April is National Poetry Month, so I thought I might reach back into my archives & give readers a glimpse of what was on my mind 33 years ago (gasp!).
Dietary Blues
If I act a little cross,
and for reason you're at a loss
let me put your mind at ease,
while I explain the dread disease.
Alas, I must admit
that I'm more than just a bit
shorter with my fuse,
'cause I got those dietary blues.
You see, I'm on a diet;
where you poach instead of fry it.
The eggs you eat are coddled
and your stomach's nearly curdled.
My open mouth now lingers
near a plate of Lady Fingers.
What tortures we endure
with our motives saintly pure.
We passed up ala'mode,
past gravy strongly strode.
But taste buds they did flutter
as the roll we missed had butter.
On we march past hot dogs,
no brownies or pecan logs.
I'm possessed of will of steel
when kept away from any meal.
Oh the things I now forgo
to keep my calories low
are not just simply a few
but fill a cookbook, or two.
There's pies and cookies and cakes
and other things you bake.
I passed up Duck L'Orange
and the BBQ at the Grange.
There's no end to my love of pasta,
and for soda, it hasta be Shasta.
No champignons in sauce,
no cotton candy floss.
The days are rolling by.
My mouth keeps getting dry.
Thinking one day in the park,
"Hmmm, I could eat that meadowlark!"
The fat friends cheer you on,
the thin ones think you're drawn.
Yep, got those dietary blues
from my head down to my shoes.
"It's worth it" my friends say,
the pangs I suffer through each day,
when I see myself much thinner
cuz I ate a lot less dinner.
Of this fact they're so sure,
but I wonder if the cure
isn't worse than the disease
of going without split peas.
So if you see me on the loose
looking for lettuce or some juice,
if I reach for something else
just give me a little goose.
Or turkey, or chicken, or rice, or spaghetti...perhaps a nice marmelade on a brioche.......
Okay, the L'Orange and Grange thing was just because there isn't supposed to be any way to rhyme orange, and I'm stubborn that way, and the pasta and Shasta works much better up here near Canada. Give me a break, I was a kid.
Happy doggerel month one and all.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
The Walls Have Eyes a short story
It's been a while since I posted a short story so it seems like a good time to lay aside political commentary and send along something completely different.
The Walls Have Eyes
Everyone is staring at me. All those eyes are focused directly on me. Well, not literally, of course, it's just an old photograph populated with long dead, unnamed, sepia-toned forebears peering at a camera lens. But somehow they seem to be staring just at me this moment: In this particular case it's professorial looking men with close-cropped hair. Pencil thin mustaches are in evidence here and there and each is clad in a crisp white lab coat with a row of buttons up one side. All in all a study in thoughtful superiority with just the merest hint of a condescending smile.
One frame over, similarly posed is an orderly assemblage of women in starchy white and gray nuns habits with large striped aprons and old fashioned nurses hats with crosses in the middle. Their countenance is solemn--almost stern--not to be trifled with.
Finally, the last old photo on this wall captures a sturdy brick building situated atop the knob of a hill. Telegraph poles fade into the barren distance. A wagon and a few flivvers are parked in front. The caption reads: 'Old Mercy Hospital, circa 1919'.
Like the photos of those who populated the halls of Old Mercy, the building itself reflects the no-nonsense utilitarian ethic of the time. Square, functional, devoid of unnecessary ornamentation.
I've seen these people before, thousands of faces and places staring unblinkingly at me from the past. Dust bowl farmers, gold rush prospectors, lumberjacks dwarfed by felled Sequoias, railroad section hands, coal miners, fish packers and factory workers. I've seen them all before, but never really looked at them. Like a tourist might see a famous museum. Idly curious, perhaps taking an extra moment or two on a few notable pieces, then checking it off the list and heading for the cathedral or opera house next on the tour.
But today I'm looking more closely. As I stand in the lobby of the modern Mercy Hospital, its air scrubbed clean and conditioned to a monotonous seventy degrees I notice windows open in the old photograph. A breeze is blowing a curtain outside. That couldn't happen here of course, the windows don't open. I try to imagine what it must have been like: Before chemistry and transfusions and antibiotics. Before x-rays, ultrasounds and CT scans, when anesthesiologists used ether or maybe bourbon on a patient before surgery. I picture surgeons, or perhaps nurses or technicians--I'm not sure, really--honing a scalpel on a razor strop preparing to make incisions big enough for two hands. Incisions replaced today with tiny punctures where remotely operated sterile instruments delicately perform routine miracles with a few days of discomfort replacing weeks of post-operative trauma. It's tough to imagine when anxiety about nature's capacity to fight raging infection was supplanted by a course of cheap pills.
The gulf seems too wide to fully comprehend. The past trapped in the photos is beyond my reach; too detached to have any contemporaneous meaning. So are the people. Not just the doctors and nurses behind glass on the wall before me but the others too, recalled from my memory. The soldiers posing by their tents, the fishermen hauling in their catch are all viewed with the same detachment an anthropologist might have for the ten-thousand year old skull found at a dig site.
The melancholy Dane could bemoan the fate of Yorick because he knew him, but I lack that empathy. The faces in all those old photos don't dress like me, think like me, live like me. They don't even look like me.
As my minds' eye shuffles through remembered images, like looking for an album in an iPod, a warm flush suffuses through me then it dawns on me, they don't look like me! Suddenly it becomes important to really focus my thoughts. Why don't they look like me? I'm straining to mentally recall the details when it hits me: All those eyes staring at me are attached to lean--even meager--faces. Beyond thin in the modern sense, most of them are skinny. Synonyms rush into my head: wiry, angular, sinewy, scrawny, gaunt and rawboned. Even the prosperous are mostly lanky with the occasional matronly woman or portly man tossed in the mix, but today's tabloids would be wondering aloud about eating disorders plaguing the richly famous among them.
Yet for all that they look healthy, vigorous even. Ready to tackle the great physical challenges before them; ready to chop down trees or drive covered wagons across the plains. Ready to walk or ride or run if need be to the next task in the conquering of a continent. They look ready to do what I cannot.
I am now uncomfortably aware of my surroundings; acutely attuned to the whisper-quiet rumble of the conditioned air and observant of the gleaming stainless and Formica surfaces. I feel small at the modern-ness of it all. My luxurious car is parked in a garage several stories below, just a few steps from the elevator. My era is a time of double bacon cheeseburgers, fries and soft drinks available from drive-up windows twenty four hours a day. Mine is a time of ergonomic chairs with lumbar support, computers and telephones without wires and televisions without content. Mine is a time of ridiculous paradoxes like driving to workouts and cheering athletic events with beer and chicken wings and chips; of food networks adjacent to exercise channels. Mine is a time when the leading causes of death are heart disease, cancer and respiratory disorders. Theirs was a time when the leading causes of death were accidents, childbirth and the flu. I'm beginning to empathize with the past, connect to their emotions feel their circumstances.
"Mr. Jenkins?"
The moment is broken, I turn and nod dumbly.
"They're ready for you now."
I kiss my wife and murmur reassurances. The nurse, clad in surgical scrubs featuring Sponge Bob Square Pants, tells her I should be in recovery in about three hours and that when she is done the doctor will be out to let her know how it all went. Crammed into a wheelchair I disappear behind the "Surgery Suites--Authorized Personnel Only" doors. I guess being a patient authorizes me.
The institutional beige corridors surround and form a maze of rooms stuffed with technology where eventually all the questions are asked and answered, the forms signed and the clothes exchanged for the ubiquitous hospital gown. I am wheeled into a chilled room inhabited by half a dozen or so people swaddled in sterile cotton and nitrile gloves. The last thoughts I have before slipping into drug induced sleep is wondering what all those fleshless people in the old photos would think about gastric bypass surgery.
The Walls Have Eyes
Everyone is staring at me. All those eyes are focused directly on me. Well, not literally, of course, it's just an old photograph populated with long dead, unnamed, sepia-toned forebears peering at a camera lens. But somehow they seem to be staring just at me this moment: In this particular case it's professorial looking men with close-cropped hair. Pencil thin mustaches are in evidence here and there and each is clad in a crisp white lab coat with a row of buttons up one side. All in all a study in thoughtful superiority with just the merest hint of a condescending smile.
One frame over, similarly posed is an orderly assemblage of women in starchy white and gray nuns habits with large striped aprons and old fashioned nurses hats with crosses in the middle. Their countenance is solemn--almost stern--not to be trifled with.
Finally, the last old photo on this wall captures a sturdy brick building situated atop the knob of a hill. Telegraph poles fade into the barren distance. A wagon and a few flivvers are parked in front. The caption reads: 'Old Mercy Hospital, circa 1919'.
Like the photos of those who populated the halls of Old Mercy, the building itself reflects the no-nonsense utilitarian ethic of the time. Square, functional, devoid of unnecessary ornamentation.
I've seen these people before, thousands of faces and places staring unblinkingly at me from the past. Dust bowl farmers, gold rush prospectors, lumberjacks dwarfed by felled Sequoias, railroad section hands, coal miners, fish packers and factory workers. I've seen them all before, but never really looked at them. Like a tourist might see a famous museum. Idly curious, perhaps taking an extra moment or two on a few notable pieces, then checking it off the list and heading for the cathedral or opera house next on the tour.
But today I'm looking more closely. As I stand in the lobby of the modern Mercy Hospital, its air scrubbed clean and conditioned to a monotonous seventy degrees I notice windows open in the old photograph. A breeze is blowing a curtain outside. That couldn't happen here of course, the windows don't open. I try to imagine what it must have been like: Before chemistry and transfusions and antibiotics. Before x-rays, ultrasounds and CT scans, when anesthesiologists used ether or maybe bourbon on a patient before surgery. I picture surgeons, or perhaps nurses or technicians--I'm not sure, really--honing a scalpel on a razor strop preparing to make incisions big enough for two hands. Incisions replaced today with tiny punctures where remotely operated sterile instruments delicately perform routine miracles with a few days of discomfort replacing weeks of post-operative trauma. It's tough to imagine when anxiety about nature's capacity to fight raging infection was supplanted by a course of cheap pills.
The gulf seems too wide to fully comprehend. The past trapped in the photos is beyond my reach; too detached to have any contemporaneous meaning. So are the people. Not just the doctors and nurses behind glass on the wall before me but the others too, recalled from my memory. The soldiers posing by their tents, the fishermen hauling in their catch are all viewed with the same detachment an anthropologist might have for the ten-thousand year old skull found at a dig site.
The melancholy Dane could bemoan the fate of Yorick because he knew him, but I lack that empathy. The faces in all those old photos don't dress like me, think like me, live like me. They don't even look like me.
As my minds' eye shuffles through remembered images, like looking for an album in an iPod, a warm flush suffuses through me then it dawns on me, they don't look like me! Suddenly it becomes important to really focus my thoughts. Why don't they look like me? I'm straining to mentally recall the details when it hits me: All those eyes staring at me are attached to lean--even meager--faces. Beyond thin in the modern sense, most of them are skinny. Synonyms rush into my head: wiry, angular, sinewy, scrawny, gaunt and rawboned. Even the prosperous are mostly lanky with the occasional matronly woman or portly man tossed in the mix, but today's tabloids would be wondering aloud about eating disorders plaguing the richly famous among them.
Yet for all that they look healthy, vigorous even. Ready to tackle the great physical challenges before them; ready to chop down trees or drive covered wagons across the plains. Ready to walk or ride or run if need be to the next task in the conquering of a continent. They look ready to do what I cannot.
I am now uncomfortably aware of my surroundings; acutely attuned to the whisper-quiet rumble of the conditioned air and observant of the gleaming stainless and Formica surfaces. I feel small at the modern-ness of it all. My luxurious car is parked in a garage several stories below, just a few steps from the elevator. My era is a time of double bacon cheeseburgers, fries and soft drinks available from drive-up windows twenty four hours a day. Mine is a time of ergonomic chairs with lumbar support, computers and telephones without wires and televisions without content. Mine is a time of ridiculous paradoxes like driving to workouts and cheering athletic events with beer and chicken wings and chips; of food networks adjacent to exercise channels. Mine is a time when the leading causes of death are heart disease, cancer and respiratory disorders. Theirs was a time when the leading causes of death were accidents, childbirth and the flu. I'm beginning to empathize with the past, connect to their emotions feel their circumstances.
"Mr. Jenkins?"
The moment is broken, I turn and nod dumbly.
"They're ready for you now."
I kiss my wife and murmur reassurances. The nurse, clad in surgical scrubs featuring Sponge Bob Square Pants, tells her I should be in recovery in about three hours and that when she is done the doctor will be out to let her know how it all went. Crammed into a wheelchair I disappear behind the "Surgery Suites--Authorized Personnel Only" doors. I guess being a patient authorizes me.
The institutional beige corridors surround and form a maze of rooms stuffed with technology where eventually all the questions are asked and answered, the forms signed and the clothes exchanged for the ubiquitous hospital gown. I am wheeled into a chilled room inhabited by half a dozen or so people swaddled in sterile cotton and nitrile gloves. The last thoughts I have before slipping into drug induced sleep is wondering what all those fleshless people in the old photos would think about gastric bypass surgery.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Fear, Inc.
On February 15, 1898 the U.S. Navy's dreadnought battleship U.S.S. Maine sustained a huge explosion and sank in the harbor of Havana, Cuba with the loss of nearly 3/4 of the 364 man crew. Shortly thereafter a photographer dispatched by William Randolph Hearst to take pictures of the 'war' complained to his boss that there was no conflict to photograph. Hearst shot back this famous telegram: 'You provide the pictures, I'll provide the war.'
In the 1920's the press dubbed a gangland cooperative created by the National Crime Syndicate; Murder, Incorporated. The NCS itself was a Board of Directors of sorts comprised of crime gang leaders from New York and New Jersey and served as a clearing house for airing grievances, settling turf wars, establishing a coordinated approach to dealing with law enforcers, and in the case of Murder, Inc., enforcing discipline.
Employees were paid a regular salary, got 'bonuses' of $1,000 to $5,000 for each killing, had a health care plan, the best lawyers money could buy and assurances their families would be taken care of should some harm befall them. 1 to 5 K may not sound like much now, but in the Roaring '20's, 5,000 bucks was enough to buy two Packard automobiles. In modern terms, two Cadillac Escalades. A thug could make a pretty good living fulfilling 'contracts'. This, by the way, is when the term 'contract' first appeared in the context of murder.
In the 1950's, following WWII and concurrent with the Korean War, the Red Menace became the public veneer of a Godless empire with evil intentions growing as a cancerous malignancy to blight the world. Or so it was told by breathless commentators. Suspected commies were rooted out by the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was led by a self-aggrandizing pol with barely a nodding acquaintance to truthfulness, born on a farm in Grand Chute, Wisconsin as Joseph Raymond McCarthy. His Chief Legal Counsel was a Duke law school grad from Yorba Linda, California named Richard Nixon.
In the 1960's there was George Wallace....well, you get the point. There is always someone willing to use fear to manipulate circumstances to benefit their personal agenda. Whether it is a complicit press seeking larger circulation (or I suppose, ratings or website hits, these days), a middling politician or union organizer with a taste for greater power and luxury, a crusader led astray by fanaticism, or worst of all, a cynic just grubbing for money, someone always steps up to the plate. So long as their has been human organization the powerful, or those aspiring to become so have unleashed fear as a primary weapon in their arsenals of aggression, or suppression.
But something has changed in the last twenty years accelerating the process and that something is technology. Specifically, communications technology. Vietnam was reported on film stock, edited and delivered days later. Radio was faster but less visceral. Newspapers got wire photos and reports from United Press International, Associated Press and Reuters, usually in time for same day publication. Reactions to these images and stories were written and mailed, or telephoned. Time elapsed between event and reaction. War was distant but the threat was made ever present to suit the needs of the powerful or ambitious.
Today wars are waged in real time. Depending on where you lived in the U.S. it was possible to watch Baghdad being bombed while eating your morning corn flakes before you went to work. It also meant you could watch people die in real time. Not a movie, though it seemed like it; real people--good guys and bad--died during my breakfast. I could respond in real time as well. If I was technologically savvy I could fax, phone or even email within seconds of seeing the event. Time to think no longer stood between event and reaction.
I was told by those in power that it was the right thing to do. They showed me evidence that evil doers needed to be rooted out, and indeed, following the horrifying images of the carnage at the World Trade Center (watched with incredulous disbelief as it was happening) it seemed clear enough they were correct. I supported the effort to wreak vengeance on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. I was convinced, along with the U.N., by the Secretary of State that Saddam was in league with these killers. I was afraid. I was schooled to be afraid. Buy duct tape and plastic sheeting and gas masks. It was the cold war gone hot. Duck and cover all over again, and I fell for it.
I'm nearly a decade older now, and more wary of scary. Finally I am on to the tactics, and the rationales behinds these assaults. I look more deeply; don't take things at face value when presented to me as frightening attacks on my freedoms, health care, gun rights, Christian values, Medicare, dot-dot-dot ad infinitum. I get it now, fear is a commodity.
Fear as a commodity is a new concept for me. I understood the manipulative qualities, and to my personal shame have used them myself from time to time. But it is only recently that I stumbled upon the quantifiable monetizing of fear. The packaging and sales of fear explains what seemed so inexplicable to me. It illuminates the success of talk media, both from the left and the right. The right tells me to fear the left. They're Socialistas seeking to steal your liberty bit by bit. They want to kill your babies in the womb and loose rapists amongst your daughters, raise your taxes and kill businesses. Oil your guns, lay in ammo and supplies, get ready to go the hills to survive. Could you donate $25 or more for the fight to preserve your heritage?
The left enjoins me to abjure my conservative roots. Those rednecks want to impose their reactionary Christian Taliban views on us all. They want the poor to perish in the streets, to be swept away with the rest of the rubbish. They want to make diversity a foreign word and lock up all the fags and atheists. They want Big Business left unfettered to pillage the citizenry. Print up more posters, march on Washington, sit in somewhere. Sing 'We Shall Overcome". Click here to donate $25 or more now to defend against this onslaught to your liberty.
Fear has a price. It is traded on the major exchanges. Fox News, MSNBC, the EIB Network, Air America all profit from fear as a commodity. Limbaugh, Olbermann, Beck, Maddow and a long list of grander and lesser players all derive their incomes (and tidy ones they are) from the packaging and sales of paranoia. They are spectacularly successful and market the resulting no-time-t0-think frenzy as 'news' in a self-renewing cycle of profitability. They play clips of each other with commentary designed to enrage without enlightening and then deftly slip in the fear mongering just before the commercial break. Each has its cadre of experts, politicians hungry for media time, and pundits raking in a few bucks on the side by beefing up 'analysis' with their own opining.
But I'm on to you now, I see how and what you do. What used to be healthy skepticism on my part has been transmogrified into vigilant cynicism. I'll admit to losing my innocence long ago, now perhaps finally I bid adieu to my gullibility as well. This is what Fear, Incorporated has sold me. It makes me sad, a little, to lose that piece of wonder and nescience that every soul should retain. It makes me angry too, with the perpetrators for their mischief and myself for my personal credulousness. I don't want to become just another angry old white guy.
Yet now, that is what I fear.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
R.I.P. G.O.P.
It's done, but not finished. Health care (or more accurately, health insurance) reform is the law of the land. A few minor fixes will survive the reconciliation process and the Obama administration will put a check mark next to this item on their to-do list. To be sure, it will face an onslaught of misguided legal challenges; which it will survive, as the Republican party continues to Balkanize itself on the shoals of intolerance.
The GOP has allowed itself to become fractured in a way that I used to think only Democrats were capable of doing. I suppose what is about to happen is best characterized as the ritual cleansing of those weaklings among the keepers of the True Faith that have succumbed to the demon of reason and common sense. These purges take place historically shortly before a political party self-immolates. It is a sad thing to see the party of Lincoln about to break itself apart upon the reefs of extremism.
Even Barry Goldwater wouldn't recognize this party. However rigid his ideology, he still understood that engagement in the process--even in a losing effort--was important. His successor from Arizona has decided instead, in a fit of pique, that he just won't join in anymore. Former presidential candidate and Senator from Arizona John McCain announced on the Senate floor he would no longer participate in lawmaking this session. He did not resign, or offer to return his salary to the Treasury Department, he just decided to become the laziest Senator in Washington. That in itself is a pretty tall order. He apparently believes he is up to the task, but I imagine he will walk that statement back. Egos of that proportion don't stand in the darkness very long. Perhaps the voters in Arizona will finally receive that for which they are paying. Perhaps they will instead decide his retirement is appropriate this fall.
Fear mongering has an epic and sordid history in politics. In long ago and recent times it relies on distortions, lies and ad hominen personal attacks to gain traction among the poorly informed. Then it fans the flames of divisiveness with race-baiting and conspiracy theories that would be laughable if the intent wasn't so sinister. In the infancy of this country tracts were published under pseudonyms and distributed by hand and reprinted in small presses. Later, similar tactics were adopted by newspapers on a massive scale (notably Hearst publications) as yellow journalism flourished in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Since then the cavalcade of technology has brought us Father Coughlin, an anti-Semitic Nazi apologist; Sen. Joe McCarthy, a Commie hunter that almost single-handedly fomented the Cold War, and has led us from Joe Pine to Rush Limbaugh and the modern day successor to Hearst, Rupert Murdoch and Fox 'News'. The saddest part of this, especially in recent times, is that for Limbaugh and his ilk stirring the pot is a cold calculation to make more money. Make no mistake, theirs is not an act of conscience, it is show business. With controversy--the more shrill the better--comes ratings. With ratings comes cash. End of story.
Watch carefully. When the hubbub over health care dies down, as it will, and the value of the sideshow loses its ratings punch, the flabby arguments from the right will disappear and a new villainous conspiracy will emerge. It's even money what it will be. The Senate will take up regulatory reform of the financial industry next and you can be sure that the right will weigh in, but perhaps with caution, given the mood of the populace toward that industry. My bet for the next cause celebre' for conspiracy theorist will be immigration reform. Expect a comeback from Lou Dobbs for that effort.
Ultimately, when no reasonable middle course of action is acceptable to the extremophiles of a party, factionalization will doom it to the dustbin of history. Without strong leadership and a reassertion of reasonable compromise that is where the GOP seems headed.
I suppose if I really wanted to reopen the conspiracy can of worms I could let it leak that all those water boardings Dick Cheney insists were are so important in Gitmo were done with fluoridated water, in Area 51 instead.
As Sarah Palin put it; time to reload, America.
Monday, March 1, 2010
My Dinner at Antoine's
I've had occasion recently to sup in some very fine eateries, and I have a few thoughts about the art of dining fine upon which I shall expound in the future. But today I have one establishment particularly in mind for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with great food, but instead for speaking to the essence of living a meaningful life. But first you need a little history.
Antoine's in New Orleans is a much venerated institution. It began as a pension' when 27 year old French immigrant Antoine Alciatore left a frustrating business effort in New York to come to New Orleans. After a short stint as the chef in a nearby hotel he started his own place in 1840. He brought his fiance' from New York and soon they were married and the wonderful aromas emanating from his kitchen enraptured the Queen City of the Mississippi and a legend began to bloom. A charming story, and true as far as it goes. Then steam displaced wind as the motive force for boats on the river, and predictable schedules for shipping reduced the demand for lodging in his little pension', but not the enthusiasm of patrons for his restaurant.
Wishing to spare his wife the agony of seeing his slow death, and desiring to be buried in his homeland, Antoine took his leave in 1874 and sailed home alone to Marseilles where he died within the year. Undaunted, his wife carried on, sending son Jules six years later to learn his craft in the great culinary centers of Paris, Strassburg and Marseilles. He returned and assumed command of the now famous Antoine's at the end of the nineteenth century, where his genius in the kitchen demonstrated itself with creations such as Oysters Rockefeller, a moniker he laughingly applied to the rich sauce he created but which had no association with the person for whom it was named. Jules fancied it a joke, but the name stuck. Today it would be Oysters Gates, maybe. By the way, that spinach and cheese concoction you may have been served elsewhere is a pale imitation invented by a jealous rival when Jules refused to disclose the recipe, still kept a family secret to this day.
Skip ahead three generations. Antoine's, always guided by a direct descendant of Mssr. Alciatore himself has weathered war, prohibition, depression, war, changing style, war, and of course, the weather. Until Katrina struck and everything changed for the Crescent City.
Huge swaths underwater, looting, death, inept relief efforts; all pictures we remember vividly. Pictures for most of us, reality for New Orleaneans. Mercifully, or more accurately because the founders of the tiny community on Isle d'Orleans, Mssrs. Iberville and Bienville built on higher ground, Veaux Carre' ( voe kuh RAY-the French Quarter to tourists) avoided the flooding, but not the wind.
Over the last one hundred sixty years of Antoine's growth it absorbed neighboring buildings. It encased and enclosed cooking areas that were once open courtyards with coal fueled firepits and second story slave quarters. It built a vast and enviable wine cellar in what had been an alleyway and inhabited each acquisition like a hermit crab making a home in a found space. The storm toppled away a century old plus second story leaving areas exposed to the elements for three weeks. A 1953 Chateau LaFitte Bordeaux wine does not like exposure to wind, rain and tropical temperatures. An entire wine cellar becomes so much vinegar. And from an insurers point of view, just some perishable reimbursed at the current market value. A '53 Chateau worth maybe $2500 is replaceable with a 2003 Chateau worth about $35.
But more importantly, it left the employees and patrons scattered to the four corners; unemployed, separated from family--or worse, and homeless, mostly with just the clothes on their backs.
The easy thing, the business thing, the expedient thing, maybe even the smart thing to do would have been to take the insurance money, say it had been a great run and retire. New Orleans, you could justify, is too wounded to recover, our people now like the diaspora. We can't go back again. But Antoine's isn't a legendary place just because the food is great. Lots of nouveau cafes have smart young chefs churning out fabulous food. Antoine's is a legend because of its people. Like the family that owns Antoine's, employees stretch back through it's history too. One generation assumes guardianship of the fine service and precious recipes from their fathers, mothers, grandparents, sisters and brothers. Like New Orleans itself, the people of Antoine's are more than employees--they are members of the family.
Which helps to explain why the newest generation of leadership didn't quit. The great, great, grandson of Antoine Alciatore came back, rolled up his sleeves and went to work. He wrangled with recalcitrant insurance agencies: No, you can't continue your employees health benefits because you aren't open for business so they aren't currently employees. Catch 22. What could he do? He could pay the entire cost of COBRA coverage out of his own pocket for every employee. So he did. He found where people were; in Arkansas, Texas, Florida and elsewhere and brought them back. He found places for them to live, co-signed countless rental agreements, and put them to work cleaning and reconstructing. He had them polishing silverware and reclaiming tables and chairs. As soon as he could he opened the Hermes Bar, the oldest part of the location they have so long occupied. He gave them something to which they could look forward: He gave them hope and purpose.
When I asked the obvious question, why he would do such a thing--take such a huge risk--he looked at me without a moments hesitation and said, "How could I not. They're family. You do what you have to do."
"You do what you have to do." It is a lesson all Americans should take to heart.
Antoine's in New Orleans is a much venerated institution. It began as a pension' when 27 year old French immigrant Antoine Alciatore left a frustrating business effort in New York to come to New Orleans. After a short stint as the chef in a nearby hotel he started his own place in 1840. He brought his fiance' from New York and soon they were married and the wonderful aromas emanating from his kitchen enraptured the Queen City of the Mississippi and a legend began to bloom. A charming story, and true as far as it goes. Then steam displaced wind as the motive force for boats on the river, and predictable schedules for shipping reduced the demand for lodging in his little pension', but not the enthusiasm of patrons for his restaurant.
Wishing to spare his wife the agony of seeing his slow death, and desiring to be buried in his homeland, Antoine took his leave in 1874 and sailed home alone to Marseilles where he died within the year. Undaunted, his wife carried on, sending son Jules six years later to learn his craft in the great culinary centers of Paris, Strassburg and Marseilles. He returned and assumed command of the now famous Antoine's at the end of the nineteenth century, where his genius in the kitchen demonstrated itself with creations such as Oysters Rockefeller, a moniker he laughingly applied to the rich sauce he created but which had no association with the person for whom it was named. Jules fancied it a joke, but the name stuck. Today it would be Oysters Gates, maybe. By the way, that spinach and cheese concoction you may have been served elsewhere is a pale imitation invented by a jealous rival when Jules refused to disclose the recipe, still kept a family secret to this day.
Skip ahead three generations. Antoine's, always guided by a direct descendant of Mssr. Alciatore himself has weathered war, prohibition, depression, war, changing style, war, and of course, the weather. Until Katrina struck and everything changed for the Crescent City.
Huge swaths underwater, looting, death, inept relief efforts; all pictures we remember vividly. Pictures for most of us, reality for New Orleaneans. Mercifully, or more accurately because the founders of the tiny community on Isle d'Orleans, Mssrs. Iberville and Bienville built on higher ground, Veaux Carre' ( voe kuh RAY-the French Quarter to tourists) avoided the flooding, but not the wind.
Over the last one hundred sixty years of Antoine's growth it absorbed neighboring buildings. It encased and enclosed cooking areas that were once open courtyards with coal fueled firepits and second story slave quarters. It built a vast and enviable wine cellar in what had been an alleyway and inhabited each acquisition like a hermit crab making a home in a found space. The storm toppled away a century old plus second story leaving areas exposed to the elements for three weeks. A 1953 Chateau LaFitte Bordeaux wine does not like exposure to wind, rain and tropical temperatures. An entire wine cellar becomes so much vinegar. And from an insurers point of view, just some perishable reimbursed at the current market value. A '53 Chateau worth maybe $2500 is replaceable with a 2003 Chateau worth about $35.
But more importantly, it left the employees and patrons scattered to the four corners; unemployed, separated from family--or worse, and homeless, mostly with just the clothes on their backs.
The easy thing, the business thing, the expedient thing, maybe even the smart thing to do would have been to take the insurance money, say it had been a great run and retire. New Orleans, you could justify, is too wounded to recover, our people now like the diaspora. We can't go back again. But Antoine's isn't a legendary place just because the food is great. Lots of nouveau cafes have smart young chefs churning out fabulous food. Antoine's is a legend because of its people. Like the family that owns Antoine's, employees stretch back through it's history too. One generation assumes guardianship of the fine service and precious recipes from their fathers, mothers, grandparents, sisters and brothers. Like New Orleans itself, the people of Antoine's are more than employees--they are members of the family.
Which helps to explain why the newest generation of leadership didn't quit. The great, great, grandson of Antoine Alciatore came back, rolled up his sleeves and went to work. He wrangled with recalcitrant insurance agencies: No, you can't continue your employees health benefits because you aren't open for business so they aren't currently employees. Catch 22. What could he do? He could pay the entire cost of COBRA coverage out of his own pocket for every employee. So he did. He found where people were; in Arkansas, Texas, Florida and elsewhere and brought them back. He found places for them to live, co-signed countless rental agreements, and put them to work cleaning and reconstructing. He had them polishing silverware and reclaiming tables and chairs. As soon as he could he opened the Hermes Bar, the oldest part of the location they have so long occupied. He gave them something to which they could look forward: He gave them hope and purpose.
When I asked the obvious question, why he would do such a thing--take such a huge risk--he looked at me without a moments hesitation and said, "How could I not. They're family. You do what you have to do."
"You do what you have to do." It is a lesson all Americans should take to heart.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
The Sun Never Sets
I was standing on gravel beach by Hale Passage yesterday afternoon having some photos taken for use in a publicity campaign. It was uncommonly warm for February 2, around 52 degrees. The water was still and the sun shone brightly through partly cloudy skies. Looming darkly in the background was Lummi Island. Even a few friendly dogs, hoping to be in the picture, or more likely, hoping I would throw their sodden stick for them until darkness set it, came by to say hello. My multi-talented friend Jeffrey B. Stiglitz was behind the camera. My job was to try to make a good face for radio seem to be a good face for a book jacket too. Needless to say I had lots of time on my hands.
With that time I reflected on my friends and acquaintances, on their many talents and how far flung they are worldwide. Among this group are attorneys and car salesmen, real estate agents and photographers, ministers of the gospel and internet gurus. I number among my friends physicians, printers, social workers, retailers, wholesalers and chefs. I rub elbows from time to time with artists, film makers, movie stars and gardeners. I know jewelry makers and jewelry sellers, writers, publishers, editors, agents and interior designers. I count as dear friends cops (and probably a robber or two) and fly fishers. I could go on, but you get the point.
Many of these people volunteer for and donate to multiple charities. They think pink for breast cancer, donate for earthquake relief in Haiti--or go there by their own means to lend a hand. They collect warm coats for the homeless in the winter and help abused children and women and do a thousand other things of which I'm not even aware. And yet, with all that happening, from around the globe and across the street they still manage to visit my blog when I post something new. They take a moment to send me an encouraging email while becoming fans of my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/R-L-Paces-Rising-Son-Trilogy-Island-Dawn-Book-One/259112635667?ref=ts). They ask when my book 'Island Dawn' is due out (summer 2010) and how they can get it.
A few have taken the time to labor through early manuscripts and make cogent suggestions on how to improve the work. Now, publishing contract in hand, I stand here on a beach on a mild winter day having pictures taken. One of these photos will end up on the dust cover of my book. I'm having a little contest on Facebook to have fans choose which one they like the best. If you would like to vote, click on the link above and by all means do so.
The point of all this is how amazed I am by my friends. And how appreciative I am that they care about me as much as I care about them. Scattered around the world in Great Britain, Malta, Hawaii, Japan, Austria, Vietnam, New Zealand, India and beyond are the brightest, most industrious people in their fields. Winners of Oscars and Pulitzer Prizes and Humanitarian Awards find the time to say hello.
I'll steal a phrase from the nineteenth century and observe that the sun never sets on the talented circle of friends and aquaintances I have around the world.
That is something about which I am truly grateful. Thanks and love to you all.
With that time I reflected on my friends and acquaintances, on their many talents and how far flung they are worldwide. Among this group are attorneys and car salesmen, real estate agents and photographers, ministers of the gospel and internet gurus. I number among my friends physicians, printers, social workers, retailers, wholesalers and chefs. I rub elbows from time to time with artists, film makers, movie stars and gardeners. I know jewelry makers and jewelry sellers, writers, publishers, editors, agents and interior designers. I count as dear friends cops (and probably a robber or two) and fly fishers. I could go on, but you get the point.
Many of these people volunteer for and donate to multiple charities. They think pink for breast cancer, donate for earthquake relief in Haiti--or go there by their own means to lend a hand. They collect warm coats for the homeless in the winter and help abused children and women and do a thousand other things of which I'm not even aware. And yet, with all that happening, from around the globe and across the street they still manage to visit my blog when I post something new. They take a moment to send me an encouraging email while becoming fans of my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/R-L-Paces-Rising-Son-Trilogy-Island-Dawn-Book-One/259112635667?ref=ts). They ask when my book 'Island Dawn' is due out (summer 2010) and how they can get it.
A few have taken the time to labor through early manuscripts and make cogent suggestions on how to improve the work. Now, publishing contract in hand, I stand here on a beach on a mild winter day having pictures taken. One of these photos will end up on the dust cover of my book. I'm having a little contest on Facebook to have fans choose which one they like the best. If you would like to vote, click on the link above and by all means do so.
The point of all this is how amazed I am by my friends. And how appreciative I am that they care about me as much as I care about them. Scattered around the world in Great Britain, Malta, Hawaii, Japan, Austria, Vietnam, New Zealand, India and beyond are the brightest, most industrious people in their fields. Winners of Oscars and Pulitzer Prizes and Humanitarian Awards find the time to say hello.
I'll steal a phrase from the nineteenth century and observe that the sun never sets on the talented circle of friends and aquaintances I have around the world.
That is something about which I am truly grateful. Thanks and love to you all.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Mr. Brown Goes to Washington
A naive young man is appointed to fill the unexpired term of a U.S. Senator by a corrupt Governor because party leaders think he will be easy to manage to their liking. The young man goes to Washington where he quickly learns that what is best for the country isn't always best for the Senate, and his efforts to pass a bill to help young people is met with resistance. When he pursues this bill anyway, the state party boss resorts to a malicious and untrue scandal to undermine the young idealist. The penultimate scene is a filibuster with an impassioned plea on the floor of the Senate to return to what's best for the country and not just cozy for the politicians. They are swayed by the earnest young man and promise to reform. The country is better for it thereafter.
That, in a nutshell, is a synopsis of the Oscar-winning Frank Capra 1939 film, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." James Stewart plays Smith, and Claude Rains the senior Senator with the epiphany. It's a great movie with a fabulous screenplay and terrific acting. It could not happen today. Mr. Smith might go to Washington, but the Senate would never let the filibuster play out on the floor.
Why, you may ask, is this so? And while we're at it, why does it take 60 votes in the Senate to pass anything when 51 constitutes a majority? Both good questions, and both answered the same way. Senate rules.
A couple of decades or so ago most of the old white men that run the Senate concluded that real filibusters (the ones where members were required to stay on the floor, and the speaker held the floor by reading cookbooks and magazines into the Congessional Record) were inconvenient to their social lives, made fundraising more difficult and kept them up past their bedtimes. So they changed the rules for a filibuster. Now all that is required is for a Senator to state that he or she will do so and the Senate automatically moves to cloture (the move to shut off a filibuster, 60 votes being required). No messy late nights. No tedious actual lawmaking. Dinner plans are intact and lobbyist's hours are not unduly imposed upon. Very tidy. Also lethal to progress for the American People.
Why, you may ask, doesn't the party with the majority simply change the rules? They have that right, indeed, the power players routinely change rules to suit them when they achieve the majority. But not this rule. This rule stands, and will continue to stand for one very simple reason: The party in power will not always be so. Therefore a gentleman's agreement was reached wherein neither party will change this particular rule for fear of retribution from other members when the inevitable fall from the grace of the voters occurs.
Like what happened in the 2008 election. Democrats took commanding control of the Senate and the House. Republicans in the Senate need only write the word filibuster on a slip of paper and hand it to the Clerk and now 60 votes are needed to sneeze or take a potty break. Bear in mind, this is not what the American People or the Constitution had in mind, but the Senate has its rules.
Herein lies the irony of Mr. Smith of Mass. going to D.C. He was elected because Democrats exhibited that most enduring party trait; internal meltdown. The Dems managed to present to the voters an unappealing candidate so sure of her election she barely bothered to campaign until polls showed that defeat was imminent. My liberal friends have asked me from time to time why I won't move to the Democratic Party, and instead choose to remain Independent. In a phrase, it's party discipline. However wrongheaded the Republicans are at this moment--and trust me on this one, they are way off the reservation--they at least know how to maintain a coherent (if inaccurate) message. Dems on the other hand show an unfailing ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It's a wonder any of them can walk given how many times they have shot themselves in the foot.
So, Mr. Brown will go to Washington and will become a majority of one. One man, one slip of paper and the wheels of government grind to a halt. Ridiculous concessions will be made, laws will be written not for good governance, but to appease the ego of a single Senator to get that crucial vote. It won't even be good sausage.
I think they ought to bring back the real deal. If you want to filibuster, fine. Bring in the cots, haul out the cookbooks and magazines and settle in for a few days of butt busting legislative work. Talk till your voice is raw, wear a diaper so you don't have to relinquish the floor, get yourself and 99 other old men and women dead tired and wanting to go home. Then start doing what you should be doing anyway. Start making decent law and reasonable compromises. Start thinking about country first and party second, or maybe third. Ignore lobbyists for a change. Do the right thing.
It'll never happen of course, but I can dream, can't I?
That, in a nutshell, is a synopsis of the Oscar-winning Frank Capra 1939 film, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." James Stewart plays Smith, and Claude Rains the senior Senator with the epiphany. It's a great movie with a fabulous screenplay and terrific acting. It could not happen today. Mr. Smith might go to Washington, but the Senate would never let the filibuster play out on the floor.
Why, you may ask, is this so? And while we're at it, why does it take 60 votes in the Senate to pass anything when 51 constitutes a majority? Both good questions, and both answered the same way. Senate rules.
A couple of decades or so ago most of the old white men that run the Senate concluded that real filibusters (the ones where members were required to stay on the floor, and the speaker held the floor by reading cookbooks and magazines into the Congessional Record) were inconvenient to their social lives, made fundraising more difficult and kept them up past their bedtimes. So they changed the rules for a filibuster. Now all that is required is for a Senator to state that he or she will do so and the Senate automatically moves to cloture (the move to shut off a filibuster, 60 votes being required). No messy late nights. No tedious actual lawmaking. Dinner plans are intact and lobbyist's hours are not unduly imposed upon. Very tidy. Also lethal to progress for the American People.
Why, you may ask, doesn't the party with the majority simply change the rules? They have that right, indeed, the power players routinely change rules to suit them when they achieve the majority. But not this rule. This rule stands, and will continue to stand for one very simple reason: The party in power will not always be so. Therefore a gentleman's agreement was reached wherein neither party will change this particular rule for fear of retribution from other members when the inevitable fall from the grace of the voters occurs.
Like what happened in the 2008 election. Democrats took commanding control of the Senate and the House. Republicans in the Senate need only write the word filibuster on a slip of paper and hand it to the Clerk and now 60 votes are needed to sneeze or take a potty break. Bear in mind, this is not what the American People or the Constitution had in mind, but the Senate has its rules.
Herein lies the irony of Mr. Smith of Mass. going to D.C. He was elected because Democrats exhibited that most enduring party trait; internal meltdown. The Dems managed to present to the voters an unappealing candidate so sure of her election she barely bothered to campaign until polls showed that defeat was imminent. My liberal friends have asked me from time to time why I won't move to the Democratic Party, and instead choose to remain Independent. In a phrase, it's party discipline. However wrongheaded the Republicans are at this moment--and trust me on this one, they are way off the reservation--they at least know how to maintain a coherent (if inaccurate) message. Dems on the other hand show an unfailing ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It's a wonder any of them can walk given how many times they have shot themselves in the foot.
So, Mr. Brown will go to Washington and will become a majority of one. One man, one slip of paper and the wheels of government grind to a halt. Ridiculous concessions will be made, laws will be written not for good governance, but to appease the ego of a single Senator to get that crucial vote. It won't even be good sausage.
I think they ought to bring back the real deal. If you want to filibuster, fine. Bring in the cots, haul out the cookbooks and magazines and settle in for a few days of butt busting legislative work. Talk till your voice is raw, wear a diaper so you don't have to relinquish the floor, get yourself and 99 other old men and women dead tired and wanting to go home. Then start doing what you should be doing anyway. Start making decent law and reasonable compromises. Start thinking about country first and party second, or maybe third. Ignore lobbyists for a change. Do the right thing.
It'll never happen of course, but I can dream, can't I?
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
An Open Letter to the United States Senate
I'm an ordinary person, capable of extraordinary things. I work with my hands, my brain the strength of my back and the flat of my feet. I am strong in times of weakness and weep openly and unashamed in moments of great triumph. I am weary to my bones but I carry on with a strength that resides deep in my soul. I persevere in the face of despair. I exult in my neighbor's blessings and help them carry their heaviest burdens.
I am vain, petty, cowardly, envious and pessimistic. And yet still, mostly hopeful. I am all these things and more; resilient, moldable ambitious, willing. I am a citizen of the United States of America. I am you and you are me, joined as we.
Together as we, let us once more do great things. Find us the tools then get out of the way. We are the sturdy people that forged a tiny, fragile country by defeating the most powerful military force on the planet. We did it on the strength of an idea. We are the country that invented the light bulb and found a thousand uses for the humble peanut through the vision and persistence of brilliant individuals. We are the country that saved a world at war for democracy twice in a single century through dogged determination and shared sacrifice as a nation. We went to the moon using nothing more sophisticated that a slide rule and vacuum tubes, and watched it, in color, on the TV we invented. We defeated Communism and we showed the world what the future of human relations looks like. It looks like you. It looks like me. It looks like us.
We have an uncanny ability to elevate one among us to great leadership at pivotal moments in our history, and we hope and believe we have done so once again. Make no mistake the challenges are great, as they always are. Save the planet, alleviate poverty, heal the sick, educate the illiterate, seek peace and justice and defend the defenseless. We are ready, eager even, as we always have been, to sacrifice tirelessly for our children's and grandchildren's futures, to scrimp pennies and tackle intolerance. Watch the world be amazed and inspired by how we succeed. Please, give us impossible tasks.
I am vain, petty, cowardly, envious and pessimistic. And yet still, mostly hopeful. I am all these things and more; resilient, moldable ambitious, willing. I am a citizen of the United States of America. I am you and you are me, joined as we.
Together as we, let us once more do great things. Find us the tools then get out of the way. We are the sturdy people that forged a tiny, fragile country by defeating the most powerful military force on the planet. We did it on the strength of an idea. We are the country that invented the light bulb and found a thousand uses for the humble peanut through the vision and persistence of brilliant individuals. We are the country that saved a world at war for democracy twice in a single century through dogged determination and shared sacrifice as a nation. We went to the moon using nothing more sophisticated that a slide rule and vacuum tubes, and watched it, in color, on the TV we invented. We defeated Communism and we showed the world what the future of human relations looks like. It looks like you. It looks like me. It looks like us.
We have an uncanny ability to elevate one among us to great leadership at pivotal moments in our history, and we hope and believe we have done so once again. Make no mistake the challenges are great, as they always are. Save the planet, alleviate poverty, heal the sick, educate the illiterate, seek peace and justice and defend the defenseless. We are ready, eager even, as we always have been, to sacrifice tirelessly for our children's and grandchildren's futures, to scrimp pennies and tackle intolerance. Watch the world be amazed and inspired by how we succeed. Please, give us impossible tasks.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Fallen Brothers
On Halloween night a Seattle police officer was gunned down and his trainee partner wounded by an assailant whose purpose was unknown. The trainee officer managed to get off a round or two at the fleeing vehicle. The alleged killer was wounded and is now in police custody awaiting court proceedings.
November 29th four police officers were assassinated at point blank range at 7:43 a.m. as they sat in a coffeehouse in Lakewood, Washington. They were preparing for their patrol shifts and reviewing the latest Department information on their laptop computers. One officer managed to return fire, wounding the murderer before succumbing to his own wounds. About sixty six hours later a police officer shot and killed the suspect as he reached for a weapon in his waistband. That weapon turned out to be a service pistol taken from one of the dead officers.
Impromptu memorials spontaneously appeared. Hearses carrying flag draped coffins along with mournful processions of hundreds of emergency vehicles followed routes lined with stunned citizens waving flags. Tears streamed down onlookers faces, newscasters choked up and couldn't speak. Emotionally draining memorial services were held in cavernous stadiums filled to capacity with officers from all over the country and the world.
The thin blue line seemed a bit thinner to many, but officers will close ranks and if the line is a bit thinner, its tensile strength is up by an order of magnitude.
I know a bit about cop culture. My father was a charter member of the Idaho State Police. My grandfather on my mother's side was a county Sheriff in Idaho. I have an Administration of Justice certification from Monterey Peninsula College. I've worn a badge. I've even been shot at a couple of times. I don't know by whom on either occasion, but I do know they missed--but not by much. My grandfather retired. Like a lot of Sheriffs in rural areas, he also was a farmer and later a shopkeeper. Law enforcement didn't pay very well, which is why my dad left the force. He just couldn't make ends meet on patrolman's pay with a growing family. The fact that he was the only State Policeman assigned to an area about the size of Delaware may have had a bearing on his decision as well.
My career in law enforcement was truncated by a California initiative. Proposition 13, more commonly known as "The Taxpayers Revolt" rolled back property taxes and caused widespread panic among public budgeteers. Departments froze hiring and laid off new hires (guys like me) until the dust had settled and people realized it wasn't quite the crisis it appeared to be. In the meantime, I, like my father, had to make a living and never did get back to law enforcement.
What did my grandfather, my father and myself have in common with the five officers killed in the last month and half? We all shared the desire for service; the calling to help. We are part of the community; parents, kids, neighbors, friends.
Cops run toward the gunfire so citizens won't have too. Firefighters charge into burning buildings to save those who cannot flee by themselves. They do so willingly, sometimes tragically, to help; to serve.
Mostly, we don't know why we do these things. Some call it altruism, some call it patriotism and some call it lunacy. But for whatever reason the thin blue line is what stands between the darkness and the light. If you hide in the shadows of darkness, beware; my active brothers will work tirelessly to expose you, apprehend you and make the streets safer. If you live in the light, the next time a cop pulls you over, do what he says. And after you've signed the ticket, thank him for his service. For you, you've just paid with a wallet, for us sometimes we pay with our lives.
And from generations past, and those yet to come, I can tell you: We would do it all again.
November 29th four police officers were assassinated at point blank range at 7:43 a.m. as they sat in a coffeehouse in Lakewood, Washington. They were preparing for their patrol shifts and reviewing the latest Department information on their laptop computers. One officer managed to return fire, wounding the murderer before succumbing to his own wounds. About sixty six hours later a police officer shot and killed the suspect as he reached for a weapon in his waistband. That weapon turned out to be a service pistol taken from one of the dead officers.
Impromptu memorials spontaneously appeared. Hearses carrying flag draped coffins along with mournful processions of hundreds of emergency vehicles followed routes lined with stunned citizens waving flags. Tears streamed down onlookers faces, newscasters choked up and couldn't speak. Emotionally draining memorial services were held in cavernous stadiums filled to capacity with officers from all over the country and the world.
The thin blue line seemed a bit thinner to many, but officers will close ranks and if the line is a bit thinner, its tensile strength is up by an order of magnitude.
I know a bit about cop culture. My father was a charter member of the Idaho State Police. My grandfather on my mother's side was a county Sheriff in Idaho. I have an Administration of Justice certification from Monterey Peninsula College. I've worn a badge. I've even been shot at a couple of times. I don't know by whom on either occasion, but I do know they missed--but not by much. My grandfather retired. Like a lot of Sheriffs in rural areas, he also was a farmer and later a shopkeeper. Law enforcement didn't pay very well, which is why my dad left the force. He just couldn't make ends meet on patrolman's pay with a growing family. The fact that he was the only State Policeman assigned to an area about the size of Delaware may have had a bearing on his decision as well.
My career in law enforcement was truncated by a California initiative. Proposition 13, more commonly known as "The Taxpayers Revolt" rolled back property taxes and caused widespread panic among public budgeteers. Departments froze hiring and laid off new hires (guys like me) until the dust had settled and people realized it wasn't quite the crisis it appeared to be. In the meantime, I, like my father, had to make a living and never did get back to law enforcement.
What did my grandfather, my father and myself have in common with the five officers killed in the last month and half? We all shared the desire for service; the calling to help. We are part of the community; parents, kids, neighbors, friends.
Cops run toward the gunfire so citizens won't have too. Firefighters charge into burning buildings to save those who cannot flee by themselves. They do so willingly, sometimes tragically, to help; to serve.
Mostly, we don't know why we do these things. Some call it altruism, some call it patriotism and some call it lunacy. But for whatever reason the thin blue line is what stands between the darkness and the light. If you hide in the shadows of darkness, beware; my active brothers will work tirelessly to expose you, apprehend you and make the streets safer. If you live in the light, the next time a cop pulls you over, do what he says. And after you've signed the ticket, thank him for his service. For you, you've just paid with a wallet, for us sometimes we pay with our lives.
And from generations past, and those yet to come, I can tell you: We would do it all again.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Out of service
Just in case anyone was wondering, I haven't run out of ideas for posts, but my computer is wonkered right now, so I won't be making any entries until it is fixed. Here are some of the things I'm working on at the moment:
Incarcerationville, U.S.A.
Restaurant Reviewing & the Art of the Good Meal
The Substitution Principle
Thanks to all of you who regularly read my posts, I'll be getting back at it when I'm on my own computer with my own resources at hand. Here's a little teaser for you though, I'm working on putting together podcasts of my posts, which will link to a website and my Face Book page. But that is in the new year, and probably a few hours of tech help down the road.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a joy filled New Year to you all.
Incarcerationville, U.S.A.
Restaurant Reviewing & the Art of the Good Meal
The Substitution Principle
Thanks to all of you who regularly read my posts, I'll be getting back at it when I'm on my own computer with my own resources at hand. Here's a little teaser for you though, I'm working on putting together podcasts of my posts, which will link to a website and my Face Book page. But that is in the new year, and probably a few hours of tech help down the road.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a joy filled New Year to you all.
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