Old Age Is Not For Sissies

September 8, 1996

“Old age is not for sissies.” - Bette Davis, late famous actress

One of my co-residents at Jefferson Center, Helen Harwood, is the most remarkable person I have met since coming to Sarasota. She is 98 years old, small and thin in stature, fully alert mentally, has a cheery laugh and does volunteer work daily (sewing, washing, ironing) at “The Players,” the theater across the street.

We had immediate empathy because Helen is the daughter of John Murray Atwood, Dean of the Theological School when I was at St. Lawrence University. John Murray Atwood was a greater influence on my adult life than any other person. I had lived here only a few days when she phoned me and asked if I was the Carl Westman who was at Canton in the 1940s.

Sitting with her this morning in church, she asked me if I had ever met her Aunt Nora. I never had. Helen then told me that her Aunt Nora was very strict and straitlaced. When Helen was a little girl, she referred to her father as “Dad”. Aunt Nora was very cross because in Aunt Nora’s view, “Dad” was unacceptable slang. She dragged Helen into the kitchen and sprinkled pepper on her tongue. Then she shut Helen in a closet.

After a while, the closet door opened and there was her father, John Murray Atwood, holding out a box of chocolates for Helen and telling her she could call him “Dad” as much as she wanted. That’s how she still refers to him!!

If you ever knew the Dean, you are not surprised at all. That was typical of his generosity and wisdom, not only with his family, but also, frequently enough with his students on far more serious matters.

Then Helen told me of her recent visit with her daughter and how bored Helen was because everybody insisted on waiting on her, not letting her do things for herself. She was so glad, she told me, to get back to Jefferson and go across to “The Players” to do fifteen loads of wash. (costumes, stage garments, etc.)

As I noted, Helen is in her 99th year. When we held hands at the end of the church service, she could hold mine only with two fingers because the others are so crippled with arthritis. But what I will remember are her sharp brain and indomitable spirit.

Old Age is not for sissies!!!!

Briers

July 30, 1996

“O how full of briers
is this working-day world.”

(Rosalind, AS YOU LIKE IT)

In this election year, I could rewrite Rosalind: O how full of liars is this political world USA. The sound-bites, political one-up-man-ship, distortions, hypocrisy and self-serving blather surprises (a little) even a political cynic as I have come to be.

I am not condemning one party alone. The burden of responsibility is equally shared by Democrats and Republicans. I fulminate particularly about all the hypocritical cant about the deficit. In spite of the uncountable self-serving speeches and press releases, I am yet to be convinced that any substantial number of Congressmen, Senators or policy wonks in the White House give a damn about the deficit.

One instance among many that could be cited is that of Senator Trent Lott, the Senate Majority Leader who has succeeded Bob Dole. Lott is rated as extremely conservative on such matters as the deficit and “big government.” Yet, as Ben Franklin reported in The Washington Spectator, Trent Lott “steered billions of dollars into the Clinton administration’s military shipbuilding program to benefit Gulf Coast shipyards. This appropriation includes $1.3 billion THAT THE NAVY NEVER ASKED FOR, to be paid to the Ingall’s Shipyard in Lott’s home town of Pascagoula, Mississippi.”

Jim Hightower, the Texas political commentator, quoted U.S. President John Adams, “one useless man is a disgrace, two are called a law firm, and three or more become a Congress.” While that seems to me to echo John Quincy Adams more than his father, it is a blanket indictment to which I cannot fully subscribe. There are honest, capable Congressmen and Senators. But there are not many.

Any predictions I suggest must be introduced by a story that I believe came from a medical journal:

A physician went to heaven and met God, who granted him one question. So the physician asked, “Will health care reform ever occur?”

“I have good news and bad news,” God replied. “The answer is yes, but not in my lifetime.”

I am not disillusioned about our system of government. I just wish we could penetrate the varieties of smoke-screens. E.g., take the deficit – most people believe it to be a sign of possible future collapse. Is this so? I’m not so sure.

For example, why has the stock market surged to such “highs” after the 1987 stock market slump? Does the so-called “smart-money” consider the deficit such a sure harbinger of economic gloom?

I have not seen figures comparing the percentage ratio of deficit to the GDP. What is the comparison as against, say, the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s? Is the inflationary creep that occurred during those years and since been put into the equation?

Then, too, I recently read that the U.S. has the smallest percentage of debt to GDP than any of the G7 countries (industrialized European countries). So what gives?

Secondly, what of the political future? Sometime, not in my lifetime, but in that of many of you, there will be more than two effective political parties. There have been third parties in our history. While short-lived, relatively, they have had influence. The Progressive Party led by the La Follettes is an example.

Third Party talk increases these days. The Reform Party led by Perot, while largely discounted, may have an effect, particularly if Perot plays less of a role. There are rumblings in organized labor about a Labor Party. Ralph Nader’s “Green” effort may gather more support than anyone now thinks possible. Coalitions are not impossible.

After all, multi-party governments have survived in European democracies.

What this all amounts to is this: Look beyond the easy political generalizations. Ask:

Is this so?

Who are the big contributors to a campaign fund?

What is NOT said as well as what is?

Qui bono? Who benefits — follow the buck.

Whenever possible, read investigative journalism.

And never give up trying one way or another to make things better. There is no political system superior to ours in theory. We must improve its practice.

Of course, Rosalind, this working-day world is full of briers. The stings are stimuli to keep at our tasks.

The Abundant Life

October 25, 1992
Lakeland

July 7, 1996
Sarasota (re-written)

[Introductory Reading: Genesis 1/26 and ff. RSV

CJW Note: That paternalistic permission and recommendation to subdue and have dominion over everything else on earth, allegedly granted by God, represents some of the worst advice ever given to humankind.]

Sermon:

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” So plain-speaking Jeremiah warned his people. (8/20) Jeremiah was no naive optimist; neither am I. There are shadows on the rosy hopes for human progress most of us once held. In speaking of the abundant life, I am an aging humanist curmudgeon, and speak not for your comfort.

In the Middle Ages a monk framed the Law of the Monastic Cycle: “Discipline begets abundance, and abundance, unless we take the utmost care, destroys discipline; and discipline in its fall pulls down abundance.” This Monastic Cycle applied to those monasteries and religious orders which had through a stern routine of work and prayer accumulated wealth, lands, and power. But yielding to the temptation to spend and enjoy the riches led to varieties of corruption, unseemly pomp and luxurious possessions, greed for more money and sumptuous living, violations of the oaths of chastity, with many monasteries deserving the name of brothel rather than sanctuary. (Roland Bainton, REFORMATION OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, and other sources.) Henry VIII, by proclaiming himself Head of the Church in England, and by severing allegiance to the Pope, not only secured his divorce in order to marry Anne Boleyn, but also gave himself the power to seize the immense hoard of jewels, wealth, and large estates of the monastic orders. Which he forthwith did, giving much of these to his favorites; thereby altering irrevocably the distribution of land, wealth and power in Britain.

The “law of the monastic cycle” may not be a universal rule. But it merits thoughtfulness in any place and time. We live in a nation of much abundance. (How that abundance is distributed is a dilemma of values and economics that is not the subject today.) Has our abundance destroyed discipline, and consequently, will abundance become scarcity?

Our land has rewarded us abundantly. For two centuries discipline was required: dawn to dusk hard work to clear, plow, seed, tend, and reap the crops; hardship and determination to push ever more West, seeking the furs, gold, silver, lumber. The great rivers became channels of profitable commerce. Engineers and sweated labor built the railroads that created and transported abundance. The ancient forests provided lumber for houses, barns, masts, furniture, and other uses beyond counting. The rivers and streams irrigated the arid West, producing fruit, vegetables, wheat, beyond any visionary dreams. We became the richest nation that history records. The paternalistic promise of Genesis was being fulfilled – we had dominion.

But in the last century or so, something went wrong. We polluted the rivers and streams. Fish died. We dumped immeasurable tons of garbage into our ancient Mother, the sea. Forests were denuded and became barren, ravaged hills. Chemical pesticides poisoned not only insect life, but also farm workers, not to speak of the unknown but probable toxic effects on many people who consumed the produce. One could go on in book-lengths how we have harmed ourselves and our posterity because we believed the natural world was ours to use for unlimited abundance, rather than recognizing that, we, too, are the natural world and certain to be maimed by our own excesses. Shakespeare has Hector say to Troilus, “Nature craves all dues be rend’rd to their owners.”

“The land was ours before we were the lands’”. It may not have been Robert Frost’s poetic intention, but that opening sentence grabs me. The land was ours before we loved the land. We possessed the land; we used the land; but we did not love it. And scarcities loom on the horizon.

[Crossed out for 1996 version: You may recall that the last lines of Frost’s “For John F. Kennedy – His Inauguration”:

“It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young ambition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.”

The legend has it that for one brief moment there was Camelot – a radiant aura of high hopes. But we did not experience the glory of a next Augustan age. There has been no golden age of poetry and power.]

Is the “Law of the Monastic Cycle” in effect? Will the breakdown in discipline lead to scarcity? Who knows the future? But there are ominous portents.

A culture of consumerism prevails. There are t-shirts and shopping bags with the motto, “shop till you drop.” Comedy or tragedy?

Last month there was a news story reporting that the shopping malls are now considered tourist sights. The story takes as an example the 225-store Potomac Mills discount mall, Maryland, where last year 17.2 million shoppers spent 358 million dollars. Of these shoppers, 4% million people were tourists – more tourists than visited nearby Arlington National Cemetery, Colonial Williamsburg or Mt. Vernon. There are other examples: in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where only 3,300 people live, an outlet mall drew 10 million visitors, a million more than visited nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

There is much political noise about the goods we consume and where these goods were manufactured. My walking shoes were made in Taiwan, my typewriter in Korea, my little calculator in Thailand. Thumbing through some of my shirts, I see these countries of origin: India, Thailand, Philippines, Hong Kong, Dominican Republic, Panama.

Should I feel embarrassed or disconcerted when I see a bumper sticker, “Buy American?” In all the cases I mentioned, I’m sure the labor cost of shirt and shoe-making and assembly were far less than the minimum wage a worker would receive here – as low as one dollar an hour for skilled and semi-skilled work. In some poverty-stricken countries, a dollar a day is not unheard of.

My older son, who is considerably smarter than his old man put it this way, “those exploited workers are contributing to our affluence.” Those provided some of my abundance. If we paid U.S. skilled wages for shirts, shoes, calculators, typewriters, we could not afford them, or so many of them. Prices would soar, inflation run wild, sales plummet. Then jobs would vanish in the shopping malls for sales clerks, buyers, truckers, warehouse, and office people. There is an interdependent web.

How to solve this? I don’t know whether I should feel guilty or positive about the shirts I wear or the TV, VCR, and radio I use. I don’t have any economic suggestions. But it is increasingly evident that any proposed solution that fails to recognize that this is a world economy is ultimately unrealistic and unworkable. Another reality is that not in my lifetime or any of yours will there be any just balance in the world between the “haves” and “have-nots.” Not that we should give up on the principles we advocate or the hopes we hold – but Emerson said, “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”

In the May 20 issue of NEW YORKER, there was a review of the show, VENUS. John Lahr commented, “In this well-directed tale, evil is demonstrated as the inability to imagine the suffering of others....”

Now that definition would not be acceptable to most philosophers and theologians, but does it not have at least an element of truth? Emerson’s words still resonate.

[Deleted for 1996 version: Our national economy seems to rely on constantly accelerating consumer purchases, preferably, “big ticket.” An article in the business section not long ago pointed out that because only interest on home mortgages is now deductible on the Federal Income Tax return, buyers were paying up credit card debt because interest on that is no longer a deduction. A parallel consequence is that people are buying less in order to to limit debt interest, thus reducing sales. Such a mercantile and marketing worry is a reminder of Emerson’s judgment, “things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”]

“Discipline” is a much re-iterated word. Too often it is a scapegoat term – blaming school teachers for failing to enforce discipline when it is obvious, to this old feller at least, that discipline, like charity, begins at home. Discipline is a big word in the military services. Whether the concept prevails widely in our civilian culture is arguable. In one of Saki’s (H. H. Munro) inimitable short stories, set in the days of the British colonial empire, there is a cutting satire about discipline. An army regiment mutinied and killed its officers because the food was deplorable. “...(the) War minister saved the situation by his happy epigram, “Discipline, to be effective, must be optional.’” Ridiculous? Of course.

However, if there is not a strong motive of self-discipline, coerced discipline, in the long run, fails. The famous naturalist, John Muir (1838-1914), once said that he was richer than railroad multi-millionaire, E. J. Harriman. Said Muir, “I have all the money I want and he hasn’t.”

Now I am not so uninformed and dense to assert that everyone with abundance will be victims of the Law of the Monastic Cycle. I have known and know many many persons who have acquired abundance and maintained their self-discipline. They have found the balance between authentic needs and fleeting desires. They know the difference between a sales pitch and an answer to the issue at hand. They are less likely to strike out on a split-finger fastball or an illegal spitball. They have not fallen victim to the Monastic Cycle. May the numbers of these self-disciplinarians increase. Millions more are needed if if there is to be some grasp on susceptibility, waste, calculated appeals to self-interest, pollution, corruption. Individually and in our institutions we need the guts to to resist easy, pleasant (and wrong) answers to hard unpleasant problems. If a thousand loggers are scheduled to lose jobs to protect a forest, which candidate gets the votes, the one who says “we must protect and conserve the forest”, or the one who says, “jobs are more important than trees.” If a weapon of war is no longer needed or is obsolete, there are instances where it will continue to be produced because a Senator or Representative fears the votes of those in his home state who would otherwise lose their jobs. Taxes and deficits – those are big emotional words these days. There is much shouting and conniving about who shares pieces of that enormous Federal pie. Dim, almost unheard voices may be saying, “yes, but we must pay for what we get.” It is said that a politician once answered the problem by saying, “don’t tax me, don’t tax thee, tax that feller behind the tree.”

You well might ask, “Any suggestions, Old Timer?” I could refer you to the Book of Lamentations in the Hebrew scriptures. But although I am no naïve optimist, I am not as gloomy or sorrowful about our times as that author was over the destruction of Jerusalem and the desolation of of the Jewish people. Instead, I’ll use an extended metaphor about the Beetle Ring.

Thirty-four or so years ago, I conducted services at the Cobblestone Universalist Church on the shores of Lake Ontario. Both area population and membership had dwindled; there was just an Annual Service. This Universalist Church was built in 1834, using lake stones smoothed by aeons of wind, wave, freeze, thaw. The building is a gem of the stonemasons’ craftsmanship. The laying of cobblestones was much more difficult than brick. Bricks nest solidly together, but cobblestones do not. The layering of mortar so that precise uniformity of tiers could [be] achieved was a skill that the stonemasons kept to themselves. The cobblestones were uniform in size and the method of selection was not a secret.

The stonemasons used the Beetle Ring to sort the cobblestones. Nothing to do with John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Those Beetles would not be born until more than one hundred years later. The Beetle Ring, either iron or stone, was a slab in which a hole had been cut away. If a cobblestone could be passed through the Beetle Ring, it was not too large for use; too small cobblestones would be obvious.

If many of us would use a Beetle Ring in our handling of abundance, perhaps self-discipline would be less vulnerable. We have needs; we have wants. Many times our “wants” are disproportionate to our needs. With a Beetle Ring of the resources of our minds, emotions, and values, we might discern if our “wants” are too large for our Beetle Ring. Then we could decide not to put that “want” into the building of our lives. All of us have desires beyond our basic needs. That’s OK – reasonable self-indulgence is not a vice. I hope not, for I have many times of self-indulgence. Midas would have been happier if he had used a Beetle Ring. So could the so-called “jet set” of the “rich and famous” if there is truth in the stories of their extravagance, frantic relationships, and the lack of happiness. Every one of you could cite other examples.

There are many issues which need a Beetle Ring to emphasize that not only stonemasons of 1834 but also those of us now alive in 1996 need to make careful and discriminating choices. There are many causes of depletion of natural resources, starvation, and despair. Over-population is directly connected to all these ills. There are now more than 5½ billion people in the world, and this number increases by 95 million every year. Globally, almost one billion people suffer from malnutrition. In Mexico City, with a population of 22 million, the world’s largest city, 40% live in slums.

[Crossed out for 1996 version: But officially, the U.S. opposes planned parenthood and birth control methods. The current administration vetoed an appropriation for International Planned Parenthood. The combined power of the U.S. and the Vatican kept family planning off the official agenda in the recent Rio conference on global resources. Quoting an article in “Time”, “the Reagan-Bush administration agreed to alter its foreign aid program to comply with the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on birth control.”

In 1970, Congressman James Scheur, (D-NY) co-sponsored “the first national program to fund family planning clinics. The co-sponsor (of all people) was a new congressman from Texas – George Bush. As George Bush changed his political mind about that, maybe he can be persuaded to change it again – although I have not the slightest expectation of that.]

The United Nations has made high and low projections of population increases by the year 2050. The high estimate is 28 billion – a figure completely unthinkable. One can predict with assurance that plague, famine, or war would kill billions before that total was reached. The low projection is a peak of 8 billion by 2050. That lower figure assumes family planning on a global scale and there are some hopeful beginnings: Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, Trinidad. Our UUSC has been involved in some pilot projects.

If I may say so, I have been a supporter of Planned Parenthood for many years, have served on the Board of Central Florida Planned Parenthood. I resent the lies and slanders heaped on Planned Parenthood by so-called ‘pro-life’ groups.

Perhaps I am too pessimistic, but I am not confident that politics as played out in our country will make any substantive change in the wasting of our resources and the transfer of an ever-increasing deficit (now 4 trillion) to our children and grandchildren. The money, power, and control of voting blocs seem overwhelming countervailing forces, no matter who calls himself the next President. I do not discount the strong efforts of conservation groups of many kinds, but they are candles in the wind.

That’s my Jeremiah. My hope is that there will be a rising tide of national and world consciousness to the end that not a few thousands, but many millions, raise their voices and direct their votes, so that even the most greedy of special interests will of necessity change their ways.

Lest you think I am an incorrigible old gloom and doom curmudgeon, let me make an observation. One of the memorable opening sentences in a novel that I have remembered for many years was in Sabatini’s dashing story, SCARAMOUCHE: “He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” If you think enough about that line, you may come to believe, like I have, that living could be worse. If we can’t now and then chuckle and laugh at absurdities, even painful ones, we will miss ways we can cope with the strangeness of it all. Pogo said, “you’re lucky to be here in the first place.”

I’ll write no Book of Lamentations. No one of us is compelled to obey the Law of the Monastic Cycle. Each of us can create his/her own Beetle Ring. We need not assent tamely to institutions, government, corporate or religious, who mistakenly believe they are exempt from that law.

But essential to avoiding or conquering the Law of the Monastic Cycle is not only the efforts of small groups but also a growing national and world-wide conviction that that this Earth is our only home, and to continue despoiling it is not only to foul our own nest, but also to curse our posterity.

Closing Words (Ulysses – Tennyson)

“Come my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down ...”

The Greatest Of These...

June 24, 1996

In the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians, Paul wrote, “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” This has been quoted millions of times in the ensuing nearly two-thousand years, but I have been asking myself in recent years if the most dominating of religious emotions is HATE.

This musing was sparked yesterday when our minister, Richard Benner, read a letter from a religious fundamentalist which excoriated Richard and predicted that he would burn forever in a “Lake of Fire.” (Revelation). Why was so much religious hatred heaped on Richard? Richard Benner had taken a public stand to defend the rights of gay and lesbian individuals and couples. Dick, like so many of us Unitarian Universalists, thoroughly believes and preaches “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” and “justice, equity and compassion in human relations.” These sentences are the first two of the Statement of Principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

The writer of this vituperative letter demonstrated his invincible ignorance. He was obviously untouched by 150 years of learned scholarship about Bible literature and origins. The matter may be too serious to joke about, but I could not help recalling the story of another fundamentalist who was greatly angered when later translations of the Bible differed from the King James version of 1611. The angry fundamentalist asserted, “If the English of the King James Bible was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me.”

Such ignorance would be either funny or pathetic if it were not so dangerous. Historian Barbara Tuchman described the sack of Antwerp in 1576 by the troops of Roman Catholic King Philip II of Spain. The troops killed everyone in their path, indiscriminately, and setting the city ablaze, not forgetting however “to fall on their knees in a prayer to the Virgin to bless their enterprise.” Tuchman then cogently observed, “It is a peculiar habit of Christianity to conceive the most compassionate and forgiving divinities and use them to sponsor atrocities.” (THE FIRST SALUTE, P.31)

The same historian writes of Peter Bayle, a rationalist forced to leave France and find shelter in Holland because of his belief that “popular religious beliefs were based on human credulity rather than on reason and reality.” One hundred years before our Bill of Rights – freedom of speech, freedom of religion and separation of church and state – Bayle wrote, “an ideal society would extend its protection to all religions, and that since most theological problems are incapable of proof, man should pray for those he cannot convince rather than oppress them.” (op. cit. p. 41)

It might be just a matter of historical sorrow if such atrocities were all in the past, but one would be naive not to recognize that there is present danger.

James A Haught, who in his earlier book, HOLY HORRORS, chronicled many of the religious atrocities of the past, in the “Washington Spectator” of about a year ago, details present dangers.

We know that “pro-life” fundamentalists murdered workers in abortion clinics in Florida and Massachusetts.

There are hate groups vaguely or specifically identified with the Christian Right and are armed. Currently there are church burnings and the continuing hate-mongering of the Ku Klux Klan. There was violence in West Virginia in the 1970s when fundamentalists turned violent in the “textbook war.” These rioters proclaimed textbooks, “godless.”

In other parts of the world, there are killings, lootings, tortures in the name of religion: Northern Ireland, India, Pakistan, Bosnia/Serbia. The “Supreme Truth” cult in Japan lethally gassed hundreds of persons in the Tokyo subway system.

These instances are current history, not the past. I fear for a world where fanaticism rules. Your truth and my truth need not agree for us to live in peace. I could write on, but let me conclude with a paraphrase of the English historian/sociologist, L. T. Hobhouse:

Essentially (religious) freedom does not consist in like-mindedness, but in the toleration of differences; or, positively, in the acceptance of differences as contributing to richer life than conformity.

“The claim of the free individual, not the impossible one that the common decision should coincide with his/her own, but that his/her decision should be heard and taken into account. He/she claims a part in the councils; he/she takes his share of responsibility.”

A Winter’s Reverie

February 13, 1996

“Abide the change of time,
Quake in the present winter’s state and wish
That warmer days would come.”

Shakespeare, CYMBELINE

While I live comfortably in a Sarasota “winter,” the severe winter in the Northeast and Midwest called up a childhood memory. This recollection was also triggered by the request of grandchildren to know more about my early days and family memories.

The small house at 32 Oliver Street was equipped with a coal/wood burning furnace in the cellar and a black iron coal/wood kitchen stove. The containers for trash pick-up were “ash barrels”, not garbage cans. The ashes were also used to spread over icy steps and sidewalks. Some home gardeners dug in ashes in the vegetable plot for fertilizer.

Taking out ashes was a daily chore. We also sifted the ashes to reclaim the coals, or coke, which were not completely burned. Although I have no memory of doing it myself, there were boys and men who walked the railroad tracks to pick up coal thrown or shaken from the steam locomotives (no diesel or electric then).

On very cold nights, I have vivid memories of sitting by the kitchen stove, with the oven door open, while (of course) reading. When the weather was frigid and the stove well-stoked with anthracite coal, the top of the stove would turn color from black iron to red-hot – literally, the top would be a glowing cherry-red.

Because my parents could not always afford to have coal delivered by the ton into the cellar coal bin, sometimes the kitchen stove was the only heat in the house. Then, when bedtime came, the flat-irons which had been on top of the stove were wrapped in old cloths and placed under the blankets thus comfortably warming the bed, at least for awhile.

There is a childhood memory which I have thought about many times, although there are gaps in the recollections. After all, it is seventy-eight years since I was six or seven years old; and memories can play tricks.

I’m fairly sure it was the winter of 1918. Because of the World War, there were shortages. In this case, the difficulty may have been getting the coal delivered. For whatever reason, there was no coal in the house and the weather was bitterly cold.

There was coal available in a place in Malden, about three miles away. But it had to be picked up, no delivery was available. In my memory, in those days coal was brought by horse and coal-wagon. Icy streets were a hazardous and sometimes fatal trip for the work-horses.

At that time my parents had no automobile. My father must have been at work. My mother took my sled and me to go get a hundred pound bag of coal. The snow was coming down steadily. Why wasn’t I in school? I don’t know. Maybe there was “no school” because of the snowstorm; maybe it was Saturday. Who took care of my sister, then about four years old? I don’t know.

I have a memory-image of crossing Broadway (Everett’s main thoroughfare) from High Street to Hancock Street. I recall helping to tug the burlap bag containing the coal onto the sled and helping pull the sled. But a seven-year-old boy could not have been much help, even though the last third of the journey home was down-hill. How my mother managed, I have no idea. She was always thin, but she must have had a wiry strength.

As the years went on, more and more homes had oil-burning furnaces and installed oil-burners in kitchen ranges. But these devices were never installed at 32 Oliver Street.
I have a more precise memory of the time a few months after my father’s accidental death when Uncle John Granstrom had about 20/25 dining room table tops delivered for the stove and furnace. I don’t know where Uncle John acquired the tables. They were the round variety which would get a fair amount of dollars these days, although then they were not antiques.

The tables were veneered – walnut or oak veneer over cheaper woods – certainly not the pressed sawdust or composition board found under veneers today. The veneer over the wood inside made the tables the very devil to chop. I had to smash them with a sledge hammer first; then chop with a long-handled axe. This must have been a short time before I went to work afternoons and Saturdays at the John T. Connor grocery store.

As I look back, that hard work swinging the sledge and axe may have been therapeutic, although that was not Uncle John’s intention. He was just doing a good turn for my mother. But the labor may have vented some of the anger that I felt and didn’t express. I was angry because my father was dead – angry at him, angry at God (I was not yet an agnostic), angry at Uncle John because he survived, angry at my cousin Henry because his father survived the boating accident which took the lives of my father and Andrew Granstrom, Uncle John’s brother.

The labor with sledge and axe may have helped – although when I reflect, I didn’t get over that trauma for many years. Perhaps I never have, fully.

Introduction To Musings VII

Introduction to Musings VII
1996

For the seventh year, my “Musings” reach out to those close to me (emotionally, not geographically). They bring my varied thoughts, sometimes impulsive, sometimes brooded-over at length.

But more than being one man’s journal of fact and opinion, Musings is a holiday greeting of remembrance, affection, and deep-seated good-will to every one of you. Reflecting on my good luck to have reached the age of 85 a few weeks ago, I have wondered if I, or anyone, could have reached that number without the many persons who have cared, and for whom I care.

So, reach out, embrace and hold close; be glad for the bright day, rejoice in the restful night; and share your love.

Grandfather W

Martyrs

November 7, 1995

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by one of his own countrymen adds another martyr to the roster of those who died for the cause of peace.

In Canterbury Cathedral is the Chapel of the Martyrs near the black slab which marks the spot where Thomas Becket was murdered. When I visited Canterbury some years ago, honored names and their stories and mementos included Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Dag Hammarskjold, Martin Luther King, [and] others were memorialized in the Chapel of the Martyrs. One day, I believe, the name and fame of Yitzhak Rabin will be another honored name and memory in The Chapel of the Martyrs.

I have been reading LENIN’S TOMB, THE LAST DAYS OF THE SOVIET EMPIRE, by David Remnick – a gripping account of the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. I hope that some day Andrei Sakharov will be recognized world-wide as a martyr for freedom, even though his death was not the result of an assassin’s bullet, but rather a man worn out in a struggle for human rights in a land where it was dangerous, fatal in millions of instances, not to kowtow to the Communist Party in its many-faceted corruptions and repressions.

Sakharov, once honored as a Hero of the Soviet Union because of his scientific genius in developing the H-bomb for his country, was later exiled to Novgorod (Gorky) because he not only renounced the use of atomic and nuclear weapons, but also took fearless and unpopular stands insisting – demanding – more freedom for the Russian peoples.

Even Gorbachev could not abide him, because Sakharov insisted that the Communist Party should no longer have the constitutional guarantee to be the only political party in the U.S.S.R. Without Sakharov, there could not have been a Yeltsin.

The years of exile had ruined his health; his constant advocacy of freedom had made Sakharov the object of persecution, derision, and scorn by ruling Communist Party.

In 1989, with reform movements gathering strength, sixty-eight-year-old Sakharov’s health was precarious. He had trouble walking up stairs; he had constant demands on his time because fear was lessening that being known to associate with this courageous man, who was the key figure in the Human Rights movement, was dangerous.

On December 14, 1989, his wife, Yelena Bonner found him dead when she went to wake him. A supporter, Korotich said later, “I’m only glad that before he died, Sakharov dealt the system a mortal blow. If God sent Jesus to pay for sins of humankind, then a Marxist God somewhere sent Andrei Sakharov to pay for the sins of our system.”

In HENRY VIII, Act IV, Scene 2, Griffith says to Katharine on Wolsey’s death,

“men’s evil manners live in brass;
their virtues
We write in water.”

Shakespeare was not always precisely correct, as Gorbachev found out to his dismay. At first, Gorbachev tried to squelch the country-wide shock and grief by stating there could be no national day of mourning for Sakharov, citing some Communist Party claptrap, “we have a procedure it seems for this: a General Secretary gets three days of mourning, a Politburo member one, and none for an academician.” But the people’s grief for Sakharov’s death, and their overwhelming feeling of obligation for the Human Rights Movement he sparked, could not be denied. Gorbachev had to yield and allow a public funeral.

The day of the funeral was bitterly cold, “so cold it hurt to breathe”, wrote David Remnick, who then noted, “the march went on for hours. No fewer than fifty thousand people had packed into a vast parking lot. And there was something more striking about the crowd than than its mere size. It was the first time that I got any sense that there could be a unified democratic movement in the Soviet Union. Until now, the miners, the Baltic independence groups, the Moscow and Leningrad intelligentsia had all seemed spread out, loosely knit at best. But I now saw Baltic flags, a Russian tricolor, banners supporting the independence movement in the Ukraine, miners from Vorkuta, students. There were placards with a huge ‘6’ crossed out – meaning that Article 6 of the Constitution which guaranteed the Party’s ‘leading role’ in society should be eliminated.”

Dmitri Likhachev (Remnick, p. 288) spoke, “We are gathered here to honor the memory of a very great man, a citizen not only of our country, but of the whole world... a man of the future. This is why many did not understand him in this century. He was a prophet in the ancient sense of the word. That is, he was a man who summoned his contemporaries to moral renewal for the sake of the future. And like every prophet, he was not understood.”

There were other elements in Sakharov’s character which were intriguing (at least to me). In his Nobel Prize in 1975 (his acceptance of the Nobel Prize was labeled as ‘international treason’) - “Other civilizations, perhaps more successful ones, may exist an infinite number of times on the preceding and following pages of the Book of the Universe. Yet we should not minimize our sacred endeavors in the world, where, like faint glimmers in the dark, we have emerged for a moment from the nothingness of unconsciousness into material existence. We must make good the demands of reason and create a life worthy of ourselves and of the goals we dimly perceive.” (p.165)

Could there be a more fitting epitaph for Andrei Sakharov than those words he wrote himself?

Policy Maker

October 26, 1995

A recent occurrence was a reminder that long ago I was the cause of a change of policy in the Everett School system. On my part, it certainly was not a deliberate intention.

As a young teen-ager in the gym at Parlin Junior High, I was involved with the rest of the (boys’) class in some sort of circle chase. I’ve forgotten the name of the gym teacher. Anyway, I was running around the outside of the circle in my new, leather (four dollar) Thom McAn shoes. The combination of the new leather soles and the polished gym floor propelled me air-borne; I landed hard and broke the bone in my left forearm.

I was taken to Whidden Hospital; the break was set; a plaster cast put on and I was brought home.

Because of my accident, the school set a policy that all students must wear “sneakers” (as we called them then) in the gym.

I cannot think of any other event in my life that resulted in so quick a change of policy. Another memory of that event was the devilish itch under the cast that could not be scratched. That was frustration!

This memory was dredged up when I took a fall on the walkway in the Jefferson Center grounds. The concrete slab was raised a bit, probably because of tree roots. I had my head in the clouds, or something, so I stumbled and went down hard. No lasting damage, although my rib cage and wrist were painfully sore for a few days.

Again, my fall changed things. The raised slabs are painted bright yellow and in some cases cemented to form a small ramp.

But I also remembered a sermon preached nearly a half-century ago by my old friend and colleague, Francis Rockwell. Contradicting Emerson’s “Hitch Your Wagon To A Star,” Frank proposed, “Hitch Your Wagon To A Horse,” emphasizing that ideals need practical efforts and ways. If my eyes had been toward the walk, I probably would not have gone down.

But if you choose to believe that I was a clumsy fellow at Parlin Junior High School and still am in Jefferson Center, I will not dispute you.

Moving Thoughts

August 15, 1995

Two weeks ago I moved to Jefferson Center. (I should note, I was moved. Because of my present physical limitations, all the labor was capably done by Sara, Bill Westman and Bill Walcheck. Bill Walcheck packed the van so skillfully that all space was used and there was not a single item of breakage. Bill Westman and Sara laboriously loaded and unloaded in hot Florida weather. They stayed it on to help arrange my “efficiency.” Bill stayed for several days to help in various settling details; and to fill the freezer with delicious meals.)

As nearly as I can figure, this is the twenty-ninth move in my almost 84 years of living. I have no memory of the first two moves when my parents moved from Boston (Roxbury) to Everett; first to the corner of Ferry and Union Streets, and a couple of years later to the house they bought at 32 Oliver Street, where I grew up.

The moving here and there in 7 States (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Ohio, New Jersey, and Florida) would seem overly frequent. I must have had an “itchy foot” as the old saying goes. Yet, as I reflect on the subject, there were always reasons and causes for each move. In retrospect, some were not the best of reasons and causes. However, we are not permitted to live retrospectively. To live is to experience immediacy. Monday morning quarterbacks do not have to make Saturday’s decisions or to nurse Sunday’s bruises and sprains.

I am settling in comfortably here in Jefferson Center. I’m not experiencing claustrophobia even though my efficiency has fewer square feet than any other place I have lived. I have frequently been wrong in predictions, but I am quite convinced that this is my last residence.

One of the privileges of living here is a TV cable that gives 13 channels. I have taken advantage of this to watch a few baseball games – including the Boston Red Sox. I am amazed and astonished that the Bosox, as of this morning, are leading the Eastern Division of the American League by TEN games!!! Is this the year that that there will be no August-September nosedive out of contention? Has “the curse of the Babe” been exorcised? Maybe, emphasize MAYBE!!!

One of the noticeable features of these 1995 Red Sox is that the team is so different. When I watched the Red Sox play the Detroit Tigers in spring training last year, or was it the year before, very few of the present team were on the roster. Mo Vaughn was coming along; Greenwell, Naehring, Clemens were there; Valentin was just making the team. The rest of the guys on this league-leading team have been acquired since. The Red Sox management has done some very smart trading as well as bringing along good players from the farm system.

Mickey Mantle’s death started me musing in another aspect of the game. I am not as close a follower as I was once, but where are the colorful nicknames for the great players: Babe Ruth, “The Sultan of Swat”; Walter Johnson, “The Big Train”; Ty Cobb, “The Georgia Peach”; Tris Speaker, “The Grey Eagle”; Joe DiMaggio, “The Yankee Clipper”; “Dizzy” and “Daffy” Dean; Ted Williams, when he was twenty, tall, and thin, “The Splendid Splinter”; Frankie Frisch, “The Fordham Flash.” Such sobriquets seem not to be created now. My surmise is that sports-writers dreamed up the nicknames.

Frankie Frisch, a Hall of Famer, and famous New York Giant infielder in the era of John MacGraw, later also managed. Frisch was always distressed when a pitcher lacked control. He was known for his deep moan and groan as he said, frequently, “Oh, those bases on balls.”

According to writer, Leonard Koppett (THE MAN IN THE DUGOUT), Frisch best expressed the frustration of the team manager when things go wrong – as usually happens to most of them. Frisch gave advice to Red Schoendienst when Red was named manager of the St. Louis Cardinals: “Don’t take a hotel room higher than the second floor because you might want to jump.”

I don’t know why the foregoing led me to look up a quote from Albert Camus, whose writings I read and re-read. Camus noted:

“There can be no attitude so free from error that men (sic) should give it their total allegiance. I’ve had enough of people who die for an idea. What interests me is to live and die because of what one loves.”

Disney World – History As It Was Not

June 13, 1995

In today’s “Business” section of the newspaper, there was an item referring to Walt Disney stock reaching a 52-week high in anticipation of great profits from the movie, “Pocahontas”, soon to be released. While admitting I’m a crabby curmudgeon, I’m predicting some historical events which WON’T be in the movie.

When Captain John Smith wrote his first report of his meeting with the great Indian chief, Powhatan, he made no mention whatsoever of being saved by Pocahontas. Many years later (when Pocahontas had become famous both in England and Virginia), Smith added the story that Pocahontas had saved him from having his brains clubbed out by taking him in her arms.

At the time of the alleged saving, Pocahontas was a young girl of 11 or 12 years old. Her name was Matoaka, but she was called Pocahontas – or “little wanton.” She was so called because when she came to Jamestown, as George Willison’s original source puts it, to the delight of all, would “get the boyes forth with her into the markett place and make them wheele, falling on their hands ... she would follow and wheele so naked as she was, all the fort over.”

Captured by Captain Argall of the ship “Treasurer” in a ransom plot to compel Powhatan to give the colonists large amounts of corn, Pocahontas had been influenced to renounce her “idolatry and openly confessed her Christian faith.” She was baptized and christened, “Rebecca.”

John Rolfe, a widower who had lost wife and child in a Bermuda shipwreck, was in Jamestown experimenting with tobacco-growing, seeking to improve its quality. He wrote a long letter describing his love for Pocahontas, not from (as he wrote) any “unbridled desire of carnall affection, but for the good of this Plantation, for the honour of our countrie, for the glory of God, for my owne salvation, and for the converting to the true knowledge of God and Jesus Christ an unbeleeving creature, Pokahuntas.” How was it that Rolfe did not know that Pocahontas was was already a baptized Christian, renamed Rebecca?

They were married. Pocahontas was willing even though she apparently already had a husband, married four years before to a brave named Kocoum.

In 1616, Rolfe and Pocahontas and their infant son, Thomas, sailed for England where Pocahontas was honored as royalty (daughter of the great chief Powhatan). “Lady Rebecca” had brought a retinue of Indian maids and her brother-in-law, Tomakin. She seemed to enjoy much the pomp and circumstance with which she was treated.

Just before her scheduled return to Virginia, she died, probably of pneumonia. Within four months, four of her Indian maids died similarly. Pocahontas was 22 years old. When John Rolfe discovered that the royal pension granted Pocahontas would not be granted to him, he abandoned his son, Thomas, in England, and never saw him again, [and he ignored] Thomas in his will.

My hope is that viewers of the movie (expected to contribute $700 million to Disney coffers, 85 cents a share) will enjoy the fictional romance, and not confuse the creative animation with historical events.

If you want to check out the crabby curmudgeon’s observations, I suggest BEHOLD VIRGINIA by George F. Willison, or “Pocahontas in Life and Legend” in the journal “American History,” July 1995 issue.

Gratitude (Inadequately expressed)

April 20, 1995

For years I have been somewhat persuaded “there is no ‘free lunch’ ” - always a price-tag that might arrive later, a point of view influenced by good drink and food, for every positive there is a negative, almost everyone has an “angle”, etc. I was wrong because I have experienced more than one “free lunch” lately (and many times in the past when I am candid with myself).

I learned that more fully in the six nights and days in Room 2014 in the Cardiac Intervention Unit at Lakeland Regional Hospital. Doctors Brown and Reddy were frank and plain-spoken, describing my condition in words I could understand. The nurses in CIU were skillful and competent. More than that, they were kind, prompt, caring, and gifted with that priceless quality, a sense of humor. They eased the long hours I was hooked up to more than one IV, a Foley catheter (ugh), an oxygen thing up my nose, and so on. So, to Andrea, Sandra, Lonny, Nan, Trish, Eddi, Candy, Jan, I quote Shakespeare, (Measure for Measure, Act III, Sc. 1) where the Duke says to Isabella,

“the hand that hath made you fair
hath made you good.”

Add to that the gracious, generous, unqualified support of best friends and family:

Sara immediately coming to drive me to the hospital when Dr. Michael Brown said I should not drive my own auto from Watson Clinic South; and her many cheerful acts of comfort, service, transportation.

Sons and daughters: John taking a whole week from his heavy responsibilities and very busy schedule to take care of me; cooking up a quantity of low-sodium meals; cleaning industriously, renting videos, and getting me on the track of necessary improvements and hiring a cleaning service and much more.

Janet on the phone every day from Oregon, talking with nurses, doctors, me. Then calling the others to report and interpret my condition.

Marj and Bill, very supportive and standing by to come and stay if needed (not at this time, I’m doing O.K.).

Anne Crosby, RN, with her cheerful home visits.

Good, helpful neighbors, Peggy and Ed Wheeler.

Bill Walcheck, helping to pick up my auto at the Clinic and bring it back here; and also Bill transporting John to and from the Airport.

Flowers from grandchildren brightening room 2014.

Other close friends visiting in hospital and keeping in touch.

So, I know there IS “free lunch” and it stimulates me not only to be grateful to those I’ve named; and others I’ve not named, but also to muse theologically.

Historian Daniel Boorstin, in his book of essays, CLEOPATRA’S NOSE, reviews the various cosmological theories: Steady-State, Big Bang, Eternally Inflating Big Bang. Then he quotes “Alan Guth’s unforgettable suggestion that ‘the Universe is the ultimate free lunch.’ ”

Voyager 2, launched in 1977, traveling at about 61,000 miles an hour, will reach within one light-year of Sirius, the Dog Star, in the year A.D. 359,000 (and this is only 1995).

And here we are, feeling, thinking, living amidst this vast mystery. Pogo was correct, “You’re lucky to be here in the first place.” Furthermore, to be here and functioning in my 9th decade because of the affection, skill and care of persons – not the Grace of God, because I don’t know if She exists, but rather the Grace of Persons who care. It doesn’t get any better than this, whatever lies ahead.

Zounds

March 9, 1995

My title is one of those words that expresses surprise, astonishment, amazement or disgust. In my lifetime, I have heard a variety of such words and expressions. For example:

“God Save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.” An older man I knew used this frequently to voice his surprise or revulsion at some shocking news or event. I was a young man – he called me “younker.”

“Jumping Jeehosaphat” - similarly used by an older generation.

“Jeezus H. Christ”. I never understood the “H” but it was profanity to comment on something that seemed disgusting.

“Is there intelligent life on earth?” An expression of the Space Age when we were wondering if there was life on other planets. Some queer event or statement caused one to wonder that if an alien species from outer space would find any intelligence here on earth if they landed in their flying saucer (or teacup or soup bowl or frisbee).

All of these expressions almost failed me when when I read two items in the Lakeland Ledger, yesterday.

The first story concerned Newt Gingrich, who is in the news every day. He was quoted as saying that many newspaper editorial boards contained “socialists.” He hinted that business companies should be canceling their advertisements from papers that “oppose their views.”

Gingrich was quoted as defining a “socialist” as “someone who believes that raising and lowering taxes have no effect on economic conduct.”(!!!)

Editorial boards: They are at least middle-of-the-road, more likely conservative to smaller or larger degrees to the right. My criticism is that they give little or no space to liberal or left-wing opinions. The media are CONSERVATIVE, Newt. But unlike you, I do not believe in a boycott. I don’t know if the “Daily Worker” or the “Guardian” are still published, but I used to enjoy reading them now and then just to be in touch with what the far-left wing was pushing.

When the Speaker defines a Socialist as “someone who believes that raising and lowering taxes have no effect on economic conduct,” where’s he coming from? Look in your dictionary, you will not find that. If you are a student of economics, where would you locate Gingrich’s definition?

I am not a student of economics. But I have conversed with socialists, given and taken criticism many times. They would find that definition an indication of total ignorance of socialist theory.

I met the late Norman Thomas one time when he was a speaker in a church I served. He was the perennial candidate of the Socialist Party for President in the 1920s and 30s. One did not have to agree with his socialist theory and politics (I didn’t) but to argue theory with Norman Thomas, you had better be familiar with the writings Adam Smith, Ricardo, Hobbes, Mill, Marx and Engels – because he knew their theories. Furthermore, Thomas had a keen sympathy for deprived, poor, and exploited peoples that Speaker Gingrich might well seek to understand and emulate.

The second item in yesterday’s Lakeland Ledger that provoked Jumping Jeehosaphat was the Cal Thomas column. He is the strident voice of far-right wing fundamentalist Christian religion. former officer of the Moral (sic) Majority. Cal Thomas was bemoaning the switch from Democrat to Republican by Colorado Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (what a charming name). The columnist believes this is bad news for the Republican Party because Ben Nighthorse Campbell is pro-choice for women; he voted to lift the ban on funding for abortion for poor women; he supported the President on gays in the military.

The only reply Thomas deserves from Ben Nighthorse Campbell is to quote Shakespeare – Act I, Sc. 2 – where Coriolanus reproves the fickle crowd that had turned against him:

“He that depends
Upon your favors swims
with fins of lead
And hews down oaks with rushes.”

Zounds and Egad – if I were a Republican who was civic-minded rather than ideologically adamant, I would rejoice in the switch of parties. We would have less to fear from Republican insensitivity to human need if there were more in their ranks of the caliber of Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell.

Sermon

March 6, 1995

In the five years I have distributed my “Musings” I have resisted the temptation to include a sermon. But in sorting out files stuffed with papers, I came across “The Beacon of the Wise”, delivered in Akron in 1957. I might say things differently today, but I have not changed a word from the original.

I have broken my rule because what I said then still represents a foundation for my beliefs.

As my posterity now includes three succeeding generations, this statement of my belief basis may be of interest to somebody, some day or year.

The Beacon of the Wise

One of the more erroneous notions that many persons cherish is the belief that doubt is a negative virtue, if it is a virtue at all. Radio voices, sometimes ominously sepulchral, sometimes merely irritatingly “folksy”, have a habit of ringing the changes on the accepted idea that the doubter lives in anxiety and dies in uncertainty. If only the doubter would have “faith”, we are exhorted, not only would his future be assured, but also his digestion would improve because he would have the “power of positive thinking”, and “every-day in every way he would be getting better and better,”

In my opinion much of this “buck-up-old-boy” philosophy is either nonsense, or is the elevation of the trivial, even though it may be complacently called “faith”. Now while I do not deny that there is at least some value in positive suggestions, in this sermon I want to attempt to state the case for the proposition that doubt can function in a manner which will lead us to a more healthy life and a more satisfactory religion.

In Troilus and Cressida (Act II, scene 3), Shakespeare has Hector say,

“The wound of peace is surety,
Surety secure; but modest doubt is call’d
The beacon of the wise, the tent that
searches to the bottom of the worst.”

As he did so many times, Shakespeare demonstrated amazing insight into human character and the human condition when he called modest doubt the “beacon of the wise.”

As one travels the coastlines of our country, the winking beacons of the lighthouses are picturesque scenery to the land-traveler. To the men who go down to the sea in ships, these beacons are a necessity. In ancient days these beacons were signal fires. As men began to know more about optics and mechanics, great reflectors thrust light out to the deep waters so that mariners might be safely guided. We now live in an age where the beacons are carried by radio on invisible sound waves. Beacons, old and new, serve at least two important functions: First, a warning is given of ledges, shoals, and reefs. Second, the beacons and buoys flash the direction of where we should go – the deep waters which are the channel to the harbor and safety of the pier.

Doubt is a personal beacon. Doubt can indicate where not to go. Doubt also guides us in safer channels of living. It should be noted that “doubt” must be distinguished from a barren skepticism. There is a hackneyed, and quite unfair definition of a religious liberal which goes something like this: “a liberal is one who strongly disbelieves anything that anyone else believes, and has a strong, sustaining faith in he does not know quite what.” While Somerset Maugham may have thought this an accurate description of a liberal, it is the attitude of the dogmatic skeptic, rather than the questioning liberal, who, while entertaining doubts, at the same time wants to grow in understanding and to develop more profound and meaningful values.

The doubt that is “the beacon of the wise,” is the doubt that does not reject beliefs with hostility, merely because someone else believes them. The “beacon of the wise” is the “modest doubt” that clarifies understanding by questioning beliefs that have become dogmas in the mind of the majority. Doubt that seeks truth and understanding will cherish something of the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (quoted by Phillips Russell, Jefferson, Champion of the Free Mind, p. 145):

“Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one, he must approve of the homage of reason rather than that of blindfolded fear... If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and the love of others which it will procure you. If you find reason to believe there is a god, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye and that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement.”

Tennyson, you will recall, said that “there is more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds.” Robert Ingersoll commented, in typical fashion something to the effect that there is more doubt in honest faith than is ever admitted in the ponderous certainties of professional theologians.

Victor Hugo, in Les Miserables, with literary genius, illustrates the positive power of doubt in two conversations with non-believers carried on by the good Bishop Myriel. First, he meets the Count. The Count scorned the God ideas, immortality and religious-ethical beliefs. To him these ideas were below the level of the philosopher-rulers of his great stature. He was quite willing that the great mass of persons should believe in God AND be deprived of the satisfaction of enough food, decent housing and cultural advantages. Religious beliefs would take the place of the bread and butter their stomachs craved. The kindly Bishop dismissed the arrogance of the Count with gentle, but penetrating irony. The Count personified the quality of snobbish shallowness which is quite deadly to the recovery of religious significance. Superciliousness is not only arrogant, but ignorant; not only destructive, but non-productive.

In contrast is the conversation between the good Bishop and the dying, agnostic revolutionist. The old radical had seen his dreams come true, only to see the bright hopes clouded over when the Reign of Terror prostituted the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity which had sparked the capture of the Bastille and the oath of the Tennis Courts. As his life ebbed away, the old agnostic could look back on an old age which had been punctuated by poverty, and worse yet, he had been rejected by his fellow-men for whom he had given his mind and strength. In spite of such blows, his reverence for life was so profound that, even though the agnostic revolutionist cannot honestly use the name of God, the good Bishop goes to his knees, asking for the blessing of one the church called “atheist.”

Why? There is a spirit of reverence in “modest doubt” which can be considerably more religious than enthusiastic recitation of creeds of ages long-gone.

The story told by Hugo is one of those universal stories, true in any age, warning us of the principal peril that any religion must encounter. There is always the danger that religion will be popular simply because it fails to penetrate the darkened crust of our selfishness. Religion always faces the horrible hazard of being nothing but a protective facade, disguising an inner corrosion; -- hiding the decay of things which are most vital.

Thus, it follows that if doubt is a vital religious process, it cannot function healthfully in a vacuum void of values. If doubt is to be a light of wisdom for us, we must have a place to stand. Otherwise we are like the men described by Henry Drummond, the great preacher of another day. He told of being on an ocean liner halted in the middle of the Atlantic because of failure of engines. Dr. Drummond said he became suddenly aware that if all the 500 able-bodied men on the ship clustered around the smokestack and pushed with all their might, -- the ship would get exactly nowhere – would still be controlled by the winds and currents.

We, too, need a place to stand. Otherwise we will be battered and destroyed by all the cross-currents and contradictions.

There is a foundation for modest doubt. Here are parts of such a foundation. (You might add other components.):

First, question, - even challenge, - any religious institution that separates morality from religious consciousness. The institution of religion is justified if it helps people to live more effectively; if it helps persons to achieve individual and group needs for love, freedom, and belonging to a great cause. When an institution frustrates those basic needs of persons, then modest, but courageous doubt must assert the priority of human values over decayed institutions.

Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress is our God,” has become one of the grand expressions of historic Protestantism. Yet Luther developed hist strong and great faith by beginning with sincere doubt. When the ecclesiastical and political nobles were concluding the proceedings at Wurms, they witnessed Luther take his ultimate position on the basis or religious morality. “I can say nothing against conscience, God helping me, I can do no other. Here I stand.”

Furthermore, this stand on morality, rather than institutionalism, must be a person-centered morality. This is a value judgment. The religious institution is but a framework in which people attempt to meet the needs they label religious. This framework is not an end in itself. When the church (institution) becomes more important than the human needs which led to the birth of the church, then it is time to look with doubt on the structure and purpose of this institution. Henry Clay Lindgren cogently expresses this point of view in his recent book, Meaning, Antidote to Anxiety. He remarks, “organized religion can help mankind by providing the place and the opportunity for self-discovery and self-understanding.”

Jesus was a doubter. He doubted the value of institutions when they neglected a person centered morality. There is tremendous impact in Chapter 5 of Matthew. One could describe this chapter as a “person-centered approach to doubt.”

Jesus says, “You are the light of the world.” “You are the salt of the earth.” Starting with these essentials he goes on to list constructive, modest doubts, which can still be “beacons to the wise.” “You have heard it said by men of old, You shall not kill, whoever kills shall be liable to the judgment, But I say to you everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to the judgment. You have heard it said ... but I say unto you.” He goes on in the instances of adultery, divorce, false witness, revenge and hate to doubt that the old attitudes are still valid. Why? Because they are not person-centered.

Thus the foundation includes not only religious morality, but also morality that centers in on the needs of persons.

Furthermore, it can be suggested that the “beacon of the wise,” will include the attitude of readiness to face facts and make needed changes. Arnold Toynbee, the historian, said, “But how, I ask you, can one lift up one’s heart and apply one’s mind unless one does one’s best to find out the relevant facts and look them in the face.”

There is a positive value in change which the history of any science, any government, any religion, will supply ample testimony.

The distinguished English actress, Dame Sybil Thorndike is now appearing on Broadway. Recently she was interviewed by a writer for a religious magazine. She was asked if there was any conflict between religious faith and a theatrical career. She answered, “No, there’s no conflict. My acting is really, a confession. I’m a high Anglican, you know, but I quit going to confession. My priest agreed. I said to him, ‘It’s my confession when I’m acting. You have to search in every character for the part of yourself that’s in it. There but for the grace of god ... I might have done that ... You say you don’t like the miracle in the play, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is to be searching. YOU’RE NOT SURE, THEN YOU’RE ALIVE. That’s a negative way of putting it, but its right for our time.’”

The worth of persons and the positive value of change are the foundation of modest doubt. Our religious education series is known as the “Beacon” series. It is well-named in the sense we have been describing. It encourages us to look at people and their religions. The Beacon series asks us to consider ourselves, and our relation to the past and the present. It asks us to be ALIVE by searching.

We must maintain a vigilant attitude of wholesome values, we must search for unfolding truths in intellectual honesty, rather than prudent defensiveness. Changes we must accept, as we accept the changes of wisdom and stature in our individual minds and bodies. Browning said it well:

“Nothing can be as it has been before;
Better, so call it, only not the same.
To draw one beauty into our heart’s core;
And keep it changeless: such our claim;
So answered, never more.

“Simple? Why, this is the woe of the world:
Time, to whose rise and fall we live and die
Rise with it then. Rejoice that man is hurled
From change to change unceasingly.
His soul’s wings never furled.”

End Sermon

CJW Postscript:

3/6/95 – It occurred to me as I was typing from the original that either through ignorance or insensitivity I did not degenderize - “men”, “he”, etc. But in the ensuing 38 years I think I’ve learned.

Mariner

February 13, 1995

My Great-uncle Andrew is etched on my memories of by-gone days. He was a brother of my grandfather, John Wilson, who was the most unforgettable man of my experience. Some day I’ll write about my grandfather; but so far, each time I try, I put the pen down because I fear the result will be too maudlin.

Andrew Wilson was the kind of man about whom Robert Louis Stevenson could have written. Jack London would have found a way to make him a character in a story of the sea. The most picaresque image in my mind is that of Uncle Andrew walking up George Street from the Ferry Street streetcar with “Polly”, the parrot, perched on his forearm.

Polly became a fixture in the households of my mother, Aunt Florence, and Aunt Fanny. I don’t know whether Polly was shuffled from one house to another every few months because she was a privilege to be shared or a nuisance to be equally borne.

John Wilson was a year or two the elder of the brothers. Both were born in Sweden either in Örnsköldsvik or Härnösand. Both are port cities on the Gulf of Bothnia. The reason for the uncertainty is that my grandmother came from one of the cities and the brothers from the other, but I don’t know which was which. Both shipped out as as cabin boys somewhere between ten and twelve years of age. Both learned the ropes and ways of the sea. My grandfather married Annette Brock (“Anna” pronounced Ahnuh) in Sweden. They migrated to the United States, settling in Boston and raised five, possibly six, daughters: Anna, Elizabeth, Carrie, Florence, Fanny and ?.

Uncle Andrew and my grandfather did not look like brothers except in size. They were both about four inches over six feet tall, big boned, but not overweight. My grandfather had white thin hair, light skin, sharp nose and high cheek-bones – much like the Scandinavian stereotype. Uncle Andrew, however, had a full head of black hair even in his eighties. His skin was dark, almost swarthy, with a big nose and a piratical mustache – more like the facial appearance of a Greek or a Mediterranean type. My mother also had black hair and a darker skin than her sisters so there must have been something in the genes from somewhere. Uncle Andrew explained his black hair by saying that he always washed it with kerosene. My surmise is that this “shampoo” was not so much to preserve the blackness as to eliminate tiny creatures which I am sure must have been common aboard ship.

When I knew him, Uncle Andrew was more bent over than his straight-backed brother and walked with a little difficulty. Not surprising when one knew that in the course of sixty to seventy years at sea, he had more than once had broken arms, ribs, legs, hips – falling from masts and rigging. He was much resentful, when in his late seventies, he could no longer get a job on a freighter. He died at the age of 87; and his last years were spent at Sailors’ Snug Harbor on Staten Island, New York City, a seamen’s home with some sort of Masonic connection. Uncle Andrew was a Mason; Uncle John Granstrom a Shriner, which didn’t hurt when Uncle Andrew’s application to Sailors’ Snug Harbor was considered.

But most of all, I enjoyed his stories. Like many old Salts, one could not be sure that his “yarns” were precisely accurate in all details. At the forefront of my memories is Swedish Christmas Eve (about which I have written elsewhere). If Uncle Andrew was in port, he would be there with his stories about the Bible, the hospital in Havana and the “Big Finn”. If he started on “Seenyoreetas”, one of the aunts would stop him, “There are children at the table.” He had a peculiar patois – broken English, Swedish accent, with some Spanish mixed in, like dressing in a salad. For many years he had shipped on United Fruit vessels to Central America, Havana, and other Caribbean ports.

The Havana story has stayed in my mind-pictures. Later on, when I asked my mother or one of the aunts, “was he telling the truth?”, the answer was, “you don’t think Uncle Andrew would lie, do you?” Reflecting years later, I realized that my question was not precisely answered.

Anyway, Uncle Andrew described being hospitalized in Havana. He had been diagnosed with what he called “The Fever.” He noted one night that another patient in the ward was given “a big black pill.” In the morning, the man was dead. The same pattern occurred another evening “He got the big black pill and in the morning he was dead.” He went on, “The next night they gave me the big black pill, but I only pretended to take it. When the lights were out I got out of the window, down the fire-escape, went to the harbor and swam out to my ship.”

Hard to believe? Of course! But I believed it then and still do – of course my Uncle Andrew could have done that. Another memory is that to my childish eyes, his hands seemed as large as tennis rackets; and I felt their size and strength when he would pick me up.

Christmas Eve, when Uncle Andrew was there, usually took a turn that was biblical and theological. As I have thought back, there were no believing Christians there. My Uncle Frank Crimmins was Roman Catholic, but he and Aunt Fanny lived in New York City and did not often get to Boston. Those gathered at the Yule table were skeptics, but that interfered not a whit in their consumption of food and drink (particularly drink). The men went to the 5 a.m. Julotta service at a Swedish church. That still puzzles me a bit because as far as I know, that early Christmas service was the only religious service any of them attended all year.

Uncle Andrew was the only one familiar with the Bible. Through the years of voyaging he had read the Bible again and again. At the Christmas Eve feast he would expound. My phonetic spelling of his Christmas “theology” doesn’t capture his accent, but it’s the best I can do:

“Yeesus Christ was a goot fellow, but he wass a bastard – it says so in the Book. Joseph did not know Mary wass going to have a baby. But Joseph wass a goot fellow, too.”

Of course at that age I did not know enough to to understand what heresy, even blasphemy, that Uncle Andrew spoke. A few years later when I was becoming somewhat aware of the Bible and how it came to be; and then more years later in Theological School and more formal Bible studies, I marveled how Uncle Andrew with little formal education to speak of, had perceived the heart of the matter – that doctrinal or creedal beliefs about Jesus and his father, Joseph, weren’t nearly as vital as what they understood and how they acted in their dealings with other persons. In such perception, Uncle Andrew was a “goot fellow”, too.

So perhaps you can understand a bit how his brother, his nieces and their husbands, and the smaller fry always had a big warm welcome for this carpenter when he came home from the sea. I never see a parrot but what the image pops in my mind of Uncle Andrew walking up George Street with Polly perched on his arm.

Once Again, A Minority View

January 18, 1995

On Monday, January 17, in Union, South Carolina, Susan Smith’s prosecutor said in the courtroom that he had to seek the death penalty for her. Susan Smith confessed to the murder of her two young sons after initially alleging that a carjacker kidnapped the little boys. Added to the notoriety was her false statement that the kidnapper was a Black man.

The prosecuting attorney, Tommy Pope, was also quoted that he sought her death by electrocution to “assure that people remembered the two young sons she drowned were the victims and not her.”

For more than 67 years I have been opposed to capital punishment, no matter how vicious the crime. That makes me a member of another minority because there is no doubt that a vast majority of the people of this country support the death penalty. Why do I maintain this stance when I am so outnumbered?

Late on an August evening in 1927, a teen-age boy sat in the kitchen corner while a tinny, primitive radio reported a story that went around the world. Five miles away in an old, dismal, rat-infested prison, located near a clattering, ugly bridge spanning a large railroad switching yard, the electric lights dimmed and brightened several times. After a short period of time, the dimming and brightening re-occurred. The pattern of dimming signified the instants when thousands of volts of electricity were jolted into the bodies of two men, Sacco and Vanzetti. Sixty-seven years ago, I was that teen-ager who listened with awed and fearful fascination.

It was a night to remember. The radio reporter described the thousands of people congregated in the streets near Charlestown State Prison, muttering and surging as the two immigrants, one a shoe-worker, one a fish pedlar, were killed by decree of the State of Massachusetts. In the years that followed, I read everything I could find about the case, and came to believe that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent of the crime for which they were executed. Because they were political anarchists and economic radicals they were the victims of an unjust verdict and a prejudiced judge.

The youthful experience of living near enough to the death house at Charlestown State Prison, so that, a few years later, almost daily I would drive by that institution of hopelessness, undoubtedly played a role in bringing me to a conviction that capital punishment is morally wrong, socially ineffective and personally harmful.

That experience branded me as far as capital punishment is concerned. I could muster the arguments against the death penalty, but I surmise that most of you are familiar with the details: that the death penalty does does not deter capital crimes or reform people; that feelings of revenge play a large part; that innocent persons have been executed; and that the law is not equally applied. (When is the last time you knew of a rich person being executed? In the present notorious O.J. case, the prosecutors announced before the trial begins that they will not seek the death penalty.)

I will concede as Charles Beals once pointed out that if a murderer is executed, that particular he/she will never kill another person. But, to me, that point is transcended by the persuasive case against the death penalty.

Furthermore, history teaches me that executions once thought legal and just, we would look on as both horrible and perversions of freedom, justice, and mercy. For example, Leonard Levy points out in his scholarly and illuminating study, BLASPHEMY:

In 13th century England, a deacon converted to Judaism when he fell in love with a Jewish woman. Found guilty of apostasy in an ecclesiastical court, presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the deacon was executed by being burned at the stake.

Adam Duff, in the 14th century, was burned alive in Dublin because he rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. That hits me where I live because I share Adam Duff’s anti-Trinitarianism.

Levy quotes a Catholic source who pointed out that in the last four years of (“Bloody”) Mary’s reign, something like 273 of her subjects were executed by burning because they obstinately adhered to beliefs that contradicted the teachings of the Roman Catholic church.

Protestants need not feel smug or self-righteous, because they were equally cruel. The Puritans in the the Massachusetts Bay Colony had 13 crimes subject to the death penalty by hanging: witchcraft, idolatry, blasphemy, homicide, rape, adultery, bestiality, sodomy, false witness with intent to kill, and a child 16 years or older who was “stubborn” or “rebellious”. All these laws, except rape, were taken from the first five books of the Old Testament. (If you are a believer in the complete inerrancy of the Bible, let me know so I can warn people). Source: ALBION’S SEED, David Hackett Fisher.

Thus, I still don’t hold with the death penalty. Shakespeare has Prospero say about those who tried to kill him and his child, and who are now in his power:

“Yet with my nobler reason gainst fury
Do I take my part:
The rarer action is in virtue
than in vengeance.” (THE TEMPEST, Act V, Sc. 1)

While I don’t particularly feel virtuous, like Prospero, I believe that any justification for the death penalty is far outweighed by its failure to solve social problems, except sating the itch for vengeance.

Thus, I hope that the jury and/or judge do not pronounce execution for Susan Smith even though dreadful was her crime.

I’m Not Easily Shocked, But:

January 3, 1995

John Salvi is the accused murderer of two persons and wounding five others at a Brookline, Massachusetts, medical clinic where abortion procedures are available. In yesterday’s Tampa Tribune, a friend of Salvi’s named Christo, defended Salvi and criticized the media for “portraying Salvi as a serial killer; instead of a nice guy.”

Christo added what I consider a most outrageous statement: “There's nothing wrong with John whatsoever other than he killed a couple of people.”

How many persons would Salvi have to kill to change Christos’ opinion that Salvi was a “nice guy?”

Mark Twain observed, “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”

I trust that there is no need to go on for pages to elaborate on the vicious and deadly distortion of human values represented by Salvi and his apologist friend, Christos.

What a bizarre contradiction that Christo is a variety of the name of the Christ.

In the social/political/religious framework, it is well to remember an observation by Lewis Lapham of HARPER’S: “The spirit of liberty is never far from anarchy.”

Introduction To Musings VI

December 1995

A Merry Yule and happy, healthy New Year is my wish for you all.

Not every one of you may know that I have a new address:

Apt. 814
930 N. Tamiami Trail
Sarasota, FL 34236

Since moving to Jefferson Center in August, I have adjusted well to a one-room “efficiency.” More simplified living is appropriate because for the first time in my eight-four years I have experienced serious health problems.

For many reasons, Sarasota is a desirable city in which to live and I am savoring its many attractions.

Bless you, everyone.

Summary

October 1994

A teacher for thirty-two years, Harold Dunn, collected some of the intriguing answers of his pupils. This caught my eye:

“Australia is located in the Pacific Ocean.
It is presently still floating.”

So with me – still floating and brash enough to share my observations for the fifth year.

Books are still my major time-sharer. For brain-jogging, and, often enough, good writing and plot construction, I still devour “mystery” novels. I enjoy finding authors I had not previously known: Sprinkle, Kelley, Carter, Sue Grafton, others, as well as old favorites. My journals include The Nation, Harper’s, Liberal Weekly, American Scholar, Spy, Church and State, Extra, and (of course) The New Yorker.

But I am still engrossed and entertained by biography and history. New 1994 books (new to me, anyway) include:

THE GREAT DEPRESSION, T. H. Watkins

C. S. LEWIS – A BIOGRAPHY, A. N. Wilson

WITHOUT SIN – THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE ONEIDA COMMUNITY, Spencer Klaw/Allen Lane

BERTRAND RUSSELL – A LIFE, Caroline Moorehead

ALBION’S SEED (Four British Folkways in America), David Hackett Fisher

BLASPHEMY, Leonard Levy

IN THE BEGINNING (THE ADVENT OF THE MODERN AGE – EUROPE IN THE 1840s), Jerome Blum

SHAKESPEARE (Because ALWAYS there are new and profound insights into the human condition when re-reading. Thus his plays, particularly the tragedies, are ever new.)

All of these books are worth the reading if the subjects touch on your areas of interest.

Grandson Carl sent me Bertrand Russell’s “Liberal Decalogue” and as parting words of advice which I have tried to embrace, I quote numbers 1, 3, and 6 because they are succinct and wise:

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
3. Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do, the opinions will suppress you.

Oh, by the way, my reference book used constantly is SHAKESPEARE, by Charles Boyce, to which I was steered by Clarke Wells. Visiting John and Renee in Phoenix last month I found that they used Isaac Asimov’s GUIDE TO SHAKESPEARE. After scanning it, I know that I will acquire a copy when resettled.

As I have no editor (and could use one), please forgive errors, grammatical and otherwise. But as Mark Twain once noted:

“If you find a mistake in this paper, please consider that it was put there on purpose. We publish something for everyone, including those who are always looking for mistakes.”

That barbed statement does not apply here, because I know my audience is both forgiving and affectionate.

BLESS YOU ALL

Crimes (Of The Young) And Punishment

October 4, 1994

A young man from Ohio was caned in Singapore for breaking the law. As administered there, caning is a bloody, scarring whipping of the bare buttocks with a thin, flexible bamboo cane wielded with all the strength of the assigned punisher.

In Alaska, two young men of the Tlingit tribe were sentenced to be banished for a year for beating and robbing a pizza delivery man in Washington State. The State court referred punishment to the tribe. Simon Roberts and Adrian Guthrie were ordered by the tribal court to spend a year to eighteen months on separate, isolated islands.

In Florida, there is political push, particularly led by some county sheriffs, to establish “boot camps” for juvenile offenders. Supervisors trained in tough drill sergeant methods would enforce hard-line disciplines: hours, daily, of marching drills, obstacle courses, rigid behavior, and dress standards for all hours of the working day.

Will such varieties of punishment and rehabilitation be effective? No one knows. The young man who was caned in Asia returned to his father's home in Ohio; and, I read, is now in a drug rehab program.

The two young men of the Tlingit tribe are going to be exiled on separate islands in Alaska, although there seem to be hitches. The tribal elders were apparently confused about enforcement. There are no tribal precedents; these are first cases, which makes one speculate why the Washington State judge turned the case over to the Tlingits. Each of the offenders will be given help in building a one-room house and be supplied with a wood-stove, sleeping bag, tools, fishing poles and some basic food stuffs such as rice and beans. They will be taught Tlingit skills for survival. Whether such teaching and supplies will be sufficient to enable each to survive an Alaskan winter alone, remains to be seen; as well as the question whether they will be reformed or changed if they do survive.

“Boot camps” in Florida are few and have not existed long enough to acquire statistics establishing whether the “graduates” choose a crime-free life or are just physically tougher lawless boys and men. Furthermore, there is the reluctance on the part of the Florida populace (taxes!) to vote to support any crime prevention program except the building of more and more prison cells (the costliest way in construction, maintenance and inmate costs).

Dealing with young offenders is not a new problem. The Massachusetts law in 1648 called for the DEATH PENALTY for rebellious sons over the age of sixteen who refused to obey their mother or father; or if they struck or cursed a parent. How about that!! There is no record of any executions under this law, but as the historian notes, “but several were fined or whipped for being rude or abusive to parents, some of these ‘children’ were in their forties and parents were of an advanced age.” (David Hackett Fischer, ALBION’S SEED.)

Are there proposed solutions that have authentic promise? I don't know, but I hope there will be continuing, realistic discussion and appropriate testing of suggested ways to deal with the immense problems of juvenile crimes crimes and misdemeanors.

Years ago I heard a story, not guaranteed to be true; it is illustrative: “After reading a letter from the camp director stating her son needed discipline, a mother replied, ‘Please don’t slap Irvin; he is very sensitive. It would be much better to slap the boy next to him; that will scare Irvin.’” Well, are parents too willing to seek easy ways to overlook, to tolerate, to excuse their reluctance to exert “tough love?” But I guess no easy generalizations will fit the abundant varied circumstances.

Contrasted to that doting mother, is the “melancholy Dane”, who when scolding his mother for her marriage to Claudius, Hamlet says to her he “must be cruel only to be kind.”

How tough, even cruel, must society be to juvenile offenders? There are some who are murderers before their mid-teens. Even pre-teens are bringing guns to school. Many kids who commit crimes or misdemeanors are arrested and released immediately because there is no place to keep them. So there is the attitude among some teen-agers: Go ahead – rob, steal, mug, deal drugs. Even if arrested you'll be back on the street within 24 hours. Is that an exaggeration? Not according to what I read, almost almost daily.

On this, my 83rd birthday, I am wary of being naively autobiographical. Times have changed too much and there has been a large increase in population and the inner cities are even more densely populated. I could go on at length – the cop on the corner kept us kids in line; no parent objected to his manhandling us a bit to teach us lawful ways. (It did). Whatever the teacher said in a note sent home was reinforced unquestioningly by the parents.

What happened? Talking recently with my older son, for whose intelligence and experience I have great respect, he said the big change happened in the 1960s. (Would you believe that in the early 1950s, when taking some evening graduate courses at Teachers College, Columbia University, after the second class, about 10 PM, I would walk through Harlem to get to the 125th St. railroad station; and I was never bothered. Try that today!)

Beyond doubt many things have worsened – the large number of one-parent families (for reasons sometimes good as well as bad), the failure of densely-grouped public housing; the strange attitude on the part of so many parents that the teacher in the public school is responsible for the learning, discipline, values, hygiene, morals, not the parents. There are other cultural factors too, which I am not qualified to assess the effect on children and young people:

The insatiable thirst for consumer goods of all kinds, cultivated by the skilled and subtle ads on TV, in the news supplements, all media. We have “bought” a cultural norm that it is better “to have” than “to be”. So, get the goods, the TV, the car stereo, rip them off if you lack the money to buy. There is also huge distrust of government, both elected and appointed, which must have some effect on attitudes toward the law. How does one cope with the belief held by so many young people that there are no “good” jobs for them, now or in the future? How much ruin is the consequence of “hard” drugs, along with the chance of getting rich by dealing in drugs?

Have all the “liberal” (so-called) programs of the last sixty years or so had as an unintended consequence of fixing in stone an extensive “underclass” who have few hopes for survival except for entitlements or illegal activities? That’s a difficult question for a life-long New Deal Democrat to raise, even with himself. But I hear of no alternatives that are realistic, feasible, or humane.

What can sustain us? There is no sense in blinking away the nature and depth of our problems and unease. Perhaps there soon will be some answers that will address the issues with some authenticity. Otherwise, the troubles accumulate, until, to use a metaphor from physics, there is a “critical mass.” Then there will be an explosion, perhaps a 21st century variety of “New Deal”; or the worst case would be violent, bloody uprisings. I won’t be around, but I predict it will be a series of catastrophic events for some persons, but possibly a beacon of hope for many others. Send me a fax, I’d sure like to know.

The Problem of Disposal

August 13, 1994

Engaged as I am in the seemingly never-ending task of disposing of accumulations, I found it relatively easy to toss a great many of my own “creations”. However, it is more difficult to get rid of the “texts,” quotes, and quips which may have been the inspiration for my effort. Consequently, this Musing is to preserve the varieties of wisdom which turned me on at one time or another.

If you like some of these “thought-starters”, ponder how you would develop the wisdom into an essay, commentary or “op-ed.”

“Lives based on having are less free than lives based on doing or being.” William James

“The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There’s far less competition.” Dwight Morrow

“There is no one alive today who knows enough to say with confidence whether one religion has been greater than all the others.” Arnold Toynbee

“Do not search for answers to be given you; if given they would be of no use, for you could not live them. For the present live in the questions and little by little and almost unconsciously you will enter the answers and live them also.” Rainer Maria Rilke

“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.” William James

“It ain’t so much the ignorance of mankind that makes them ridiculous as the knowing so many things that ain’t so.” Josh Billings

“It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one’s neighbor.” Eric Hoffer

“Meeting:
Mind alone is without hone
Dialogue is whetstone.” Elaine Sommers Rich

Enough for now, although there s more. But I want to end this Musing by re-telling one of the best sports stories I have read or heard (seems rather fitting in these days when millionaire ball players are on strike against millionaire owners). Jim Thorpe (1888-1953) was arguably the greatest athlete in our nation’s history. His college was Carlisle, a school for American Indians. As Clifton Fadiman wrote the story,

“When word got around that the Carlisle Indians had an outstanding track team, Harold Anson Bruce, coach of the powerful Lafayette College team, invited “Pop” Warner’s athletes to a dual meet on Alumni Day. Reluctantly he agreed to pay a large guarantee. But when Bruce went to greet the visitors, he was disconcerted to find only a few young men getting off the train with Warner.

“Where are your Indians?” Bruce demanded.

“I’ve got enough,” answered Warner.

“'How many?”

“Five.”

“But Pop, I’ve got a team of forty-six; it’s an eleven event program. This is a disaster. You haven’t a chance.”

“Wanna bet?” asked Warner.

“Thorpe won the high jump, the broad jump, the pole vault, the shot put, and the low hurdles, and was second in the 100. Two others ran first and second in the half-mile, the mile, and the two-mile, another won the quarter-mile, and the fifth the high hurdles. Carlisle won 71-31.”