Archive for July, 2007
What to write?
There has been a conspicuous absence on this journal of any textual analysis or real thought. Anecdotal bits, yes. Photo bits, yes.
I have wondered quite a bit about this and have more or less arrived at the realization that this journal isn’t really so private anymore…. wait. Did I say private? An openly available and online Journal ‘private’? Seems antithetical. However, following on the heals of this realization came the thought that I began this journal because I had things I wanted to say, that I wanted people to hear, but still remain somewhat anonymous. Huh. Seems like I wanted to have my cake and eat it too, doesn’t it?
I guess I am worried that if I spill my thoughts onto these pages, enough people I know might have a look and read that also I see in person from time to time, that might make things uncomfortable for all concerned. Now, its certainly not that I have any ill will to anyone that I wish to unleash in this journal. But I know I would be uncomfortable with people reading what I am thinking about and then having to meet those people and know they know something private about me – even though I would have divulged it!
This has sort of taken the stuffing out of me to continue this journal (I do so loathe the term ‘blog‘). I’ve thought of starting a new one, but that just sort of smacks of cowardice. If I want to publish anything, shouldn’t I be tall enough to stand up to whatever might be thrown at it, emotionally or otherwise? Is this not precisely what “blogs” started out to be lo’ these several years past?
Things that have happened recently:
1) In April I was in Panama for 10 days. I walked across the Isthmus from the Pacific to the Atlantic with four other guys (one gringo from toronto, a Panamanian guide and two Amerindian porter/guides), camping in the forest. I was sent there by Outpost Magazine to write and shoot a story about trekking the ancient Camino Real – or King’s Road. This road was built and used by the colonial Spanish in the 16thC to transport plundered Incan gold to the Atlantic for transport home. You can see a taste of images from that story (to be published in September) here.
2) In May my father visited for ten days and built benches on our deck that we are very pleased with. He’s 74, and so was a little grumbly at himself for feeling sore afterwards.
3) In June my mother visited us for two weeks and was a tremendous help in looking after kids, helping with supper and so on (Hi, Mum). She’s 75 now and also a little surprised at getting out of breath and feeling sort of tender after not much (in her eyes).
4) Carrie is making jewelery like mad and has sold a respectable amount already to acquaintances and at cultural fairs.
5) Finney is just now coming out of a bad bout of smallpox; puir wee lass. It was a dumb mixup where the pediatrician thought she’d had her shot and we thought the pediatrician had given her the shot. In her weaker moments a couple of days ago, she would just sit on the couch staring into the middle distance, not eating or listening to much. Occasionally, she would weep and say “I hurt.” Not much rips your heart out like a 3 year old girl weeping. No wait, this also happened: I was laying her into her bed, as gently as I could, when she was right in the middle of the outbreak, when I said not so much to her as to myself ” I wish I could take all those dots off you and put them on me.” To which she replied: “But I wouldn’t want my Dada to hurt.” Good thing it was dark and she couldn’t see me weep. She then said ” Besides, then your Mama and Dada would be worried about you.” This last implied that she was fully aware that we were worried about her. Clever girl, under all those tantrums and tears and the me-first-ness of three year olds.
6) I approached the sculptor Frances Gage (a family friend) to see if she would allow me to write her a website in exchange for producing a small (10″) bust of each our our children. She readily agreed and I am now waist deep in producing a site for her. Can’t wait to see her begin her process. She will make them in wax and then cast in dental stone. When we can thereafter afford it, we can cast the dental stone on into bronze.
I’m sure there’s more, but I wanted to kick-start myself and write a little more
4th of July
The following was written by one Howard Zinn, of Boston University for The Progressive:
“On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?
These ways of thinking — cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on — have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours — huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction — what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.
Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.
That self-deception started early.
When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession.â€
When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: “It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day.â€
On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our “Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence.†After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: “We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country.â€
It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to
war.
We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, “to civilize and Christianize†the Filipino people.
As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: “The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness.â€
We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.
Yet they are victims, too, of our government’s lies.
How many times have we heard President Bush tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for “liberty,†for “democracy�
One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail in 2004 that God speaks through him.
We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.
We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.â€