Time to Wake Up

For those among us who happen to be Catholic Christians, the name of Fr. Maximilian Kolbe brings great pride. He is a modern martyr, dying of starvation and a final injection of carbolic acid to finish the job in 1941 at Auschwitz. When 10 prisoners were selected to die, as a result of a camp escape, he took the place of one man who had a family.

I did not know, before this Sunday when our priest spoke of Fr. Kolbe during a homily, how he ended up in Auschwitz in the first place. He had, done, for some time prior to the time he was arrested radio shows critical of the Nazi regime.

We think, in these United States, to the extent we know of these horrors of only the last century, blinded as we are by our own narcissism and conspicuous consumption, that such a thing could never happen here. In fact, it is well on the way. Moments that get little play in the broader media which presage a totalitarianism of the leftist Left this country has ever seen. Little intrusions on the reality posited as fact, when they are lies. Say it, go ahead try to say it, and you
get a lecture, with ad hominem flourishes. But the worst is happening.

Two groups visit Washington, D.C. Not to protest. To see the seat of their government, once the beacon of liberty. One goes to the steps of the Capitol. Another to the Lincoln Memorial. The group at the Capitol, in this country founded, let me say it, founded under God, but allowing all to express their beliefs whatever they may be, or not be, dared to. . .pray. A group. Yes. But the prayer was private. Individuals gathered together in praise of the God who guided the great republic into being. And they were told that they could not do so. They were not free to pray as visitors to the steps of the Capitol.

The other group, at the Lincoln Memorial, recited of all things, The Pledge of Allegiance. They were intercepted and chastised by a functionary of officialdom.

A not so parenthetical fact: Almost half of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, concerned in large part with slavery, invoked God. You may remember the last paragraph: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

In the play and movie, "1776" John Adams, in the throes of the most disorganized disagreements of the Continental Congress, on the precipice of the great founding or a great foundering, asks, "Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I see?." He saw the greatness and he helped to give it birth . We, the inheritors, will we see what we must do to preserve it? Or will we be forbidden, on pain of imprisonment, even death, from speaking the truth of this nation? Martyrdom is not without possibility if we do not stem the tide.

Planet Earth: My Backyard

Last night, my friends and I went to the Hollywood Bowl, featuring clips from the series "Planet Earth" against the sounds of George Fenton's Live theme music. For me such amazing nature tales are evidence of the existence of God. My mind kept repeating a portion of a biblical line, in those portions of the documentaries in which one animal chased and killed another, "And the Lion shall lie down with the Lamb", this of course, at the end of time, in Paradise. For those of us who make it there. . . .well THAT's another entry.

I realized that what played out on the screen plays out in my urban backyard every day. I woke up to one this morning. Mother Jay squawking frantically. I got up and went outside. A crow. Of course, a crow. From about April on, it is the season of baby birds and crows love to cop the unhatched eggs as well as the helpless newborns in the nests that surround us. There is one in the foliage between my apartment building and the one next to me. No doubt mama bird was keeping the crow at bay, and as in one of the features last night, not entirely successfully. My arrival was the thing that scared him off. Me and mama bird, protectors of her little ones.

Over the years I have come to know there is little to be done. Some new birds will survive. Many will not. It makes me cry, watching a screen or seeing it in real time.

There are also the squirrels. They walk across the electric wires fairly high above the two story buildings. I saw one fall once onto the top of my garage roof. I could only hope he wasn't hurt. But I had no ladder to look. And I was on the way to work.

The possums come out at night to eat the cat food. I like to watch their long noses in the cat dish. But that's as close as I am going to get. Once I got a good close up camera shot of a baby possum on top of our little outside gazebo like thing.

A favorite is the hummingbird. I never saw one until I moved to California. My backyard is full of them. I know their sound now. Wings whirling and an odd chirp unlike any other bird back here. One once actually stopped on a branch above where I was lying on a bench and watched me, watch him. A long time. We seemed to enjoy each other equally.

And then, of course, there is Elwood. A cat. The cat. Orange tabby, all bowed legs these days, somewhere around 17 years of age he is. He used to live inside, but decided it was too lonely there, with my neighbor. So he went outside, where all this is going on. The jay thinks he's a danger to her young, but Elwood is too old be chasing birds. And he's afraid of her dive bombing anyway. He just wants his food, his water, and a pet, from time to time, extra on the weekends when I am around. My little piece of the planet earth.

Watching Them, Watching Me

I get into the elevator in the building in which I work. I press my floor. And then I am captivated. I mean it. Captivated. By the Captivate Network, a screen for which has been placed in every conveyance going to every floor in our massive building.

I hate it. But I cannot avert my eyes. Snippets of news. Stock prices, over and over, and over. Quizzes. I am particularly seduced by the word of the day. I have a new one in my verbal quivver, "Snolleygoster". Yep, a real word said the shrewd man, or in this case woman. Well, that's a good thing, right? I got a new word out of my travels from Starbucks to my desk.

They have recently changed the format and the logo. Or had I not noticed it before? It is a modern art version of an eye

Oh Oh. Didn't the book and movie of 1984 feature flat screens in every room that could not be avoided or shut off?

There is a cognitive dissonance in knowing that your society, the one you must remain in until you die, is going down an obvious, terrifying road, and being unable to do anything other than stare at the screen."I am NOT a number, I am a free man!" So saith the "Prisoner" circa 1968. TV again.

Yeah, right. Freedom. Slipping like a flat noodle through our grasping fingers.

Soon, that little elevator television will be talking to me, lulling me into a hypnotic trance from which I will not awake. Hello, Big Brother. Watch out for Rover.

Hoping for a happy ending to this entry? Ain't got one. I am probably one of the cowards and not one of the resistance. How about you?

"Be seeing you."

One Woman's Saturday Morning

You may recall the saga of the piano a few entries back. In my effort to recreate my space, a one bedroom apartment in which I have lived more than half my life, I had painted, tossed or stored some of the old accumulated "stuff" much of it beloved, but not particularly useful. And I decided to have the piano, scratched and pocked and worn, restored. When it returned, and was in the second stage of tuning, it became clear that the pinblocks needed to be replaced as well as some strings. Since it had not been an expected problem for a variety of reasons, Simon, my piano technician, agreed to have the pinblock replaced without charge for his time. And the piano was removed a second time to a workshop far far away (the Valley).

All that remained tangible to remind me of its absence was the bench. For now, nearly two or more months, the bench, repository for my landline, has gathered dust. I left town for vacation. I returned. Work became extremely busy as a new boss is coming aboard in a week or two. Friends and family had crises which distracted me from my dreams of rediscovering the raw musical talents of childhood. Occasionally, my uncle, who mostly orchestrated the apartment renovation would ask, "When is the piano coming back?"

Today.

As I write, there is the annoying/lovely sound of tuning. Given the number of strings, it may be a while. And so I have been trying to act as I would on any Saturday, with a cacophonous background accompanying. I removed clothes for dry cleaning to my car. I washed my white cat's eye with a solution of diluted boric acid so that he does not again have an infection requiring an always expensive visit to the vet.

And then, I sat down to read, coffee in hand, a short short distillation of Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica. Or short short short, because, although Thomas may have meant his work for the so-called "beginner", a beginner in his time apparently was a genius compared to a beginner in these days. Me, my college and graduate education are poor matches for the disputations of St. Thomas, Articles (Questions), Objections, Sed Contras (On the Contrary) and conclusions of Thomas himself on the issue.

I had to laugh at myself, sitting on my couch trying to consume lines from the Summa while Simon pounds at the piano. Who else in the world would be doing this just now? Pretention!? Idiocy?!

A snapshot of the Djinn's peculiar life in Los Angeles!

A Newly Minted Celtic (Fan)

I have paid little attention to professional basketball. For that matter, I guess I am not much of a fan of any organized sport. I am not, mind you, disdainful. But since my parents had little interest, I developed their lack thereof. I have enjoyed, in fact, over the years the occasional foray into the bleechers of one sport or another. Hockey. A King's game once. Baseball. Len of Len Speaks has been my host, if you will, at Met and Dodger games, and even the odd Yankee game. Never been to a basketball game.

When I was recently back East, I was in the home of some friends, who are big Celtic fans, and in the middle of a gathering, I noticed most everyone was off in the den catching up on the one of the early games between the Celtics and the LA Lakers that would determine the championship for 2010. I sat with them and they, in between successful shots of their team, asked me who I favored. I had to admit that I was really neutral. Jokingly, they suggested I needed to make a choice, given the loyalties in that room.

I found myself wishing I had the kind of passion for the game that they did. And that I had a team to root for. A passing, not particularly intense thought was this.

Back in Los Angeles, car after car waved Laker flags in anticipation of the last game, the one here at the Staples Center that would make or break it, now that the teams were tied.

Game 7. I happened to run across flipping channels, the beginning of the third quarter. I found myself sitting, and watching. And enjoying. I could imagine my friends back in Massachusetts noisily delighted that the Celtics appeared to stay just ahead of Kobe and Company. I had a slight bias, I realized, toward the shamrocks. I actually felt a little nervous as the Lakers' defense kept the Celtics from shots to get them way ahead. And then the Lakers were able to pull just ahead leaving no further chances for the Boston team. LA wins. My disappointment was nominal. And then. . . .

In celebration, a rather significant number of "fans' of the Lakers decided to rock taxis, vandalize businesses and light inappropriate items on fire. It has happened before. Back in Boston, I hear, the losers were more, well, civilized. Nary a person or thing was disturbed. All was as it should be. But here in LA, shameful behavior, again. And I felt a need, a silly need, perhaps, to rebel.

So, as of that night, I decided. I am now officially a Celitc fan. Next year, I will be watching, and rooting for, them. I will be doing this particularly when they are playing the Lakers. Oh, I know, it wasn't the Laker's fault. I am not necessarily applying logic in making this decision. But it's a statement of some sort, that I need to make to myself, for whatever it is worth, likely nothing. It is, as they say, what it is. Go Celtics, 2011!

Thoughts on a Sunday

I have been kicking around my apartment since I returned from Church and a quick run to Bristol Farm for supplies. And oustide my apartment because the gloom of June ended earlier today and there was sunshine to enjoy. So me and Ellwood shared a sandwich (don't feed cheese to a toothless cat parenthetically. It gets stuck on the room of the mouth) and I made an entry in my private journal while the breeze meandered about me.

This morning, lying in bed just awakened, I thought suddenly about a bronze coin a friend gave me, a memento of hers or someone she knew from the Bicentennial of 1976. I was suddenly cognizant of just how young this country is and how I, probably we, never really consider that the events we treat as ancient history are really adjacent to our own. I remember standing on a Bronx roof, courtesy of one of my late uncles, that overlooked the Hudson, watching the tall ships sailing up in one of the commemorations. I had lived already, 22 years of that 200 years since the founding of our country. I have now lived 56 years of the 234 years since the founding of our county. Not that many generations separate me from Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and the beginning of the great American Experiment.

Or separate any of us in the fifty states from that delicate balance which is Democracy in America. And yet we treat her, America, as if we can say or do anything without damage to the core values. We treat her, in fact, as if those core values mean nothing, and can be rearranged wily nilly. Or worse, we treat her, as if those core values should be eradicated in favor of those kinds which we have seen if only we remembered destroy the rights of man using deceptive self-aggrandizing rhetoric. I think perhaps Daniel Webster was more astute at discerning the rhetoric of the Devil than we the people have been of late. This country is young and it hasn't taken sufficient root for us to assume that the values of the Founding Fathers, which are by the way under vicious and alas even smug attack, will survive. Without the values there is no America, despite the appeals to their irrelevancy. And some of those appeals are from our own representatives, who refuse to listen to their constituencies about key issues. Even mock those constituencies in an early expression of government despotism.

We haven't been around so long that we can afford to think ourselves indestructible. Countries and empires with far more years under their territorial belts, died writhing deaths, as did their citizens, failing to heed the lessons of history.

I don't know. I don't know why I was thinking about this stuff in my bed on a Sunday in June. But I actually got a littled chilled to think that so little time in the past, a group of adventurous, thoughtful men (and it's ok with me that it was mostly men since that was the society of the time, foward thinking, but still with the frailty of humanity) were birthing something so magnificent that we might let die because of our negligence or wilfullness. Worse because of our ignorance of the value of what we have had.

A Wee Let Down

When you have been out and about in different territory, somewhat adventurous territory compared to one's everyday life, the hustle and bustle begins to seem like it will never end and there is a joy in that. While I was away, there was a lot to do and see, perhaps more than I could possibly manage in just ten days in two locales, one the pandemonium that is New York and the other the quietude of the oceanside in the South Shore of Massachusetts. And then, I came home, to the usual. At first, it was nice. Relaxing. Recouping. Catching up. And then.

Back to work today. The same problems big and small. The same debates. The same, well tiredness, after too many years trying to save a world that just doesn't want to be saved. It's not like I do it "pro bono". I get paid a decent salary. But the time away, seeing the bigger world thousands of miles away from my everyday, reminded me of the glory of possibility that returning to the same ole, same ole just eradicated, all in the space of one 7.25 hour day.

"What AM I doing here?" All this effort to get to management and what? So what? Pension. Check. Other benefits. Check. All done according to hoyle. Check. Not ungrateful. Check. But. . .the forever but. You know. The path not taken. The path too late to take. Choices that did not really seem like choices. But they must have been. And now? Ideas pop in and out of my mind. I even have a folder of those that can be reduced to application or description. And then the existential stuff, the stuff that no folder can contain. Perhaps no mind. Not mine, anyway.

Going away. Coming back. As if it never happened.