It's Beginning to Sink In

This is for real. This is not a made-for-TV movie. The front pages of the newspapers proclaimed it loud and clear. His picture was everywhere.

An African-American candidate will presumably be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

Democrat, Republican, Independent- Americans. You don't have to like him. You don't have to vote for him. But it is historic.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had this to say:

"It's a country that has overcome many, many, now years, decades of, actually a couple of centuries, of trying to make good on its principles.

"And I think that what we're seeing is, an extraordinary expression of the fact that 'we the people,' is beginning to mean all of us," she added, referring to the opening line of the U.S. Constitution.

It amazes me that there are still people insisting he is Muslim or that "this country's not ready for a Black president." I think this country is ready for a Black or woman or Hispanic for President. It is time as this year's amazing primary season has clearly shown. The excitement, the overwhelming responses to both Obama and Clinton are hopeful signs that something new and unique is happening in these United States.

I thought of a very old quote attributed to the 1st Century Rabbi Hillel as I wrote that. The whole quote is:

“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”

If not now, when? Whether he gets elected or not, this is a new time. It began 16 and 17 months ago when both he and Clinton started this process. It is an exciting time to be an American.

So all- remember where you were when he won the nomination.

This land is made for you and me- for you- and you- and you- and yes, you, too.

Wow!

Please Mr. Bush, Don't Get Involved

Standing in Israel whose existence can be traced, at least in part, to the aftermath of the Nazi's horrific "Final Solution" we now call the Holocaust, Mr. Bush appeared to liken Obama's willingness to talk with Iran to the appeasement policies of Great Britain prior to World War II. It is easy to paste a really negative label on someone in historic terms. Just say they would have been easy on the Nazis.

There is a fine line, of course, between appeasement, which is a giving in to an enemy and expecting them to behave, and talking to your enemies. Bush's statement would have precluded all the behind-the-scenes talks, for example, between Nixon's people and what we then called Red China. They were the big enemy. But then, without warning, Nixon announces a change. We were talking and about to enter into trade with them.

How about detente, the attempt from the late 60s to the early 80s to relax tensions with the Soviet Union? That, too, would be wrong.

Obama has gotten into trouble, not for saying he would talk with Iran, but for getting in the way of continuing to have An Enemy that is bigger than all the rest. We have forgotten Osama bin Laden as he probably roams the caves of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is still real. Are they being sponsored by Iran? Who knows. But the only way to learn what your enemy wants is to talk to him.

Will that prevent a war? Perhaps. Perhaps not. History is not very positive about the possibilities. That is not appeasement. It is good international relations. Is Iran as bad as the Nazis? Who knows. We kept talking to Stalin even as he was as horrific a leader as Hitler. We even had him on our side for a while.

No politics and foreign policy are not as simple as Mr. Bush tries to make them. I congratulate him on going to the Knesset and celebrating Israel's 60th birthday. But it was not a place for such politically charged rhetoric.

A 40 Year Memory - A Merry Month

May - "May of 68" is a symbol of the resistance of that generation. Agitations and strikes in Paris lead many youth to believe that a revolution is starting. Student and worker strikes, sometimes referred to as the French May, nearly bring down the French government.
--Wikipedia

Closing an Icon

Came across this in the news yesterday..

An initiative to save Berlin's Tempelhof airport from closure failed to win enough support as voters, primarily in the city's former communist east, opted not to turn up at polling stations in a city-wide referendum.

Tempelhof, the main site of the post-World War II Berlin Airlift, has become the focal point of a movement that sought to preserve the historic building.

A limestone edifice that was molded in the 1930s by the Nazis into one of the world's largest buildings, Tempelhof was one of the main landing points for allied supply planes in the 11-month Soviet blockade in 1948-49. Architect Norman Foster has called it ``the mother of all airports.''
--from Bloomberg.com

When I was in Berlin in 1970 I went to the airport just to see it. I didn't have a flight or anything, I just wanted to be in a historic spot. The Berlin Airlift was still in a lot of people's minds at the end of the first decade of the Berlin Wall. I will have to dig out some of my old slides of that trip and scan them in.

In any case, an old airport isn't like some Roman Ruin or anything. I guess time has to move on.

Darwin, Christians, and Hitler

As I was surfing the web the other day I came across an article on Salon.com on novelist James Carroll's book Constantine's Sword and the new documentary made from it. It is a book about anti-Semitism and the Catholic Church's complicity in it for centuries (or even millennia.) The article by Andrew O'Hehir in his "Beyond the Multiplex" column said at one point:

Carroll believes that Christians, and especially his fellow Catholics, must come to grips with the past. They can't claim to be a force of morality and integrity until they face the church's painful history of anti-Jewish libel and persecution -- and face it in what he terms a spirit of "repentant change."

As one who has been a student of this issue for nigh unto 40 years now (and a Christian who was born Jewish and more than painfully aware that in the anti-Semitic world even my daughter, 1/4 Jewish, would be singled out for hatred. That in spite of my 44 years as a Christian and her lifetime as one.)

Then came the next paragraph:

The culmination of Christian anti-Semitism, of course, arrived under the Nazis, ...

That line made me want to break my silence on the recent anti-evolution film with Ben Stein, Expelled. What makes the film controversial, as I understand it, is linking evolution with the Nazis. Without Darwin and evolution the Holocaust would never have happened.

Wrong! Sadly and greatly wrong. It makes it sound like the genocidal mania of the Final Solution is based on some liberal, secular idea. Hitler may have been the ultimate secular, and he was anything but liberal but his whole approach was based on an idea that has been around almost as long as the church.

Anti-Semitism of the same virulent and homicidal approach was around long, long, long before Darwin. It was around long before Newtonian science. Long before Copernicus took the earth (and us) out of the center of the universe. To make such a silly and reductionist claim about evolution is nothing short of bad history and a gret big form of denial.

The article goes on:

Carroll's objects of contemplation are various and his approach is always sober and reflective. He finds the roots of anti-Semitic violence in the Emperor Constantine's sudden conversion to Christianity, which came in a vision as he was crossing a bridge over the Tiber.

Ben Stein couldn't say that without getting into trouble. James Carroll, a Catholic and former seminarian can say it.

I am not getting into any argument about creationism vs evolution. I find it a silly, reductionist waste of good energy. But when the argument seeks to change or worse ignore history it is in danger of losing the war to win the battle. Yes, I know that Hitler would have used anything and anyone to justify what he was doing. But he knew what he was doing when he is reported to have said that he was about the finish what the church had been trying to do for centuries- get rid of the Jews.

And much of the church was found wanting when it came to standing up and saying "No!" After all, the government is for our protection. Those Jews must have been doing something wrong or the government wouldn't have taken them away.

Oh how scary!

I hope that Carroll's documentary gets a far wider showing than it will. Anti-Semitism is one of those powerful core sins of western civilization, just as racism is our American core sin. Anti-Semitism is not dead and gone. It is not based on Darwinian evolution. Yes, the Nazis utilized evolutionary thought to justify what they were going to do. But that isn't what drove them. Historically, for six times the length of time since Darwin, the world that the Nazis built on has been driven by anti-Semitism.

A 40-Year Memory - SDS at Columbia

April 23, 1968. Columbia University, New York City. The first protest at Columbia over a proposed gym to be built in Morningside Heights. By the time spring had finished the anti-Vietnam War protests had been added and famous pictures were posted of long-haired students confronting police (or was it vice versa. Memory slips into what one wants to remember.) In many ways this protest was the first that showed what would be happening in many places. It wasn't the first student protest, but that it happened in the Ivy League made it more significant.

It was actually part of a lot longer protest that had begun a year earlier when the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) had discovered a connection between Columbia and a Defense Department think tank. A number of things occurred but the BIG DEAL hit with the gym and resulting protests. But underneath it all was the simmering of a restlessness and anger and a flexing of muscles. SDS and others were in the right place at the right time to take advantage of it.

Last month The New York Times had an article (on Easter Sunday, no less) about the SDS rebirth on the Columbia campus. They titled it "To the Ramparts (Gently)." In it they highlighted the more politically astute and community organizing style of today versus the In Your Face attitude of that other generation.


But as for Columbia, James Simon Kunen, a 19-year old at Columbia, wrote a book called The Strawberry Statement about his involvement which spawned a later movie of the same name.


James S. Kunen is a journalist who has worked for Time, Inc. and has served as a conscientious objector and a public defender.

This set of protests at Columbia lasted for a week, ending April 30. But alas it was only the beginning.

Coincidence

Today is the date of the Great San Francisco Earthquake. It was April 18, 1906 that the earth moved beyond description. I would highly recommend A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 by Simon Winchester to anyone interested in history, natural events, and disasters.

I was struck then when I checked the news this morning of an earthquake in the mid-west, specifically around West Salem, IL, that was felt all the way to Chicago. It was not a big quake, relatively. But it reminds us that good old solid terra firma isn't.

Then the was the story the other day that there has been a series of small quakes off the Oregon coast that no one has ever seen before. Scientists are puzzled. The more we know, the more we know how little we know. That is of course why I am always wary of anyone of any persuasion in any field who says they have THE ANSWERS.

So This is Tax Day...

Let's therefore remember the days of the Revenuers...

Since I mentioned Prince Farrington tin the post above, I thought I would give you this little bit of my hometown's lore. This is from an article on StoryTrax:

Central Pennsylvania has its own legendary outlaw, a former North Carolina farm boy named Prince Farrington. His empire spread from Altoona to Williamsport, from Harrisburg to the New York State border.

Farrington sold something more tangible than cultural esthetics or athletic success. His business exported Centre, Clinton, and Lycoming Counties’ one–time pride all over the eastern half of this country. It took the form of a near-religious ecstasy that traced its origins back to every agricultural hamlet throughout God's country.

We call it moonshine.

Whiskey-making was part of our area's economic lifeblood eighty years ago. There were few alternatives to making a decent living here. Traditional markets were not providing the income farmers needed to keep their land and support their families. Distilled rye and corn liquor was always easier to ship and brought bigger profits than flour.

I remember that I had a teacher in High School that was related to the old King of the Bootleggers. We didn't think anything strange about that even in the early- to mid-60s. It was part of our history, our regional heritage. We even thought it was kind of cool. Even those of us who didn't drink thought it was at least interesting.

A 40-Year Memory- Dr. King and Bobby

The world was truly changing. LBJ had announced four days earlier that he wasn't going to run again.

Hooray!

Things were looking good. Bobby Kennedy was in the race.

Good news.

There was still hope in the world. The United States is the shining example of how democracy works. We were more convinced of it than ever.

Even if I did have to study. Well, at least act like I was studying. I was at the end of my sophomore year in college and much more interested in the band and the radio station than the engineering classes I was not cut out to do in the first place. I had been studying at the student union and, coincidentally, walking downstairs to see what was going on at the radio station where I was a newsman and disc jockey.

The memory is only vague; the specifics not real clear. I remember the bell going off on the teletype machine which is how we got all the news. I poked my head in the newsroom (a room about the size of a closet) and looked to see what the news was. I didn't save that piece of paper. I wish now I had. Or maybe my memory is false and someone else told me what was on the paper. I do remember going into the DJ on the air and asking him to interrupt the show for a news bulletin.

Martin Luther King was shot tonight in Memphis.

No. It cannot be.

Studying was over for that night. How can one study when the world is crazy. I walked back to the dorm in shock and angry. I didn't know at the time that this would be the first of many such moments in that long ago year that split the world apart. When I got back to the dorm it was even worse. No one was reacting. They were all going about their business as if nothing had happened. Oh a few were watching the news on TV in that pre-24/7 era. That only made me more angry.

Martin Luther King was gone. Killed. Murdered. My God, don't you have any feelings?

I'm a white guy and I was angry. What's it going to be like among the Black Americans. Things had already been difficult in a number of cities. Riots and death and destruction were not new. What now?

Well as we all know rioting broke out around the country. With one major exception. Indianapolis, Indiana.

Bobby Kennedy was the reason. He was scheduled to make a campaign appearance there that night.

Instead he canceled the appearance and made an impromptu appearance in the Black neighborhood and delivered what may have been his greatest speech. Here's part of it...

For those of you who are black--considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible--you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization--black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

A few weeks ago Barack Obama, in Indianapolis referred to this speech as a call to move beyond racial issues. It reminded me that even now, 40 years later, we are still trying to move beyond those same issues. Bobby Kennedy's words- and presence- probably kept Indianapolis from going the way of hundreds of other cities.

Syl Jones in today's Star-Tribune wrote:

The looting, the armed occupations, the ugliness of the act of murdering an apostle of nonviolence all took their toll on us. Hope became like the pool of blood dripping from the balcony outside the Lorraine Motel, slowly going down the drain. The dream was over. The nightmare was just beginning...The narrative of this country changed forever in 1968. We lost our innocence as children and as a nation, and once lost, a fragile thing like innocence can never be restored.
--Star-Tribune

I hope, though, that in the loss of innocence, which I, too, am painfully aware of- and trying to sort out in this series of 40-Year Memories- we don't also lose our direction. Maybe we have over the last 40 years. Maybe, as my friend G commented, it was taken from us. But that doesn't mean we can't get it back. It doesn't mean that we can't continue to be seekers - pilgrims- aware of our losses and shortcomings but also aware that people like Dr. King saw something better and greater from his moutain top.

Today as we remember that awful Thursday may we also remember his vision of what this country is supposed to be about. And remember that there have been many times when we have lived up to it. It is not too late, even now.

Bobby Kennedy's whole speech

Listen to the speech here.
Or watch part of it here.

A 40-Year Memory- LBJ

A foggy night along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Northeast Extension. We were somewhere between the Pocono (I-80) Exit and the Lehigh Valley exit. It was one of those evenings when you had to keep your eye as much on the lines along the side of the road as the road in front of you. I think there were four of us in the car heading back to school after spring break.

March 31, 1968.

"I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President"

We had only been half-listening to the speech. Blah, blah, blah, was what he heard. We were tired of LBJ and "his war." We had heard it all before. Eugene McCarthy had stunned all of us a few weeks earlier by a fine showing in New Hampshire. Bobby Kennedy had just entered the race. It was looking interesting.

Out of the fog came those words. We weren't even sure we heard him.

He said what? What was that? Huh?

"I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President"

Did he really say that? He's not going to run again. Maybe we can win after all!!

For the first time since November 1963 many of us felt a sense of hope. The oldest group of my generation had just passed 21 the year before. I was soon to be 20. I wasn't able to vote yet, but my generation was about to undertake our great adventure in electoral politics. Or so we thought. Eugene McCarthy had rallied the young- college students leaving school to go to New Hampshire and stump for what seemed like an impossible dream.

"I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President"

They were the words that seemed like words of liberation. We were excited. It had not been a good year. The Tet Offensive in Vietnam was two months old on that night. The war was becoming less and less popular. The draft was breathing down everyone's neck. Washington wasn't listening.

Now there was hope.

"I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President"

I wish...Oh how much I wish.

Just as I do today. To be a person of hope, I believe, is just as essential today as it was then. Yes, many times over our hopes have been found wanting, and 1968 is as good a year to see that as any. But sooner or later I believe we have to come back to hope. Without it we are a lesser people.

Of course hope, as we talked about a few weeks ago, can be misused, abused and turned into rhetoric. But without it, we would be paralyzed. The hope of March 31, 1968 was a false hope- or perhaps a hope stillborn in the rush and crowding of history. Forty years later I still see hope. Some of it is a frantic grasping hope, like a last-ditch effort. I also see hope that builds out of a vision of a different world and a different way of doing things. Then there is the hope that is so easily placed upon us- the hope built on trusting in might and overpowering strength.

We will never know what the hope of March 31, 1968 may have given had it lived. We will never know how the story might have played out. We only know the story that became reality. But that doesn't mean we don't work for the hope- for the story we resonate with. To do otherwise is to give up- give in.

God forbid.

Let's Stop and Review- A Tale of Two States

The Iowa and New Hampshire craziness is now over. Two states, two different winners. In spite of what the news media with their otherwise short memory wants to believe, these are not the final stopping place in the political horse race. It is only the beginning and some parameters are set for the rest of the race. So what is the Tale of the Two States?

Before and above everything else, let's not lose sight of one extremely, extremely, important fact:

In the last week we have been witnessing history in the making. Never, absolutely NEVER before in American history has a woman and an African-American been in a position to actually be running for President with a chance to win.

NEVER!

They have each won - yes WON - an election.

And the election of either one will, in the end, be just as revolutionary in American political history!!!

That clearly means that regardless of where it ends up in a little less than 10 months from now, the American political scene has changed. We are in a time of excitement and transition. Even with McCain and Huckabee on the Republican side, we are not in "politics as it has always been."

Establishment- vs. - change-
Yes Hillary is establishment. Which is what makes her situation revolutionary. She would make as good a president as Obama. Which in a sense is what makes this whole thing so difficult. Two revolutions of change running against each other. Sadly it might dilute the whole picture. So don't count Edwards out. More to the point, I think, as a friend commented today, the fact that they are running against each other at this point allows them both to stand on their records, their ideas, and their own without being pigeon-holed as The Woman Candidate or The African-American Candidate. Instead they are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. What excitement!

Young vs. more established-
The young people are getting interested again. GREAT! There is some tension in that, of course. There always is when the generations face each other. We may actually be witnessing the kind of thing that happened in 1960 with JFK being the symbol of incredible change. Obama, of course, as the younger candidate has a better chance at that vote, but don't forget that Hillary is not your grandfather's presidential candidate.

The Media-
Iowa and New Hampshire do not finally decide and to crown a winner after each one and then be surprised when it doesn't happen is just pandering to ratings. What they do is set a stage that has yet to be populated. We have become so entranced by media that they forget that they are reporters, not the creators. They are not omniscient. Polls are faulty. Their memory, as I mentioned above does not tend to go back before the last sweeps rating period. They crown winners based on incomplete, pre-vote insights.

I am not faulting them. I am faulting us for giving them so much power. Yesterday may have been as much about reacting to them as anything else. Which is not a good reason to vote for or against anyone, of course.

But the issues are out on the table. For now. Iraq is not a major one at this point. But it will be again. Change is the buzz-word- until things change. Hillary is back on top- She Who Is Inevitable- until she isn't again.

But this is one of the most exciting and fun-inducing elections in years. Let's hope it doesn't lose its momentum. i can't wait to keep watching and to attend by own caucus here in Minnesota in a month.

Now, let's get back to the pilgrimage. The review is over. On to the next- and the next- and the next- and .....

So, Back to Latin?

From LiveScience:

The translation of the Bible into English marked the birth of religious fundamentalism in medieval times, as well as the persecution that often comes with radical adherence in any era, according to a new book.

The 16th-century English Reformation, the historic period during which the Scriptures first became widely available in a common tongue, is often hailed by scholars as a moment of liberation for the general public, as it no longer needed to rely solely on the clergy to interpret the verses.

But being able to read the sometimes frightening set of moral codes spelled out in the Bible scared many literate Englishmen into following it to the letter, said James Simpson, a professor of English at Harvard University.

The Year Before

I just finished reading 1491 by Charles Mann. It is remarkable summary of the history and controversies that continue to swirl around an understanding of what the Americas looked like in 1491. Today is, of course, the traditional date of Columbus Day so I thought I would at least mention this book.

What is most amazing is the depth that Mann develops as he looks at the innumerable discoveries that have been made over the last 40 years in archeology and palaeontology in relation to pre-Columbian America. Much of what I would have learned when younger has been seriously called into question. For example, it appears that homo sapiens was here in the Western Hemisphere long before we thought. It it is also not a matter of scientific orthodoxy that the Bering Sea land bridge was even used or played any role whatsoever in the migration of early Indians to the Americas.

Even more incredible is the growing belief that the native populations, long before Columbus- and at times even ahead of similar advancements in Europe, were landscaping, even terraforming the land to make it more hospitable. It has called into question, for example, the idea that the land was "pristine" or virgin in much of America when Columbus arrived. What it was, however, was a carefully developed habitat that was in most instances cultivated and managed with both respect and awareness of impact.

Mann talks about the controversies that have been part of this whole process and the issues such as the epidemics that wiped out far more people than had been thought- simply because there may have been far more people here than had been thought. He does a very good job of laying all this out. He makes a strong case that this "New World" may have been that in name only. Things were happening here even ahead of European or Asian development.

A wonderful book and one that gives us a lot more to discuss and develop in our own continent and hemisphere's history.

The 60s: Summer of Love- Rerun

Last week our local public radio morning talk show had a program on the Summer of Love, which was 40 years ago. It was the beginning of a series of events that put together has been called "The 60s" which in reality was only about four years long. The hippie era in San Francisco was what the Summer of Love was really in its basic incarnation. It was the natural(?) outgrowth of the Beat Generation of the late 50s and early 60s in SF. It was the explosion of drug use for "greater consciousness" and not just to get "wasted" although somehow we all convinced ourselves that doing ther first was not the same as doing the second.

But it was also the beginning of the seismic shift that would bring about protests at the Pentagon and around the country. In October 1967 the first national protest of the Vietnam War was held. The Summer of Love was still invoked- wanting to levitate the Pentagon and putting flowers into gun barrels proved that. But it was about to become more than a summer of love.

Norman Mailer's incredible book, The Armies of the Night told that story. David Maraniss in his book They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967 compared events in Madison, WI (where Dick Cheney was in hiding) and Vietnam on the same day. Life was changing.

Between then and Kent State in 1970 we were in the midst of a civil war, cultural revolution, and political upheaval. King and Kennedy were killed. Riots broke out in inner cities and at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Woodstock seemed to be a new summer of love but it turned out to be a muddy climax before it all came crashing down. Nixon and Vietnam and Altamont and then Kent State. What a turbulent era.

Listening to the show that morning brought back a lot of things about that era that they raised and I thought I would take some time to blog about over the next week or so in some disconnected posts. These will include some thoughts on:

• Radio and Music including styles of music and raceless radio and what was so darn significant about all that music anyway.
• Activism then and now including some ideas about why it happened and why it isn't happening now.
• Who won the revolution and the turbulence - if anyone - and why we're still in the midst of it.
• And, not to forget, what drugs may have had to do with all of this and why it's still something we're dealing with.

So that's the task I have set for myself. If anyone has any thoughts or ideas you'd like me to make sure I give my opinions on, just comment on this post. I'm looking forward to it. It's one of those benefits for being my age and becoming a living link with history.

One Small Step- 38 Years are Gone
I sat in the radio studio at WMPT in S. Williamsport, Pa. on that distant afternoon. I had the TV on in the production studio on the other side of the glass and the ABC news feed on the air. It was 4:17 in the afternoon:

Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

The only song I could think of to play that afternoon as we prepared to come back to the music was an old Kingston Trio song- The New Frontier. Here's the chorus that was inspired by the election of JFK almost 9 years earlier:

Some to the rivers and some to the sea.
Some to the soil that our fathers made free.
Then on to the stars in the heav'ns for to see.
This is the new frontier. This is the new frontier.

It was a remarkable moment. Man had landed on the moon; for the first time- ever- a human was somewhere other than on old terra firma. It was later that night at about 10:56 pm on the east coast when we sat in front of the TV as a slightly fuzzy but remarkable picture glowed from the set. Neil Armstrong stepped off the last rung of the ladder with his now famous,

That's one small step for (a) man; one giant leap for mankind.

We watched for a couple hours as Armstrong and Aldrin had a view that no one had ever had before. An earlier flight had brought back the first pictures like it; but now they were on the surface looking back at the great blue-colored ball hanging in the midst of apparent nothingness. Mother Earth.

The day will come. It's got to be.
The day that we may never see.
When man for man and town for town
must bring the peace that shall resound.
This is the new frontier. This is the new frontier.

A fragile looking sphere. So small against the sky. Never again could we look at earth in the same way. Not if we were to think of how little, how seemingly insignificant we might all be in the great scheme of things. How easily we forget, though. When we begin to focus back on ourselves- our individualism, our nationalistic narrow-mindedness, our human shortcomings of greed and fear and racism, to name but a few.

The new frontier? Not yet. But maybe one day.

Just take a closer look at that blue and white earth hanging in the balance.

Some to the rivers and some to the sea.
Some to the soil that our fathers made free.
Then on to the stars in the heav'ns for to see.
This is the new frontier. This is the new frontier.

Cultural Heroes Who Aren't
Walking through the book store the other day I came across a book with a most interesting title: Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him by Humberto Fontova. The book blurb description said:

Nearly four decades after his death, it’s impossible to avoid the image of Ernesto “Che” Guevara everywhere from T-shirts to cartoons. Liberals consider Che a revolutionary martyr who gave his life to help the poor of Latin America. Time named him one of the one hundred most influential people of the last century. And a major Hollywood movie is about to lionize him to a new generation.

The reality, as we learn from Cuban exile Humberto Fontova, is that Che wasn’t really a gentle soul and a selfless hero. He was a violent Communist who thought nothing of firing a gun into the stomach of a woman six months pregnant whose only crime was that her family opposed him. And he was a hypocrite who lusted after material luxuries while cultivating his image as a man of the people.

Fontova reveals that Che openly talked about his desire to use nuclear weapons against New York City. Such was Che’s bloodthirsty hatred that Fontova considers him the godfather of modern terrorism.
--Amazon.com

Now, anyone who knows me will know that I am not a right-wing reactionary. There might have been a day when I thought good thoughts about Che. But my just-as-liberal daughter agrees with me (and the book) when she says she doesn't see why people idolize Che. He was all the things mentioned in the above paragraphs- and worse. He was an angry young man- admittedly at least for some very good reasons.

But he is not one to be so idolized. If he had lived my guess is he would be in the same sinking boat that Fidel finds himself in. People like Hugo Chavez would find themselves on his wrong-side, I am sure. Whether Che could be seen as the "godfather of modern terrorism" is arguable, but he sure knoew how to do it.

Having said all that, I do believe that the interest that continues in Che should have some other things attached to it. I enjoyed, for example, both the movie and the book The Motorcycle Diaries. They give a hint of what it was that turned Che into who he became. He is more a symbol- a metaphor- than a real person. He has lost his anger and his hatred and his bloodletting behavior in the 21st Century views of him. He is now a man on a T-shirt looking into some distant future where poverty and oppression are history.

That is something worth working for, even in rebellious ways, perhaps. I have a hunch that much of what we see of Che today is for that very reason. He may have been as violent and brutal as just about any dictator, but being "martyred" in the eyes of his followers, added a sense of uniqueness to him.

What is perhaps the scariest thing when I think of Che? That the circumstances that led to his rise are not all gone. Peace and hope are lost in many parts of the world. Che wouldn't have- and still can't do anything about that. He would have made it worse.

I will still opt for a Gandhi or Jesus T-short any day.

Or better still, a world where Gandhi's lifestyle and Jesus' words and life are lived.

An Anniversary of Remembrance-
Archbishop Oscar Romero
It was 27 years ago today that Archbishop Romero of El Salvador:

Romero was shot to death on March 24, 1980 while celebrating holy Mass at a small chapel near his cathedral, the day after he gave a sermon in which he called for soldiers as Christians to obey God's higher order and to stop carrying out the government's repression and violations of basic human rights.
--Wikipedia

The life of faith can often be dangerous when you decide to live in ways that the powers that be don't like. Too often we think of this as what Christians are supposed to do in anti-Christian countries or places where their right to worship may be threatened. Archbishop Romero reminds us that when the church challenges the state, it doesn't matter what faith the state professes. You can find yourself in deep trouble.

May we never find that out in this country.

I Am Also Reading
Not a surprise, of course, that my reading list over there on the right grows so quickly. I love reading! I usually have at least two or even three books going at a time. I don’t always post on them because it would take too much time. I would recommend a few that I am working on right now or have just finished.

• Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick is an incredibly interesting history of the Plymouth community in it first fifty some years. It begins in England with the religious background and ends with the end of Prince Philip’s War- a 14- month conflict between the English settlers and some of the Native American tribes in the area. There is much I had never known before (which is why we read books, isn’t it?). But what struck me was the depth of diplomatic knowledge and skill that was often exercised by both groups in most of those first 50 years. It fell apart in the end, but as Philbrick points out in the epilogue, such an extended era of peace at that time and place may be one of the Pilgrim’s great accomplishments. It is sad that it was torn to shreds by their children.

• Education of a Coach by David Halberstam is the history of New England Patriot’s Bill Belichick. I will read anything by Halberstam whether sports or politics. He does his usual high-caliber job of telling Belichick’s story and how he has so dramatically changed football with his eye for defense. It doesn’t make me more of a Belichick fan, but it is sure an insight into what it takes when one wants to excel at that level.

• Tied in with that is Blind Side by Michael Lewis. This tells another football story of change as it impacts a young man in Tennessee. It shows how the “west coast offense” and the Parcells/Belichick style defense have clashed to make one position- left tackle- a whole new world of football. Caught in this story is young Michael Oher, a sort-of homeless BIG high school student. It is nothing short of fascinating and is even more interesting on a human, personal level than Lewis's previous book, Moneyball.