-prisoners? Did they ever smile or laugh again? What, beside the threat of death, fueled Archie’s energy to keep on keeping on? What sustained his faith?
My point in telling you this story is that, as I see it, aggressive war is humankind’s greatest crime. Too often, too many good people make excuses for it. We explain it away as “legitimate national security,” but that’s where we’re all wrong regardless of our nationality or our political or religious convictions. As far as I’m concerned, human sin didn’t begin when Adam ate an apple; it began the second we decided it was legitimate to kill one another.
Archie Mitchell’s story is powerful for me because his suffering was brought about by humankind’s most impersonal act: war. Yet, he kept giving back in a very personal way. Too often when man chooses to expand or defend even the legitimate writ of his authority, he invariably destroys not only his enemy, but his enemy’s innocent brothers, sisters and children. The great statesmen of the world, even with all of the guidance mechanisms on their instruments of destruction, have no more control of their destructive force than did Hurricane Katrina or the December 2006 tsunami. Still the Archie Mitchells of this world appear to live their best dreams even amidst the uncontrollable outrages brought about by both man and nature.
Archie Mitchell, I’ve only just met you, but I’ll never forget you!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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