August Eighth. It strikes me that something should go with that.
We can March Fourth. We can May the Fourth. What can we August Eighth?
Are there any other days of the year where we might might come up with puns and jokes? Does pi day, March 14, count? I don't see why it shouldn't.
Think about it please, just so I'm not the only one doing it.
About forty years ago in an attempt to improve community relations the Detroit Police Department created dozens of what were called 'mini stations' across the city. The idea was to have small offices with perhaps five police stationed in them, where citizens might drop in and more readily discuss issues of crime and policy. Not a bad thing, really, but also not really the point of my tale.
The mini stations were rarely free standing but were rather housed in larger buildings with available office space. One such instance was when a station had been put on the ground floor of a senior citizen high rise on the west side of Detroit. It was placed there reasonably enough for seniors to have access to police services. Not a bad thing really, but also not really the point of my tale.
One day I was driving past the aforementioned senior citizen high rise with a friend of mine as a passenger; I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name. As the high rise was centered to a large city block, a sign proclaiming that a Detroit Police Mini station was in it had been placed out at the intersection of two near cross streets. You know, to let everyone know it was there.
The traffic light at the intersection caught me. After a moment Cloyce incredulously says, obviously after seeing the sign, "That's a Mini Station?"
Not thinking much about it I answered simply, "Yeah."
Cloyce continued in amazement, "How big is a regular police station?"
And that is the point of my tale.
Should we have or should we have not? That is a question which is asked about many things, not the least of which involves what happened 76 years ago today. We have arrived at another anniversary of the atomic age: the first use of an atom bomb, dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, an August 6, 1945.
It is easy to believe that the US should not have dropped the bomb. Many civilians were killed or injured, and civilians are off target according to the Just War theory promoted by the Catholics and many others. It rests on the idea that civilians are noncombatants, innocents, and should be safe from the traumas of war.
Yet William Buckley, the famous conservative writer and himself Catholic, suggested that perhaps that no longer applies. In the modern world with modern warfare, are civilians actually noncombatants? It's simple enough to see that in Imperial Japan during World War II, civilians were often encouraged to participate in the war effort. Some estimates claim that as many as 70% of the civilian population of Okinawa were injured or killed during the 82 day battle where the Allies occupied the island. To be sure, many were pressed into service. But many fought the invaders voluntarily just the same. Either way, they were hardly innocents.
Buckley's idea does not single out Japanese militarists. Across the sphere of total war, can it be argued that those who work in munitions factories are noncombatants? That those who organize and participate in scrap metal and scrap rubber drives are wholly innocent, or even those who merely buy war bonds? Still, there are true innocents involved, mostly the children. Therein we find the greatest tragedy of human warfare: that it has become so terrible that children are involved at all. But worse: that organizations such as Hamas and the Viet Cong, even the Imperial Japanese and Nazi Germans, have been heinous enough to use them as shields as well as actual fighters. This certainly isn't the fault of the children, but a reality that must be dealt with just the same.
The picture isn't pretty. Surely true innocents must be beyond the targets of war so much as it can be helped. Yet it seems be the face of modern war, a reality which must be dealt with. It doesn't hurt to remember that (by and large) the bad guys started the practices. That is small comfort but we may just have to content ourselves, so much as we can, that much of it is not our fault. Even at that, we must never forget the cost of war.
I am currently reading a book defending American History as it is, warts and all. America, The Last Best Hope by William Bennett, if you care to know. It's a good read and does not back away from the tough questions.
There are things in the book which I must admit are insightful. One example is when he talks about the Three-Fifths Compromise, designed at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. We've always been taught that the compromise demeaned black slaves in counting each as 3/5 of one person. I do not doubt it. Yet Bennett points out that it actually served as an encouragement for at least some parts of the country to free the slaves. Remember that at the time of the Constitutional Convention all states except Massachusetts still allowed slavery. So for each slave freed a state increased its power in the Congress because it effectively gained population; states which kept people in chains lost representation, or at least it remained static. While far from the best argument for emancipation it's an interesting point, one that is rarely if ever mentioned in the schools. It demonstrates that many of the Founders, at least, were actively trying to end the peculiar institution.
On another occasion he quotes Benjamin Franklin as saying that the older he gets the less he trusts his own opinions and the more interested he becomes in the opinions of others. While I would never imagine myself on the intellectual level of Dr. Franklin, and while I cannot entirely agree with him, I have sympathy for his point. The older I get the more inclined I am to consider other views. I realize that does not always show in my writings and Facebook rants. But it's there in my calm, rational moments I assure you.
To be sure, truth is objective and knowable to all who openly and honestly seek it. There is a line in the sand which we must always trust is a true and undying mark if our actions are to have any merit at all. Arguing against slavery for example only has meaning if slavery is objectively, morally wrong for all people and at all times. Yet as to exactly what people think and how they come to think it, well, I do believe we need greater charity. They may well be wrong about their opinions and stances. But maybe they came to those points of view due to events and circumstances which are themselves entirely understandable if nonetheless errant. A man may be mad at God because his wife died and thus lash out at the Almighty. He's wrong to be mad at God. But that could be merely his grief speaking and not his reason. Our charity demands we give consideration of that.
I'm about half way through the book. But if the rest offers even only a couple more insights along the way I will have to consider it a good use of my time.
There was always this clear glass cookie jar in Grandma and Grandpa Cosgriff's kitchen, on the second tier of a triple shelf by the back door. It was about eye level for a toddler, someone about three years old, right where he could spy the crunchy, sweet delights beckoning beyond that clear exterior and metal cover. One with a red wooden knob. One always filled with oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip, or cocoanut windmill cookies.
Frank never, ever, took a cookie without permission. Grandpa Joe, Great Grandpa Joe to him, always sat in his fancy carved wooden dining room chair by the kitchen table, aligned perpendicular with the back door but pushed right up against that kitchen table, guarded the cookie jar. Frank would toddle behind him, stumble towards the back door, the heavy wood inside door closed during the winter but opened to the latched screen in the summer, and would stop, season notwithstanding, to the side of the cookie jar, and wait.
Joe would give it a moment, knowing Frank was there. Then he'd take a draw on his cigarette, and glance towards the door. Frank would look him in the eye, raise a finger on his left hand, and point at the lid of the cookie jar. Joe would draw another puff on his smoke, then he'd nod slightly. Only then would Frank open the lid on the cookie jar, take a cookie, and toddle away munching on it.
Joe would laugh. "Frank speaks sign language", he'd say.
They understood each other, them adversaries, 82 years and generations apart.
Me cousin George down in North Carolina was a crackin' good mechanic. Me Grandpa Joe up here in Detroit was a good mechanic too. Yet he also tinkered. The two ideas didn't always mesh, and that once led me to hide a truth from Joe.
My wife and I had borrowed Joe's Chevy Nova for a trip to NC to show our six month old son to me Grandpaw Hutchins. Charlie is the only one of our kids who actually met Grandpaw; we have a neat picture of him sitting next to Grandpaw on the couch of the old gentleman's living room. Anyway, a couple hours before we get to Carolina the car starts running rough. It got us there but I knew it might not get us back.
That's where me cousin George comes in. He was indeed an outstanding mechanic and checked it out for me. He deduced, "The carburetor needs to be rebuilt. I can do for you for the cost of a rebuild kit." At that time such a kit was $13.
I hated to trouble him so I offered simply to buy a rebuilt carb for him to put on. You know, to save him time and effort. "That'll cost a lot more than you think," my cousin said, quite knowingly. But off we went to Sandy Mush Auto Parts. Sandy Mush North Carolina is where a lot my southern kin live.
We got there and George asks what a rebuilt carburetor for a 76 Nova cost. "$91," the counterman answered. I can still see George's head swivel towards me with a look of 'so what do want to do?' even though the look itself told me what he believed we should do.
Of course I bought the rebuild kit and we went back to his garage to rebuild the old carburetor.
I couldn't do much, the parts being far too small for more than one guy to work with, although I did help by cleaning out the three larger metals parts which made up the body of the carb. George had some kind of red-purple liquid that you could slosh a part around in and clean it up right fine; to this day I'd love to know what it was. In a little bit he had the carb rebuilt and installed and that old Nova simply purred. I've always been thankful to George for helping out a younger cousin who's money was tight.
Yet that's where my hiding the truth from Joe comes in. I knew, just knew, he'd mess about with that carburetor and it wouldn't be right when he was done. All I told him when I returned the keys and he asked how the car did was, "Just fine, Grandpa Joe, thanks again for letting me borrow it." I don't believe I even told me Pops that his nephew George had fixed it.
I still feel bad about that. But George did me a solid and I will never forget it.
I want a walking stick. More specifically, I want a shillelagh. It's pronounced shill-lay-lee. Don't ask me why. I can't hardly figure out English spelling sometimes let alone Irish.
It's a walking stick of a style popular in Ireland. I figure since I walk 5-6 mornings per week depending on circumstance a shillelagh might be a nice addition to my hikes. It would give me the look of a man about town. That is, if a man about town is supposed to look like he really ought to be out in the countryside.
My only question is whether it would be a help or a hindrance. Would it help my pace or slacken it?
Of course I could simply pretend I'm Gandalf, if I could figure out a way to put a light bulb at the top end. And shillelaghs are supposed to double as weapons. Who knows? I might save the day with a shillelagh.
Nah, I'd more likely just look like the neighborhood kook. Quiet Ron.
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