Update

Tim, my old partner in radio crime from Lehigh, commented on my post about George Carlin. He agreed with me that it probably was the Mitchell Trio that Carlin opened for in the late winter on '67. He also reminded me that the Mitchell Trio was introducing their new member at that time. Chad Mitchell, after whom the trio was named had left. His replacement was a fair-haired boy by the name of John Denver.

Tim also asked if I remembered the time that the students of Lehigh got scolded by Simon and Garfunkle. Their show was delayed, as I remember the scenario, because they got stuck at another college and had to get a plane to get to Lehigh. Their opening act was Eric Burdon and the Animals, famous for a number of great songs including House of the Rising Sun, Sky Pilot, and that eternal end-of-the-school-year anthem, We Gotta Get Out of This Place.

Well, Burdon and company were in an experimental phase or something. (Maybe it was just drunk college students only wanted to hear the hits.) Their show was not well received. Simon and Garfunkle were backstage finally to hear some of this unfair treatment of another band. They came out and did their show and were their stellar selves. But in an interview with the college paper, The Brown and White, they scolded us for our behavior.

Or wait a minute, was it Jefferson Airplane who got stuck at another school? Two things strike me as I write this. First that memory can sure play tricks after 41 years. And second, how lucky we were in those ancient days or yore when the big names came to college concerts. That was their bread and butter on tour. Sure there were the SUPER STARS who only did arena-type concerts, but to see groups like these and others in your own college field house was great.

I do know it was Simon and Garfunkle that scolded us, though.

Some Fun and Memories

I really can't let this week get away without saying some more about George Carlin who died last Sunday. In the last fifty years there haven't been many of his overall quality and culture breaking approach. I can think of Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor. Maybe a few others, but so many were co-opted by TV or movies. They lost their stand-up edge. Not Carlin.

I first saw him perform my freshman year at college. I don't remember anymore whether it was fall or winter, nor do I remember who he was opening for. It might even have been the Mitchell Trio (remember them?) In any case it was over 40 years ago and I still remember the laughter as he did the Hippy-Dippy Weather man routine:

Now for some partial scores. 5, 3, 7

Tonight's forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning.

He could also catch human sayings and life when it was really being stupid:

Jumbo shrimp. Is that a BIG shrimp or a tiny jumbo?

Hot water heater. I don't need my hot water heated; I need my cold water heated.

Non-stop flight. I want mine to stop. Preferably at the end.

But where he hit home and developed his greatest controversy was in truly being counter-cultural. Everyone has been talking about his Seven Words You Can't Say on TV. Well, I won't put them here. You can find them in many places. He was arrested at Summerfest in Milwaukee for using those words. The charges were dismissed with the judge saying the words were obscene, but free speech was more important. Too bad the FCC (and Supreme Court) didn't agree when WBAI played the seven words on the radio.

But that wasn't the extent of the cultural challenge:

The very existence of flame throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.

And sometimes he just made us stop and think:

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

Think off-center.

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.

We will miss that and a whole lot more.

Yom Ha'Shoah- A Day of Remembrance

Last month Elie Wiesel wrote an essay for the NPR/All Things Considered series, This I Believe. (Link.)It began:

I remember, May 1944: I was 15-and-a-half, and I was thrown into a haunted universe where the story of the human adventure seemed to swing irrevocably between horror and malediction.

A haunted universe. Haunted by one of the most incredibly horrible events in human history. No, I don't think I exaggerate.

The Holocaust- the systematic annihilation of 12 million people, first and foremost among them the 6 million Jews as Hitler dreamed of a Final Solution. Based in hatred and downright evil it set the lowest standard which sadly others have since tried to reach. Whether we speak of Stalin or Idi Amin or the genocides in various places of the world, The Holocaust stands as the ultimate reminder that not even western civilized thought and action makes us immune to such evil.

All that can be prayed- and worked for is the 63 year old cry, prayer and call to action: Never again.

With that we close with another quote from the man of peace and speech, Elie Wiesel:

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Note: In honor of Yom Ha'Shoah this is today's only post. There is nothing else to say.

Thunder Beings
Reading Black Elk Speaks this past week, I came across his use of the image of "Thunder Beings." These are the mythical beings of the West where the thunderstorms come from. They are the ones who come riding east with great flashes of lightning, rumbles of thunder, and downpours of rain. As I was reading I thought to myself, "I never noticed any Thunder Beings in my lifetime.

But I caught myself quickly. It was Labor Day Weekend, 1966. It was an event that has stuck with me as powerfully 41 years later as it did that night. The Thunder Beings had rode through town and moved on south and east out of the West Branch Valley. But there, beyond the Bald Eagle Mountain they continued to light up the summer sky.

We always called it "heat lighting" since it always seemed to be hot when we saw it. There was never thunder with it. We knew that it was really the light from distant storms, too far away to hear. But their presence was real. There they were, clouds miles and miles away reaching several miles into the sky. The lightning in the clouds kept illuminating the structure and folds and billows of the clouds. It went on for a couple of hours as the storms slowly made their way to the south and east.

It was my last night at home. Early the next morning we would pack the car and I would head off in the direction of that lightning to college. I would be leaving The Valley and heading beyond that southern mountain boundary that had been a reassuring part of my horizon for 18 years. I was scared to death. I knew everything - and I knew nothing.

I stood in awe of that light show for a couple of hours. I had already said goodbye to a couple of my best friends so I stood alone in my backyard. These 41 years later I don't remember the exact thoughts that went through my head. They were probably of my parents, both dead for several years. I probably thought a little about what it means to be a Christian instead of a Jew, having only been a Christian for a little over two years. I probably stood there and thought how awesome God really is- and how quiet I have to become when I watch His world at work.

I was as ready as I would ever be to move on. I would never return to The Valley to live permanently. A life I never even considered was waiting. The Thunder Beings, as I might describe it now, were leading the way that I was heading.

In digging into a little bit of mythology, for many Native American tribes the Thunder Beings were, like so much of the natural world, ambiguous. Too much of anything, even a good thing is not a good things. Thunder Beings are cleansing and life giving. They bring water from the West that will help the crops, animals, and people. They are a source of healing for the dry spiritual times and places. They share the power of The Sky. The lightning can show the way. I also found that in Chinese mythology, the Thunder Beings stand for enlightenment.

But there is always the caution. Too much rain, especially in western dry washes and gullies, can bring flash floods. Lightning is dangerous and can start devastating fires. Take too much medicine and it can kill you. Wisdom is needed. To walk wisely is to know that there are dangers as well as benefits. You can even die from too much water in your system- or from floods.

Those are all excellent descriptions for what happened that September evening in a land far away and a time long ago. It was a beginning, a start of a different life. The Thunder Beings were showing the way- and urging me to be cautious. It was a reminder that I should never forget my roots back there in the Susquehanna Valley for that is where I was raised and nourished. It has been a vivid vision for 41 years now. I now can say that I saw the Thunder Beings- and they were right.

A Memorial
Today would have been Wilson's 59th birthday. He wasn't here to celebrate it. He died around his 43rd birthday. On Good Friday that year. He had gotten the HIV virus from a blood transfusion before there was a test to find it. He got AIDS before all the drugs that are now available that are prolonging so many lives.

I still remember Wilson many times during the year. We were going to grow old together and share old memories that go back to high school. We didn't make it. Life is never what we expect it to be- but it can be what we do with it that makes the difference.

I still remember that Good Friday. I had left Pennsylvania the night before, saying good-bye for the last time. I took the train back to Wisconsin and, when I got to Chicago and called home I learned that he was gone. Later, as my friend Rick drove me back from the station in Milwaukee he commented that in Native American cultures they believed that the soul of the deceased would come back in some animal form to let us know that things are okay. As he finished that statement I saw out of the corner of my eye a hawk soaring on the thermals of that early spring afternoon.

Hawks- raptors- Hawk Mountain in Pennslvania were one of Wilson's and my great adventures together. I smiled and felt an assurance. God has ways. It was Good Friday- but I knew Easter was a reality.

Sadly, HIV/AIDS is still with us. Some are saying that the infection rate in the United States may be climbing again. Unsafe sexual activities, effects of complacency since it doesn't appear to be a "death sentence" anymore; these get in the way of common sense about a disease that is so preventable. More common sense, more awareness, more willingness to step aside from instant gratification and think about the consequences. Such are some of the ways to prevent the conintuing spread of the disease here in the United States.

I pray that no one has to go through what Wilson, his wife and son, his family and friends had to go through.

One Day in September- 35 Years Ago
Surfing the movie channels the other morning I was brought up short at IFC, the Independent Film Channel. They were showing a documentary made in 1999 about the Munich Olympics and the hostage taking and massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists.

It brought back one of the most difficult and awful days of I had up to that point. Those hours when Jim McCay became more than an ABC sportscaster and was the eyes and ears of the world. That final moment- "They're all gone" forever etched into memory along with the shadowy head that kept peeking out of the door.

I can't say that it changed my life or the world, but it was one of those reference moments when what you once understood changed. Looking back now, after 9/11 and the other bombings in Madrid and London, perhaps that can be seen as a significant first strike in an ongoing terrorist campaign. Or it was the first explosion onto the world of a different (from our perspective) type of war, one where civilians were the prime targets and not just unlucky bystanders.

But then again, maybe it brought into harsh focus the brutality of all wars. In this contemporary world all wars have more collateral damage (don't you just hate that phrase) than ever before. It can be the fire bombings of Tokyo and Dresden, the V2s launched at Britain, or the threat of nuclear war- no one is safe in any war.

Ten months after Munich my wife and I traveled to Israel. We went on El Al airlines in a time when they were the only ones with high security. Later our friend who took us to the airport told us he stayed around to watch us leave- and ours was the only plane to take off perpendicular to the terminal instead of parallel. We felt safe.

Until time to leave. As we got to the airport in Tel Aviv security seemed particularly tight. We were given an even more thorough going over with an even deeper search into our luggage before we were allowed anywhere near the waiting area. It was only when we finally sat down in the pre-dawn darkness that we saw the reason for the security. There had been an attack at the Athens airpport the evening before. All of a sudden you look around and wonder.

As long as there is war, we will be struggling with these issues. There is no answer. There is no way to be 100% safe. And that has to be okay. Life has always been like this. Life today for most of us in the Western so-called "civilized" world don't see it as often. Which is why 9/11 has so unnerved us. But we are not different, better, or more civilized. In the end, we have just been fortunate to own the whole continent we sit on.

I realize this sounds pessimistic and scary and fatalistic. Believe me, I'm not. I still believe in the possibilities of peace. I still believe in the possibilities of a human soul created in the image of the Creator God. I still believe that we are redeemable. Able to be perfect? No. But together we can work on newer ways as we move beyond the human frailities and look to the ways of peace as more than dreams- they are things we must also work for. When we do that, we have been told, we truly are the children of God.