Thoughts

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Sharing Your History


Most people look at the making of history in a short of detached mode.  That is, they see historic events, like the 9/11 bombings but do not consider themselves as a part of it.  We all saw the towers collapsing, the people jumping to their deaths, the fire and police responders in the middle of everything.  Those people, of course, we central to that history as it was made.  But they we actually only a small part of a much larger scenario.  That historic event in fact went on for days, months, years.  We were all witness to it in one way or another and we all made observations about it.  It effected our lives, our movements, our perceived safety, and many other parts of our lives.  For me personally, I had to attend my daughter’s wedding 10 days after the attack and had to fly through Newark airport to get to San Antonio.  My flight from Boston to Newark involved our flying very near to where the twin towers once existed.  I saw the smoke rising from that spot and that image is indelibly imprinted on my memory.  For a historian, which I have a masters degree in, primary source material is of the first priority in understand historical events completely.  My recounting of the 9/11 events, not just my seeing ground zero from my airplane window, but how I, as a Federal Government employee at the time, is exactly what a historian covets in properly capturing historical events.

But what else is there?  First of all, history is something that in on-going.  It does not start and stop with particular memorable events, but is a continuous series of small events.  Most people believe their lives are uneventful and of no particular interest to historians.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  The fabric of history is intertwined with the lives of every living people.

For example, back in 1989 I decided to take the train cross-country, Boston to San Francisco via Chicago.  The Boston to Chicago leg on the Lake Shore Limited started in the late afternoon of one day and finished in Chicago in the early afternoon of the following day.  On the morning of that second day, I travel from my compartment to the dining car to have breakfast.  I was seated across from an elderly lady and we of course struck up a conversation.  I asked her where she came from and what she had done when she was working.  I remember her commenting how her life was unremarkable, or so she thought.  She told me that she had taught school in a one room school house in southern Ohio.  I told her that her experience was special and worthy of being remembered on paper.  I told her that the one room school house was a thing of the past and that only those who experienced such things could properly relate to coming generations who would have no concept, no perspective of such a thing.  I was sad that I had no way to capture her memory but told her that her memories were valuable and worthy of being written down.  I have carried that belief with me since.

My own family has a rich history but most of it is limited to brief snippets which do not do justice to their experiences.  To that end, I decided to interview my Aunt Charlotte.  Aunt Charlotte was my father’s sister.  My father died in 1970 and I was too young prior to that to have asked him much about his prior life.  That meant when he died so did every single memory of his.  I have at least 1000 questions of him which of course can never been answered.  But I decided that I could gain insight by interviewing my aunt who was extremely close to her brother, my father.  I had the good sense to take a mini-recorder with me when I interviewed her so I could capture her every word.  I then found someone who could transcribe the recording.  I have a complete written transcript of that interview which was invaluable for my gaining insight into my paternal family.   During that interview an interesting thing happen.  She used the word “pung” which has slipped from the modern lexicon.  That is because a pung is a sled which was used when she was a child, 1910s and 1920 to transport milk cans from the dairy farms to the creamery.  Although it was a part of her memory it of course was not a part of mine, or anyone else of my generation and succeeding generations because paved roads put an end to their use.

My own personal history includes my having worked in a shoe factory, a true sweat shop, when I was 16.  I was experience in the end of a particular type of manufacturing in Lawrence Massachusetts.  The pictures in my head need to be on paper so when someone wants to learn about the experience of factory workers back then they will have my first person account of it.  That experience is called by historians “primary source.”  A primary source is a first hand account of any event.  But when historians go about reconstructing an event in history rely heavily upon these primary sources.  Unfortunately, too my of history is either lacking or absence of primary source material.

When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on that bus back in 1954 her story was well documented.  But there were other people on that bus.  Their view of history as it happened at that moment is equally important in drawing up a complete picture.  It is unlikely many, if any, of their accounts were documented and that is a loss.

My suggestion to everyone is to document the histories of the elder members of their family first.  Have them tell you their experience of what it was like when they were young, from their earliest memory forward.  If nothing else, you are guaranteed to hear very interesting facts of their early life.  These oral histories, as they are referred to, are invaluable.

An excellent way of preserving your family’s history is through genealogy.  There are many sites on the internet today dedicated to genealogical study and research.  More and more people share their family’s history on-line which could possibly intersect with your own family.

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A Few Questions For My Creationist Friends


From what I can find most creationists believe the Earth to be between 5700 and 10,000 years old.  I think the most important questions they need to answer is:  “Why would God create a universe, and the science that goes with it, and play a trick on us?”  The trick is that the very science He had to create allows us to date the Earth at approximately 4.5 billion years of age.  Another question which needs answering is: “Why would God create an entire species, dinosaurs, and then destroy them?”  He also makes us believe them to have died out about 250 million years ago.  Does this mean that He loves being the trickster, the magician, who relies on sleight of hand?  Even more importantly, why not keep the entire human race at a relatively low level of intelligence so we would not confuse ourselves with what appears to be facts?  The creationist credo says God does not make mistakes and that all human are created in His image.  How does that explain human beings who are born so developmentally impaired that they not only can never care for themselves, there is good reason to believe that it is impossible for them to comprehend the existence of their maker?

Creationist hate Darwin and his theories of evolution.  I can understand how the concept can be difficult to comprehend but that does not make it fantasy.  If there is not constant evolution, how does the creationist explain that the average height of a man during the time of Jesus was about 5 feet 1 inch but today it is 5 feet 9 inches.  That is close in evolution pure and simple.

Here’s a mind blower.  Our nearest neighbor in the universe, to our Milky Way Galaxy, is the Andromeda Galaxy.  It is 2.5 million light years away.  Why would God bother to create other galaxies in the first place and then place the nearest one 2.5 million light years away, about 13,540,372,670,807,453,416.15 miles away. And that is just the closest one.  There are other galaxies which are billions of light years away.

pillars

The above picture was taken by the Hubble telescope.  Astronomers have named it “the Pillars of Creation.”  But the creation they are talking about is of stars.  It is a star nursery, if you will.  They are 7,000 light years away.  The height of each of the pillars is measured in the 100s of light years.  But the laws of physics, created by God of course, tells us that what we are looking at is at least 7,000 years old but even more, took millions of years to create in the first place.  But even more, those “stars” you see in the background are actually more galaxies so far distant that they look like tiny specs of light.

I believe that God is sitting, where ever He sits, and is mumbling to himself, “I created all this, gave you high intelligence, and the best you can come up with is that it has all only been around a few thousand years?  I also gave you an imagination, try using it to consider that I actually created this a very long time before that!”

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Which Lie are You Telling Now?


Everyone has a conception of what a lie is.  It is being deceitful to someone when they ask you a question or when you are offering something which you state as being factual.  I think most people are pretty honest in their lives.  But there is also a part of us, a part I think which comes from upbringing, environment, and other factors which is so insidious that after a while it blurs the truth so badly that we cannot tell what is true or that we are lying.  Still another sort of lie is one I think few people ever even consider, denial.

The first sort of lie comes to us when we are children and uncomfortable subjects arise which are parents cannot find the courage to discuss.  Possibly chief among such lies is the discussion of sex.  As parents we do not know how to speak to our children about it, or we are not sure what we should say or how much we should say.  The other thing that runs in most families is the lack of discussion around things like alcoholism, drug abuse, mental health, and fear.

When I was young we had an alcoholic uncle living with us.  He had been abusive to my mother when she was younger and was abusive to my brother and I when he was living with us.  But he was never referred to as a drunk or an alcoholic but as some one who drank too much.  Then, some time after he died, my mother suffered a mental break down.  My brother, sister, and I were shipped off to relatives to live for a number of weeks until she was recovered.  I was an adult, maybe in my 40s, before I found out what had happened to her.  And then when I asked my mother about sex she pushed some foolish book off on me which told me nothing.  She was too afraid to speak to any of us about this subject.  That was quite common for others in my generation but I fear it still happens far too often.  These are examples, mostly, of denial and fear.  In defense of my mother there were extremely good reasons for her actions, or lack of them.

For the first four or five years of a child’s life, almost everything they learn comes from their parents, either from direct instruction or by parental example.  From then on children learn from their peers but always use their parent’s example as the sounding board of what is right and wrong, what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.  But any gaps in a child’s training, direction from his parents, he will fill in the gap with whatever seems right.  If parents actively avoid difficult discussions the child will grow up to do the same.  The lie in the case is the parent knows the truth but does not relate to the child, frequently justifying that action by saying the child is too young or does not need to know whatever.  Most of the time that just is not true.

I believe that as adults it is rare the day goes by that we are not confronted with an uncomfortable truth.  Most of the time those truths are relatively minor though they may be briefly psychologically painful.  The common human reaction is avoidance, and that is always wrong.  And too often that avoidance employs denial.  We think that if we deny that slightly uncomfortable truth, and then forget about it, it will be behind us never to be seen or heard from again.  I think the occasions when that actually happens is rare, if at all.  I believe that these minor uncomfortable truths come at us over and over again, slightly different, but basically the same.  The problem with denial of those small truths is that in either avoiding them, or denying them, we are teaching ourselves how to act or react in those situations.  It becomes second-nature.  We become so numb to our active denial of the truth that we come to believe the lie to be true.  From there we rationalize lying when we encounter even more uncomfortable truths we would rather not face.  Our denial becomes such an active and large part of our lives that we employ it without thinking.

For me, the most difficult truth to tell is one which puts me in an unflattering light.  But in considering such things, I have come to the conclusion that unlike the lie, telling that uncomfortable truth does not require that I defend the position whereas a lie always demands a defense.  And some of the most difficult positions to be in, and not defend, is when I know I own a portion of something I have done wrong but not the entire situation.  I want to say that this other person was complicit and so I don’t deserve all the blame.  The thing is, that does not matter.  If I own any part of a wrong, regardless of how small, I need to just own it and be done with it.  Trying to shift blame serves no good purpose.

My tack these days is to be absolutely honest about even the most minor of details.  For example, when someone asks me how I am doing, and I am not feeling at that well, my response will be along the lines of “I’ve been better.”  But I do not say “fine” when it simply is not true.  That is the most common thing people ask me which requires an honest answer and by being truthful there it helps me practice with the bigger and more important questions of truth.  Every now and then I will discover that something I have said is not quite fully truthful and upon such discovery I correct myself.  The truth is, my feelings have to take a back seat to my telling the truth.

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I Will Never “Pass On,” I Will Die!


I really cannot stand that euphemism, pass on.  What does it really mean?  And anyone who dares say that I have “passed on” can be assured of being haunted by me.  I will pass that on!  A friend of mine sometimes borrows my copy of the Boston Globe to check what he calls “the Irish sports page,” the obituaries.  I too check the obituaries on a daily basis just to make certain I am not listed there.  So far that has worked just fine and has meant I will enjoy a good day.  As yet I have not decided what I will do when I do see my name there but having a party comes to mind.

Don’t you just love it when you are feeling, and looking, absolutely miserable and someone asks, “is everything all right?”  I always want to get seriously sarcastic at such moments but good manners generally wins out and I’ll say something mild like, “does  it LOOK like everything is all right!?”  I think I would prefer someone to say, “hey, you don’t look so hot, what’s up?”  At least they acknowledge the obvious and are offering the possibility of comfort.

Here’s another good one.  You are in a crowded grocery story and are standing in one of the long check-out lines.  You have waited extremely patiently while the woman in front of you stares at the cashier while she checks the person out and informs her of the total.  Then, she opens her pocket book and proceeds to search through it for her check book which she eventually finds and then asks the cashier for the amount again.  Then, just as she’s finishing the check she asked if the cashier scanned all the coupons she forgot to give which she then plops down and the cashier scans which of course means a new total and with it a new check has to be written.   Of course the longer line to my left has now gone down and people I saw behind me are finishing up being checked out.  Yes, this has happened to me.

That one is similar to sitting in your car in a long line waiting for the light ahead to turn green when a guy in a BMW screams by you in the left turn only lane and suddenly turns on his right turn signal so he can edge into the front of the long line in front of you.  At time like that I wish I had a shotgun to shoot out his tires with.

I go to this coffee shop in Boston’s Back Bay pretty much every day.  Right in front of the shop and on the street is a sign that says parking is for commercial vehicles only, sic delivery trucks.  But you can almost always count of some guy in a Mercedes or other high-end car parking there so he can run into Starbucks for his coffee.  No, I do not go into Starbucks but the other coffee shop, Au Bon Pain, which is next door.  Still, I want to gain the “special” status such people have that allows them to park with impunity wherever they desire.

I do have other pet peeves but I think those are enough for any post.

 

 

 

 

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After the Beatles


This past week people having been giving homage to the Beatles and all they did for music.  They were the beginning of what was known as “The British Invasion.”  That invasion included groups like The Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks, the Who and others.  The Beatles deserve a lot of credit for helping to define music as we know it today.  Other artists, however, had been defining the new rock & role for some time.  Artists such as Bob Dylan , Carole King, Sam Cook, Ray Charles and others also greatly influenced the direction of popular music.

I want to add 10 artists who I think made huge contributions but who many people today have never heard of even though their music lives on.  The following list along with links to youtube are presented in no particular order.  I hope that some of the music will inspire those who have not heard it before to seek it out.

1. Steely Dan “Do It Again” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgYuLsudaJQ

2. Blood, Sweat & Tears “And When I Die” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu7XWgczC7o

3. Carol King “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOyvYnkdEcc

4. Bill Withers “Ain’t No Sunshine” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIdIqbv7SPo

5.  Bob Seger “Old Time Rock & Roll” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQswfILThsY

6.  Jethro Tull “Aqualung” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8ZZ8QnUFVM

7. Stevie Ray Vaughn “Pride and Joy” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU0MF8pwktg

8. Eric Clapton “Layla” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX5USg8_1gA

9. Freddie Mercury (Queen) “Bohemian Rhapsody” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p4MZJsexEs

10. Gladys Knight “Midnight Train” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meaVNHch96o

11. John Lennon “Imagine” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLgYAHHkPFs

I put John Lennon at 11 because he was, of course, part of the original Beatles but this particular song he wrote after their demise and I consider this to be his greatest piece.  He was also the musical genius behind the group and wrote much more on his own.

I hope you enjoy my choices but please know, this is just an ad hoc list that could easily be expanded.

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Our Public Schools Are Not Failing Us: We are Failing Them


Today I figured out how long I worked in Information Technology before I retired out of a combination of frustration and burn out, over 30 years.  I took 6 month off before starting my second career, public education.  For the past 7-plus years I have worked in the Somerville (MA) Public School System at the k – 8 level.  As it turns out, and even though I am just a substitute teacher, it has become the most rewarding part of my work life.  Somerville is a working class city right outside Boston.  It also has a very large immigrant population primarily of immigrant from Central America but also Brazilians, Haitians, Africans, Indians, Nepalese and others.  By law, the city is required to educate all comers regardless of their background which for a city with as many low income inhabitants as it has, can be a very challenging task.

I work entirely at one elementary school in Somerville and have come to know the entire staff quite well.  In the process I have learn how to be an asset to both staff and students alike.  I have learned how to be a teacher at this level and this has made the experience extremely rewarding as-well-as allowing me to feel the experience as being tremendously rewarding, more so than at any time in my previous career.

I have had the opportunity to watch the regular teachers in action.  My take on them is that they are all not just well educated, but extremely professional, devoted, and effective in the jobs.  From experience I can say with absolute certainty that those who criticize the job these teachers do have never tried to do it themselves and have no appreciation of what it takes on a daily basis to be a good and effective teacher.  What does that mean?

Ideally, no teacher in any system should ever have to teach more than 16 – 18 students on a regular basis.  The logic for this is very simple but I suspect that few critics take the time to consider it.  That is, if you consider that a teacher may be able to devote one hour per day to each of the various subjects a student must learn.  Simple math tells us that means a teacher can only give fewer than 4 minutes per hour to an single student needing help, and they all need help to one degree or another.  The next consideration is the actual grade-level of each student in any particular subject.  That means, in any subject each student is below, at, or above the grade level they are enrolled in.  For example, each 2nd grader reads below, at, or above the second grade level.  While the distribution of such students should be relatively uniform, it is not a given.  And, it is more likely that more students will be below grade level than above.  That means each teacher must give more time and resources to such student to assist them in being successful.  But that leads to the ultimate problem, the individuals student’s desire to learn.

Intelligence aside, I do not believe there is any other single factor that is an indicator of a student’s likely level of success.  But the fact is, if a student is not willing to work to learn what they need to, no teacher, regardless of how talented they are, will change that.  Key to that desire to learn are the child’s parents.  The parents level of education and income are irrelevant if they are not fully involved in the child’s education.  And this is exactly where we are failing our children.  There is one other way and I will get to that shortly.

Every parent has an absolute responsibility to their children to be involved in their education.  That means they keep up with where their children are in school, that they are doing the in class work, their homework, and are behaving appropriately.  When any one of those things happens it is their responsibility to find out why.  This means they must consult with the teachers and counselors involved.  Teachers must teach, children must learn and parent must be responsible.  Sadly, it is my belief, that far too many parents feel absolutely no responsibility in their child’s education aside from seeing that they attend school.  But I have been witness to above intelligent students who are failing most, if not all, of their classes.  While some may argue that their may be a sub-standard teacher in a system, when the student fails regardless of which teacher he finds himself in front of, the argument fails all reasonableness.  But what is even more problematic with such students, is most of them are also discipline problems.  The tend to be disruptive influences in whatever class they attend.  This necessarily takes time away for a teacher’s ability to teach those who want to learn, in order to correct the bad behavior of those who do not want to learn.

Most people will say in response to knowledge of a failing students is that the school should not promote that child.  This happens in reality exactly once, if at all.  The reason is does not happen more often, if at all, is there exists political pressure to show that any particular school is not “failing.”  Unfortunately, the parameter exacted of what is failing, at least in Massachusetts, is two-fold.  First, how many students are held back, and second, their MCAS scores.  The MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) is a test students at various grade levels take once a year to determine their level of education.  School districts are judged by the percentage of students passing any of the tests given.  Of course, money is at stake.  Teachers necessarily tailor many hours of classroom time to assuring their students will do well on the MCAS.

One thing that is not allowable at the local, state, or federal level, is accepting the fact that in any population of individuals, a certain percentage is going to fail and there is little, if anything you can do about that.  What teachers and school administrators absolutely need is the ability to retain any student at any grade level until he shows he can perform at that grade level.  While this might mean schools systems have a group of 16-year-old 7th graders, it will also offer a fair amount of peer pressure to dissuade students from failing.  As things stand now, functional illiterates are passed along and enter high school unable to read and understand the their text books.  You can be certain that at the end of each school year, at least at the elementary level, every teacher has at least one, if not more, student who absolutely needs to be retained at that grade.  But they are not because directives coming from the schools system’s superintendent will not allow such actions.  The superintendent is pressured by the mayor, who is pressured by the state’s education czar, who is pressured by the governor who is pressured by the federal government, Washington DC politicians.

Anyone with a lick of common sense, and certainly all successful businessmen, know that before you can fix a problem who first have to properly identify what that problem is.  In this case, the fear of being perceived as a failing school system drives those in charge to promote the least well-educated while declaring them a success.

First we need to hold back any student at any grade he fails.  In calculating what defines a successful system is that system’s ability to show that on an annual basis maybe 2% of their student population is retained at grade level each year.  This would signal that the system takes seriously the actual level of education any particular student achieves rather that creating a perception that belies reality.

The ability to get parent’s to act more responsible towards their children is far more problematic.  Every good educator knows that children crave discipline.  And to a certain extent, so do their parents.  I believe that politicians fear public reprisals if they were to take a hard stand on education, holding children and parents responsible for learning that which is offered.  But my experience says that for every detractor of stricter methods, you will have 10 supporters.  And while the detractors may be for vocal, it is the supporters who guarantee your program’s success.

Every time we promote a student to a level he is not prepared for, we fail that student.  You hold a student back enough and sooner or later he will get the message and start working.  That will be difficult when you have that child’s parent in your office screaming that he should be promoted, but standing by certain principles will bring them around too, eventually.  But given time, even the most stubborn person will eventually realize that it is not profitable to do 60 MPH in a 30 MPH zone and not expect to get a speeding ticket.

Nearly 100% of all schools succeed 100% of the time using the parameters given them today.  But it is those parameters, composed by politicians and their public, that are failing our schools.

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Freedom of Speech Is Not Absolute


For some months now the American public has been tasked with what to think about the Eric Snowden case and the NSA.  This boils down to what citizens have a right to say, what the government knows and how they know it.

There is a good reason that the first amendment to the Constitution is the freedom of speech; it is because those who wrote that document had firmly in their minds the restrictions of what they said and wrote under British rule.  They believed that dissent was healthy and that any truly free society needed to allow for dissent, sometimes to the extreme.  Imbedded in the first amendment is the freedom of the press.  Pre-revolutionary dissenters usually wrote under a pen-name so their words could not be held against them in a court of law.  The press was viewed as a way to publicly discuss possible government transgressions against the people in an open and free forum.  And in almost every attempt to limit these freedoms, the US Supreme Court has seldom narrowed its scope.  A well-known exception is the law against yelling “fire” in a movie theater.  Threats of violence are also a prohibited speech.

Even before our country was founded, governments understood the need for secrecy in certain of its dealings.  Throughout recorded history, governments have collect information about other countries, some of it needed to be held in secret.  Always in such cases the sake of national security was seen at stake.  As with anything, some, if not all, governments have taken such things to an extreme, far beyond reasonableness.  Other time, governments have thwarted or restricted its people’s desire to openly dissent.  Such instances still occur regularly in many parts of the world.  Closed societies such as China and North Korea are a few of the more prominent who do not allow much freedom of speech.

The United States is unquestionably one of the most open societies in the world.  We pride ourselves on that very fact and like to hold it up to the world.  The problem with that is the general public’s lack of understanding of classified material, and the government’s overreach with over-classifying and its methods of gathering information.

Eric Snowden is absolutely guilty of something, which is for a court to decide.  He is absolutely a coward who knew he had caused great harm and who absolutely knew the consequences of his actions.  He is absolutely guilty of being a coward.  While it is certainly difficult to whistle-blow on government agencies, particularly those dealing with intelligence gathering, it is far from impossible.

The Federal Government was certainly remiss in its due diligence when it hired Snowden in the first place.  But before being allowed access to classified materials, Snowden was fully briefed and signed documents that he acknowledge a full understanding of what was expected in his guarding against release of any classified material.  That he saw and revealed government misconduct is an entirely different discussion.  A reasonable person who had discovered such things, and feared reprisal from his agency for whistle-blowing, knows there are two groups of people who lives are dedicated to ferreting out government misconduct, the Inspector General of each agency, and the Department of Justice.

The NSA’s practices were brought into sharp focus, as they should have been.  But the manner in which it got there is indefensible.  Snowden released thousands and thousands of documents which had absolutely nothing to do with the NSA’s purported spying on American citizens.  Not only did that achieve nothing, it comprised our standing in the world.  That compromise may take many years to fix.

Intelligence gathering agencies are paranoid by both necessity and legacy.  Governments spy on other governments, friends as well as foes, but none want such facts aired in public.  It is unlikely the German chancellor was particularly surprised by anything revealed, but to show otherwise would reveal their own complicity.  Such events are almost always revealed in privacy and repaired that same way.

There are formal groups in the U.S., the ACLU not being the least, who make it their job to protect freedoms and play watchdog of the government.  Snowden  could easily have appealed to the ACLU and caused the NSA and Federal Government deserved shame without compromising national security.  At some point Russia will certainly see him as a liability and he will be returned to the U.S.  Other countries are unlikely to allow him a place to hide.

The U.S. press, for its part, has failed to report evenhandedly, portraying Snowden as something he is not, a martyr.  They need to report the true of his actions and, while not absolving the NSA, reporting that Snowden too has a price to pay.

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A Yankee’s Introduction to the South


Sometime around noon, February 20, 1968, I stepped off a Delta airlines Boeing 727 and into the airport in New Orleans Louisiana.  It was the first time in my life that I had ventured out of the northeast, and greater Boston in particular, in my life.  It was only three months prior that I had dropped out of Boston University knowing that I was not yet ready for college life.  I was not sure what I was ready for so I decided to enlist in the army, staying one step ahead of the draft board which would have been hot on my newly designated 1-A status.  But even with the Vietnam war roaring, I had no thoughts of going there.  I wanted to fly and had managed to get myself into the Army’s aviation program for helicopter pilots.  First, however, I had to go through the army’s basic combat training which, for officer candidates, existed at Fort Polk Louisiana.  When I left Boston the temperature was a chill 23 degrees and was greeted by  the low 60s in New Orleans, short sleeve weather for me.  A short lay over in New Orleans was followed by a flight to Lake Charles on Trans-Texas Airlines, or as the locals euphemistically called it, “Tree Top Airlines” from its TTA logo.

The Lake Charles of 1968 was sort of a non-descript place.  It contrasted northern cities with its wide concrete boulevards, corrugated steel roofed buildings, and in inherent slower way of life.  But just below the surface of this typical American town of the south were smoldering embers of a highly change resistant south.  There was an uneasy tension between black and white which shown through but the still existing Jim Crow laws.  But my 18 years of life had no experience with such things.  My experience with blacks to that point was limited to my schoolmates at the boys school in New Jersey I had attended over the previous two years.

About mid-afternoon I boarded a bus destined for Leesville Louisiana where the army would claim me.  But at the beginning of that bus trip I watched out the window as the landscape passed by me.  At a bus stop along the way I was introduced to the old south when I observed a pair of water fountains, one barely a foot away from the other.  But above each was a sign, “white” and “colored.”  My virginity was taken and my mind indelibly imprinted with the sight.  I had had the good fortune to be brought up by parents who believed racial equality was a given, not an argument.  But still, I did not yet realize, how much racism has been infused, thought unwittingly, into my spongy mind.

The US Army in 1968 did not have time for racism.  It had been integrated in the early 1950s, and whatever racism existed in any single soldier, was considered unacceptable by the army in general.  While the US population in 1968 was roughly 12% black, the army was at least double if not triple that number.  During my entire basic training, and all training afterward, there was never a hint of racism either between my fellow trainees, or in the case of the all southern drill sergeant cadre, them towards the black trainees.  And such thoughts would have quickly faded had it not been for the April 4, 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King and the ensuing race riots that occurred in the neighboring Leesville.  Fort Polk was closed, all leaves of absence cancelled.  But at least on the fort, there was no tension between white and black troops.  Still, we were all stunned by the events in Leesville.

A little over a year later I was station in Yongsan Korea when I became aware of a group known as the Black Panthers.  There existence, and reason for existing, came to me from a white soldier who was sadly misinformed,  However, I was uneducated to the facts and took his word that they were in Korea and looking to knife white soldiers while they slept.  But rather than seek out the truth, I allowed myself to believe his lies.  But then, I had believed the old government pronouncements, J. Edgar Hoover to be exact, that Martin Luther King was a dangerous person.

It took another year plus for my ideas to be corrected, while I was stationed in Livorno Italy.  At that time I saw a black soldier reading a book named “The Spook Who Sat By the Door” by Sam Greenlee.  My memory says that the title actually used an even more derisive epithet, but I cannot find any supporting evidence.  Regardless, my shock must have registered well on my face because the soldier informed me that it was about race relations in the US.  He went on to educate me about the true reason for the existence of the Black Panthers and other black radicals of the late 1960s, Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, and Angela Davis.  The FBI went to great lengths to associate these people with violence when the truth was something entirely different.

As the years went by, I learned that what the south had been doing overtly, the north had been doing covertly.  The great lesson of all this was, I needed not look at the south as the home of racism, it was always all around me, had I only known what I was seeing.

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Science Proves God Exists!


My title, of course, is fictional but I firmly believe that one day it will be science that definitely proves, or disproves, the existence of God.  The best of all possible outcomes would be a theologian, who is also a scientists, is the one who finds that proof.  It is not any religion’s task to prove God’s existence, theirs is one of providing faith to their followers.  But faith, by definition, is a philosophical belief system which works in the absence of proof.  That is a good thing.  But some religions, the more conservative, seem to believe it is their job to proclaim that certain theories and facts of science are nothing more than the work of the devil, or that such science is in direct contradiction to either the teachings of God and Jesus, or contrary to what is said in the Bible.

It seems that the Bible, of all things, is the root of some problems between certain religions and science.  Those people who believe that the Bible is the source of many absolutely which man needs to accept, fail to allow for certain conditions that must exist when dealing in absolutes.  That is, when someone, in this case the writers of the Bible, declare something to be true it is their responsibility to offer either empirical or first hand proof.  The first five books of the Bible were written by Moses.  Moses’ only first hand experience appears in the book of Exodus.  He certain lived long after the book of Genesis as he relates it and offers no proof.  The rest of the Bible was written by at least 40 different people none of whom claim first hand experience.  This includes the New Testament.  Theological scholars have dated the earliest New Testament documents having been created at least 60 after the death of Jesus.

The New Testament is full of quotes attributed to Jesus.  It is my belief, however, that most of those quotes are truly paraphrases.  The most basic problem of that day is the extreme lacking of literate people at the time of Jesus and for many centuries following.  By tradition, stories of family, history, and religion were passed along by story tellers.  These story tellers can be compared to today’s television news reporters.  They take a story reported to them and pass it on to others.  The story tellers of Jesus’ day were paid to do their job, just as news reporters are today.  The Hebrews, Romans, and all other civilizations required such people to maintain their traditions from one generation to another.  A scribe was a rare person who was usually connected to persons of political position or wealth.  The population of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus was approximately 50,ooo.  The number of scribes in that one city likely did not exceed 10, most of whom would have been assigned to Roman politicians.  And in looking at who the 12 disciples of Jesus were, it is unlikely any were literate, to include Jesus himself.  Scientists today know that human memory of any particular incident is accurate for about 48 hours.  After that, without a concerted attempt to remember, our ability to recall details quickly diminishes.  This is not to say that people living at the time of Jesus could not have remembered with great accuracy what he said it did, but that it would take much effort to do so.

Theologians know for fact, for instance, that Moses actually brought in excess of 500 commandments to his people for his supposed meeting with God.  This, of course, raises the question of what to believe.  The Bible says there are only 10 commandments, but theologians know there were truly at least 500.  Jesus lived 1500 years after Moses.  Unfortunately, whatever progress there was in creating the Bible was insignificant if you want to use it as a document for historical fact.  More moderate theologians will tell you it is a book a faith.  What is certain, in this case, is that it cannot possibly be both a book of fact and faith.  Either the “prove it” or “disprove it” argument necessarily win out.  It is best left as a book of faith to be interpreted by each person according to his own conscience.  Left in that sphere, it is an exceptional book worthy of much study and faith.

Most scientists do not deny that certain aspects of creationism have associate truth.  But conservative religions fail to give that same respect to science.  What they fail to realize is that their most basic belief, that God created everything, necessarily means God created science, and with it all the laws of science.  In His creating the universe, God created all the laws of science which scientists use every day.  God gave man the blueprint to find Him, but only if man choses to look.  For reasons which confound me, it seems conservative religions do not care to see God.  Science named the Higgs Boson as the “God particle.”  And Steven Hawking has stated that when we figure out the “big bang” we will see the hand of God.  These are not idle comments made by extremely intelligent people to poke fun at religion.  It is their true belief.

Recently, astro-physicists have offered pictures of the universe as it existed about 250 million years after the big bang.  In astronomical times, that is very close to birth.  The truth is, scientists have absolutely no desire to disprove, or prove for that matter, the existence of God.  Their job is to tell us, in as exacting terms as possible, why things are happening, and how they happened in the past.  That being the case, like a good detective novel, you eventually find and prove “who done it!”

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The Trials At Guantanamo Bay


I just watched a segment of the CBS program “60 Minutes” which talked almost exclusively about the legalities of trying the “detainees” at Guantanamo Bay.  But the show failed to even ask one extremely important question on which the entire show hinges, “Is Guantanamo Bay” U.S. soil.  The reason for asking that is simple, the US Constitution only applies, and can only apply, to people located on US soil.  As someone who has lived on foreign soil, and while in the US Army, I was always cautioned that the law of the host nation was always primary and the Uniform Code of Military Justice second.  Even though we were on US bases, it did not afford us the protections of the Constitution enjoyed in the US.  To wit, we could be arrested on the US base, jailed and prosecuted by the host country without any guarantee of due process, legal representation, unreasonable search and seizure, etc.   It is my belief that the detainees in Cuba do not enjoy any rights of our Constitution as they were arrested and have been held outside the legal boundaries of our Constitution.

I think any sort of torture regardless of the reason is evil.  It is also well-known, and long known, that a tortured person will admit to anything his torturers desire to hear just to stop the torture. It is for this reason, among others, that torture has long  be specifically illegal in the US.  But for however a horrible act it is, it is an offense either where it was committed, or at a world court tribunal.

The terrorists about to be tried own both the acts committed by them, the fact that they knowingly conducted a non-traditional act of war, they were not a part of any regular military, and that any justice they can expect is comparable their own world-view.  That is, they are not prisoners of war and cannot expect to be treated as such.  Each was captured as an individual acting upon his own will, and denying agency of any particular nation.  Consider, no country, not even the one they call home, has come to their defense.  Their acts are considered by the world in general as horrendous and indefensible.

The terrorists own lawyers, though well-versed in the US Constitution, were wont to offer any specific portion of the Constitution which protects these people and any rights, whether real or perceived.  Their arguments, while good on US soil, truly have no standing in a courtroom outside the borders of the United States.