Soft Targets

April 15, 2013 ~ thoughtsatlarge ~ Leave a comment

The events in Boston today are still raw, the embers are still burning, the wounds are still being dressed and the limbs are still being amputated.

When did living in America become a balancing act between freedom and paranoia? When did we decide that churches, schools, movie theaters, grocery store parking lots and marathons should no longer be considered integral parts of our daily life but “soft targets?”

Politicians on both sides of the aisle will call for prayers now. The gun lobby will ignore compassion and state that if only a “good guy with a gun had been there” blah blah blah, and nothing will change. We will wring our hands and shake our heads, call for justice and ignore the facts, demand vengeance and persecute the innocent in misplaced bloodlust, run to Wal-Mart to purchase our assault weapons and hunker down in our bunker waiting for the end of times.

And then our fickle little minds will forget and move on to the next crisis where we will wind up our public outrage for a new group of victims.

What happened to compassion and empathy? Are they so anathema to the personal success and safety in America that we are doomed to suffer for our arrogance? When did celebrity and instant gratification replace intelligence and hard work?

I am heartsick to learn that the final mile of the Boston Marathon was dedicated to the families of Newtown affected by the evil events at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. Sickened to learn that there may have been another device under the very VIP viewing section in which they were seated.

I refuse to live in a society where we gauge our potential activities by some weighted average based on their “soft target” quotient. I should not have to sit in a movie theater with an eye on the best route of egress, or view the pole obstructing my view as “cover”, or worry if I need to use the restroom whether my children will be attacked while I’m gone. I should not have to worry at a sporting event that I am in a large group and therefore a great target for mass casualties. I should not have to worry that when some student who did not prepare for an exam in college calls in a bomb threat and when my children congregate with a large group of students waiting for the “all clear” that they represent a soft target.

America used to be the land of the free, now we are the land of the paranoid, where 300 million guns exist to “protect” us from our own government and fertilizer is no longer used exclusively to feed the world, but to detonate and kill, where politicians disgorge vitriol and fabrications in order to make the evening news and Congress enjoys a 13% approval rating. We blame the President, Congress, the education system, parents, the environment, the weather, any other country and everyone else with certainty, but we never look in the mirror. The golden rule has been bastardized to be “Do unto others before they do unto you.” We harden ourselves and avoid soft targets. Can’t we do better? Don’t we want better? Shouldn’t we demand better? We continue to burn holes in the calendar. Am I whistling alone in the hurricane?

Texas George (or Administering Medicine to the Dead)

April 11, 2013 ~ thoughtsatlarge ~ Leave a comment

Speaker John Woods, whose girlfriend was murdered at the Virginia Tech massacre listens to John MacLean perform his incredibly moving tribute to the children of Sandy Hook Elementary called Six. Photo credit: Austin Dowling

To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture. Enjoy, sir, your insensibility of feeling and reflecting. It is the prerogative of animals. And no man will envy you these honors, in which a savage only can be your rival and a bear your master.

Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, March 21, 1778

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

Joseph Heller, Catch-22, Chapter 3, 1961

The gun “debate” in the United States pits two sides against one another which could not be more different had they hailed from different edges of the ever expanding universe. One side uses rationality, compassion and fact, believing that life is paramount and government’s supreme priority is the defense of its citizens. The other side uses paranoia, fear and hyperbole, gets exorcised at the words “tyranny,” “Obama,” and “confiscation,” and is armed to the teeth to defend themselves against the very republic which they claim to love. Logic would tell you that the fight is not fair. Logic would suggest that reason and compassion would reign over hysteria and fear. Logic would be wrong.

This country finds itself at a moral crossroad at a time when it also intersects with a political movement bent on a systemic abdication of empathy in favor of some financial utopia; an Ayn Randian egoism on steroids. Let us assume that the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party was formed with the intention of restoring the federal government’s financial ledger. Let’s also ignore that the ledger wasn’t upended in the first place by Republicans plunging us into two wars based on specious arguments and bloodlust following 9/11. Place into that caustic mixture a society where the internet has led to more granularization of beliefs and less debate and compassion, a youth with the responsibility memory of a fruit fly and the belief that there is a cosmic “reset” button on life, a proliferation of 300,000,000 guns with no oversight because of a lobbying group with rabid members who salivate at the concepts of “tyranny” or “confiscation” and cannot hide their racial/political hatred for our sitting president and would burn the country down to see him fail and you have a toxic environment where compassion and logic are trounced by hysteria and hyperbole.

Nowhere is this confluence of concepts more evident than in Texas, a state being torn from the safety of republican clutches and turning purple before our eyes. While the cities are democratic strongholds, the rural areas are staunchly red. Unfortunately for Republicans, the urbanization of the country, combined with the influx of citizens relocating from democratic northern states and the burgeoning immigrant population arriving from the south clash in a cultural maelstrom which will result in a blue Texas. Once that happens (and assuming California and New York remain blue), there is no mathematical formula that wins Republicans the White House. The only question is when Texas turns blue, not if.

In the gun debate the lines are equally color coded. Red states love their guns. Blue states don’t. Which leaves Texas in the unenviable position of being the stage from which we all get to watch Republicans pander to the NRA and their rabid, and predominantly white constituency, who ignore the impending tsunami in hopes of returning to the “glory” days of the wild west where guns were plenty and white men ruled the world. Everywhere there can be seen the angry clamoring for this return to Mitt Romney’s 1950’s America. “Secede” bumper stickers jockey for placement on pickup trucks already adorned with Browning logos, Keep Christ in Christmas clings, and that little imp peeing on the words “Gun Control” next to a picture of a cannon and the Greek words Molon Labe (Come and Take It).

Lawmakers, both on the local, state and national level from Texas enrobe themselves in the American flag in order to conceal the Texas flag they truly wear, as if one is not part of the other. They are increasingly suspicious of the United States Constitution and make legislative overtures ignorant of the Supremacy Clause in feel-good measures enabled to allow Texas to enjoy the fruits of the US Constitution a la carte while simultaneously ignoring the burden borne equally by the 50 states to uphold the union.

Beyond the Ted Nugent’s and Alex Jonses’ of the Loon Star State, it is also home to other less colorful, but potentially more damaging (and entertaining, were it not people’s lives hanging in the balance) due to their lawmaking potential. These include:

Governor Rick Perry whose solution to gun violence following the sickening murder of 20 first graders in Newtown Connecticut was to pray and who is wooing gun manufacturers to relocate to good-ole-boy Texas.
Attorney General Greg Abbott who has advertised in New York newspapers for New Yorkers upset at the impending sensible gun legislation to relocate to good-ole-boy Texas where EVERYBODY has at least one gun and “gun control is when you use both hands.”
US Rep Steve Stockman who invited twisted has-been rocker Ted Nugent to the State of the Union speech in violation of all common decency and decorum in front of the families of Newtown in attendance, and who is also pursuing the “persecuted” gun manufacturers to relocate to good-ole-boy Texas. As a member of the House, he has pledged to prevent any gun legislation from being voted on. A true patriot.
State Rep. Steve Toth, (a minister) and Tea Party sycophant who in the weeks following Newtown held a “Gun Appreciation Day” on the steps of the state capital in Austin and has introduced his version of cafeteria style US Constitution adherence legislation called the “Firearm Protection Act” prohibiting local law enforcement from implementing federal gun laws. He appreciates guns and protects firearms. Did I mention he’s a minister? To bastardize the murdered John Lennon’s quip “Guns are bigger than Jesus.” Welcome to the Church of Glock. This is also the same “representative of the people” who cancelled his appearance on a local PBS television show when he found out he had to debate me, a “far left wing radical!” You see, he wants to represent the people, just not talk with them.
US Senator Ted Cruz, another Tea Party twit who joined Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee (and 11 other senators) in a ridiculous filibuster designed to prevent any gun legislation from being voted on by the senate. He claims he will do whatever is necessary to defend the Second Amendment, which is Tin Foil Hat language for “I’m going to do everything I can to prevent the “libtards” from starting down the path toward registration and confiscation.” Again, they defend the gun and every nutjob’s right to them with callous disregard to the carnage caused by these “good, honest, law abiding Americans.”

Here is a breakdown of the campaign funding various Texas legislators have received from the NRA since 1990:

Legislator	District	Party	Amount	NRA Grade
Ted Cruz	Junior	Republican	$ 9,900	A+
John Cornyn	Senior	Republican	$ 17,850	A
Louie Gohmert	1	Republican	$ 11,450	A
Ted Poe	2	Republican	$ 9,500	A+
Sam Johnson	3	Republican	$ 23,450	A
Ralph Hall	4	Republican	$ 25,450	A
Jeb Hensarling	5	Republican	$ 20,900	A
Joe Barton	6	Republican	$ 47,948	A
John Culberson	7	Republican	$ 22,550	A
Kevin Brady	8	Republican	$ 17,500	A
Al Green	9	Democrat	$ –	F
Michael McCaul	10	Republican	$ 19,500	A
K. Michael Conaway	11	Republican	$ 11,000	A
Kay Granger	12	Republican	$ 13,950	A
Mac Thornberry	13	Republican	$ 27,450	A
Randy Weber	14	Republican	$ –	A
Ruben Hinojosa	15	Democrat	$ –	D
Beto O’Rourke	16	Democrat	$ –	N/A
Bill Flores	17	Republican	$ 7,000	A
Sheila Jackson Lee	18	Democrat	$ –	F
Randy Neugebauer	19	Republican	$ 16,950	A
Joaquin Castro	20	Democrat	$ –	C
Lamar Smith	21	Republican	$ 30,750	A+
Pete Olson	22	Republican	$ 12,450	A
Pete Gallego	23	Democrat	$ 1,000	A-
Kenny Marchant	24	Republican	$ 10,750	A
Roger Williams	25	Republican	$ 2,000	AQ
Michael Burgess	26	Republican	$ 13,150	A
Blake Farenthold	27	Republican	$ 4,500	A
Henry Cuellar	28	Democrat	$ 18,350	A-
Gene Green	29	Democrat	$ 12,950	A-
Eddie Johnson	30	Democrat	$ –	F
John Carter	31	Republican	$ 22,450	A+
Pete Sessions	32	Republican	$ 64,000	A+
Marc Veasey	33	Democrat	$ –	B
Filemon Vela	34	Democrat	$ 1,000	AQ
Lloyd Doggett	35	Democrat	$ –	F
Steve Stockman	36	Republican	$ 1,000	A

The total here is almost $500,000, and this counts only the contributions made to those currently holding office. It does not count the amounts contributed to unsuccessful candidates or those who previously held office. It does make me wonder why the NRA would spend so much money in a state so gun hungry as Texas.

Former Virginia Tech student and EMT Kathy Staats who responded to the shooting there on April 16, 2007. Photo credit: Austin Dowling

Which brings me to Texas George. You see, there was a Gun Sense rally sponsored by Moms Demand Action at the Texas capital in Austin last weekend. Hundreds of people attended to listen to the reasoned and compassionate speeches of victims, family member, first responders and legislators. While one young woman, a volunteer EMT at Virginia Tech who responded to the mass shooting on the morning of April 16, 2007, relayed to us her attempts to secure an oxygen mask to a student whose jaw had been blown off by a bullet and who later died, a local genius who called himself Texas George walked up to the front of the crowd holding a sign with the nonsensical message “Stop Gun Ban.” As other people in the crowd tried to get in front of him to block his asinine, attention seeking stunt, I noticed the sickest part of this display. While he held the nonsensical sign in his right hand, he held the hand of his no more than 6 year old grandson in his left. Two thoughts rang through my head. First, how insensitive and callous to bring your grandson to such an event where his grandfather was being berated and shouted down (by me in addition to others), but that his grandson was roughly the same age as the 20 children blown apart in Newtown, Connecticut. And while that juxtaposition played around inside my head, the most poignant image of that day would have to wait for me to see it the following day.

The image below shows my child standing behind a woman holding a sign denouncing the murder of 8 children a day in America. My initial (and eternal) pride in seeing my son stand up for something he believes in and which saves lives gave way to the sick feeling that slammed into my stomach when I linked the message about children to the sight of my child. Something I will never forget and something Texas George, Ted Cruz, Steve Stockman, Steve Toth, Rick Perry, Greg Abbott and any other defender of our “God given” right to blow away any of His creatures will never understand. Joseph Heller’s protagonist would question everybody’s sanity in this drama. Logical discourse with these people is like administering medicine to the victims of Newtown.

My son, Cameron (left) and his friend Austin listen to speeches while a woman holds a poignant sign.

In Praise of a Dog

October 26, 2012 ~ thoughtsatlarge ~ Leave a comment

The soul, that ephemeral wellspring of morality and ledger upon which eternal judgment is based, or so it is believed in Christianity, is, according to the Bible, a wholly human characteristic. “Dominion over the animals is the right of man.” Might we not take this with a grain of salt if we step back and acknowledge that we read this from a text written by, whom else, humans? What else would we write? And it is not limited to Christianity. Islam believes dogs to be unclean, and few Sunni or Shi’a own dogs, but are taught in the Quran to treat dogs well. Hindus believe that dogs guard the gates to both Heaven and Hell, not unlike Cerberus, the three headed dog employed by Hades to guard the underworld in Greek mythology. But do dogs have souls?

Theologians argue that animals have no souls and therefore are not candidates for the eternal paradise of Heaven. However, this is not a universally accepted position. Abraham Lincoln said, “I care not for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.” Not surprisingly, Will Rogers said it more plainly, “If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” Lord Byron in his poem Epitaph to a Dog, written in 1808 as a eulogy to his Newfoundland dog Boatswain writes, in part:

But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend,

The first to welcome, foremost to defend,

Whose honest heart is still his master’s own,

Who labors, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,

Unhonored falls, unnoticed all his worth,

Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth –

While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,

And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven

James Thurber said, “If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.” I would go a step further and suggest that, if Heaven exists and is the paradise promised by the prophets, perhaps man’s care of pets constitutes one of the thresholds for admission. Perhaps we meet Saint Rocco and our pets at the gates of Heaven, not Saint Peter, our pets providing an incontrovertible assessment of our character. If this is true, then all dogs do indeed go to Heaven, patiently awaiting our arrival, ball in mouth, ready to play.

“A dog is a man’s best friend.” We have all heard this phrase, but as is the case with so many other colloquialisms, we retrieve it from the card catalog of quips we hold in our heads whenever we deem it appropriate, but few of us know its origin. In fact, the phrase comes from a trial in Warrensburg, Missouri that took place in 1870. George Graham Vest, a lawyer and future senator for the United States (as well as in the Confederate States) represented a man whom had sued his neighbor for shooting his dog, Old Drum. The statutory limitation on damages was limited to $50. In his closing argument, Vest said:

Gentlemen of the jury: The best friend a man has in this world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name, may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it the most. A man’s reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him and the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog.

Gentlemen of the jury: A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.

If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when the last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death.

Not only did Vest win the case, his client was awarded an unheard of $500! Why is man “blessed” with the promise of eternal salvation, even on his death bed following a lifetime of moral depravity, if he opens his heart to God? Why do we posit an omnipotent overlord capable of superhuman forgiveness of evil, crime and sin while at the same time turning His back on the dog? Is it because humans have the gift of verbal expression and emotion? I would offer as a counterargument that my dog, with his expressive eyes, ears and tail combines these three attributes into more expressions than the English language has words to express emotion. “Man himself cannot express love and humility by external signs, so plainly as does a dog, when with drooping ears, hanging lips, flexuous body, and wagging tail, he meets his beloved master,” wrote Charles Darwin.

Is it because man reasons, where dogs do not? Consider this quote from Stanley Coren, “The greatest fear dogs know is the fear that you will not come back when you go out the door without them.” Or consider this passage from Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings:

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal… In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh–not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.

I offer these thoughts as I sit in the waiting room craning my neck in hopes of seeing my dog’s surgeon approach. I take umbrage with the term dog “owner.” I do not “own” my dog as much as share a portion of our short lives together. My small dog, the youngest member of what must seem to him like a Brobdingnagian family, is worthy of every consideration I would offer to my children. Having survived cancer in his neck earlier this year and emergency eye surgery three years ago, this is the second surgery he has had on his back legs. He tore the cranial cruciate ligament in his left leg in 2009 and tore the same ligament in the other leg this past week. In spite of this, he, our little bionic dog, never complains and seeks only to love us and have us play with him. Mordecai Siegal summed it up well when he said, “Acquiring a dog may be the only opportunity a human ever has to choose a relative.” My position may differ slightly in that I consider it more likely that our dog chose us. And how fortunate we are to have in our lives this gentle soul.

Ramblings and Rants

October 10, 2012October 10, 2012 ~ thoughtsatlarge ~ Leave a comment

Just some ramblings and rants today!

The FY2011 budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is $430 million. The CPB funds both the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR). The Department of Defense budget for FY2011 is $678 billion. I did some quick math and found that killing the CPB budget would run the Defense Department for 5 minutes and 33 seconds. Conversely, cutting the Defense Budget for one year would ensure Big Bird stays on the air for another 1,577 years, or until the year 3589. Now, I don’t know that given the embarrassment of channels available on cable TV, we need to fund a public station, but I do know that I have connected with many of their offerings over the years, including

This Old House
Victory Garden
Sesame Street
The Electric Company
ZOOM
Mister Roger’s Neighborhood
NOVA
The New Yankee Workshop
PBS Newshour
Live from Lincoln Center
Masterpiece
Frontline
Julia Child
Scientific American Frontiers
Ken Burns documentaries
Downton Abbey

Did you know that only 15.5% of the PBS budget is funded by the CPB. The rest is made up of federal grants and contracts (3.3%), state and local taxes (21.8%) and donations from “viewers like you” (59.4%). The United States spends as much as the next 14 highest spending countries on its military, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Don’t believe me? Here’s the chart:

It seems that we won the Cold War and our reward was to outspend the rest of the world for a military that can be outfoxed with a 737 and an IED. Al Qaeda would be so much easier to defeat if they had a flag and a specific colored patch on my globe to target. Unfortunately, they don’t and yet we have “reluctantly” proclaimed ourselves “the world’s policeman,” mainly because the UN is terminally impotent. We don’t declare war anymore and politicians trip over themselves to declare peace, but a peace devoid of meaning. We preach democracy and capitalism and ignore the fact that ours is being defeated by the very marketplace mechanism we tout as China buys up our debt. Our citizens deny personal responsibility in favor of societal blame, seek government handouts while condemning a bloated system and idolize celebrities while condemning a foe stuck in the Dark Ages. What happened to the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason? The Greatest Generation shouldn’t be treasured because they defeated Hitler. They shouldn’t be treasured because they brought us into the technological wonder that is modern day living. They should be treasured because they got up every day, went to the office, or climbed up and down a ladder painting someone’s house, or focused on being a good parent, or because they paid their taxes and asked for nothing in return but safe roads and bridges. They should be treasured because they embraced the opportunity to grind out a living. Today we observe, critique and obfuscate. We avoid tough decisions and manufacture drama. Neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama claims to have an answer to this problem. Why should we look to Washington to solve this problem? Maybe, just maybe, we need to become responsible for ourselves instead of trying to fix the rest of the world’s problems. Maybe, just maybe, we should bust our ass a little more and kiss it a little less.Put another way, the US spends five times the amount annually on its military as China, 10 times as much as Russia, 43 times as much as Israel and 113 times as much as Pakistan. And yet, we plan to build 10 new aircraft carriers to replace our existing fleet, at a cost of $10 billion a piece. Last year, Congress authorized $181 million to build another 70 M1A2 Abrams tanks, despite the fact that the Army doesn’t want them. They already have 2,000 of these sitting in the California desert collecting dust because they don’t need these either!

I’m Still Someplace

October 3, 2012 ~ thoughtsatlarge ~ Leave a comment

I had to steal this from Letters of Note, Correspondence deserving of a wider audience, located at http://www.lettersofnote.com. As they describe themselves, “Letters of Note is an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos. Scans/photos where possible. Fakes will be sneered at. Updated as often as possible; usually each weekday.” It is a great site. I signed up for their daily email. You can too at:

http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=LettersOfNote&loc=en_US.

So, here, today is their offering, blatantly stolen, but graciously sourced:

In his wonderful book, Chuck Reducks, the late-Chuck Jones — a true legend in the world of animation who, amongst countless other achievements, created characters such as Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, and also directed what is widely considered to be one of the best cartoons ever made: What’s Opera, Doc? — credits his beloved “Uncle Lynn” with teaching him “everything [he] would need to know about animated cartoon writing” during his early years, going on to paint him as a hugely positive influence in his life in general and an “ideal uncle” whom he “worshipped.”

Uncle Lynn also knew how to write a beautiful letter. One day, soon after the sad death of Teddy, the Jones’s dear family dog, Uncle Lynn sent the following to young Chuck and his siblings.

Dear Peggy and Dorothy and Chuck and Dick,

I had a telephone call last night. “Is this Uncle Lynn?” someone asked.

“Why yes,” I said. “My name is Lynn Martin. Are you some unregistered nephew?”

“This is Teddy.” He sounded a little impatient with me. “Teddy Jones, Teddy Jones the resident dog of 115 Wadsworth Avenue, Ocean Park, California. I’m calling long distance.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “I really don’t mean to offend you, but I’ve never heard you talk before—just bark, or whine, or yell at the moon.”

“Look who’s talking,” Teddy sniffed, a really impatient sniff if ever I’ve heard one. “Look, Peggy and Dorothy and Chuck and Dick seem to be having a very rough time of it because they think I’m dead.” Hesitate. “Well, I suppose in a way I am.”

I will admit that hearing a dog admit that he was dead was a new experience for me, and not a totally expected one. “If you’re dead,” I asked, not being sure of just how you talk to a dead dog, “how come you’re calling me?” There was another irritated pause. Clearly he was getting very impatient with me.

“Because,” he said, in as carefully a controlled voice as I’ve ever heard from a dog. “Because when you are alive, even if the kids don’t know exactly where you are, they know you’re someplace. So I just want them to know I may be sort of dead, but I’m still someplace.”

“Maybe I should tell them you’re in Dog Heaven, Teddy, Maybe to make ’em feel—”

“Oh, don’t be silly.” Teddy cleared his throat. “Look, where are you?”

“Oh, no, you don’t. We’re trying to find out where you are,” I barked.

“Hey, I didn’t know you could bark.” He sounded impressed with my command of the language.

“Wait just a minute,” I said. “You had to know where I am, or you couldn’t have called me on the telephone, right?”

“Boy, you know so little,” said Teddy. “I simply said I called you long distance. Who said anything about a telephone? They asked me if I knew where you were, and I said you were someplace else, besides 115 Wadsworth Avenue. So they dialled someplace else and here I am and here you are.”

“Can I call you back?” I asked dazedly. “Maybe that’ll give me a clue.”

“Be reasonable,” said Teddy. “How can you call me back when neither you nor I know where I am?”

“Oh, come on, give me a clue,” I begged desperately. “For instance, are there other dogs around there? I’ve got to tell the kids something.”

“Hold it,” said Teddy, apparently looking around. “I did see a pug/schnauzer with wings a minute ago. The wings could lift the schnauzer part of him off the ground, but the pug part just sort of dragged through the grass bumping into fireplugs.”

“Fireplugs?”

“Orchards of them, hundreds of ’em. Yellow, red, white, striped. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have to pee anymore. I strain a lot, but all I get is air. Perfumed air,” he added proudly.

“Sounds like Dog Heaven to me,” I said. “Are there trees full of lamb chops and stuff like that?”

“You know,” Teddy sighed. “For a fair to upper-middle-class uncle, you do have some weird ideas. But the reason I called you was Peggy, Dorothy, Chuck, and Dick trust you and will believe anything you say, which in my opinion is carrying the word ‘gullible’ about as far as it will stretch. Anyway, gullible or not, they trust you, so I want you to tell them that I’m still their faithful, noble, old dog, and—except for the noble part—that I’m in a place where they can’t see me but I can see them, and I’ll always be around keeping an eye, an ear, and a nose on them. Tell them that just because they can’t see me doesn’t mean I’m not there. Point out to them that during the day you can’t see the latitudes and you can’t really see a star, but they’re both still there. So get a little poetic and ask them to think of me as ‘good-dog,’ the good old Teddy, the Dog Star from the horse latitudes, and not to worry, I’ll bark the britches off anybody or anything that bothers them. Just because I bit the dust doesn’t mean I can’t bite the devils.”

That’s what he said. I never did find out exactly where he was, but I did find out where he wasn’t—not ever very far from Peggy, Dorothy, Chuck and old Dick Jones.

Sincerely,

Lynn Martin, Uncle at Large

An Alien Impression

October 1, 2012October 1, 2012 ~ thoughtsatlarge ~ Leave a comment

It’s hard to step back, to see things in a different way, to extract one’s self from the myopic view of daily life. But imagine if you can, a visitor from another world peeking in on our pale blue dot for the first time. What would it see? What would its first impressions of us be?

It would see Earth’s dominant creature huddled on a land composing only one third of our planet’s surface. Two thirds of our planet, covered in water, the life nurturing element we seek on all other space rocks, avoided here at home. We want to live near it, but cannot live in it. It would see our frail, little bodies carried around in individual metal conveyances. Cars, everywhere cars! 2010 saw the earth surpass the 1 billion automobile mark for the first time. Nikolaus Otto created a stationary four-cycle internal combustion engine in 1876. Karl Benz, at the urging of his wife Bertha, registered patent (DRP 37435) on January 29, 1886 for a three wheel, four-cycle motor car. Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach used a mobile version of Otto’s engine on a stagecoach in 1886. Everything since, every innovation, advancement and safety feature, is built on this transformational, but dated, internal combustion engine. Choking on self-inflicted pollution and limited in access by the venous network of roads across our planet, our visitor might wonder at our lack of imagination. Our visitor would see the tricked-out pickup truck next to us scream down the highway at 80 miles an hour, cutting across four lanes of highway, oblivious to the welfare of his fellow travelers. From above, this looks callous and entitled, and yet almost stationary! Even our air travel looks lethargic. Metal tubes with protruding wings shepherded by specially trained operators, herding people like cattle across states, countries, oceans and continents, flying at a mere 350 mph (or 0.000052% the speed of light) and limited in their decent to specialized patches of cement bedazzled with various colored lights, from which more tendrils of road emerge.

And speaking of light, it would see that we still use the incandescent light bulb! Thomas Edison’s first commercially practical light bulb was created in 1879. We still use this as our primary source of artificial light, in spite of the fact that 95% of the energy created is wasted as heat, while only 5% is converted to visible light. If our visitor could travel the world at night and take a panoramic picture, this is what it would see:

It would also notice that we cannot speak to one another! At last count, there were at least 6,700 active languages in the world. According to Ethnologue, here are the top twenty (in terms of the number of speakers):

Language	Speakers
Chinese	1,213,000,000
Spanish	329,000,000
English	328,000,000
Arabic	221,000,000
Hindi	182,000,000
Bengali	181,000,000
Portuguese	178,000,000
Russian	144,000,000
Japanese	122,000,000
German	90,300,000
Javanese	84,600,000
Lahnda	78,300,000
Telugu	69,800,000
Vietnamese	68,600,000
Marathi	68,100,000
French	67,800,000
Korean	66,300,000
Tamil	65,700,000
Italian	61,700,000
Urdu	60,600,000

You may notice that this accounts for only 3,679,800,000 of the 6,973,738,433 inhabitants of our planet, or 52.8% of the earth’s population. You might also be interested to know that the United Nations, the “international organization founded in 1945 after the Second World War by 51 countries (but now composing 191 countries) committed to maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights,” has only six official languages: Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), English, French, Russian and Spanish (representing only 33% of the world’s population).

Another look by our visitor would see that we have invented incredible methods of murdering one another. We kill each other at an amazing rate and over reasons quite unfathomable to our guest. And it is always 20/20 hindsight for these “inventors of death.” Robert Oppenheimer, “Father of the Atomic Bomb” quoted the Bhagavad Gita saying,

Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

Albert Einstein said,

I made one great mistake in my life—when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification—the danger that the Germans would make them.

Mikhail Kalashnikov, creator of the AK-47 said,

I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work — for example a lawn mower.

Even Alfred Nobel, the man whose name is synonymous with peace, but who also invented dynamite, considered his invention for the mining industry to ultimately be a peacemaker.

My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace.

Should our visitor land on our soil (without being shot out of the sky), breathe our specific atmosphere (without inhaling instantaneous toxic death) and speak to us (in flawless English the caricatured words of science fiction movies from the 1950’s, “Take me to your leader”) who amongst us can speak for all of us? Who can stand and represent us to the galaxy? The answer, I think, is not the President of the United States, the Secretary General of the United Nations or the Pope, it is our children. Unburdened by the fractious effects of race, religion or sex, they retain their wonder, their imagination and, most importantly, hope. Science and mathematics may be the galactic language, but every child, with the flame of hope burning brightly within, is our best envoy.

So the next time you’re stuck in traffic at night and pass a billboard written in a foreign language for “Bulk Ammo and Silencers”, think of our imaginary visitor and wonder, can’t we do better?

A Bug’s Life

September 28, 2012September 28, 2012 ~ thoughtsatlarge ~ 2 Comments

I saw a bug yesterday, a beetle actually. It was in the parking garage attached to my building at work. It was black and shiny, almost iridescent, about an inch long. It lay on its back, legs flailing helplessly, trying to right itself. I flashed my badge at the sensor on the door and walked by, my morning coffee in one hand, my lunch bag and computer bag in the other. It was 7:15 AM. At 5:30 PM, pleased with the day’s accomplishments and eager to get home, dreading the hour commute, but looking forward to seeing my wife and dog, I left the building and walked to the garage. There, in the same spot I had seen it earlier in the day; lay the beetle, now motionless. It was dead. Why had I not helped it? Why did I feel guilty? It was only a bug. I had stepped on, swatted at or killed hundreds of bugs in my lifetime. Why did I feel guilty? As I walked into work this morning, I looked for the beetle, half hoping not to see it. Why does it still bother me?