FROM MY OWN BOOK OF LOVE, WAR AND OTHER REMEMBRANCES

USS Blue (DD 744) off Hawaii

Hi again, folks. Since it’s Valentine’s Day, this a love in war story, It’s true, except for her real name and a condensing of some events. It’s also a chapter from my own Book of Love, War and Remembrances. (With appropriate acknowledgement to Herman Wouk for the title.)

We need to go back a few years, to the Fall of 1968. The Vietnam War was raging furiously and the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing. High school classmates were returning, sometimes walking and sometimes in body bags. The voting and drinking age was 21. A small matchbox of pot could get you hard time at Folsom, a 45 minute drive from where I lived.

There was a Draft on and I was holding a student deferment while attending Sacramento City College behind a busted home, two jobs and a devout attempt to keep the small dance and show combo which had been sustaining me in several ways, alive. My generation was fighting for its life and in my world, those who were not preparing to do duty for God, country and whatever were protesting the war and suffering their own casualties. There didn’t seem to be much middle ground.

Autumn is a lonely time in Sacramento. The harvest is over and the seemingly endless delta, with its network of rivers, levees and vast barren fields stretches to all horizons under grey skies that mark the flights of southbound Canada geese.

In some ways, I was a lot older at 19 than I am at 59. For the last three years, I’d been leading six other teenagers into a career union musicians twice our age envied. We played everything from the USO and high school proms and balls, to military base service clubs and for private parties at such Class A houses as the Sacramento Inn and the Mansion Inn. We had one motto that served us real well. Don’t play for the money, play for the people.

With all that was going on around us, we figured we’d be lucky to see 21. So we broke some rules and assumed a few of the rights of the adults we actually were. We worked hard and we played hard. We were tough, prematurely cynical and had less than no patience with anyone who tried to suggest a different way of living. It was like, if you can’t handle it, fine. Just don’t (expletive deleted) with it.

Kirsten was about the last person I should have met back then. She was slim, lithe, doe-eyed shy, and her thick ash blonde hung in long, loose natural waves, draping her slim shoulders and brushing them, like angel wings. She was from the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the east, and she reminded me, in a lot of ways, of Heidi. She was down in Sacramento, living with her sister and family and going for an AA degree in art.

I worked for the school newspaper and she helped print it. There was a glass partition between the newsroom and the print shop and I one morning, I looked up from my typewriter to see this Hallmark and Campbell Soup young mother holding a baby in her arms. (It was the print shop teacher’s daughter but I didn’t know that at the time.) I was just blown away by this incredible wave of gentleness that was suddenly washing over me. I felt vulnerable and that’s not always appropriate. I was tough because I needed to be and there was room for sex but there was not room for romance.

So I turned away and made it a point not to look at her working on a layout table about a foot and a pine wainscoted and glass wall away. I "heard" her humming softly to herself and remembered my own time in her mountains. Half of me needed and enjoyed it. The other half of me was telling me to focus on the tasks at hand. I was running on about 12 cups of coffee and a pack of Winstons a day and about the only time I had to myself was lunch.

Sacramento City College is situated across Freeport Boulevard from one of the most understatedly beautiful parks I’ve ever been in. Back then, it includes the Sacramento Zoo and a duck and boating pond. Trees all over. An amphitheater, some baseball diamond and tennis courts. I liked to go over to the duck pond, dine on peanut butter and/or baloney sandwiches, a bag of potato chips, and a half pint of milk. I brought old bread for the ducks and we had some interesting conversations. I always ate alone, except for the ducks.

So when noon came, I shoved Kirsten to the back of my mind and made a beeline to the duck pond. I remember that day as particularly Canada goose lonely, with an east wind blowing off her mountains. I’d just found out two of the guys in the band had been reclassified 1A, which meant "first available". We had weekend gigs through New Years. After that, my job was pretty much over and my outfit and way of life scattered to the winds.

Her shadow flickered across me before I actually saw her. She was dressed in a nice Weinstocks car coat with a mock fur collar and I remembered she’s been in a man’s workshirt and levis under that. She had a khaki knapsack that I later learned her grandfather had worn in Belleau Wood and the Argonne. She glanced at me and the only bench available, which was also the one I was sitting on, in the middle, with my own kit spread out on both sides. She arched a delicately feathered eyebrow and I stared back at her, without moving.

I read loneliness in her eyes and half of me wanted to tell her to just truck on because I had enough on my own plate, including a girlfriend with whom I was also having a real interesting time. The wind off her mountains rose a bit and scattered the bag of bread, the waxed paper open with the sandwiches, and the partially consumed bag of potato chips. By the time I recovered what didn’t land in the duck pond, she was comfortably ensconced on one end of the bench, drinking vegetable soup out of a plaid thermos and feeding the ducks from her own bag of stale bread.

Kirsten and I got to be friends after that. It turned out that we lived just a half mile apart so we were together most of the walk home from school we managed to make every late afternoon. It gave us a chance to talk and to get to know one another.

I learned that the war hadn’t left Kirsten untouched. On her right wrist was a bracelet with the name of her high school sweetheart, by then a Marine Missing In Action in Vietnam. She talked about the plans they’d made for him to come back and get a good job in the woods, while she found work in Placerville, the county seat. There was some land they could save for and he’d build the cabin. And together, they’d raise a son who would be, like their father, a football hero, and their daughter, like her mother, good with animals and art.

Kirsten tried to get me to talk about my life but since there wasn’t a lot of good news to report, she didn’t have a lot of luck with that. Instead, I listened to her and her dreams. They were modest and they were wholesome. And they depended on a Marine missing in action.

When grades came out in December, I found out, not to my total surprise, that I’d flunked most of my classes and was no longer eligible for a student deferment. By then, it was a lot colder and it got darker a lot earlier so Kirsten and I met in the cafeteria before starting home. That night, when everybody else was comparing report cards, she read the look on my face and tears gathered in her eyes.

She held my hand when we walked across the street to the bus stop. She hugged me tightly with her face buried in my chest on the ride home. We got off at her stop and I walked her the half mile in the thick tule fog to her sister’s front door. She held me even tighter and before putting the key in the lock turned and faced me.

"Please don’t do this to me, Please don’t leave."

Neither of us had a lot of choice and I did, by enlisting in the Navy and volunteering for Vietnam. The first time I returned to Sacramento, a some two years later, she was living with a hippie musician and sharing his needle. The second time, seven years or so later, she was running a flower shop in a real mellow part of downtown, near Sutters Fort. She said she wasn’t in love with anyone and hadn’t been in a long time. She was just as lovely then as she was the first time I met her. But when I went to cup her cheek and tell her that gently, she withdrew and shook her head.

"Nor do I ever intend to love again. It hurts too much."

It’s been some thirty years now and several other wars. I wonder how many other Kirstens there are out there. I suspect there’s a few.

On Valentine’s Day, I dream of a time when there won’t be quite so many.

WHEN POLITICIANS ACT LIKE QUARRELING CHILDREN

Hi again, folks, from the Bastion on the Sound. In response to several of you who have asked for my reaction to President Obama’s Monday address to the world and press conference following, he continues to live up to my expectations. He’s assuming personal responsibility for the problems he’s having building consensus for the economic stimulus package he’s proposed. He also reminded us that he’s already told us he’ll make mistakes occasionally.

While that thought doesn’t exactly inspire me to bluegrass and The Happy Dance, I appreciate his candor. He’s a human being governing a nation of same and I expect no more or less of him than I do myself or anyone else. He’s got a job to do and I sincerely believe he’s doing the best he can. I’m a little less than impressed with the Republican Party for continuing to play "politics" at a time when the constituency needs THEM to attend to the task at hand, restoring the national economy and contributing to the fiscal healing of the global community. In other words, knock it off and FOCUS.

Closer to home, our own elected officials are moving swiftly. While waiting for our share of the above-cited federal economic recovery package, Washington governor Christine Gregoire is streamlining state government by eliminating more than 150 state boards and commissions and closing 25 Department of Licensing offices. She estimates that the latter measure would save approximately $2.6-million over the next two years. For the full story, click here.

Seattle’s mayor Greg Nickels, apparently taking his lead from Olympia, is working on a capital improvements plan which is expected to create 6,464 jobs and cost an estimated $223,758,774. It covers everything from AMTRAK to low income housing, energy, streets and roads, and the hiring an additional nine officers for the Seattle Police Department. For a breakdown, click here For an overview on what other American cities are doing, click here.

(For those interested in a quick but dynamic overview of what our region, including British Columbia and California are doing, I strong recommend the Sightline Daily. It gathers news from the print media, large and small, and presents it with the lead and a link to the rest of the story. I’m learning a great deal and it’s having a real effect in countering what seems like an overwhelming amount of negative coverage by the other media sources I consult each morning.)

To our north, Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has promised more relief in addition to the $40-billion slated for economic recovery over the next two years. He's proposing this should the global community's fiscal problems continue to impact this nation of 36 million.

Harper, a Conservative, is having some of the same problems with opposition party members of his government that have thus far plagued President Obama and has sent the same message to all concerned. He invited the leader of the Liberals to "do something he never did in the pre-budget period, which is actually provide some economic policy suggestions to Parliament." For more on this, click here.

It appears American elected officials are not the only ones prone to putting party politics before the welfare of the constituencies they were elected to serve. Both our nations, I believe, are fortunate to have chief executives who are not afraid to take a firm but measured hand in insuring the integrity of the true national agenda.

Well, that’s it for this week. Keep the faith, folks. Granted, times are tough now, but as long as we pull together, communicate and continue to love one another, we’ll get through this. Whether you’re American, British, Canadian, French, Irish, or Scots, you live in a nation of heroes. And heroes don’t give up, do they?

SEATTLE SKETCHES - MR. SIMS GOES TO WASHINGTON

Seattle Skyline - photo by MS(R)M

Howdy, rowdies, from sunny Seattle. Nice to be able to say that after all this snow and ice we’ve had this winter. Hope the good weather lasts but Rainier Ralph, the beaver, (we don’t have groundhogs) saw his shadow Monday, so it looks like another six weeks of rain. Unless we get another earthquake like we had last week. Or the Lady Volcano decides to throw a hissy fit. I’ve been polling the locals and either is preferable to more wet stuff falling from the sky.

Which means we’ll probably get 42 straight days of liquid sunshine. Seattle’s like that. It’s built on seven hills in the shadow of a rain forest and enjoys about eight microclimates. The Emerald City has multiple personality disorder and that’s not surprising considering downtown had to be rebuilt on higher ground after the tides kept making the toilets back up. In winter, it’s a great place to live if you’re a duck. Or related to one. Some of us have been here so long, we’ve got webs between our fingers and toes. (Putting my hands in my pockets)

We’re also the fashion capital of the Pacific Northwest, which is to say that after grunge, we sort of slid further into the Land of Laid Back. So many of us are descended from Klondike claim jumpers that we don’t wear ties because it’s too convenient to hang us with them. We prefer Birkenstocks to boots, even in winter, because sandals and wool socks are easier to dry out than Gucci leather and somewhat kinder on the cow. As a general rule, we’re almost as polite as Canadians except when something happens far away that gives us an excuse to yell a lot in support of lofty causes. Once we get it out of our system, we retire to a neighborhood pub to quench our thirst with a politically correct microbrew.

It’s also a good place to be a woman or a minority in politics. Our governor, Christine Gregoire, is the second of her gender to hold that office in 40 years. Our two U.S. Senators are Maria Cantwell and Patti Murray. We’ve got a green mayor, Greg Nickels, who banned bottled water from city offices after piling up a month’s worth of empty plastic bottles on the steps of City Hall to make his point. Ron Sims, a black man, has been our county executive since 1996, when he took over from Gary Locke, who became our first Japanese American governor. Ron’s been appointed deputy secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and will be in charge of HUD's day-to-day operations, a nearly $39 billion annual operating budget and 8,500 employees. He’s squeaky clean so his confirmation by the Senate is not expected to be a problem.

And he’s not likely to be the minor embarrassment Heath and Human Services Secretary nominee Tom Daschle has been over that $120,000 in taxes he said he forgot to pay. I just hope he keeps better track of our money than he did his own. It does bother me a little, though, that this is the second Obama appointee with a bad memory. But I guess if the guy who’s now running the IRS after disclosure of his tax-paying problems can get confirmed, we shouldn’t be too surprised if the individual responsible for the national health policies of America slides into the cabinet as well. I guess that’s why a surgeon never works alone in an operating room. I do wonder how many times we’re going to hear "oops" again though. After eight years of the Great Decider, I don’t imagine the national constituency is going to be quite as patient as they’ve been in times past.

I know I’m not. So good luck, Ron. Don’t let ‘em rub off on you.

A LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT

Hi again folks. Before I launch on the topic at hand, I want to thank you yahoos for your responses to my last blog. Fifteen emails and IMs during the first hour it was published is phenomenal for a readership of this size. What’s even more gratifying to me is that they came from all over the States, Canada and the U.K. You said you felt the same way and several told me I said it well. That tells me I’m doing my job for you folks. I need to hear that once in awhile. Thank you.

I watched most of the Inaugural, off and on. I was online looking for work in the Seattle area and places to publish the other stuff I write. Even though I know that most of us enjoyed that national celebration, I’m also well aware that some of you, for whatever reasons, did not. So I’m not going to talk about that. Instead, I’m going to address our newly elected national executive. Yeah, I know this will never actually reach him, but play along with me, okay?

Happy Second Day of Work For Us, Mr. President. Do a good job over the next one hundred and I’ll call you Mr. Obama. If you’re still cool by Christmas, you’ll be Barack after that and if and until we find out that a mistake was intentional. We know you and your team are going to make some. You’ve said so and we know that because we’ve made some too.

We’re not looking for you to be a hero, Mr. President. In this country, a lot of them get killed and that’s not something I think needs to continue, with all due respect. Americans don’t need heroes, as you well know. We’re a nation of them.

I’m glad you made it, Barak. Since childhood, you’ve been caring about folks on BOTH sides of the color line and if ever this country needed that extended to the International Community, it’s now. I read about what you did in your dad’s part of Africa back last year and I remember thinking, ‘If ever there’s a potential president who can negotiate, this guy Obama is it.’ And I was a Hillary supporter at the time. Please don’t forget that skill’s needed at home too, Mr. President.

Barack, we know it’s not going to be easy helping us get back on our feet financially. People are skeptical of bailouts. They’re not donations, they’re loans. Remind all concerned of that too, Mr. President?

Well, like my last letter to Santa Claus, I’d best keep this brief. (Don’t even go there, guys). Sooo, in summation and stuff.

Mr. President, keep your end of the contract. We’ll keep ours. And please don’t forget who you work for.

Thanks for the ear, then, folks, and until next time.

Rusty

TRIAL OF A NATION

As I write these lines, it is four a.m. on the morning of what will probably be remembered as either the day Americans turned the corner and lived up to the passion and prayers of the Founding Fathers or chose instead to go the way of other empires which vanished for no other reason than the greed of their citizens and the self-serving enabling of the government which allegedly served them.

To me, this is about more than electing a president whose ancestors were both brought over here in chains and made that hellish voyage possible in the first place. In our rush to celebrate our racial enlightenment, I think we forget that Barack Obama is also white. He is, in a larger sense, the hybrid alluded to by the term melting pot. He is the product of the forge and the crucible; the legacy of Nate Thomas and Simon Legree; Gettysburg and the Reconstruction; the Ku Klux Clan and the Congress of Racial Equality; Dr. Martin Luther King and Governor George Wallace.

He exemplifies a new generation of Americans, born and raised to believe that all things are possible it one refuses to envision anything except success. He understands perhaps better than any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the need for cooperation and consensus. He is far more a statesman than a politician; far more a facilitator than a charismatic leader; far more a walker than a talker, despite an eloquence which springs from the heart and the mind across one tongue and a language common to every single citizen he has pledged to serve.

He represents the best that is in each of us and he is vulnerable to the raging beast that co-exists in the often convoluted and contradictory character of the nation itself. He has willingly admitted that he cannot do the job without us; that his solutions depend on the willingness of each of us to participate in the process. He is not a benevolent genius ordained by God to lead his people out of the self-imposed bondage of material greed. He is much simpler than that. He is an American who understands what it is to be one.

Regardless of whether his plans for economic salvation succeed or fail; regardless of whether his foreign policy returns this nation to a place of honor and respect among all nations; whether his fireside chats reach the Blackberries and the laptops of his constituency here and around the globe, Barack Obama himself will not pale before the promises he has made, for no single individual is mighty enough to let an entire nation down.

If we end up sinking into the mire of abysmal economics and sealing our own extinction, it will not be because Barack Obama failed. It will be because we, as individual citizens of the noblest social experiment in history, chose to do so. And we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

A PARTIAL WISH LIST FOR THE COMING YEAR

Hi, again, folks, this time from Soggy Seattle. Now that the snows have stopped and melted off some, our rivers are doing something they don’t usually do until Spring. Imagine that’s familiar to a lot of you folks about now.

All in all, we’re handling it real well and so far, mostly without the help of the federal government. The Army Corps of Engineers has been activated to help out, and if necessary, Governor Chris will call out units of the Washington State National Guard in dryer places. As close as we all are in this region, it won’t be a big call out. Most of our daughters and sons, fathers and mothers, cousins, et al will already be where they’re needed.

Yes, there have been tragedies associated with this and our time of mourning will come. Right now, we’re still rescuing the living. We do, however, truly appreciate the concern expressed from those in other parts of the States, Canada and abroad. Compassion is not lost on us. And we do remember far longer, those who stood by us in hard times than we ever will those we attracted during good. Thank you, then, eh?

Well, so far, I’ve evaded every editorialist’s annual responsibility to predict what’s in store for us the rest of the year. As some of you know, I’ve done that in years past and did last year, as well. Alas and alack and stuff, I’ve found out I’m not as good at it as I once was. Like Grandpa Seamus used to say, "If you can’t remember the cards, time to get out of the game."

So this year, I’d like, instead, to share with you what I HOPE happens?

I’d like to see economics shift from national to regional to serve first local markets and then the rest of the nation. I realize that in order to do that, we’re going to have to scale back some but we’re already seeing the precursor to that in certain businesses like Subway adjusting their prices to their consumer base. Seems to me that’s the kind of flexibility necessary right now for any of this to work.

Each region of this nation has something unique for "export". Each region in this nation is capable of economic independence by appropriately using its available resources. Every region has universities doing research in everything from environmentally appropriate agriculture to integrated energy sources to alternative transportation.

The historical precedent for the shift is there. And every civilization, present and past, has gone through the same evolution. America moved from the predominantly agrarian to the highly industrialized and into the technological. The scientific and technology communities have not failed us. Our own greed did. But both communities are still there as resources.

I had the rare privilege, during the late Seventies, to read a ‘novel’ entitled Ecotopia. That small book and it’s prequel and sequel, talked about a regionally environmentally appropriate, stable state economy. Despite some of its Swiftian overtones and its premise that for Ecotopia to fully evolve, it needed to secede from the Union (Why am I seeing a smile of the faces of some of you who live below the Mason Dixon, north of Monterrey, California or in Quebec province now?), it works from a technological perspective.

Ecotopia, as a regionally adapted model, was and is both plausible and possible, certainly more now than when the books were written, some three-plus decades ago. An article in one of last month’s editions of the New York Times seems to support that contention, as well, by the way.

Perhaps as a sidenote, I also had the unforgettable experience of meeting the author, Ernest ‘Chick’ Callenbach. He was also at that time, the editor of the University of California’s Film Quarterly. He was a man of the arts, with an appreciation for and an understanding of appropriately applied technology. A soft-spoken, gentle man, he was also the father of two sons he did not want going to war.

So another thing I hope for this year is that there will be a renewed interest in his books as a viable resource. I’d like, as well, for some soft media attention to be focused on him for his ideas in these regards. In my mind, in times like these, he’s one of our best thinkers. And he’s not going to be around forever.

I also hope, as much for my own region, as for others, that we take another look at "land use". I’d like to see us go back to the earliest studies of the Pacific Northwest and, because I live here, the Puget Sound. We superimposed our needs on this land and at first, I think that was okay. But when we grew too large by cutting down too many trees, etc., we ultimately ended up ~ have and still do ~ spending more on disaster control (which never really works here), disaster mitigation and disaster victim relief than we would have if we’d just sited ourselves more appropriately.

There seems to be this stubborn streak in some of us that makes it okay to get washed away and then rebuild on the same flood plain without, apparently, much thought to moving to higher ground. Grandpa Seamus would have accorded them that right under the U.S. Constitution but he would not have paid one dime in taxes to support, enable or perpetuate that particular brand of foolish thinking or behavior.

Most of all, I hope we remember that we got ourselves into this and if we really want things to be better, we will work together to get ourselves out. Several blogs ago, I issued a call for ideas in these regards and I’m renewing that call again.

Rusty

P.S. I want to take this opportunity to express my personal appreciation for the response I received from this last blog about Samantha and what she’s going through. I owe particular gratitude to another Native American, fellow Northern Californian and Vietnam veteran, Mr. Tom Two Crows. Thank you, Chief. I passed the word along.

A PRAYER FOR A PROMISE MADE

One of the young people in my life recently celebrated her 40th "escape from the gallows," as Mark Twain once put it. She sees it as a milestone in her life and considering what this very special and gifted individual has survived to see the sum of those sunsets and sunrises, I’m inclined to agree.

She’s an extremely gifted writer and a sensitive and caring human being. She’s quick to accept personal responsibility and slow to apportion it. She’s got a beautiful Native American face that can be read like an epic Jean Auel novel or experienced like Aaron Copland’s Ode to the Common Man.

She’s breathtakingly beautiful, this child of God. Intelligent and endowed with a sense of humor devoid of all shred of malice, she has, as well, an intimate understanding of this planet as the goddess Gaia and the same rapport with the deity which governs beyond.

She was a medic in the Persian Gulf War and before she shipped out to Operation Desert Storm, she asked me to talk about what I did in a long ago war of my own and how I survived it. I gave her the volume of poetry I’d written against the day one of the young people in my life faced this particular contingency and asked her to read it on the plane over.

That’s never worked for Samantha and it didn’t this time, either. So I read it to her. It helped her remember life up ‘til then. Sometimes she laughed, sometimes she cried and sometimes she stared at me without really seeing me.

We had popcorn and drank canned Coca Cola. We listened to music we’d experienced together a lot before. We broke out Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, her favorite movie and mine. I tucked her into bed that night and the illumination of my computer screen as I worked on cast her dreams as Technicolor shadows about and beyond me.

Samantha shipped out without ever hearing about my war experiences. They weren’t the same. I didn’t want her burdened with mine or doing this weird comparison and contrast when she needed to focus on what SHE was doing, tending to the hurt and dying.

She came back different. They all did. After a brief reunion, I didn’t hear from her for quite awhile. She said she needed time to work things out. I knew what she meant. I had that volume of poetry I wrote and the music we enjoyed together.

She’s come a far piece but she recently lost of third friend in Iraq. The hauntedness has returned to her eyes. Now when she sleeps, the shadows’ danse is macabre and violent. She cries out in her sleep for lost brothers and awakens disoriented and with deep shadows ringing her eyes.

She’s losing interest in her art, her music and her writing. She goes for aimless walks along the Ship Canal and ends up sitting in a coffeeshop, staring into space for a long time, remembering what she cannot forget, even in sleep.

She wants the American government to stop sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. She’s tired of saying good-bye. Her numbers are legion in this country and they are just as much victims as the veterans of any other war the citizens of this nation have chosen to fight. Samantha knows what every combat veteran knows.

War is an atrocity with no real rules of engagement. And no one who takes a life ~ under any circumstances ~ is ever truly whole or happy again.

Soon, we will witness the inauguration of a man we voted into office because he said he will get us out of both places. I hope we hold him more responsible for that promise than we have some others we have elected to lead this nation both in peace and in war.

This young person, Samantha, is very special to me and I do not want to lose her again.