The People We Bury

Perhaps you have seen someone who is dead, someone who lies contained and peaceful and is there for the viewing. And perhaps you have been in a place, say a small hospital room, where you have watched somebody die. Not seen them being simply dead, but watching for 12 or so hours as morphine dosed high enough to remedy nearly anything drips over the course of a night and into early morning, long enough for the heart and lungs to finally surrender.  I have seen only a few dead people, and, until very recently, had not actually been in that room when someone went from dying to dead, someone I have known for a very long time. And now, yet another person in my family could be dead before tomorrow or before autumn. As his daughter says, "It's up to him now."
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Somewhere in this blog I wrote about Jeff, I think, a childhood friend who died several years ago. We were, in fact, great friends, though he was much more prone to trouble than I was as a boy, something he never grew out of. He was shot at least once that I know of, and he spent time in many jails. He was a good person, I think, and I've always thought that if I hadn't moved to California when I was in eighth grade, I could have kept Jeff on a more straight and forward path. I often think of him, and I miss him.

A couple of weeks ago I read that Jeff's father, Maury, had died at the age of 92. Not a bad age. I hadn't not seen Maury in many years, not since one or another visit to my small hometown in Illinois, a place I often return to in one way or another. I once dragged my wife and sons to see him during a family vacation, and he was a wonderful host and seemed quite pleased to see us. Maury and my father worked together for many years until my father was transferred to California, which is how I ended up here. I remember things about Maury: that he had been a pilot in WW2, that he made wine in the basement, that he was a Catholic. I also remember a Little League game in which, at 8 years old, I was playing shortstop. The batter hit a nice ground ball to me, and stood right where I was and  watched it roll by me. I did not move. Moments later my coaches yelled and hollered, and they pulled me from the game. Sitting alone on the bench, I cried. And I'm not sure of why, buy Maury was soon sitting next to me, his arm on my shoulder as he tried to cheer me up. To this day I do not remember why he was there, why my parents were not. Perhaps Jeff and I were playing at the same time on different teams, and Maury was watching over us that night. Then again, it's quite possible that the memory is incorrect as memories often are.

The person I recently watch die was buried just a few days ago, and the small ceremony was quite nice. Maury was buried in a cemetery in my home town; I do not know where Jeff is buried. Maury's obituary mentioned those family member who had preceded him into wherever they went: a couple of brothers, a sister, a wife. Oddly, though, it did not mention Jeff, and I do not know if the omission was his intent or his daughter's, who I can only suppose wrote the thing. I hope that Jeff was not simply forgotten or brushed away.

Three Random Thoughts

The semester ended a couple of weeks ago, and now I have an extra night free each week. Of course, I also have free throughout the week since I've got no papers to grade and nothing to prepare for. Somewhat addicted to work, however, I did start a 5-week course at another school, though it's just one night a week. A co-worker asked a good question: "Why do you keep doing it?" I didn't have a good answer.

Travels are on the horizon, and this time we're be visiting someplace new to us. I'm excited. This will be my first extended vacation (2 weeks) in a very long time. I'm hopeful that I'll learn something along the way.

My guitar, try as I might, is still getting the best of me. I seem to be learning and growing more comfortable, but progress is slow. Do I want to learn theory? Should I practice scales for an hour each day? Do I simply want to play pop songs? Good questions. And, again, I don't have a good answer.

Insomnia

Pretty much the basics of being awake too much at night.



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Insomnia

Sunlight’s refraction through the cracked

kitchen window  this morning;

the water needs of rye and fescue weighed

against a possibility of drought;

that my hip now aches no matter the weather,

and sometimes my heart skips beats;

my wife’s nighttime sighs and her breath

on my bare shoulder;

my youngest son shifting in his bed

as his brother turns the front lock,

and the dog trotting down the hallway

when the door is pulled softly shut;

that my father would have been seventy-two

this year, my mother, seventy-one;

the moon's deliberate arc across our skylight

on this, the first night of autumn.

Surprise

Might have stolen a line from someone when I wrote this one many years ago.

Surprise

A trained eye can isolate

stars even during such in-between

phases, separate them from

a schooner’s mast spiked

into uncommitted dusk.

But someone should have mentioned

how dusk might linger like this,

how daylight and a diminished

horizon might refuse one another

as easily as they refuse the half-moon.

Even the ocean seems unsure: five-hundred

feet below, a slack tide barely pulses

toward the line of seaweed strands,

distressed driftwood, diminished legs of crabs.

From this bluff, from this bed of clump

grass, only that single light

on the schooner’s mast has purpose,

an unnatural beacon any eye would find

until finally even it is directed

away, perhaps into the surprise

of strong water, into what becomes

of dusk.

Lost

Yet another old one. Because, really, all of them are old.


Lost

Shadows cut imprecisely into

the riverbank.  Rain

like fingers reaches beneath

the current and pulls different

water to the surface.  Somewhere

in this river’s mud are footprints—

only hours old but a path

back to familiar topography. 

Waiting beneath conifers

that betray a cloudburst’s

passing, I try to predict an age

at which men understand how thunder

begins as silence, how foolishness

is wisdom’s sly twin.

 

Catch and Release

Knee deep in a flush of late spring snowmelt, you slide

the barbless hook out of the trout’s translucent lip then cradle

its body at a forearm’s length in water cold enough

to pull breath from your fingertips. Early season trout

are greedy, and the first time we fished together

you worked a gullet-snag for ten minutes, all the while

cursing the fish’s lack of discipline. But this fish, its flesh

cleanly pierced, earns whispers of praise—

coos of love you speak into a new year of catch

and release. 

Pennies

Another old one.

 

Pennies

Of the many things I had to explain was lying

motionless, pennies balanced on my closed eyes. 

My mother voiced annoyance as my father stroked

his chin and asked about this fascination with death.

His shirt smelled of butane—a working man’s cachet.

I said I was fascinated with nothing but thought

we should rehearse being still and learn the weight

of those coins, that if I died before he did I wanted

to have practiced everything.  His lips opened and closed. 

My mother gasped and left the room.  I inhaled

butane as my father stared into me, his fear so strong

that Death itself would have paused mid-grasp.

This is an old one--written in graduate school and submitted to the "Room of One's Own" poetry contents. There's more to the story, of course, but we'll just keep that a little secret.

Going Crazy

1.

I leave to escape fragments

of previous conversations

I cannot swear to ever having.

It is the warm gin that affects me,

I tell myself, or too much poetry

or aftershocks from a single

mescaline overdose. Nothing more.

At the water’s edge I strip

and float into the cold,

fogged-over Pacific, wondering

if a man could drift to the

Cape of Good Hope with nothing

but skin and survive.

2.

Once I looked up from the Equator

and wondered why the sun seemed

no different, why I could not feel

a shift in polar influence.

But I can tell you water dripped

from a faucet, though it spins

with time when it reaches the sink,

vanishes just the same.

3.

What are the visible signs

of going crazy? I have asked

the round-faced postman,

who listens, and, once,

the milkman, who does not.

Tell me, what will I lose

first: my gait? bowel-control?

the simple ability to hold my hand

steady, like this? I think of my

three children, sweat beaded

on their cheeks, watching

my firm grasp loosen digit by

digit until they slip away and fade

into the common American blizzard

of apologies for drunk fathers.

  

4.

I know a man can stay afloat

a lifetime through only occasional,

fluid sweeps of one arm, forcing

the head back and trying

to remember to breathe. So little

is required: it is instinct;

it is years of lessons and learning

to find a way up through clear

water to sunlight. Yet,

I drift in the moonless

tide. This is fine, I say,

and dream of the breathless

life beneath the surface rising

with open mouths to consume

me, to drink from even

the first star.

When Things Close In

I am not especially claustrophobic, though if I were to try spelunking I might find otherwise. Being in cramped elevators or train cars does not bother me, nor does spending hours in an airplane. On my ship in the navy, by bed was a thin mattress laid out in an area only slightly larger than what I imagine a coffin must be, though perhaps a little wider and taller. The bottom of the bed above me was less than an arm's reach away. I learned to "sleep small," I think, and even now in a queen-sized bed I don't wander far from my assigned place. My backpacking barely accommodates my length and girth, but it is a fine place to spend a night or two. A couple of years ago I lay in that tent during a loud and wonderful thunderstorm in the mountains of southern Yosemite, and I was quite warm and cozy.

In a less literal sense, however, my feeling of claustrophobia runs deep. I have known this for a very long time, but in the last few weeks I have come to know it better. My work life is, for the most part, devoid of stress, something I sincerely appreciate as I grow older. Many years ago, in a job that I truly hated, things were otherwise. The woman who was my boss was also the only person I can say that I truly hated. I have disliked people, but never hated. It is a waste of time and energy to hate people, isn't it? But, even as my current work life does not keep me awake at night or cause me much anxiety, it is still somewhat confining. Nobody, however, is to blame for that confinement. The situation is just what it is, and nothing more. Were I more energetic and more career-driven, I could probably shake my life up with great effect. I have also quite efficiently and systematically subdued any creative bent I might have once had.

The classroom I teach in two nights a week is stuffy and hot, truly confining in a physical sense. The class runs for two hours each night, and when I walk out the door to come home, I am exhausted. This probably means I am doing too much of the work, but that's a different story. One night not long ago I walked out of the classroom and out of the building after class, and the cold, fresh air on my skin and in my lungs was something I wanted to never go away. I felt as though I'd crawled out of my sleeping bag and into a morning breeze high in the mountains. Every night since, I have looked forward to those few minutes between the building and my car.

Yesterday I drove to the mountains and spent nearly three hours cross-country skiing. It was my first trip in about two years, and for at least an hour my skis and my feet were not working well together. Every stride seemed unnatural and uncomfortable for quite some time. Then, things changed: I was no longer thinking about what I was doing, I found myself relaxed, and I simply skied. And when the snow started, I stopped in a large, open meadow and relished the cold air.

It was good to be outside.

Nicki

For the last year or so I have dedicated many hours to learning how to play a couple of guitars: an electric Fender Stratocaster, and an acoustic Martin D-15. Each is a very nice instrument, though neither was expensive. And neither, when all is said and done, sounds especially good when I try to play.

In a college course on playwriting, we often discussed what makes a play "good." The answer is certainly subjective. One day we also discussed the question of what happens when writers finally realize that they are not especially good at their craft? At what point, exactly, should they give up and find a corporate job?

It happens. Or, maybe it should happen. I don't know.

In a more recent college course at a local junior college, a course in which we got to play our guitars and even learn some things, I met a woman who caught the short end of many sticks physically. Her teeth were bad, almost deformed somehow; she was large without trying to be. She had assorted ailments that required medication, and she once told me she suffered from some kind of learning difficulties that qualified her for disability. In the time I knew her, she broke one ankle and wrenched a knee. On several nights after class I helped her carry her assorted bags--she always had at least one bag plus a backpack--and guitars across campus as she limped to the light-rail station. She didn't have a car. She told me many things: problems with people she lived with, problems with her family, how she had to use a credit card to pay for her mother's funeral because nobody else would pay and was still trying to pay things off.  I often wonder why people--often people I barely know--share such things with me.

This woman...wait: her name is Nicki. Let's call her that. Nicki was majoring in music, and she knew the chords and the theory and the techniques quite well. She would try to help me figure things out, if I asked, which I thought was nice. She had plans of getting her B.A. in music, and then teaching. She loved jazz, and she knew the jazz chords. To get into the music program at the university she wanted to attend, she had to audition. The week before her audition, I wished her luck. Our class was at night, and her audition was during the same day. As we sat in the hallway before class started, waiting for the instructor to unlock the door, Nicki was on the phone. She didn't seem happy. When she hung up, I asked her how her days had gone. And, because I'd asked, she told me that she'd blown the audition, that she'd been told, basically, that maybe she could try again in a year or so. She was 35 at the time.

What do you say to someone whose singular dream is liquified in the span of a 20-minute audition? Nicki had worked and worked to get to that spot, and I didn't have anything especially wise to tell her. I considered her large body, the poor teeth, the unseen other ailments, and everything that must have burdened her as much as the bags and guitars she schlepped on buses and light-rail trains as she worked her way from her apartment and to 2 junior colleges. I wanted to tell her that things would work out, but that kind of advice has no value so close to a time when things did not work out.

Tonight, trying to work the Martin through what I'm sure is an easy 36-bar song, I thought of Nicki, wondered what she's up to. And I wonder if writers who never sell anything and musicians who never pass auditions every really give up. I know that when I write--when I really sit down and write something born from imagination and not something corporate--I am quite happy.  The characters' voices are always there, and we can have grand conversations. And, to a lesser extent, when I sit down with the Fender or the Martin, the IV chord is always there, just where it is supposed to be no matter the baggage I've carried throughout the day.

Two Views of Half Dome

Just photographs of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park.

The Day Before

Many years and much of a lifetime ago on this day, the day before Thanksgiving, I graduated from boot camp. A couple of weeks later I was off to Pensacola, Florida, for a few months of schooling. After that I went overseas and spent almost 3 years on a ship.

The night before I left for boot camp, I hit and killed a dog while driving my girlfriend and my best friend and his girlfriend back to my house. Later that same night, my girlfriend spent a couple of hours throwing up. I don't remember where we obtained the liquor that made her do that.

In Pusan, South Korea, my friend Kent and I found a bakery between wherever we'd been and our hotel. This was the day before we had to return to the ship and head back to Japan. Kent was from Indiana. He was older than I was, and he was a happy, if unstable drunk. I've never been especially stable sober, but that night he had to hold onto my arm as I led him back to the hotel. We'd bought a chocolate cake and 2 bottles of Pepsi in the bakery, but we didn't have forks or a bottle opener. So, we ate the cake with our dogtags, and used a notch in the showerhead to open the Pepsi. Then, a storm came in and we couldn't get back to the ship. We had to spend the next night at an Army base, sitting in plastic chairs in the cafeteria.

We often had a lot of free time in the Philippines. We had a lot of fun, too. I could tell your stories! Once, the day before I had to work, I got lost while making my way from Subic City and Olongapo. Olongapo was the town just outside the gates that separated the Navy from the natives. The country was under Marshall Law back then, and everyone had to be inside after midnight. Even after sunset the air was hot and humid. I remember thinking I was headed toward the main gate, that if I kept working my way through the crowd of people and jitneys, I'd easily get back to the base before curfew. I walked and walked. Finally, after what seemed to be far too long, I broke down and paid for a taxi. Thirty minutes and many miles later the driver dropped me off at the main gate. I showed the Marine my I.D. and got onto the base with minutes to spare. I learned then that sometimes a man has to break down a bit if things are going to be set right.

What Happened Here?

My father coughs and opens his eyes. “How do you want to remember me?” he asks. He has a tube in vein in his neck, a tube in his nose. These are just the tubes I can see. Others are hidden by the bed sheet. The last few strands of what he once called his Donny Osmond hair fall over his forehead, and I move them away from his eyes.

“How do I want to remember you?” 

“Yeah. Do you want to remember the jerk, or the days when I was a decent man?”

“Dad,” I say. But I can tell from his breathing that he has drifted off.

Later, at home, my wife Cindy asks how things went at the hospital. “He seemed to be comfortable,” I told her. She hugs me, and pressure of her hands on my back feels nice.

We sit down for supper, and Cindy hands me a plate. “Could he talk?”

“A little,” I tell her. I compare the hot roast beef on my plate to the sandwich I’d had at the hospital cafeteria that afternoon, when I’d left my father’s room when my father’s bed and dressings were being changed. “He asked me how I want to remember him.”

“I think that’s sweet,” Cindy says. 

“I didn’t know how to answer.” The kitchen and the food are warm.

“Did he want an answer?” Cindy passes the salt for my green beans.

“He fell asleep before I could say anything,” I tell her. “He was still sleeping when Phil showed up.” Phil is my older brother.

“How nice of him to visit,” Cindy says.

“He’s been pretty good, Cindy.”

“And he makes sure that everyone knows he’s going out of his way to go see his own father,” Cindy says.

“Well,” I say. Phil has never been reliable, but has been trying lately—trying to stay sober, trying to do what he can. My family story is that our men cannot hold their liquor. My father and I learned that early in life, but Phil seems to be more like our grandfathers and uncles, men who drank and didn’t care. They are legendary for how effectively and efficiently they abused anyone who crossed them. Phil and I got lucky in one way because by the time we got to junior high our father had gone sober. Some of our cousins, though, didn’t fare as well.

“When are you going back?” Cindy asks.

“Tomorrow, I think. After work. Phil told me that he’d go again in the morning.”

“You sure he’ll be there?”

“I have to be sure, don’t I? Don’t beat Phil up too much. He’s trying.” I know that Cindy never really liked Phil, and there are good reasons for that. Still, there were a lot of times when I could count on him when I couldn’t count on my father.

“So, what did you tell him?” Cindy asks.

“Phil?”

“Your father. How would you answer?”

“I don’t know,” I told her.

At work the morning Susan, my boss, calls me into her office. “How are you doing with all of this, with your father?”

“Pretty well. I’m headed back to the hospital after work.”

“You can leave early if you need to.”

Years earlier, when Susan was going through a divorce and Cindy and I were having a rough time, we’d gone to the brink of an affair. One day we were in her office, and we decided that we couldn’t go any further. We stepped back from that brink and felt good about it afterward. Susan had let her hair grow out since then, and now was letting it go gray as if challenging the aging process to take its best shot. I liked her confidence.

“Phil should be there now,” I tell her.

“Okay,” Susan says. “I just thought I’d check in with you. I know this is hard. How’s your wife?” Susan had never been able to say “Cindy,” even when their paths crossed.

“She’s fine,” I say. “Helping me get through this.”

Traffic is heavy on the way to the hospital after I leave work, and the fifteen-minute drive turns into thirty. I walk through the lobby and take the elevator to the third floor. I sign in at the counter and get a visitor’s badge. I don’t recognize the young man—maybe a nurse—behind the counter. Over the last few weeks I’ve grown accustomed to the same faces, mostly young women.

The man checks to see whom I’m visiting. “Oh,” he says, looking at me.

I can’t tell if he wants to say anything more, so I walk to my father’s room. Phil’s there, sitting in the vinyl chair that is set too close to the ground. Something’s different in the room.

“Stan,” Phil says, and he stands up and hugs me. He has always been taller.

When Phil lets go, I look at the bed. My father’s eyes are closed, but his mouth is opened slightly. The tubes are gone from his face. “Dad?” I say.

“It happened before I got here today,” Phil says. “Just a little while ago. I told the nurses you were on your way, so they said they’d be back in just a bit.”

“What happened, Phil? What happened here?” I edge by Phil and get closer to the bed so I can touch my father’s face. It is barely warm.

“Look, Stan…”

“Phil? What happened?”

“He did it himself. Pulled the tubes out right before I got here.”

What? Why didn’t somebody stop him?”

Phil points to the sign above the bed. “DNR. You knew about that. And the advance directive. Nobody was supposed to stop him.” Phil had inherited my father’s hair, and he used both hands to pull it away from his face.

I sit in one chair, and Phil sits in the other. I want to cry, but I can’t.

“He was always tough,” Phil says. “I couldn’t do that—take those tubes out of myself.” He sighs. “I wished he’d talked to me, you know? Every day I’ve been here for the past week, he hasn’t said a word.”

I can’t think of a thing to say to Phil. I slide back in the chair and stare at the bed and think about my father’s last question.

Phil sighs again. “He was tough when we were kids, too. Remember the time when we were kids, before junior high, when he chased us out of the house and told us never to come back? He was drunk and pissed.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” I say.

“What? How can you not remember that? It was winter, and we were running away. Dad had a baseball bat, or something, and Mom was yelling at him from the front door. We didn’t even have boots on, and my feet were freezing in the snow. You were bawling and wouldn’t stop.”

I look at my father’s body, at its diminished form. I look at Phil, at how unkempt his hair is. “I have to say that I don’t remember anything like that,” I tell him.

Phil looks at me and seems like he wants to ask me a question.

That Creative Feeling

Years ago some words would appear in my head, and quite often I'd imagine an entire short story: beginning, middle, and end. It was a great experience, and I'd do what I could to write everything down as soon as I could. It happened again yesterday--and it's been a long time. I was in my car listening to a couple of sportswriters reading essays on NPR, and as soon as one of the men stopped, I had an idea for a story I wanted to write. Fifteen minutes later, when I stopped my car and started to ride my bike, I had the entire story: beginning scene, middle events, characters, and final scene.

I wrote the story this morning in an hour. It's not great, maybe not good. It works around trite and over-used  plot and theme, but the first draft is done. As soon as I get it formatted for HTML, I'll put it here.

Thanks, Muse.

Notes from the Peaceful Side

I once worked with a man who often would stop by my cubicle to discuss things of a military nature. He had never actually been in the military, but he was well read on the machinery and implements of war. In several of our conversations I remarked that I am always amazed at how humans are so good at inventing ways to kill each other. He never responded or reacted to such comments.

Several of my high school classmates joined the military. One became a well-decorated marine, and another became a Navy SEAL. Both of them were--and probably still are--quite knowledgeable of how to kill people. Some people might consider these men warriors. I was in the military, too, but on the peaceful side of things. I never learned how to kill people, though I came to understand that the aircraft carrier I was on and the ships we traveled with carried enough weaponry to effectively destroy great swaths of land, large numbers of people.

I have watched the TV news and read newspapers for as long as I can remember. When we lived in Illinois, I watched Walter Kronkite, and I read the Chicago Daily News. I remember the TV news broadcasts during the Vietnam War, how the newscasters would each day announce the number of US military personnel killed in that war. When we moved to California, I probably watched different newscasters, and I read the Sacramento Bee (fairly liberal) and the Sacramento Union (very conservative). The Bee is still around, but the Union stopped publishing years ago.

I am not sure of why I went into the navy. I suppose I had nothing else to do after high school, and perhaps I'd forgotten the significance of how many people were killed in Vietnam. I had a great time while in the military, really; I got to travel a bit, to meet some good people, to develop a certain confidence when confronted by new situations that involved a certain amount of stress. Once, a photographer I knew on the ship had just returned from a helicopter ride from where he took a picture of our carrier group cruising smartly through a calm sea. He showed me the photo and said, "Makes you want to go kick some ass, doesn't it?" It did. Maybe that's how young men think.

During and for some time after the Vietnam War, people who were or had been in the military were often ridiculed. I think this was more of a reaction to the War itself and not to the people. Those men and women simply had the misfortune of being the most visible targets. Things are different now. The wars we have started and fought in the last couple of decades have, for a large portion of the population, been quite popular. So, we both literally and figuratively applaud "those who serve" in one remote region or another. Everyone in the military--the clerk and the sniper alike--is now a hero. We are encouraged to "Support the Troops,",to embrace those who "fight the enemy there so we don't have to fight them here." Some people call this "patriotism."

War, of course, has been profitable for a long time. Until relatively recently, much of California's economy flourished because of the defense industry that developed here after World War II. There is good money in new weaponry. My brother-in-law asserts that the defense industry and certain people in the government, and companies such as Haliburton, are actively finding ways to create more conflicts or at least to keep the current ones going, though I am less cynical. Or, perhaps I am still somewhat hopeful and optimistic.

I still watch the TV news, and I still read newspapers. I also read a lot of things on the Internet, and I listen to news on the radio while in my car. This means that I see and read and hear a lot about war, about various groups of people wanting to kill other groups for one reason or another. The drumbeats of war seem to be everywhere, part of our normal human existence. And I find this cacophony nearly overwhelming these days. I'm torn between staying informed about what's going on in the world and dropping into blissful ignorance.

I don't think that going into the military is necessarily a bad thing, and I don't believe that there are not times when military action is called for. But I also don't believe that going to war should be easy. As a nation, we are now considering killing people in Syria because, as some believe, the Syrian government killed some people there with chemical weapons, weapons that President Obama and others have labeled as weapons of mass destruction. Obama has made his case to Congress, which apparently has told the President that a limited use of military force is okay. The international community, however, has resisted, and I do not think this is a bad thing. The decision to kill people should be difficult, and it can be just as patriotic to say "no" as it is to say "yes."

When President George Bush and his administration wanted to beat up on Saddam Hussein in Iraq, more people should have said "no" or at least been more loud about asking "why." We went there, apparently, because Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed an immediate threat to the world at large. Hanz Blix, a UN weapons inspector, said there were no weapons of mass destruction there, but this apparently didn't matter. Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush's Secretary of Defense, was adamant that those WMDs were there, though. And photographs of Rumsfeld being chummy with Hussein during President Reagan's tenure are not evidence that the two men were actual friends, of course. This was at a time when Iraq and Iran were engaged in fisticuffs, when Hussein was apparently using chemical weapons in the conflict. The US did not like Iran then, just as later the US wouldn't like Iraq.

As I have gotten older, in many ways I have become less conservative and less afraid. I have also become more of a pacifist, more reluctant to support this or that military conflict. And this has not been an easy transformation, for I am not so ignorant to believe there are not truly evil people in the world, and that some of these people have no qualms about ending this or that life. Those who truly support a war should be first in line to fight it, to encourage their sons and daughters to fight. The 1960s band Country Joe and the Fish sang, "be the first one on the block to have your boy come home in a box." It's a great line. Then again, maybe we should all read or re-read Johnny Got His Gun and Slaughterhouse Five and To the White Sea. Throw the bible in there, too.

All in all, I remain somewhat hopeful that things will be resolved in a way that does not involve cruise missiles and blowing people up. How hopeful? Maybe 40 percent, though that number might edge downward in the near future.