From Sling-Shot Gliders to Weeping Camels

Tags

Camels, Essays, gobi desert, inspiration, lifestyle, Mongolia, New Guinea, Story of the Weeping Camel, WWII

I long ago learned that if I were to talk politics every day, my head would explode. I want things done now and usually my way. That seldom happens in the political sphere, so I am often frustrated and well, to be honest, freakin’ mad at the idiots that stand in my way of utopia.

So I often engage in learning about things that are far from the land of Washington D.C. Which explains why we often watch weird stuff on TV. It’s pure escapism from the slow-as-molasses moving of a progressive agenda.

And, learning can be a humbling experience. Take last night.

Jon Stewart had a guy, Mitchell Zuckoff on, who wrote a book about a plane crash in New Guinea. Only three survived out of 24. This, during WWII. A group of paratroopers was sent in, but there was no way to land a plane nor walk out. Eventually parts of a glider were air dropped in, and a set of goal posts erected, between which was strung a giant rubber band. The glider was affixed somehow, and a low-flying plane with a hook, captured the band, and catapulted the glider over the mountains where it landed safely.

I kid you not. The glider was named Faggot, and such planes were universally known as flying coffins. One person from that group is still alive today.

If that isn’t incredible enough, I offer you the documentary called “The Story of the Weeping Camel“.

For this we travel to the Gobi desert into the land of the Mongols, who live in round portable houses called Gels and raise camels, sheep and goats. Life is harsh but seemingly happy. The people subsist mostly on camel’s milk with a bit of meat.

All is well. The female camels are dropping their babies. The mothers are tied up so that assistance can be rendered if necessary. All goes well until the last of the expectant mothers finally begins to give birth. It is apparent that she is having a somewhat rare white colt. He is big, and the men help in pulling the gangly babe free.

This is her first birth, and given it’s difficulty, she is decidedly not interested in the colt. Days go by and she makes every effort to evade his attempts to nurse. Of course the family (four generations) offer as much help as possible, milking the mother and trying to get down enough to keep him going. When let loose, the colt follows the mother relentlessly, but she will have nothing to do with it.

A discussion is held by the men, grandfather, father and son. Of course there is only one solution–an ancient ritual, but alas there are no near neighbors of the desert who play violins (or what passes for that in Mongolia–generally a three-stringed instrument that looks more like a guitar).

A trip must be made to the “Centre” what appears to be a smallish town-trading center, one serviced with electricity and a certain modernity. The oldest boy (about 12 or 13) and his brother (about 7) set out on camels to locate a violin player.

They stop at a lone neighbor part way for refreshments. These folks have a satellite hook-up and the younger boy is mesmerized by the cartoons being shown on the TV. A truck and motorcycle are also evidence that the two are closer to “civilization.”

After being told to follow the power lines, the boys finally arrive at the Centre. Crowds of youngsters play games in the dirt around dozens of Gels and wood frame buildings. The boys apparently find relatives and tell them of their needs. An aunt (or equivalent older woman) leads them to the school, where a dance class is interrupted to locate the musicians. Second floor it is. The violin teacher is located.

The boys return home and advise that the teacher has much work, but will come. Indeed, he arrives aboard a motorcycle and the ritual soon begins.

A woman, wife to the youngest adult male and mother of at least one child, begins to caress the tied-up camel mother. She begins to sing in a three-tone voice that goes on for a few minutes. Then the violinist joins her, and the song continues for some time. The colt is slowly brought forth. The mother noses it, and looks off to the horizon.

The colt is urged to the teat, and all hold their breath, as the singing and playing continue. The colt begins to nurse, and for the first time, the mother does not try to walk off. The camera zooms in to her eye, and a distinct tear forms, and then more, until her eye is flooded with water.

The colt drinks his fill. Quietly the song ends, the woman moves away, the violin stops, and the family who has remained at a respectful distance, smiles and congratulates each other on the success of the ritual. Mother and colt are left alone, the mother now solicitous of her child, nuzzling and watching over him.

So.

We who are so filled with our exceptionalism can but shake our heads and remember that there is more in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our “civilized” philosophies. With much apology to Shakespeare, I remember again, that this world is full of so much that we do not understand, and are in our arrogance too “smart” to realize.

May you find something amazing in your life today that makes you stop and ask, just how much is still wonder in the world we inhabit?

 

Lies, Lies, Damnable Lies

Tags

Bruce Braley, Carl Paladino, Catholic Church, Democrats, food stamps, fundamentalism, gay rights, GOP, immigration, Iowa, Latinos, Nazis, Newt Gingrich, Ohio, patriarchy, Politics, right-wing crazies, social issues, violence, women

Private monies funding attack ads are favoring GOPers about seven to one. And there are no reins on them either. Truth, Smuth. Who cares. It’s winning that counts.

Here in Iowa, they are out in force against Bruce Braley (D-IA), from the 1st district. The little dweeb running against him, just bought his first suit, or so it looked at their debate. Yet something like $800,000 is being spent by outside sources to defame Braley, telling Iowa voters that he is responsible for their individual taxes going up a cool $1600 per person next year. A bold-faced lie, but of course his opponent need only shrug and disclaim any responsibility.

This is taking place all over America. The GOP is not funding these “loser” races, because it cannot, but big business can. And they are. Further, as was noted on PBS News Hour, candidates in the future know what they will face.

Of course ads besmirching the character and actual policies and actions of  Democratic incumbents and candidates is only a part of the problem.

The other is the character and policies of the GOP-Teabagger candidates themselves. Paladino, in New York continues to try to walk back his ugly comments about gays.

”I just think your children and my children would be better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don’t want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option–it isn’t.”

What he included in his written speech but didn’t actually say, and later denounced was this:

“There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual. . .[which] is not how God created us.”

Paladino has since tried to walk back his comments claiming a great love for all things gay, except marriage,  but his campaign manager continues to defend his statements as “exactly equivalent to the Catholic church.”  As David Wilson points out in the Commonweal piece, whether Paladino is in line with Catholic teaching or not, is this the way it should be expressed? He asks whether the hierarchy owes some statement about the tone being set by Mr. Paladino.

It is no secret that the Catholic church does not support active homosexuality. In this I would argue that it is categorically wrong and probably on some level realizes it among its scholars at least. However, having painted itself it a corner on many of these issues (the Church being protected by the Holy Spirit and being incapable of error on matters of doctrine and morality), She is having a mighty hard time figuring out how to get in step with modern exegesis and ethics.

To hide behind the Church’s skirts, if you will, is no defense at all to Mr. Paladino. Two wrongs don’t make a right as they say.

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I had to laugh yesterday when I was perusing the political blogs and came upon a reference to Cantor and his claim that the Ohio wannabe congressman who participates as a Nazi in WWII re-enactments had gone a bit too far. The writer, and I have no clue who it was now, suggested that FINALLY we have found something so outrageous that even Republicans are offended! Not the desire of such folks as Angle and Miller to disband and social security, medicare and Medicaid, and unemployment benefits. Nay, that is just forcing folks to look out for themselves. Not gay bashing, and treating undocumented workers as criminals who deserve hanging. Nay, that is just upholding morality and homeland security. But Nazi sympathizers? That just might be too much.

Cantor probably should speak to DeMint and the cuckoo clock in Delaware, I’m not so sure they would agree with him.

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Oh Newt the Snoot is at it again. Newt is another of those GOPers who still doesn’t GET that what he said before is actually written down and SAVED. Newty is urging his fellow slugs to start calling the Dems the “party of food stamps.” Except there Newty, you forget! Perhaps there is a limited brain capacity of the average sluggo, and that explains Newty’s failure to recall how he supported  Bush’s rather blatant attempt to increase food stamps for immigrants in the hopes of enlarging the Hispanic vote for the GOPers. Oh Think Progress, don’t miss a thing!

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It seems to awful to be true, but it is true. And Ahab at Republic of Gilead has done a great job in investigating and reporting on the strong ties between violence against women and children to the religious right. Indeed, it is their screwy interpretation of scripture that endangers women and children every day in this country. Read this and know thy enemy.

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Hope the day is finding you well and happy.

Related Articles

• Paladino offended gay pride parades’ bumping and grinding (nydailynews.com)

War, Good God, What is it Good For?

Tags

Afghanistan, Iraq, Veterans, Vietnam, War

It may come as a shock to you to know that I am a pacifist. I hold no truck with war. None. I find it an ugly waste of life.

I am not a patriotic person by nature. I don’t understand artificial national lines of demarcation. I figure you farm where food grows, and you manufacture where factories make sense. Anything less makes no logical sense.

War never ends war, never has, and never will. Within every war are the seeds of the next one, and the next, and on and on.

It has been said that these interminable wars we now are engaged in, are real only to the actual soldiers and their families. The rest of us remain largely untouched. That is probably true. But it probably always has been like that. We fail always to see the deeper and more subtle costs that effect us all.

I read many years ago Normal Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead.  He won the Pulitzer for it, and well he should. I never felt the same way about war after that. I learned there is no glory, no adventure, no honorable patriotic pride. There is only blood, sweat, insects, rot, disease, discomfort, pain, mental distress and death. Nothing heroic or noble, just putting one foot interminably in front of the other, marching into the jaws of death.

I think it speaks volumes that most veterans don’t talk about their war. It is too horrific, too vile, too inhuman. The fear they have is, I suspect, the revulsion they might find. My father never spoke of WWII, except to point a time or two, as he gazed at his company yearbook, “This guy got shot in the gut right next to me. He died.” On some beach, somewhere in Italy. Somewhere in some far off land.

I’ve been reading Tim O’Brien’s extraordinary book, The Things They Carried. I found it on a great books list, and thought my husband might need to read it. He cannot stop reading it, re-reading passages again and again. My husband wasn’t a grunt, he flew on helicopters, yet O’Brien’s poignant vignettes of life in the bush of Vietnam ring so true that he finds common ground aplenty.

I’ve read about half, and there are times I want to set it down and not continue. So raw and so frightening are the feelings. Time and again, I cannot relate to the behavior of young men living in such hell. I try, but I fail to understand. I would guess they would act one way, and they don’t. My husband understands, but I do not.

The book is so aptly titled. For he speaks of what they carried common to them all, water canteens, rations, M-16’s, ammo. But he then goes on to speak of the more personal things, the letters, the rabbit’s foot, the pair of pantyhose of a girlfriend, a deck of cards, a bible. And then deeper still, the fears, hopes, dreams, terrors that each carried in varying degrees.

One line I shall never forget.

“They died so as not to die of embarrassment.”

Vietnam was a war of the draft. Boys were called up. Damn few chose to go. Most did about everything they could to avoid it. College was a safe place to be, but grad school was not. The state army reserves was excellent, but the waiting lists were huge. Conscientious objector status was good, but you really had to show a history of such beliefs before being drafted. Boys sometimes pretended insanity, or homosexuality to escape. And then there was Canada.

O’Brien almost ran. He drove to the border, he fought his internal battle for a couple of weeks. In the end, he says, he was not courageous, he was a coward, he went back home, to report for boot camp.

You see, it was the embarrassment. Better to die in a war you did not believe in, wanted no part of, than to face the embarrassment of family, friends, town. Embarrassment that one couldn’t stand up and do the manly thing.

Ironic, that the draft captures the young. The eighteen through twenty-something. Exactly before young men have found themselves, their self-ness. Still so locked into peer pressure, and wanting to life up to expectations of what others desire them to be. It’s an ingenious system that works, most go like lambs to the slaughter because they cannot bear to be different. Thought cowardly.

So they go. And they die. Or they are grievously wounded. Or they see and participate in horrors the likes of which we who have not drunk from this cup, cannot imagine. We would recoil, we would move away. We would relegate such as these to leper colonies, these no longer quite humans.

So they don’t mostly speak. They live among us, with their terrible memories. With guilts and tears unshed, with fears of cowardly acts, of monstrous visions. Of death, of more blood than any animal slaughter house would conceive.

Of the smells, awful rotting human flesh, the charred remains of villages, of once sweet smells now gone rancid because of associations. The sounds, that make fireworks at home on humid July nights intolerable. The same for backfiring cars. The sounds of helicopters rotate through the mind and recall the sinking feeling as one is propelled downward into a free fall crash.

These are lifetime memories. Never to be escaped. And they forever color and mutilate lives, shrinking the scope of opportunity. Forever icing over the heart. Always the need to protect the raw pain that is ever present, though often softened by drugs and alcohol or any other addictive and repetitive behavior that numbs the senses.

And since we, the unchurched in such affairs, don’t understand, we all too readily are willing to defer to the crazy minds who still think that war is an answer. And so we don’t rise up in anger and indignation and demand that this hell stop. We tell ourselves it is unfortunate, but necessary.

And it is not necessary. It is simply humanity stuck in a rut of pain giving and receiving, back and forth like some crazy swing set. And I weep for all, for all who are ground up in this endless meat grinder.

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The lyrics to Edwin Starr’s War, can be found here.

For a poem about life at Landing Zone Betty in Vietnam, read Gary Jacobson.

Peace