Anyone visiting the site will have noticed a lack of recent postings. I have been working on a novel, which I have finished. There are several other writing projects I am anxious to undertake.
I found that maintaining two separate blogs--Planet Restart and Every Man A Giant--was impossible to do along with my other writing projects. So, I have consolidated them into a single new blog, The Windroot Press. Every Man A Giant will remain online for those who wish to read older posts. I invite interested readers to visit the new blog or my home page.
MAY 1, 2010
SATURDAY MORNING SPECIAL
APRIL 24, 2010
THE QUESTION OF THE DAY
If you could bring one person back to life from the dead, who would it be?
1...2...3...Stop!
The second you read that you thought of someone. I know I did. After a bit more thought I began to make cateogries. Loved ones I would like to see again. Historical figures I would like to chat with, maybe ask them how we've done or what they would have done differently. The person I would NEVER want to see come back from the dead.
But the interesting choice, the one that says the most about the person you see looking back at you in the mirror each morning was that first reaction. Why that person? That's the real question of the day.
APRIL 20, 2010
PLAYING WITH FIRE
T he Tea Party know-nothing wingnuts are for the most part well-intentioned people who think that getting mad is actually doing something constructive. That would be laughably pathetic were they not so committed to their anger. What they don't get is that there are people out there both on the far right AND the far left who feed off that anger.
I say left as well as right. When you put a fire under a pot full of water, the whole pot comes to a boil not just the right or the left side. And when some one individual reaches the boiling point and decides to turn the rhetoric into actions, then we got us a situation.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think most people secretly assume it will be some right-wing nut job who goes ballistic. Sarah Palin certainly acts as if she believes that. Why else would she be so loose with her tongue, coyly using the coded language of the gun culture to get her point across and then saying "Oh well, gosh darn it, I didn't mean THAT."
Well, Sarah, maybe you ought to think twice. And on that second thought you might want to consider that you could just as easily be a target as anyone else. If you don't believe me, just think about Jerry Ford and Ronald Reagan.
Let me be clear. I am against any sort of political violence. I have seen that movie and trust me, I don't want to see it again and neither do you. I know exactly where I was the day Kennedy was shot. Nobody should want that kind of memory to share with their children.
But there are those out there who work themselves up into such a state of desperation that they believe violent change is the only way out. What you don't want to be is the person or political party that lit the fuse. At that point, the tea party is over.
APRIL 12, 2010
WANDERING SOULS
"On March 19, 1969, First Lieutenant Homer Steedly, Jr. turned a bend in a trail in the Pleiku Province and came face to face with a North Vietnamese soldier, his weapon slung over his shoulder. The two stared at each other for an instant: a split-second later, Homer's bullets smashed into the chest of a young medic named Hoang Ngoc Dam."
S o begins the jacket description of Wandering Souls: Journeys With the Dead and the Living In Vietnam written by Wayne Karlin and published by NationBooks. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in understanding war and the soldiers who fight them. The writing is poignant and at times so painful that I had to put the book down and pause to let the emotions settle. If you have any interest in the Vietnam War and have yet to read much of anything this is the place to start.
As someone who was there, I can tell you that everything rings true. The story centers around some captured enemy documents that Lt. Steedly sets out 30 years later to return to the family of the soldier he encountered and killed in the jungle. I remember the day that I saw a similar notebook taken from the body of an enemy soldier. I was overwhelmed by the understanding that this was a guy just like me, a guy who had a family and a girl friend, who saved letters from his mother and had pictures of loved ones.
As soldiers, we sometimes became so numb that we lost sight of our own humanity, never mind that of the enemy's. As civilians sending our sons and daughter, husbands and wives off to war, we sometimes became so taken up with the cause that we were too willing to overlook the effects.
Wandering Souls won't let you do that. Instead, it allows you to see the war from both sides of the lines. For the first time I understood the disillusionment that gripped Vietnamese society as the immense personal cost of the war could finally be stacked up against the slow to be realized benefits of victory.
To me this book does for Vietnam what Paul Fussel's book The Boys' Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944-1945 did for World War II. It strips away the myth of war and forces the reader to grapple directly with the cruelty of war and the lingering impacts that every war has on soldiers and civilians alike.
APRIL 8, 2010
SPRING FEVER
C ows belch and fart. When they do they add methane to the atmosphere. Given that there are 1.5 billion cows and billions of other grazing animals, we are talking lots of methane. As it turns out, methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide when it comes to global warming.
Now for some good news. Scientists have discovered that cows grazing on grass reduce the amount of nitrous oxide – another greenhouse gas – that is released into the atmosphere by the action of soil microbes. Longer grass keeps the microbes toasty warm so they can produce nitrous oxide. When the grass is eaten by grazing animals, the ground freezes, along with the microbes. No microbes, no nitrous oxide.
Personally, I think there is an even bigger story here. Nitrous oxide is the scientific name for laughing gas, the stuff dentists use to make you comfortably numb. I don’t know about you, but I had no idea that my grass was harboring microbes that pumped out nitrous oxide.
And guess when these little microbes are most active. In spring, when the grass is coming back after winter. So maybe we have a clue about spring fever. The very air we breathe contains the highest concentration of laughing gas during spring. Small wonder we feel better.
For me, that is one small belch for a cow, one giant smiley-face for mankind.
APRIL 1, 2010
SOMETHING WORTH DOING
I wish I could say this was an April Fool's joke, but it isn't. A federal appeals court has ordered Matthew Snyder's father to pay court costs to Fred Phelps and his wingnut followers at Westboro Baptist Church after it overturned a verdict awarding him $11 million in damages because Mr. Snyder showed up at his son's funeral to celebrate his death as part of some cruel and bizarre campaign being waged by Mr. Snyder's church against gays in the military. If you want to help with costs, here is the web site:
MARCH 31, 2010
THE SOUTH HADLEY TRAGEDY
I s there anyone whose heart does not go out to poor Phoebe Prince, who chose to commit suicide rather than face another day of relentless bullying by a group of fellow students who were mad at her for dating some guy for a few weeks?
Is there anyone who can explain how a girl is bullied over a period of months and everyone knows about it and just stands by and lets it happen?
Is there anyone out there who does not want to see these little bastards get every inch of punishment the law can mete out (and don't give me any shit about juvenile justice)?
Is there anyone out there who doesn't think that every school administrator who knew about this and failed to act shouldn't be canned on the spot?
Is there anyone out there who doesn’t want to give a big "Right On" to the DA who is going after this with everything she has?
Is there anyone out there who knows of a situation like this going on RIGHT NOW and who doesn't feel like he or she should do everything in their power to stop it RIGHT NOW.
MARCH 28, 2010
WORTH REPEATING
The Next GOP Screw-Up by James Carroll
"It’s one thing for Republicans to try to wreck the domestic centerpiece of American health-care reform, but what about the once-sacrosanct tradition of bipartisan foreign policy? President Obama and Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev are putting the final touches on the U.S.-Russia arms-control treaty that will be signed in Prague early next month. This agreed resumption of the reduction of nuclear arms, which stalled badly more than a decade ago, may be the most urgent item on the world’s agenda. It’s the precondition for halting an explosion of nuclear proliferation and heading off a new arms race—one that includes China in the competition.
But all of this presumes the ratification of the U.S.-Russia treaty by the U.S. Senate. Fully two-thirds must vote yes. Democrat John Kerry and Republican Richard Lugar, respective leaders of the Foreign Relations Committee, assured President Obama that the treaty would be put before the Senate by year’s end, but how does that square with John McCain’s post-health care vow that from Republicans 'there will be no cooperation for the rest of the year?' Will nay-saying Republicans scuttle the treaty, regardless of its merits, its historic necessity—and its tie to Ronald Reagan’s greatest legacy?"
MARCH 27, 2010
SATURDAY MORNING SPECIAL
MARCH 27, 2010
THE GRAY LADY
F or the last couple of years I have seen this homeless woman on a regular basis. Rain or shine, hot or cold, I see her walking around carrying all her possessions in two or three paper bags with handles.
She looks to be in her forties, but there is an Asian cast to her features that may disguise her age. She is short with gray hair. Her person is well maintained. She doesn’t smell and her clothes always seem clean.
I have never attempted to communicate with her. The times that I have walked past her and gotten close enough to say "Hello," I have encountered a "nobody in here" look in her eyes that discourages communication.
The frequency with which she appears at random moments in my life troubles me. Is there a message here? Am I missing something? Twenty years ago I would have acted on my curiosity and engaged her, somehow. Now . . . I am hesitant. Whether this is a sign of the wisdom that supposedly comes with age or the timidity that I know for sure comes with age, I can't be sure.
Lately, whenever I see her I think of the song "One of Us" by Joan Osborne. The reprise goes "What if God was one of us . . . just a strange on the bus?" Tell you what, if that song contains any truth and God is one of us, I know who it will be.
