Sky Above, Sand Beneath

We returned last night from what has become an annual trek to the sands of South Carolina and the lure of waves crashing on shore, sun and great food and more important than those, a few very close friends with whom we share the week.

I look forward to three things during the week we are gathered: walking the beach, starting before the sun is above the horizon, and the sky has only a few golden hints of the day ahead; sitting and talking over coffee on the wide and deep screened porch that faces the ocean; writing in a room the others have agreed is mine for the week. I follow the same schedule that I follow here on the mountain: early morning ramble (but without my pal Teddy), a leisurely breakfast (but with the other early risers), then work until noon or so. Afternoons at the beach are for reading, talking, and occasional forays into the more citified areas around us. Closer than the small city we consider our commercial anchor here at home, and about as many cars per mile as in all of our county.

There is something about being away from one’s "regular" desk, I think, that opens the mind to more creativity. I generally have at least one story I’m working on when we get there, and add a lot of new material. I finished my first novel there some years ago, and at least a couple of short stories, and added to other works-in-progress. It is a working vacation, but for me every day is a working day. I suppose that is because I wouldn’t know how to not work, as long as I can work.

I also had a birthday while we were on the Island, pushing me closer (but not all the way) to the end of another decade. There are few things I value in life, but most of them come together on the shore of the Atlantic ocean. They show up in sharp relief there, where other things can’t intrude: family, friends, solitude and sharing, and work. Especially word-work. For me, those are the things that balance my life, and in that order of importance. Within those boundaries I find the essentials: love, laughter, learning. As my clock runs faster, it is the eternal repetitiveness of those things that slows it down enough for me to read the time.

How do you leave footprints in the sand that don’t get washed away? I walk every morning along the beach. I can usually see where I’ve come from by looking for the distinct impression of my sandals. When I come down onto the sand tomorrow though, I will have to make a new trail on new sand. I may make an impression, but that isn’t the same as leaving a permanent mark. To do that you must do more than take a walk, I think.

I’ve been walking the beach for a long time. If I’ve made an impression that will be there tomorrow, it will be because someone else has seen it and found it useful. The best one can hope for is that the footstep that covers yours will in turn be covered by another and eventually someone will rise above it all and make a lasting impression.

So much for finding poetical reminders of the impermanence of it all.

　

Shifters and Flippers

We were coming home from a shopping expedition (given where we live, every trip is an expedition) the other day, taking the scenic route through a small village with stop lights. Now, our county has no real stop lights, just one that blinks yellow going east and west and red going north and south, but that’s it. Stopping, while not optional on the red side, isn’t a lengthy process. If you don’t spend a lot of time in that part of the county, when changes occur you don’t necessarily notice them. But the town we drove through has several stop lights, and this time we hit them all.

Sitting waiting for the last one to turn green, I looked around and noticed that a restaurant on the corner had been redecorated and renamed. It looked much more up-scale than it had, and it occurred to me that over the years that we have been passing through there, it had undergone several changes. When we were first coming to this part of the region it was a simple, home-cooking kind of place. Then it became a more tavern-like venue. There were a couple of other re-dos over the years, and now it is Italian-Rocco and very grand looking. I wondered aloud if the food had been upgraded as well, or if it was simply the same old menu with longer names and higher prices.

As we drove on, my thoughts shifted to Washington, D.C., where we had lived for many years. In my university days, and for some years thereafter, there was a trio of restaurants on a corner near Dupont Circle. One was a coffee shop, one specialized in burgers, and the third was an early version of the "family steak house," decorated with western things like ropes and saddles and such. About two years after I came to the city the three restaurants closed. A few weeks later they re-opened, except that where the coffee shop had been was now the steak house, the coffee shop occupied the former burger joint, and burgers were now where the steaks had been. No change in menu, no change in food, not even much change (but some) in prices. Over the years the same switcheroo was pulled off several times. I realized that it was a marketing ploy, making customers think things had changed, when really, it was the same old kitchen, cooking the same old menu, but making it look a little different. Kind of like the guy at the fair who hides the pea under a walnut shell. If you move them fast enough maybe nobody will see what you’re hiding.

It might be called Putin-Medvedev goulash: same stuff, served on a different plate. You try to figure out what it really is, when all the time, you know.

It’s a political stew that you can find today on almost every street corner in the world.

Hostage to ourselves

So many of us seem to think the answer to all of our problems lies in replacing a single politician with almost any other. I’m not so sure. In fact, as far as I can tell, the politicians presenting themselves for election or re-election, have all missed the point. Holding office isn’t the reason for being elected. Somewhere along the way though, that idea seems to have insinuated itself into the political DNA. It has infected political discourse at every level.

In response to a comment I made about where the Congress could look to find solutions to our growing debt (including their own pockets) I met agreement with a correspondent who then went on to say that if we replace the man in the White House with one of a different political persuasion, all of our problems could be solved. Well, while I may not find the current occupant doing everything I would like to see done, in ways I might agree are the best, still (given the possible choices) exchanging leaders is not the answer to all our problems. Considering the choices, I’m not at all keen on electing someone who wants to get the government off our backs and into our bedrooms. Any man (or woman) who thinks that the salvation of democracy and the American Way resides in having a third party privy to what we do in the most intimate of situations, and with whom, and according to only one theology, is (to my mind) misreading and misinterpreting the whole concept of America, and of democracy (with a little "d" because democracy is for all the people, great and small).

There are real issues before us. There are differences of opinion, and optional solutions, but they get lost in the blather about things that we cannot change, or have no business trying to change, or both. Where are the real thinkers today? Have they all gone into hiding because of what they face if they raise their voices?

It isn’t that politics and politicians have changed so much, of course. Rancorous discourse has been a part of the political process from the beginning of our country (and elsewhere before that). It is just that it happens so much faster, over a so much broader field, that there is no time to hear the words or see the problems.

No matter where we go, we can’t get away from who and what we are, can we? We are holding ourselves hostage.

From Sports Car to Sport Sedan to Pickup Truck in Just 50 Years

Later this week we will acknowledge our vows to be man and wife "until death do us part," by celebrating our golden wedding anniversary. It is a short span, as lives go, especially for two people who had decided that single-hood was better than couple-hood. That is, we met when we both had decided that marriage wasn’t something we wanted or needed. Then mutual friends introduced us at a party, we started talking, and . . . well, we just never stopped. Including saying "I do," on a sunny morning in October.

When we met, I was convinced that the only kind of personal transportation one needed was a two-seater roadster with the top down and the wind in my face. That lasted a couple of years more, before a growing daughter and more realistic needs pushed us into a sedan with sporting pretensions. Now my garage holds a sports coupe, a 5-door squareback that is every bit as good in the mountains as any sports car of the ‘50s, a couple of tractors, a 4-wheel drive sport-utility vehicle and a pick-up truck. And instead of a Georgetown apartment, we live three-hours away from that neighborhood in a setting that can only be described as bucolic. And we are still talking. Not just speaking, but talking. More and more that seems to involve recollections, but there are still new ideas, and new experiences to talk about.

When we were married we agreed to a few rules that have guided us along the way. They are simple, and to our minds, common sense:

Always treat the one closest to you with the greatest care. Too many people, we observed, seem to treat strangers with more courtesy and love than those closest to them.

Never go to bed with a problem unresolved.

Don’t wait until you have constructed the perfect sentence or paragraph before saying what’s on your mind.

At the same time, be careful that the words you use are not hurtful. Ephemeral they may be, but words do not die once spoken. The clever riposte, the "zinger" that kills, does just that: kills love and respect.

Never part without a kiss and the words,  "I love you." You never know when it may be your last opportunity.
Those are the basic rules we try to live by every day. Love, the adhesive in our life together, is the strongest bond there is. It is not always easy, or convenient, or simple, but it is always worth everything.

Fifty is not a magic word. Love is.

Who Pays the Price of Freedom?

I recently learned that a military organization, in which I played a long and rewarding part, is being reduced in size and capability. The reasons have to do with the new economic reality, but the consequences will be felt for a long time, I believe.

We had the best of it, that's for sure. We grew up in an age of challenge, but it was also one of possibilities. The end of the Great Depression, the years of global warfare, but better than that, what I like to think of as the Age of Sacrifice.

Even that ill-conceived event known as the Korean Police Action, and its next iteration, Viet Nam, were heavily dependent on a broad swath of America to carry the burden. It was also because so many were active participants, that both events were eventually seen by many as wrong.

I don't know when it went wrong, but my sense is that when we began to think of our military as a way to exploit tax dollars for private gain (Revolutionary War), and make military service a volunteer situation (same time as the other part), we rode all over the Founding Fathers' idea of a civilian-oriented military. Today we have a philosophy gone wild, I think: "rake in tax dollars and spread them around among your friends, and the economy will benefit," doesn't work, because defense of a nation isn't something you can buy.

 More and more people are stepping back from their responsibilities as citizens, and the result is a loss of capability, of strength, and of future. It isn't this president's actions (or lack of them) that has brought us to this point. It has been going on for a long time. Remember Eisenhower's admonition to beware of the military-industrial complex? This is what he was talking about. And hiring paramilitary organizations to defend the country at home and abroad didn’t begin with our current president. The result is that we are, by and large, becoming distanced from the defense of our liberty, of peace and prosperity.

It is everybody’s job. It isn’t something we can buy.

Measured Moments

The sun was still below the horizon at seven this morning, and as I stood looking toward the east, the ridge was in silhouette, just a dark line with dark trees against the pale grey sky. Movement! A line of deer, six or eight, perfectly outlined, grazing their way up the ridge. Just enough light to see an occasional flicker of white as one of them moved on. I stood where I was, at the apex of the driveway. At about 150 yards I was not disturbing the small herd, and Teddy, grazing grass along the roadside, hadn’t seen them yet. Just as they moved over the edge of the ridge and out of sight he caught their movement and silently, swiftly charged up the ridge, only to find nothing there by the time he arrived on the line. As I watched him come back, happy to have had a bit of a run so soon in our walk, I thought about what I had just witnessed, and about how, after more than two decades of living on this mountainside, I still get a thrill out of being so close to our natural neighbors.

Yes, the occasional bear on the deck or at the front door is perhaps a bit too close, but still, looking out and seeing our cohabitants so close, often closer than this morning, is a wonderful and beautiful part of our life here. How quietly thrilling it is to live in and be a part of this natural world.

We are a fortunate few who live where we do. We have a very little piece of the world to call our own, and it is a joyful experience every day. We have water that needs no chemicals to make it safe to drink (so far). We are able to look and to see a clear sky and hear birds and bears and breezes when we stand silent and still. We have air that we can breathe. There is a cost to all of this, of course, but it is one we have always been willing to pay.

It is a special kind of freedom we could enjoy nowhere else.

Speaking Written Here

The events of the past week, as well as of the last eleven years . . . correct that: the last 236 years . . . are much on my mind these days. Yours, too, I’m sure.

What I’m thinking about is free speech. There may be things this country doesn’t do very well, but free speech isn’t one of them. It is, in fact, the one thing we have done well from the very beginning, and as long as we continue to hold fast to it, we will still be America.

There are those (even in this country) who take offense at hearing what others have to say. Understand that I know as well as you, that not everything we hear said is true, witness the recent political conventions and their political ads. Still, there isn’t anything that stops you from turning off or turning down the volume of what offends you. Nothing, perhaps, except the desire to know what others are saying if only so that you will not be blind-sided at some point either in conversation or in the voting booth. If you know what others are saying you can allow for that in decisions you make.

Americans have not always agreed on everything, nor should we. A nation that has only one voice is a nation of one idea, and that idea will seldom be the one everyone embraces. I don’t mean that it is okay to call people names, or shout down their voices, or kill them because you disagree. That’s not free speech. Especially killing those with whom you disagree. That is simply foolish. It will bring down the wrath of others, and the end of that is death to many, and especially to thinking. If we let our ability to think be controlled by fear, we are undone. We will be no more.

This last week, with the exploitation by our enemies of a film they don’t like, illustrates my point, I think: expressing yourself becomes a risk. But look at it this way: if we decline to express ourselves, even in terrible words, even in horrible images, we open the door to our death just as surely as we expose ourselves to those who will kill us because they don’t like us.You don’t kill a sick philosophy  by killing people; you do it by showing a better way. And yes, people will die. But people will die anyway.

As for me, I would rather die knowing it was because I said something, rather than because I said nothing.