Words matter

This past week Osama bin Laden was killed.  He was a symbol for an enemy unlike any we've ever known in the United States of America, unlike any we've ever known in the so-called "civilized world."  Death in war is a frightening concept, but when it's played "according to the rules" we can somehow depersonalize it, imagine that it only happens to soldiers, those people we don't know (unless we do,) people who signed up for the killing, knew what they were getting into, even got paid for it.  But the death of "innocent civilians" is an atrocity we can't comprehend.  Or maybe we can, if we call it "collateral damage."  Words matter, and even the few I've written will incense victims of 911, a symbol for that different enemy, the "terrorist" who kills even "civilians."  He is the inhuman monster that does not care who he murders, whether they are "soldiers" or babies.  I do not mean to say anything that would make the deaths of those 2752 civilians any less tragic or meaningful.  I am horrified by the killing of innocent men, women and children, as I am horrified by the holocaust, as I am horrified by the genocide in Rowanda...as I am horrified by Dresden, and Hiroshima and the deaths of 109,990 innocent Iraqis.  The United States of America responded to Osama bin Laden by lashing out.  We were enraged by this enemy we could not see, who wore no uniform, who did not play according to Queensberry rules.  So we invaded the country where he was, and for good measure, the country where he wasn't.  We kicked him out and we killed the dictator in Iraq, and by the way we only lost 109,990 people to collateral damage in Iraq and about 10,000 (give or take a few people) in Afghanistan.  But we won.  We killed Osama bin Laden.
What bothers me so much, is not that we as a country are so happy he's dead.  Surely, had I been of age,  I would have celebrated the assassination of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin.  And I think it is justified to murder bin Laden, even according to Queensberry rules.  But it's the words we use that bother me.  He was our enemy, a man who felt we were collateral damage.  The civilians of the United States were his Hiroshima and Nagisaki.  All I am asking is that we recognize it as such.  We can celebrate the winning of a battle as long as we understand the cost of the fight.  It demeans our humanity...it demeans humanity...to think we are no less guilty of murder for killing one man, than we are for killing thousands or millions.
Martin Luther King said "Returning hate, multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.  Darkness cannot drive out darkness:  only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate:  only love can do that."
So the country is celebrating.  People are out in the street shouting hurrays.  College students who were babies in 2011 are cheering and partying in revelry over the killing of Osama bin Laden.  Our president, who is hated by almost half the country because their names sound alike, is taking credit for, and making political hay out of the United States of America murdering one kidney-failing terrorist.  I have yet to hear one journalist, including those from the far left, finding fault with this.  It appears to be the only issue that brings our country together, and maybe that was its purpose, not only its unintended result.
But words matter.  Let's face it.  Might makes right and history is written by the victors.  There is no text on the founding of America written by an Apache or a Navaho.  There is no one in New Mexico who thinks they are living in occupied territory.  And so if we want to preserve our way of life, we need to fight, and unfortunately slay our enemy.  But we do not need to demean what that does to us as a country and as individuals.  We pay a price for that murder, each and every one of us.  It would be humane to acknowledge that.  Words matter.  

Rambling prose: Children as art

Rambling prose: Children as art

Children as art

My father turned 100 today.  I miss him though I'm not sure he knows it.  I took him for granted when he was alive and I'm sorry about that.  Towards the end of his life I began to question mine, and, I think inevitably, my mother and he took the blame for what I didn't like.  During that period they were kind and generous enough (I hope it wasn't naivety) to gather up and give me all our correspondence that they had collected from when I went to summer camps.  It was damning!  When I complained that my camp councilor was bullying me, my mother told me my father had worked himself to the bone so I could enjoy a summer in the sun, and that if I didn't have anything nice to report, to make it up!  I've told that story a hundred times to show how insensitive they were, but the truth is that sometimes I feel the same way about my own children.  I seem so spoiled and so ungrateful for what I've had, so I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to my parents.  They weren't all that bad.  In fact, they were pretty darn good!  They fed me and housed me and loved me.  That's all we can or should expect...the rest is up to us.
But there is an art to rearing children, one that is undervalued and to my mind, poorly understood.  When my children were young my parents told me that parenting was a matter of good instincts and that I didn't have them...that if I gave them my son and two daughters for just two years they could really do something with them.  My wife had convinced me several years earlier that we should take parenting lessons, and after harumphing for an appropriated time I finally consented.  We studied the theories of Haim Ginott and I was a thorough convert.  I read all his books and more.  I was completely convinced that we needed to learn how to be good parents, that it didn't just come naturally, and that my mother and father were a perfect example of that.
Now my children are grown, (and quite successful, thank you very much.)  Today my father would have turned 100 and I'm not as sure as I was when he was alive and here to criticize.  He certainly didn't do what Haim Ginott would have done, but today his three sons spent an hour on the phone together reminiscing.  My father was an accountant but he really wanted to be a teacher.  We hated him for trying to teach us and refused to listen, but in the end we really did.  And though we've spent the better part of our adult lives trying to figure out how he screwed us up so badly, we're really not that bad.  We all have good lives with our first wives and with good children and grandchildren who all love each other.  So it's not about instinct or knowledge, it's about love and respect.  My father was a good man who loved and respected us and that's the art of being a good parent.
Happy birthday Dad.     

Valentine Poem to Marlene

Februaries ride in on winter storms that chill my soul

They dull me with the dreary sense of never ending cold

It is a time when I can feel alone and over-suffer ills

When life seems burdened with remedies and pills

But there is beauty in the harshness of February snowing

The joy that comes each year; that comes with knowing

There is someone here sharing frigid days and rainy nights

Who softens burdens making darkness fill with lights

That there is someone here who knows my ways

Who’s lived with me through seasons filled with Mays

When life and love abound in all the blooming flowers

When it is clear to see what gifts and joys are ours

It makes me look again at sheets of February ice

Beneath the drifts and flows that others find so nice

To see that dormant times may not portend an end

But rather be the start of some exciting trend

So let us take a trip of dreams into the months of spring

Where trees will bud and birds will sing

When life will blossom with the mien of something new

When all that’s good is there because of you