BUILD A WALL AND WE WILL TEAR IT DOWN

Our household chose not to watch the 2018 State of the "Uniom" address from D.C. last night but a Netflix movie in its stead. We weren't alone in not wanting to listen to the speech. I won't mince words we have heard enough from this chaotic destructive administration this past year.

After the movie though, there on my feed was the streaming of the  Democratic response by Rep. Joe Kennedy III.  In case you'd like to hear it,  I have included the CBS link below. 

Eloquent, compassionate, articulate, educated,  Kennedy states: "This is not right, it is not who we are." "Ladies and gentlemen, have faith, the state of our union is hopeful, resilient, enduring.” For more, click on this link for the  Democratic Response .

THE PRICE OF SEAT MATES

Nowadays there are more hidden costs to flying most airlines. Not only is there the check in baggage cost but now the cheapest tickets not only have you boarding last but charges for that overhead carry on bag/to valet it.

What's interesting though is that most of my flights due to being full have been offering to check your carry on bag straight to your destination if you haven't bought the cheapest no frills ticket. But, wouldn't you be ticked if you were the passenger that paid the $25 for that same service? 

Choosing one's seat aboard a flight also has become more of a challenge. As I discovered this summer on the international flight a middle seat comes with your ticket but it costs more to sit on the aisle (that flight an additional $91) and less to sit by the window (+$43 ) and although much less for domestic flights, seat prices do vary. 

For the less desirable rear seats if I have the opportunity to choose an aisle seat I need to take into account I'm left handed. So if I'm planning on doing computer work I will constantly be bumped into if I sit on the wrong side. Sometimes the airlines chooses the seat for you and you get what you get.

So why am I carrying on about additional charges? Well on Saturday my return flight of Atlanta to Chicago was empty. Maybe the larger craft was needed back in Chicago? But I was flabbergasted because I was sitting in a full row. My seatmates had been traveling from overseas and their body odor let's say was pungent.  My olfactory sense was working overtime and although the conversation might have been interesting there was no need to share the row with oodles of vacant rows in front of me. I did move to one of those many empty aisle seats and enjoyed watching a recent full length feature movie.

Okay, the movies are free and there are recent releases. Do you remember when you had to pay for the headsets?  Anyhow I've discovered on this particular flight if you start the movies as soon as you get one you can finish watching it but it doesn't leave time for conversation. Some folks want to talk and others give cues that they'd rather not. 

People are interesting as no telling what they will share with a complete stranger. My first flight last week had an elderly gentleman who had never flown before as he had always driven down to Florida with his wife of 62 years who had passed a couple years ago. His female traveling partner was in a different seat but he didn't want me to switch with her because he wanted to sleep. I understood. Before dosing off he shared how they were staying in one of her son's timeshares and that it normally rented out for $1600/ day. He knew it would be nice, but not the same. My heart gave a little pang... 

Sometimes seatmates don't want to talk as inserted ear buds indicate. That's okay except I probably missed out on some interesting stories from the second leg of last week's flight. A very tan, attractive elder white haired gentleman dressed in nice sweats and a baseball cap with the Yankees insignia was asked by our late comer seatmate as she moved to the window if he was from NY.  He laughed and replied no, but said he had played for the Yankees. He placed his ear buds in as did she. That was that. I followed suit to watch my movie. At the end of the flight I noticed the gentleman's hands as he played with his cell phone volume and noticed each ring finger bore a World Series ring.  Wow, now that could have been some interesting conversation but hey I can say I saw two World Series rings. :)

The last flight of this trip started with just a couple comments as the pilot/flight attendants were playing some sugary teen age pop music album for way too long during our delayed take off from O'Hare. It was bad. Maybe it was one of their kid's garage band but it was torture. My seat mate and I exchanged quips that it was too bad we couldn't change the channel/ even quiet would have been preferable and how unusual it was to play music on the overhead. Once we took off, the music was stopped and my seatmate went right to sleep and I played word search on my phone for the 46 minute flight. It was when we were landing he awoke wanting to talk. His 90 year old father who lives in assisted living had fallen out of bed and broken both hips which are irreparable. Family was flying in as this was the beginning of the decline. He reminisced about how much he missed the Driftless Region and how he like his father, loved the outdoors, hunting, fishing and canoeing and had been in Boston now 24 years. His wife loved shopping and 2 of their children were like their mother and 2 were like him. I heard about his folks's hobby farm and their motor home which was never used due to his mom's passing and the last time his Dad drove out to Boston at age 82. I got an earful.  I know he was nervous about seeing his dad with the realization this was probably his last visit to be with him ... I was glad to listen.

The airlines can control the cost of the luggage, seats, etc. but what they can't control is who sits next to you and the possible conversation. That, my friends can be priceless.

IN FLEW ENZA...

Did you miss me? 

It turns out 2 weekends ago we were forewarned about a nasty storm coming our way that Monday. Winter storms are okay if you can stay put but my agenda was supposed to be departing on a 6 am Tuesday flight to head south to Atlanta to help take care of my grand daughter.  My daughter's husband had spent the last 2 weeks on the road for work and this was week 3. An extra two hands would be sorely missed if that storm impeded my visit. From experience we know there was no way that predicted ice was going to be passable from the End of the Rainbow Valley... Well as I double checked my ticket there in red was a weather alert with a note if one's city was included in the list, one could change departures without a fee. 


It was meant to be and I left 2 days earlier than anticipated and did avert the ice storm. It turned out to be a good week to be in Atlanta for more than one reason...

As is customary I call home daily to check on the home front but an unknown groveled voice answered the phone. It was Natureman and he sounded like death warmed over. He shared a story about a bird named Enza who had flown inside our screened in porch.  The storm wasn't the only thing I averted. 'In flew Enza' ( say it faster) Yes,  'influenza'  had also entered the End of the Rainbow Valley.

Natureman had not only read up on his symptoms but had also watched a documentary about the 1918 Influenza, the worst epidemic ever in this country which killed more people than all of the wars in this century. The country ran out of some thing one would never suspect, caskets.

The virus followed young Kansas infected soldiers abroad who in turn infected others as the microbe changed and came back to the U.S. as influenza, an airborne flu which sent the victims to bed. Worsening becoming pneumonia, taking lives in 12 hours. It killed the youngest with the strongest immune systems. The young immune systems were working overtime against each other.  "Their immune systems destroyed the mucus membranes in the attempt to destroy the invaders.  The leaking fluids filled the lungs of the victims and they died."

It spread from Boston to the eastern seaboard and beyond with some cities denying its existence.  Philadelphia had held a war parade with some 200,000 in attendance breathing on each other. Days later the city was plagued by the respiratory disease. 

Eventually a vaccine was developed but it was attacking a bacteria and this cure would not attack the real culprit, a virus which killed some 550,000 Americans. The epidemic left as it had come attacking the susceptible then  dissipated and was gone and somehow forgotten over time...

Although the documentary just dealt with the U. S. "an estimate by Dr. Alfred Crosby that the Spanish Flue globally killed around 30 million people from 1918 to 1920. Still, the most common estimate is more than 50 million, and even up to 100 million, with 17 million deaths in India alone, meaning that perhaps more than in WW1 and WW2 combined died from the H1N1 virus. 2/3 of these died the last three months of 1918, and as much as 500 million of the world's then 1,8 billion people got infected. This means the pandemic was more extensive and deadly than the less known Plague Of Justinian (541-42, 25 million dead) or perhaps even the Black Death (1346-53, 75 million dead or more). There were several hypothesis about the origin of the virus, such as Spain (!), Kansas and Brest, but most likely it came from China and mutated near Boston. There also is a thesis that it originated in Australia in 1917."

Natureman seems to be on the mend after a week his fever is gone along with his headaches and his cough has lessened. Upon my return I have sanitized everything I can and am even using a preventative measure using neosporin around my nostrils. Who knows if it will work? Fingers are crossed that I won't get it and the little bird Enza will have left the End of the Rainbow Valley.

FOTO FRIDAY: GO LYTELY MY FRIENDS

FOTO FRIDAY this week is actually a generational thing that perhaps my young readers won't be able to appreciate but this morning at 5:30 I finished this entire jug. I haven't been able to accomplish this feat before in my last 3 attempts.  

In fact, one time a friend had suggested adding Crystal-lite and as I perused the flavors the only one that appealed to me was cherry. Oops, big mistake as I reread the instructions the next morning before heading to the hospital, I had missed the line which read to avoid anything with the color red as it may be interpreted as blood. My procedure had to be postponed. Translated: I had to go through that jug cleansing twice for that procedure. 

Well, thank goodness it's been 10 years since the last time where I gagged my way through the process. It just goes to show you if you live long enough some things improve. Thank you to whoever did the research to make this a more pleasant ingestion.
And cross your fingers for me the results will be negative and this will be my last time ever to have to go through a colonoscopy. 

Any tales you'd like to share about this/ medical improvements? Do tell.

Last week's FOTO FRIDAY was:WONDER NO LONGER 
which actually is a good thing Henrietta didn't give up. It's going to be a whopping 40 degrees today.

TBT: I WANT MY DIMES BACK

TBT this week is the promised second story shared on Monday evening by Nate Coleman Jr.,  La Crosse's 2018 recipient of the Martin Luther King Leadership Award. 

It's about a conversation after Barack Obama was elected when Nate Coleman, Jr. asked his father what he thought about having a Black man in the White House.  His Dad replied: "I want my dimes back." Nate Jr. thought he didn't hear correctly and repeated the question and his Dad's response was the same, "I want my dimes back."  The senior Coleman was in his 80's and his son thought maybe his Dad had a little dementia so perhaps he needed some money for food.  "Dad, can I pick you up something to eat?"  "No," he retorted, "I just want my dimes back," and then his father went on to explain.

You see the senior Mr. Coleman was referring to a time ( I would assume the 60's) when there were still segregated city busses which cost a dime to ride.  If you were Black, you would get on the bus, drop your dime in the money box, and then have to get back off the bus to go to the rear door to get on. Many a time the driver would not wait for him to get back on and drive off, regardless of the weather.  

You could have heard a pin drop in the auditorium as this was a reality most of us had never experienced/witnessed.  Nate Coleman Jr. explained that his Dad wanting his dimes back was his way of saying he wanted to be validated. 

Let us think about validation and understand better why the Black Lives Matter movement is so important...

A TRUE LEADER AND GREAT ORATOR...

Yesterday I shared a personal story shared from the Martin Luther King Day Celebration where we live but I also received an email sharing the following King speech from 50 years ago. I would be remiss to not share it with you.

"Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (also known as the Riverside Church speech). It focused on Vietnam and social justice. It was delivered exactly one year before his assassination. Some consider this is most important speech and he reportedly said that he labored over this speech more than any other. And there is ongoing conjecture that this speech, and is shift towards speaking out for peace, against the Vietnam War, and aggressively on economic justice issues, is what got him assassinated."
A link to the speech is beneath the text... 

  Full text:

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, some of the most distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it’s always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it’s always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit.

I come to this great magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization that brought us together, Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement, and pray that our inner being may be sensitive to its guidance. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns, this query has often loomed large and loud: “Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” “Peace and civil rights don’t mix,” they say. “Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people?” they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment, or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church—the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate—leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides. Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans.

Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything on a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years, especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, “What about Vietnam?” They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a civil rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957, when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard from Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes, I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Now it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read “Vietnam.” It can never be saved so long as it destroys the hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that “America will be” are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1954.* And I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was also a commission, a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of man. This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances.

But even if it were not present, I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the Good News was meant for all men—for communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place, I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood. Because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned, especially for His suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them. This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1954—in 1945 rather—after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China—for whom the Vietnamese have no great love—but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed and Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all of this was presided over by United States influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem’s methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.

So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation’s only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call “fortified hamlets.” The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.

Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation front, that strangely anonymous group we call “VC” or “communists”? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of “aggression from the North” as if there was nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only real party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of a new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western worlds, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led this nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a unified Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be considered.

Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than eight hundred, or rather, eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called “enemy,” I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

Surely this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroy, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and dealt death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increased in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.

Unquote.

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.

I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

Number one: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

Number two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government.

Five: Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement. [sustained applause]

Part of our ongoing [applause continues], part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary. Meanwhile [applause], meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation’s role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. [sustained applause] I am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. [applause] Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. [applause] These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality [applause], and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing “clergy and laymen concerned” committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. [sustained applause] So such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” [applause] Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin [applause], we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see than an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. [applause]

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. [sustained applause]

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. [applause] War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy [applause], realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low [Audience:] (Yes); the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I’m not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another (Yes), for love is God. (Yes) And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. . . . If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.” Unquote.

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood—it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message—of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation comes a moment do decide,
In the strife of truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ‘tis truth alone is strong
Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. [sustained applause]

*. King says “1954,” but most likely means 1964, the year he received the Nobel Peace Prize.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Qf6x9_MLD0

MLK STORIES

The extreme cold and first real snow fall couldn't keep us away from our community celebration of Martin Luther King's birthday especially since an unknown angel in a bright orange ski mask  actually showed up mid afternoon on a kelly green ATV and snow plowed our one mile driveway. He drove off before we could discover his identity and thank him. Sometimes it's the unexpected act that changes one's day and it was this type of selfless action that was emphasized last night at our Martin Luther King's Day celebration. 

Amidst the program of music and speeches the message was clear. Servitude. Do something for someone else. This year's 2018 community recipient of Marin Luther King Jr. Leadership Award is a big guy in more than stature. Nathaniel (Nate) Coleman Jr., a city bus driver also has a big heart as illustrated by lengthy letters supporting his nomination of countless acts of kindness to his riders who also found time to start The Good Fight Community Center, a neighborhood youth program for kids of all backgrounds and circumstances to have a safe place to go. In his acceptance speech he wanted to share a couple stories of why he was here. His first story was about his Mother...

Back in the 70's on a cold, wet snowy day Mr. Coleman's Mom caught the young cold female postal carrier at the door and invited her in for a cup of coffee. The carrier politely refused but his Mom reiterated to come in and warm up with a cup of coffee. Once again the carrier negated saying policy says you do not go into the customer's home. She couldn't come in. Well, you wouldn't believe what happened next as Mr. Coleman's Mom reached inside the mail lady's mail bag grabbing a handful of letters and threw them inside the house. Now, the carrier either had to go in / leave those letters behind.  Of course, his Mom had her way as the carrier came in to not only retrieve those letters but to have that cup of coffee as well.  In addition to the coffee before you knew it the carrier's wet boots and socks had been removed to dry and her cold wet feet were being massaged until they warmed up. That day the carrier was sent off with a thermos of hot coffee and plastic bags covering her feet to keep her warm and dry for the rest of her route. Come to learn this single mom mail carrier had been contemplating quitting the miserable cold job even though she had 2 small children at home. Thanks to this act of kindness and many thermos refills, the young mom continued on the job until retirement.

Nate Coleman quipped, "Now don't be grabbing the mail as these are different times and you'd probably end up in trouble with the law." We laughed but his messages were clear.  We do learn by example and a small act of kindness does make a difference. 

Do join me in making a pact this year to do something on a regular basis for somebody else. Not only will we make another's day better but we too will feel better in a what seems like a very selfish messed up world right now.  Servitude is part of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy as we are all G-d's children... 

 ... Also if you are on FaceBook and would like to make a donation to the Center go to the page of the Good Fight Community Center where you will find a fundraiser for the  Center to continue its fine work with our youth.  Thanks. The  youth are our hope for the future.

FISH STORIES TOLD HERE

 Sometimes stories come to me and such is the following fish story shared with me by the fisherman's wife Linda. Linda is married to Lenny, the eternal sportsman as their home attests.  And although their home is filled with numerous trophies of deer heads, both European and American mounted, antlers galore, skulls, pelts and fish, it is an ice fishing story that is going to be shared today. 

I have written before about the guys I've dubbed Ice Nuts. Seriously, who goes out in negative degree weather and sits on ice? Well, Lenny is one of those, and he couldn't live much closer to his second home, the Mississippi. 
   

Portable shanties in one part of Stoddard Bay, Mississippi backwaters

When the weather freezes those waters, Lenny will be among the hundreds on the ice. Lenny shared with me some of his fishing gear and I was most impressed with the underwater camera. The lantern looking camera equipped with a light is lowered into the fishing hole. The fisherman then can scout out the fish activity from their shanty with a small remote control that rotates the camera showing its view onto a small tv monitor.

Here I've captured Linda and myself.

Last week was a first for Lenny. You see sometimes the unexpected happens. 


Lenny's equipment that day included his usual pail of minnows, his jig rods (miniature ice fishing poles) and tip downs. There is also a tip up with a flag that pops but Lenny was using his 'tip downs' the day of the story.

tip down in beginning position

tip up

rig rod about 18" in length tipped down

If you look beneath the reel you see a small dowel that holds the rod in place and allows the rod to tip when the fish takes the bait.

And he also had his fishing grappler stick used to remove the fish from the hole.

Lenny returned to the 2 fishing holes he had made the previous day. 

Okay, so here's the story as Linda tells it as told to her by Lenny paraphrased by yours truly. 

Lenny was sitting in his shanty as he noticed the tip down was indeed down but by the time he got over to the 18" hole the fish had not only taken the hook, line and sinker but the entire rod too. It's not the first time Lenny has lost a rod to a Northern/Bass (much stronger and larger fish than perch) In fact, many rods have been lost to bigger fish. 

It's what happened 2 hours later as he noticed his tip down and went to check on his line. As he reeled it in he noticed something familiar, the bobber on the line was not the one of that rod but his first rod that had disappeared with yes, the very same fish.  As

he used his grappler to pull out the fish there attached was his other rod.  What are the chances the same fish would return to the same hole? Now that's a great fish story.

How big was that Northern?

Now Lenny has a great new fish story and you too have a new one to share.

I didn't need to ask if this was his best catch because these was another sign that answered that question beneath that Fish Stories sign...

Link More about Ice Fishing: FISHING NUTS

FOTO FRIDAY:WONDER NO LONGER

FOTO FRIDAY  has us no longer wondering what our poor chickens are thinking with the extremely bitter cold winter days of negative temperatures and very little snow fall. I think yesterday's sleet and blustery winds did it... 

   
Henrietta said as she tilted her head into position for the guillotine, "Please take me out of my misery, I have had enough." 

Sorry Henrietta, I know how you feel. Hold on we can make it. Only 68 days until it's officially spring... Not that I'm counting.

Last week's FOTO FRIDAY : FAKE NEWS

TBT: EL FIN

For those of you who have followed my FFA (Fabulous French Adventure) from last July this is el fin. Yep, the end where we fly out of Figari, Corsica's southern most airport back to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris. 

For convenience('s) sake I had picked an airport hotel as we had spent our entire first week 'in' Paris. We would just need a place to rest our heads, eat dinner and have breakfast before our late morning overseas flight. The airport train dropped us off at our 'space' themed hotel two stops from the airport and it was like we were in Disney. You may think I'm kidding but take a look.

The hotel's exterior was super contemporary and its interior was decorated in space graphics.






Figuring out key systems had been part of our learning curve in elevators and hotel rooms...
Do you swipe/ hold or insert?

Even our beds had special moon lighting and the star galaxy bathroom wallpaper was out of this world. (Sorry, I couldn't help myself.)

Finished 3/4 of it and yummy pommes frites 

And I realized after 'finally' ordering Steak Tartare for dinner, the infamous raw meat dish I had never tried, the Fabulous French adventure was complete:  gastronomically, artistically, architecturally, historically, geographically, botanically, I was sated. 


So, now we've come full circle as this all started with our memorable airport  departure story. (link below)

Au revoir France and the hugest of thank you's to my Milwaukee teaching buddy Sally who was responsible for me taking this trip. It all started when she asked if  I would like to go with her to France, a trip that was never even a blip on my radar... 




Thank you Sally as these memories will forever be part of me as I continue my life back here in the End of the Rainbow  Valley...




*To see last week's TBT in Corsica: Here's the link: CORSICAN BLUES

**Beginnning of Fabulous French Adventure:COUNTDOWN

*** AIRPORT SAGA 

NURTURE OR NATURE OR BOTH?

I've been a bit overwhelmed in decision making regarding what to comment on after such an eventful couple of days.  Nurture or Nature / both?

Weather has thrown us a a 30 degree temperature difference and as we gladly left the negatives, I took back out my fall jacket. Today will be in the 40's until tomorrow when winds will blow in nasty rain/ freezing precipitation leaving icy road conditions with some snow coverage. 

Winter brings hardship for both large and small beings. Look who I found enjoying the suet meant for the birds. Both Natureman and Romeo had had a face off with this guy. Romeo's sight and hearing are less than stellar but he did pick up this guy's scent and had a nice barking session.  Of course Mr Possum didn't move and stayed most of the evening polishing off the large piece of suet. 


Speaking of chowing down, we also have a smaller guest working on something between the kitchen cupboards. He's a very noisy eater but I finally caught sight of the little fella scurrying around last night. I will have to set a trap as I don't need any wires being chewed.


There's never good timing for a snow storm but my Jazzercise class is in charge providing dinner for the homeless/needy on Thursday.  So, just in case those roads dictate otherwise I opted to make the vegetable soup a day early and bring it in town today. 

At a time when too many are hungry much less being able to afford going to the movies/cable /internet, the 75th Golden Globe Award participants  showed their support for many of today's societal issues.  It was truly heartwarming and we'll just have to see if one particular person is hungry enough to run for President...