Nobody 704

Sunday, July 15, 2007
Nobody # 704

Nobody Asked Me But:

To those
Who laughed with me on sunshine days
And walked with me through foggy nights.
Especially to those
Who listened when I talked
And when I was silent. – James Kananaugh

I WAS THERE.

Forty years ago today, (last Wednesday) the Angels hosted the longest All-Star game ever played, an Anaheim Stadium marathon won by the National League, 2-1, on a 15th-inning home run by Tony Perez off Catfish Hunter….

I was there.

Perhaps you read where the William Randolph Hearst/Marion Davis house in Beverly Hills (below) went on the market last week for $165M, making it the highest priced home in American history.

I was there – inside, I mean. I delivered flowers to a movie set inside the house in 1979.<<<

Here’s Hugh in response to my exciting boyhood vacations:

Summer vacation for me was going to my grandfather’s farm in Visalia. It was always a treat for me who loved farm work (my mom and dad always left for home JUST when feeding the chickens was losing its appeal).

This reminds me of when I was a boy. We lived on a semi-farm outside of Lansing, Michigan. Like Hugh, I used to feed the chickens, collect the eggs and avoid the messes. About this time, I also saw the movie, “Reap The Wild Wind,” in which John Wayne battles a giant octopus. Put the two together and you have my recurring boyhood nightmare about being chased around the chicken yard by a giant octopus.<<<

JIM’S WISDOM

SIDEWAYS: Ryan’s accident – he broke his thumb at camp last week. (Just after the picture - left) That’s way down. He broke it because he tastes life at every opportunity and accidents happen to those who do so. That’s way up. (But I still hurt for him)

UP: J&B, for our impulse trip to Las Altos this weekend to check out the art festival – especially an artist whose work we are considering. (example below left)

DOWN: The NEA, for loving Obama until he mentioned “the thing whose name shall never be spoken” – merit pay, after which they assumed their usual head-in-the-sand position while giving Barack the one-finger salute.

UP: The writers of Genesis, for having differing creation stories in chapters one and two, so that the reader can choose the one he/she likes best.

DOWN: Congressional Democrats. If you are going to challenge Bush’s “expansive” definition of executive authority choose an issue of more importance than firing eight federal prosecutors.

UP: Thomas Friedman, for his unique plan to protect the environment – “Imagine if there were a Web site — I’d call it GreenSinai.com — where every time you thought you had violated one of the Ten Commandments, or you wanted to violate one of them but did not want to feel guilty about it, you could buy carbon credits to offset your sins.”

I see two problems though. First, the Catholic Church might sue for infringement on their patent for selling indulgences. Second, some of us might never have to contribute.

DOWN: The truth in this sentence from “Requiem For An Assassin,” a novel by Barry Eisler. “Americans would rather send their young to die than to carpool.”

UP: Those Republicans who are deserting Bush on Iraq.

DOWN: Homeland Security, where approximately one-quarter of the top positions are unfilled.

SIDEWAYS: Cultural differences – In American it is a moral offense to have a mistress. In China it is a moral offense to have a baby with your mistress.

Way down: The American Film Institute, for dropping “From Here to Eternity” (1953) off its 100 best films list. It finished a too low 52 in 1998 but out of the top 100 not only questions the validity of the new (2007) list but the sanity, as well, of those who made the selections.

(And you can make the same case against them for dropping “A Place In the Sun” off the list.)

DOWN: Stanley Fish. Professor Fish is supposedly smart enough to write for the NY Times and yet he is not bright enough to see the contradiction between his dogmatic creed that “teachers teach and students listen” and his statement that an important part of learning for students is to acquire analytical skills.

Analytical skills come from a balance between listening and speaking freely.

UP: Socrates, who knew that the key to great teaching is to encourage students to speak up, not to shut up.

Down: Americans, for wasting toilet paper in public restrooms – as much as an arm’s length per pull.

UP: Richard Thorn, for perfecting an electronic dispenser, which spits out five sheets per waving hand.

DOWN: Pope Benedict, for saying that non-Catholics are essentially non-Christians. It makes one nostalgic for the humility and ecumentalism of John XXIII.

UP: The All-Star tribute to Willie Mays, the greatest baseball player of all time. It gave me chills to watch as he circled the field in the back of a pink Caddy convertible throwing autographed balls to the crowd.

DOWN: Our government, for spending $12B per month on two wars that promote terrorism.

UP: Al Martinez, (remember me writing last week about letters to the LA Times saving his job) for rejoicing over the songs of pride that he heard America singing on her birthday but despairing over songs he didn’t hear -

“I heard no songs of peace sung in competition to the drums and bugles. I saw no crowds gather to sing not only of an America that is good, but of an America that could be better.”

The Martinez column last Monday from which I quote the above is so poignant that I will finish today’s Nobody with his words, which are far more eloquent than my own.

“So I've composed the four phases of combat as a reminder of what exists beyond the glow of secular nationalism.”

“Phase One is the aura of invulnerability that accompanies young warriors as they stride off to battle, a feeling that protects them from distant realities. Dying, they will tell you, is the fate of someone else, not them. They will remain untouched by the bullets and shrapnel that shape the economy of their embattled lives.”

“Phase Two is when death nudges closer, taking a friend who has suffered next to them through months of combat training, a brother in arms alive one moment and gone the next, like the transitory drift of a passing cloud. A soldier new to war's caprice is suddenly transformed by the silence of the dead, and the emptiness of death's eyes.”

“Phase Three embraces the terrible knowledge that it can happen to you, that eternity rides on the winds of combat's shifting fortunes, hovering over landscapes that war morphs into graveyards. It is a fearful and lonely realization, the facing of one's mortality, and it comes, as knowledge often does, at the price of an easy mind.”

“Finally, Phase Four. This is not, as you might suppose, death or injury, because they fall into a category of their own. Soldiers and civilians lie side by side in the awful unity of silence and pain, either beyond eternity or walking proof of combat's violence. Wearers of the Purple Heart will live to relive their agony, and those untouched by bullets or shrapnel will join them in the view, because that's what Phase Four really is - memory.”

“Recall is the aftermath of war that wounds the soul, and a veteran can never again walk free from the shadow it casts. War reminds its aging sons what it was like to be death's companion. The memories come in nightmares that gallop through the darkness, or in flashes of horror that fire through the head at unexpected moments; while driving, while dining, while listening to music, while playing with children, while watching a movie, while making love.”