Veterans' Day

Today is Veterans’ Day.

In 2004 we were on Gibralter on November 11. At 11:11 our guide stopped everything and we stood in silence for two minutes.

The First World War, the horrible War To End All Wars, came to an end at the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. It slaughtered about half of the young male population of England, and in honor of their sacrifice on this date every year, the entire country comes to a halt at 11:11.

I think it’s a beautiful gesture, and a wonderful way to honor those who gave their lives for our country as well as those who gave a portion of their lives.

I know too many of them. My college roommate and best man Mike Baldwin suffered the effects of Agent Orange from his time in Viet Nam. Another college roommate, Jerry Smith, stepped on a land mine there. He survived, but at what cost?

My father, Dan Moser, and my father-in-law, Eugene Butler, both were veterans. They survived World War II, and lived long and useful lives. Eventually.

My chosen son Derek, who graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis, was at NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain on Nine-Eleven. He talked with all the honchos - when he could locate them - and conveyed the order to ground all commercial domestic flights. When he left the Navy and moved back to Illinois, my blood pressure went down.

And countless other friends and acquaintances served in the military.

I don’t think we can minimize the effects of military experience on those who served and those around them. Eugene came home unable to sleep for weeks. Only with the help of those who truly loved him was he able to assimilate back into society.

Today at 11:11, I urge all of you to stop what you’re doing and observe a minute of silence. Think about the sacrifices of those heroes who serve - and served - our country.

And please ponder the following poem by Wilfred Owen, who was killed seven days before the Armistice that ended that awful War To End All Wars. The Latin, by the way, means "How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country.”

Dulce et Decorum est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. --
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs

Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

As always, please feel free to comment below.

Halloween at the Mosers

I was a Shoe Tree.

Ann dressed as a French Maid.

As always, feel free to comment below.

Those Who Know Best

Halloween has come and gone, and with it the frantic messages from Those Who Know Best about devil worship, paganism, impending planetary chaos, and general going-to-hell-in-a-hand-basket of those who celebrate and enjoy the holiday.

I think Halloween is fun. It used to be more fun when I was a kid, but that may have to do with the fact that I was a kid. I kind of think not, however. When I was a kid, the naysayers may have been around, but they didn’t have such a large presence in American life (except for Jo McCarthy, of course). At that time Halloween hadn’t eclipsed Christmas as a moneymaker for businesses and manufacturers of costumes and decorations.

We carved a pumpkin - without advice from Martha Stewart. Our jack-o’-lanterns were were crude, and they all had triangular teeth, but we had fun making them and throwing the slime at our little sisters, and we got to roast the seeds and eat them. Or not. We made our own costumes instead of buying them. Our parents helped us put them together, and frequently we used old clothes from a box pulled out of the attic. In those days, we had attics, too.

In the middle Fifties we went trick or treating for two nights - I was an elementary school student living in Albuquerque. We went out for hours. It was dark. People gave us popcorn balls and apples. And we ate them without incident - except for the sugar overload from all the candy (which was made with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. How did candy makers manage in those days?) We were gypsies or hobos or cowboys or old men (never President Eisenhower) and we bought rubber masks that we filled with sweat as soon as we put them on.

And no one told us how sinful we were. It was a time to let loose and be someone else, if only for a couple of hours.

What I find most irritating about Those Who Know Best about religion, is that they have lost track of the idea that in America we get to chose how we worship. And those who chose not to worship have that option too. No one in the United States is allowed to force their ideas onto anyone else. It's guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

I have learned that once we make up our minds, it’s pretty useless to try to change us. I have give up arguing about religion and politics because all it does is raise my blood pressure and alienate my friends. To my chagrin, I never change anyone’s mind.

Those Who Know Best don’t understand that. And they seem to have no concept of the doctrine of Free Will. You know, the one that says God isn’t the puppet master using us as marionettes to perform His (Hers? Its?) every whim.

I am going to believe what I believe whether anyone else likes it or not. I may pay the occasional lip service to other people’s ideas to get them off my back, but more likely I say that I have my own beliefs and they are entitled to theirs. As long as theirs don’t step on mine.

And that’s the way it is with Halloween. And Harry Potter books, and ghost stories. I can enjoy them without buying into whatever Those Who Know Best think is behind them. Like Christmas in America and Martin Luther King Day or Veterans' Day Mattress Sales, Halloween has taken on a life of its own and people of every stripe and feather celebrate it without regard to its origins.

And somehow, whether I like it or not - and even if Those Who Know Best don’t like it at all - that’s all right.

Please feel free to comment below (even, or perhaps especially, those of you who went Halloweening as Republicans wearing Sarah Palin - Jeb Bush 2012 tee shirts. Just because you’re entitled to your beliefs, doesn’t mean I don’t get to tease you occasionally).

News Fast

Ann and “Vlad” outside the castle.

There is no such thing as bad publicity.

Some of the best remembered figures in history weren’t nice people, but they were well known. Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one. Stalin said that one death is a tragedy, but a million is a stastic. Both Charles Manson and Rasputin used mesmerizing eyes to bend people to their will.

Vlad the Impaler, now known as Count Dracula thanks to Bram Stoker, lives on in history (see photo above). When I imagine him, I have images from old movies of stage coaches at night while the trees, lit by some unseen force, reaching down to grab the coach as huge horses thundered on. We went to Transylvania during the daytime, and the only thing scary about Vlad’s castle is the Romanian ladies who were the ‘security’ in every room. They would appear from behind doors to ask if we wanted to buy a sweater they had knit. “Or sox, Mister? Cheap.”

Just as scary as Vlad’s movie incarnation (And I have no doubt that being forced to sit on a six foot pointed pole and let gravity take over until the pole came out the top of my head would be terrifying, at least for the first couple of hours) was Romanian President Nicolae Ceauşescu, whose palace was built by slave labor. He wanted to be able to see the Black Sea from his balcony. The architect cut down trees and razed buildings; he did everything he could but move the Black Sea from the other side of the building.

All these people are well-known because everyone talked about them. And still do.

A completely new thought, but I’ll try to tie them together:

A couple of weeks ago we were in Denver visiting our new granddaughter Ella and her parents Derek and Jo. While we were there, we went on a news fast. I think it was because we don’t watch television news - too many body bags - and Derek and Jo don’t subscribe to a newspaper.

During our visit Falcon Heene (where do people come up with these names - despite this one’s appropriate connotations here!?) apparently flew away like the Wizard of Oz in a mylar balloon. The operative word, of course, is apparently.

We didn’t know anything about it, but for a couple of days its coverage dominated the news. A poor child who, despite his name, didn’t have wings, flew away and no one knew where he was. Bless his heart.

His father Richard Heene (He has a rather nice first name. But I imagine everyone is calling him Dick, these days though) is an aspiring celebrity. He appeared on a reality show, Wife Swap, the show with the salacious name but innocuous content. Innocuous apparently, that is, except when one ‘wife’ works very hard to impose her extreme values on the family she has come to live with - which have opposite values.

“Dick” apparently was looking for more spotlight. He got it.

Since the coverage of the Balloon Boy hoax, the newspapers have been rife with lamentations about how we spend our time watching pap that the news (read entertainment) agencies have filled the airwaves and cablewaves (is that a word?) with. And Dick and his family have appeared on countless ‘news’ programs explaining themselves. In fact, that’s where the hoax came out.

The Balloon Boy story compares with the coverage of Baby Jessica (McClure), who fell down a well in Midland, Texas, in 1987 and the world went crazy when CNN showed the rescue effort (read media circus) non-stop until she was rescued. Except for commercials.

I know. I’ve commented on this before. Television news and its endless loop of non-news and trivial vitriol.

And I still have the same answer. My television has an off button. I use it. You can use the off button on your TV, too.

As always, feel free to comment below.

Impatience and Criticism

Derek, Jo, and Herself

Proud Grandpa and Ella

Proud Grandma and Ella.

Ella Herself

I frequently am impatient. I want things to be better than they already are. I want life to improve.

We went to Denver last week to see Derek's new baby, our new granddaughter Ella, who will be 10 weeks old on Tuesday.

It was a great visit. I got to hold her, feed her and I didn't have to change her. I learned I had muscles I hadn't used in 35 years almost. I also learned - once again - that very the act of holding a baby makes me sway.

One of the best parts of the visit was the language lessons. I worked on teaching her to say the following things:

"I love Grandpa Bill."

"I love Grandma Ann."

"I love Daddy."

"I love Mommy."

I would say each sentence one word at a time, and then repeat it out of the corner of my mouth in a high pitched voice. Ella spoke.

Even though I frequently look for improvement, I just can't imagine any way for her to improve!

I invite your praise of our beautiful baby below.

Holidays, Sports, and Television

I don’t have a sports gene. I don’t know why it skipped my generation, although it’s possible that it never really existed in my family.

My father used to turn on football games so he could nap on the couch. If we changed the station or turned off the television, he’d wake up immediately and say something like, “I was watching that!” I never understood how commercials didn’t interrupt his sleep but changing the station did. That’s the way it was.

Anyway, I have no dislike for sports. I’m just not interested. I do have to admit, however, that when I was teaching, I resented the huge amounts that sports figures were paid. I reckoned that when my classes were televised, when I was making upwards of eight figures a year, and a national commentator said, “Look at that lesson plan about Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath come together! Did you see that student field that question about the oversoul? It was a winner!” When that happened I would start watching professional football.

I went to football games and basketball games when I was in high school. I went pretty regularly 50 years ago, but it was social and I wanted to fit in. I went to games in college too, I guess. I think I can remember going to a few. But my heart was never in it.

These days Ann and I watch the Blackhawks, but I frequently watch with a book in my hand, and if I miss a play - or a game - I don’t get too upset. I am concerned that Huet allows too many goals. But I could emulate my dad and sleep through the games and not really know the difference, I suspect.

Bear with me while I change the subject, but I’ll tie it all together pretty soon:

The holidays are coming up. We know that because of the sudden influx of high end catalogs in the mail box.

We’ll have Thanksgiving at our house again this year, and it will be pretty much open house for people we love - people whom we haven’t seen enough of during the year.

In the past we hosted Thanksgivings and had lots of people - upward of 30 one year. We borrowed tables from our church, set them up as one long banquet table in our living-dining room, and scrounged chairs. It was lovely.

But after all that cooking - and new ceramic tile floors in the kitchen, a dumb move on our part - I could barely stand for a couple of days. I was younger then, and we don’t have such big crowds any more. (The floors in the kitchen of this house are wood, by the way.) But it was still fun. And we got to see and talk to people we didn’t see as often as we’d like.

Recently people we’ve hosted are more interested (see, I told you I’d bring it back) in the football games on television than the people around the table. These have been people we see perhaps once or twice a year, and I think we have a lot of catching up to do. They obviously think otherwise.

One year I unplugged the television before everyone came, but they figured it out and plugged it back in. I tried flipping the circuit breaker, but it controlled too many other things, so I turned it back on. Another time our TV died, and I put a 13 inch set in the family room. They just sat closer. Much closer. I don’t know if it’s intimacy they fear, or we don’t have enough in common since I don’t care about sports. Isn’t there anything else to talk about? Perhaps they like our food but are uncomfortable around us. I don’t know. They never turned down an invitation, though.

I do know that watching television doesn’t seem to me to be a group activity. Sitting silently in the dark with a group of people may be green, in that only one television is using electricity. But I can watch television by myself, and frequently do.

So the holidays are coming up. We haven’t invited sports fans to Thanksgiving this year. That may be un-American. Too bad.

We’re going, instead, to practice the Art of Conversation.

As always, please feel free to comment below.

Paper products

We use cloth napkins. Always. For breakfast, lunch and dinner. Generally, they are finger towels of terry cloth, absorbent, big enough to wipe your hands and face on, and easily washable. No ironing. We have dozens of them.

When we have fancy guests we use linen, generally monogramed, hand hemmed, double damask, sixteen-by-sixteen-inch napkins my great-grandmother made shortly after her marriage in 1869. We have 16 of them because that’s what the Victorians had. (We also had my great-grandparents’ fruit set - six silver forks and six knives with pearl handles - but we gave them to my niece who values family heirlooms. Or maybe that’s my sister projecting on to my niece. I’m not really sure.)

We also have a lot of other linen napkins and table cloths that we use when we have guests. For ourselves, we use teflon coated table cloths that resist stains. Water and wine bead up on them. We have a friend who always knocks over a glass of red wine, so we use the teflon table cloths when he and his wife come for dinner.

Usually, when we go to other people’s houses, we end up with paper napkins. These range from little flimsies to paper towels to the really nice - and expensive - paper. Paper is fine with us. We don’t complain at all.

But I think we might be a little greener using cloth than if we used paper. I’m not sure. It may be just habit.

What I do know is that five per cent of all trees used for paper goes to paper products like toilet paper, tissues (a.k.a. Kleenex), and napkins. That seems a lot to me. And it ends up being a lot in landfills, cesspools, and sewage disposal plants. At least it’s bio-degradable.

We use tissues without a thought of being green. I used to carry a handkerchief, and it didn’t take long to figure out that I could use two or three a day because of my allergies. And then I could never get my glasses clean when I wiped them. Go figure.

We also use paper towels, although hardly with abandon. We use the tissues and towels, which I realize that despite being biodegradable contribute to the landfill problems, because they are more sanitary.

I can throw out a tissue instead of carrying the handkerchief germs around with me in my back pocket all day. I can spray disinfectant on a counter after working with chicken, for example, wipe it up with a paper towel, and not worry about cross contamination.

And everybody, I hope, uses toilet paper (enough said).

I can’t even begin to speak to disposable diapers. When our son was born we used both cloth and disposable. I hated changing poop-y diapers. It made me gag. I got over it. That has nothing to do with paper v. cloth however.

Is thee a point to this? Probably. Do I know what it is? Probably not.

As always I invite you to comment below.