NO APOLOGIES NECESSARY

Seattle waterfront - MS(R)M

Well, hello again from the Bastion on the (Puget) Sound. It’s an interesting place from which to study the rest of the species. The drawbridge, the moat (also a sanctuary for abandoned water pets), and the panoramic sweep of two mountain ranges, two lakes and, on a clear day, two countries also lends a certain insularity to the enterprise. We have eagles nesting in our skyscrapers so the precedent’s already been set.

Nonetheless and despite the most sophisticated of defenses, stuff from Beyond the Pale does get through. It’s not always the apparently most important but it must have something going for it to get past all the contract security staff, food and media tasters, etc.

Internationally, one of the things President Obama apparently gets to deal with is a demand that Turkey apologize for the atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire against its Armenian population. I’ve studied some on that and it’s as shameless a chapter in human history as ever was written.

I’m also mindful that the folks in Ankara and Istanbul now were not responsible, no more than the people walking the streets of Berlin today caused, sanctioned or participated in the extermination of some of my mother’s people in Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, Dachau, Treblinka and the Warsaw Ghetto. In two more generations, the same will be able to be said of the English, with regards to the Irish, my dad’s side. And in one more generation, for Americans, with regards the Vietnamese.

It’s probably just me but I have a real hard time asking someone to apologize for something they didn’t do. I’m also Canadian-Californian but I’m not stupid. There’s enough around here now that all of us do that we should apologize for but a lot of times don’t.

I figure I’ve got enough to do to concentrate on improving my own track record in these regards without worrying about what a bunch of people who produced me without my consultation and whom I’ve never met did way back when.

I think it’s important to keep the memories alive because what we do now does impact what happens down the road. And maybe guilt serves as a reminder to do better so the next generation is freer to create and enjoy positive alternatives and options.

I don’t personally need the reminders. Life is precious enough to me as it is and I’m fully aware that other human beings are part of the richness and texture of it. I want to use both the bad things and the good of my life, in the now, for the now and to make things better for the future. I want to enjoy myself doing it and bringing to others a celebration of life and the incredible passion our species also has for compassion, decency and freedom.

I’d like to think that maybe if we all do this a little more, maybe there actually will come a day when no one will have any need to ask for apology, or feel the need to give one.

Until next time, then. And thanks for the ear.