Never Too Many Problems

LONG LIVE THE WEEDS
Hopkins

Long live the weeds that overwhelm
My narrow vegetable realm!
The bitter rock, the barren soil
That force the son of man to toil;
All things unholy, marred by curse,
The ugly of the universe.
The rough, the wicked, and the wild
That keep the spirit undefiled.
With these I match my little wit
And earn the right to stand or sit,
Hope, love, create, or drink and die:
These shape the creature that is I.

Theodore Roethke, Words for the Wind

I would like to think that we can learn something even from events as horrendous as the attack on the World Trade Center. Events like this test our strength and question who we are.

We must toil as individuals, and as a society, to come to terms with these “unholy”and “ugly” attacks on the World Trade Center.

In doing so, we truly define who we are and what we believe in ways that we never can when dealing with the ordinary, everyday events of our life.

Like most people, I’ve spent many hours talking about these events with friends and family. Sharing makes it easier to bear the pain of these events and helps to discover how I really do feel.

However, forcing yourself to express your ideas in print to strangers is another step in truly understanding your feelings and coming to terms with them.

Maybe that is why so many people are blogging now. They realize, as I have, that expressing their ideas publicly is the best way to discover who they are.

Ban On Biological Weapons

The first time I knew for sure that I wasn’t cut out for a career in the Army was when I attended the CBR school in Fort McClellan, Alabama.

For me, the moment of truth came when they put one drop of nerve agent on the nose of the goat to demonstrate its effectiveness, and the goat instantly went into convulsions. It was a horrible way to watch an animal die, and it certainly wasn’t reassuring when the atropine they administered failed to revive the goat, although they were quick to reassure us that it was an effective antidote if applied quickly enough.

But nerve gas was only a small part of what was discussed in training. Strange diseases like anthrax that were unknown to humans had been designed to kill enemy troops. Now, admittedly, I was there largely to learn how to defend our troops from attack by chemical, biological, and radiological weapons, not to learn how to employ them in combat.

Nevertheless, I was stunned to learn about our own capabilities in these areas. What kind of mad scientist would spend his life developing these weapons? Since we had more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, why did we need chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction? Who would ever use such weapons?

Fortunately, I have been able to largely forget those memories in the ensuing years. Although I’ve periodically heard about these weapons, particularly their use in Iraq on Iraqi citizens, I had naively assumed that they were obsolete weapons waiting to be destroyed.

When international discussions began on banning the weapons, I thought that it was a no-brainer. Virtually everyone seemed to be opposed to them, especially doctors. Certainly the American press and the American government seemed outraged that Iraq had used them on its own people.

Both the local and foreign press were critical of America’s veto of the ban, particularly since America had initiated the attempt to ban it during the Reagan Era.

Now I have no doubt that this is a complex issue. However, I would hope that the American people will look at this veto a little differently after our own anthrax scare in Florida.

Bush Reject Land Mine Treaty

Although I’ve yet to read all of Higgy’s links to Bruce Cockburn, higgy edit this page, there appears to be some great links to one of my favorite singers there.

Bruce Cockburn ranks right up there with Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, and Paul Simon as one of the greatest lyricists in modern rock, though he certainly hasn’t received that kind of attention here in America.

Cockburn’s haunting lyrics in “The Mines of Mozambique” from his album The Charity of Night

Rusted husks of blown-up trucks
Line the roadway north of town
Like passing through a sculpture gallery.
War is the artist
But he’s sleeping now
…
And in a bare workshop they’ll be molding plastic
Into little prosthetic limbs
For the children of this artist
And for those who farm the soil that received
His bitter seed.

seem particularly poignant in light of the war in Afghanistan, one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. An article on the Voice of America page discusses how children are particularly subject to the danger of landmines, AFGHANISTAN LAND MINES

It certainly seems ironic that the first confirmed civilian casualties from the American bombing were UN workers who were attempting to remove mines from previous wars. And America has apparently been criticized for endangering starving refugees by dropping food into mined areas Independent News

The greatest irony of all may well be that the Taliban leader so widely condemned as of late ruled out the use of land mines, Taliban Ruler Rules Out Land Mines while the American government under the Clinton administration (hard to believe, isn’t it) refused to sign the treaty US should sign treaty banning land mines.
Let’s just pray there are no further ironies to report.

Channel Firing

I’ve loved Thomas Hardy since high school. Although I had always loved reading, his novels, particularly Return of the Native and Jude the Obscure, came as a revelation to me. Their brutal honesty and unsentimental analysis of the human condition amazed me, especially since much of the literature I had previously encountered in high school struck me as sentimental nonsense.

I wrote my first research paper on his works after reading all of his novels. I earned an “A” on that paper, no small feat from Mr. Thomas. And, perhaps for the first time, I thought of becoming an English major instead of a physics major in college.

Later, I grew to love his poetry more than his novels. Although his works seem to have gone out of style because they “lack style,” I still believe that they convey a truth through their simple language that is often lacking in more popular works. And, most of all, I look for truth in literature.

“Channel Firing” is a simple poem that needs no explanation, but it conveys truths about war that are as true now as they were when this poem was written:

THAT night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, “No”
It’s gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:

“All nations striving strong to make
.
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christ’s sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.

That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them’s a blessed thing,
For if it were they’d have to scour
Hell’s floor for so much threatening. . .

Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need).”

So down we lay again. ‘I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,’
Said one, ‘than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century !’

And many a skeleton shook his head.
Instead of preaching forty year,
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.