Michael J. Roueche's Blog, page 13

All of Shakespeare Before the 450th: “What’s Mine is Yours….”

I finished Measure for Measure, the fifth play read and the first so far that I don’t remember having previously seen or read, although it did seem oddly familiar, and I do have a bad memory. But before I get into the play, Shakespeare-Online features an article, How to Study Shakespeare: Five Steps to Success Reading a Shakespeare Play, which I thought offered good suggestions for tackling the Bard for the first time. One of its suggestions—using an annotated version—would really help with archaic language and culture. I’ve been stuck using the poor-quality 1975 Gramercy version without annotations, but I admit I’m now cheating and reading much of it on a Kindle with it’s pop-up Oxford dictionary and there’s always the internet for the details. (The other suggestions are “read a good synopsis”; read play once; see performance–they recommended the BBC versions that are often available at libraries; read play again.)

Now to the play. I liked it—I think I liked it a lot. It’s a he said, she said story with a twist about hypocrisy among the rulers/government (not a theme, of course, that we have to worry about in the “post-modern” world), hypocrisy in judging others (again, how universal can this theme be?) and a reminder that power has the tendency to corrupt. There’s once again the easy forgiveness of the comedy, but the Duke tempers them with reforming punishments that fit the crimes (measure for measure). The play ends abruptly, and I would like to have known what everyone finds out at the Duke’s palace.

New Rating System: As everyone uses a rating system for everything, I’ve decided to add ratings to my simple comments on the plays. The system is based on how much I personally enjoyed the play compared to other Shakespeare plays. So don’t expect profound reasoning for the ratings. By definition it’s an extremely bad system, if for no other reason than I’m rating all but one of them before I finish them all. But it’s just for my own entertainment, so it doesn’t really matter. The ratings are officially “the Bard Ratings”: one to five Bards, five being the most enjoyable for me. So if the system works, you can expect me to give five Bards to six plays and one Bard to six plays. We’ll see. (Credit for the idea goes to the Washington Post and their Pinocchio rating system for presidential candidates.)

Measure for Measure earns:  

 

 

 

Quotes (long list) that appealed to me (for various reasons) and a brief note on some of them:

Duke: “…if our virtues did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike as if we had them not.” (appreciating our individual gifts and using them for others)

Angelo: “Let there be some more test made of my metal, before so noble and so great a figure be stamp’d upon it.” (Good advice for all of us.)

Duke: “Our haste from hence is of so quick condition that it prefers itself, and leaves unquestion’d matters of needful value.” (Weighing the tradeoff between “needful value” vs. hurry)

Escalus: “A power I have, but of what strength and nature I am not yet instructed.” (It takes our entire lives to figure this out.)

Lucio: “Why, how now, Claudio? whence comes this restraint?” Claudio: “From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty: As surfeit is the father of much fast, so every scope (i.e., liberty) by the immoderate use turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue, like rats that ravin down their proper bane, a thirsty evil; and when we drink we die.” (We seemingly desire and pursue those very things that destroy us.)

Duke: “For terror, not to use, in time the rod becomes more mock’d than fear’d; so our decrees, dead to infliction, to themselves are dead; and liberty plucks justice by the nose; the baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart goes all decorum.”

Lucio: “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” (We can’t take counsel of our fears.)

Angelo: “The jewel that we find, we stoop and take’t, Because we see it; but what we do not see we tread upon, and never think of it.” (How much in life do we miss because we aren’t looking?)

Angelo: “This will last out a night in Russia, when nights are longest there….”

Provost: “I have seen, when, after execution, judgment hath repented o’er his doom.”

Isabella: “I have a brother is condemn’d to die; I do beseech you, let it be his fault, and not my brother. (That’s what I want: my faults to die, not me for or because of them.)

Isabella: “How would you be, if He, which is the top of judgment, should but judge you as you are? O, think on that; and mercy then will breathe within your lips, like man new made.” (A good argument for mercy. Reminds me of a great bumper-sticker quote someone recently used in a speech: “Don’t judge me because I sin differently than you.”)

Isabella: “O, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant!”

Isabella: “but man, proud man! dress’d in a little brief authority,—most ignorant of what he’s most assured, his glassy essence—like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep…” (It’s that power and authority thing again.)

Isabel: “Ignomy in ransom and free pardon are of two houses; lawful mercy is nothing kin to foul redemption.” (“Ignomy” is archaic spelling of “ignominy.”)

Isabella: “Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die: More than our brother is our chastity.” (A concept temporarily lost in our time.)

Isabella: “perpetual durance” and later “I quake, lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain, and six or seven winters more respect than a perpetual honour.” (Choosing honor and integrity over extended life without it.)

Duke (speaking to Isabel): “The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good: the goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief in goodness: but grace, being the soul of your complexion, should keep the body of it ever fair.” (I like the Duke am very fond and respectful of Isabella.)

Duke: “Virtue is boldness, and goodness never fearful.” (The base of courage.)

Duke: “Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.”

Duke: “No might nor greatness in mortality can censure ‘scape; back-wounding calumny the whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?”(Not everyone’s going to say nice things about us, even if we don’t deserve them.)

Duke: “None, but that there is so great a fever on goodness, that the dissolution of it must cure it: novelty is only in request; and it is as dangerous to be aged in any kind of course as it is virtuous to be constant in any undertaking. There is scarce truth enough alive to make societies secure; but security enough to make fellowships accurst: much upon this riddle runs the wisdom of the world. This news is old enough, yet it is every day’s news.” (I’m still thinking about this one.)

Escalus: “…Rejoicing to see another merry, than merry at anything which professed to make him rejoice…” (Taking joy in others’ joy.)

Duke: “Twice treble shame on Angelo, to weed my vice and let his grow! O, what man man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!” (Necessity to overcome weakness or become something worse inside. I think of Judas or Benedict Arnold when I read this—letting weakness grow till it consumes and destroys the man or woman.)

Duke: “…Music oft hath such a charm to make bad good and good provoke to harm.” (The power of music to do and promote good and also evil.)

Duke: “The vaporous night approaches.”

Isabella: “…It is ten times true; for truth is truth to the end of reckoning.”

Duke: “…Life is better life, past fearing death…”

Duke: “What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine…”

Next Up (if you’re reading along): Much Ado About Nothing

All of Shakespeare by the 450th: “What’s Mine is Yours….”

I finished Measure for Measure, the fifth play read and the first so far that I don’t remember having previously seen or read, although it did seem oddly familiar, and I do have a bad memory. But before I get into the play, Shakespeare-Online features an article, How to Study Shakespeare: Five Steps to Success Reading a Shakespeare Play, which I thought offered good suggestions for tackling the Bard for the first time. One of its suggestions—using an annotated version—would really help with archaic language and culture. I’ve been stuck using the poor-quality 1975 Gramercy version without annotations, but I admit I’m now cheating and reading much of it on a Kindle with it’s pop-up Oxford dictionary and there’s always the internet for the details. (The other suggestions are “read a good synopsis”; read play once; see performance–they recommended the BBC versions that are often available at libraries; read play again.)

Now to the play. I liked it—I think I liked it a lot. It’s a he said, she said story with a twist about hypocrisy among the rulers/government (not a theme, of course, that we have to worry about in the “post-modern” world), hypocrisy in judging others (again, how universal can this theme be?) and a reminder that power has the tendency to corrupt. There’s once again the easy forgiveness of the comedy, but the Duke tempers them with reforming punishments that fit the crimes (measure for measure). The play ends abruptly, and I would like to have known what everyone finds out at the Duke’s palace.

New Rating System: As everyone uses a rating system for everything, I’ve decided to add ratings to my simple comments on the plays. The system is based on how much I personally enjoyed the play compared to other Shakespeare plays. So don’t expect profound reasoning for the ratings. By definition it’s an extremely bad system, if for no other reason than I’m rating all but one of them before I finish them all. But it’s just for my own entertainment, so it doesn’t really matter. The ratings are officially “the Bard Ratings”: one to five Bards, five being the most enjoyable for me. So if the system works, you can expect me to give five Bards to six plays and one Bard to six plays. We’ll see. (Credit for the idea goes to the Washington Post and their Pinocchio rating system for presidential candidates.)

Measure for Measure earns:  

 

 

 

Quotes (long list) that appealed to me (for various reasons) and a brief note on some of them:

Duke: “…if our virtues did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike as if we had them not.” (appreciating our individual gifts and using them for others)

Angelo: “Let there be some more test made of my metal, before so noble and so great a figure be stamp’d upon it.” (Good advice for all of us.)

Duke: “Our haste from hence is of so quick condition that it prefers itself, and leaves unquestion’d matters of needful value.” (Weighing the tradeoff between “needful value” vs. hurry)

Escalus: “A power I have, but of what strength and nature I am not yet instructed.” (It takes our entire lives to figure this out.)

Lucio: “Why, how now, Claudio? whence comes this restraint?” Claudio: “From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty: As surfeit is the father of much fast, so every scope (i.e., liberty) by the immoderate use turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue, like rats that ravin down their proper bane, a thirsty evil; and when we drink we die.” (We seemingly desire and pursue those very things that destroy us.)

Duke: “For terror, not to use, in time the rod becomes more mock’d than fear’d; so our decrees, dead to infliction, to themselves are dead; and liberty plucks justice by the nose; the baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart goes all decorum.”

Lucio: “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” (We can’t take counsel of our fears.)

Angelo: “The jewel that we find, we stoop and take’t, Because we see it; but what we do not see we tread upon, and never think of it.” (How much in life do we miss because we aren’t looking?)

Angelo: “This will last out a night in Russia, when nights are longest there….”

Provost: “I have seen, when, after execution, judgment hath repented o’er his doom.”

Isabella: “I have a brother is condemn’d to die; I do beseech you, let it be his fault, and not my brother. (That’s what I want: my faults to die, not me for or because of them.)

Isabella: “How would you be, if He, which is the top of judgment, should but judge you as you are? O, think on that; and mercy then will breathe within your lips, like man new made.” (A good argument for mercy. Reminds me of a great bumper-sticker quote someone recently used in a speech: “Don’t judge me because I sin differently than you.”)

Isabella: “O, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant!”

Isabella: “but man, proud man! dress’d in a little brief authority,—most ignorant of what he’s most assured, his glassy essence—like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep…” (It’s that power and authority thing again.)

Isabel: “Ignomy in ransom and free pardon are of two houses; lawful mercy is nothing kin to foul redemption.” (“Ignomy” is archaic spelling of “ignominy.”)

Isabella: “Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die: More than our brother is our chastity.” (A concept temporarily lost in our time.)

Isabella: “perpetual durance” and later “I quake, lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain, and six or seven winters more respect than a perpetual honour.” (Choosing honor and integrity over extended life without it.)

Duke (speaking to Isabel): “The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good: the goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief in goodness: but grace, being the soul of your complexion, should keep the body of it ever fair.” (I like the Duke am very fond and respectful of Isabella.)

Duke: “Virtue is boldness, and goodness never fearful.” (The base of courage.)

Duke: “Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.”

Duke: “No might nor greatness in mortality can censure ‘scape; back-wounding calumny the whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?”(Not everyone’s going to say nice things about us, even if we don’t deserve them.)

Duke: “None, but that there is so great a fever on goodness, that the dissolution of it must cure it: novelty is only in request; and it is as dangerous to be aged in any kind of course as it is virtuous to be constant in any undertaking. There is scarce truth enough alive to make societies secure; but security enough to make fellowships accurst: much upon this riddle runs the wisdom of the world. This news is old enough, yet it is every day’s news.” (I’m still thinking about this one.)

Escalus: “…Rejoicing to see another merry, than merry at anything which professed to make him rejoice…” (Taking joy in others’ joy.)

Duke: “Twice treble shame on Angelo, to weed my vice and let his grow! O, what man man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!” (Necessity to overcome weakness or become something worse inside. I think of Judas or Benedict Arnold when I read this—letting weakness grow till it consumes and destroys the man or woman.)

Duke: “…Music oft hath such a charm to make bad good and good provoke to harm.” (The power of music to do and promote good and also evil.)

Duke: “The vaporous night approaches.”

Isabella: “…It is ten times true; for truth is truth to the end of reckoning.”

Duke: “…Life is better life, past fearing death…”

Duke: “What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine…”

Next Up (if you’re reading along): Much Ado About Nothing

What’s Meaningful?

Now that the Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs, the High Park fire near Ft Collins and the Flagstaff fire near Boulder are more (than less) under control, I write about what I learned from a friend who has gone through a difficult month. We had friends that were affected by all three fires: everything from prepare to evacuate orders to evacuation to housing evacuees. But the lesson came from a friend who lives up in the mountains behind Ft Collins.

He and his family were evacuated weeks ago and within a few days they had lost their barn and sheds. In the immediate area where they live, there were 11 houses when the fire started; in an early briefing after evacuation, they learned that nine of the houses were burned down. His miraculously was one of the two still standing. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Many days of silence followed that briefing. Was their beautiful mountain home gone? Had everything been ignited in fire? They were left to wonder.

The last time I saw him, he had just learned the final toll. His evacuation had ended, and he was able to return to inspect what was left. On one side of his property the fire had burned along the fence between he and his neighbor’s property. The fire had burned everything on the neighbor’s side and left everything green and untouched on his property. He described one area of his property where he had stacked 30 cords of wood for winter. The wood was gone—just gone, leaving just an inch of ash in its place. A winter’s heating wood gone in the flame of a very hot and fiery summer. Their house thankfully was still standing, but he described distant hills behind it that were blackened by the blaze. The ponderosa and lodgepole pines on closer hills were still green, standing, untouched. Finally he described with moistening eyes his experience climbing his front porch and looking out to the front: a meadow and the surrounding aspen: It was all untouched. He said to me, “I never knew how much that meadow meant to me.”

It’s all left me wondering: What is it in my life that is particularly meaningful, and I don’t even realize it?

Celebrating Half a Century Since a “New Style” Invasion

We’re all continually reminded of the ’60s “British Invasion” in music and now this year of their even more aggressive literal invasion when they had the audacity to burn the White House and as much of the capital city as they could put their torches to. But I just noticed yesterday on a video at the Wall Street Journal that we’re marking a more subtle and gentle invasion, and it’s making me feel old.

Fifty years ago a “new style” of Samba-influenced music was making its way to US shores in the form of a wonderful new song and style of music. The music was the Bossa Nova, literally “new style;” and it’s gentleness, clarity, poetry and beauty was captured in a song that now apparently ranks as the second most recorded pop song in history. While it’s been sung by many people, everyone from Frank Sinatra and Cher to Diana Krall and Amy Winehouse: it’s still the import and partially translated version featuring Brazilian Astrud Gilberto that captures its essence of this new style for me: The words of the English translation are beautiful, but they fall short of the poetry of the original Portuguese version of “Garota de Ipanema” (“The Girl from Ipanema”). Fifty years later, I’m still enjoying the song.

I think I’ll listen to Getz/Jobim/Gilberto/Gilberto version right now.

It’s in the Mail (Really!)

Yesterday we sent off copies of Beyond the Wood to the three winners of the Goodreads book giveaway. So congratulations to Elizabeth, MJ and Sarah. Your books should arrive in the next little while.

It was fun to see the interest in the book, with 945 people hoping to get copies of Beyond the Wood. Thanks to all who entered and who are supporting our efforts. We appreciate you.

As if I didn’t have enough to worry about!

We love to be scared! Horror movies. Stephen King novels. Roller coasters. Bungy jumping. And that’s just the made up stuff. If the imaginary isn’t enough, we can fear the economy, wars around the world, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, twisters, even the presidential election—they’re always scary. The problem with all this is that I’m pretty sure that fear is cumulative and wears away at us till we cringe, whimpering in the corner.

Here’s the personal confession: I think I’ve reached the point, thanks to another “massively” frightening media story. You may have seen it: an article on msnbc.com about the risks of tiny strands of hair cutting off the circulation to baby toes, to the point that they might lose those toes. I can’t get the story out of my head, and I have begun checking my own toes morning and night for if one strand of hair can do it to an infant’s toe, perhaps 10 or 15 might do the same thing to my toe. You’ll be relieved to know that since I have been checking, I have not found one hair anywhere near any of my toes: but the risk is there (It always is!), and now that I know about it, I’m profoundly frightened. (I’m not even worried about the babies. How can I when I may be a risk!)

A few selected quotes from the article capture how terrible this situation really is:

As recently as this year, the Hong Kong Journal of Paediatrics reported the case of a 2 1/2-month-old girl whose right fourth toe was inexplicably blue and swollen — until doctors detected an errant hair and removed it.

If that’s not enough, there’s still more:

“You’ve got to have a persistent paranoid suspicion whenever you see something that doesn’t look right — like a blue or a red toe,” he says. “And you can’t let people blow you off. If your kid’s toe is blue there’s got to be a reason.”

I can do persistent paranoid suspicion thanks to all the fear that’s been accumulating in me.

The only saving fact here is that it is rare (but that doesn’t mean I won’t be the one be afflicted): “… doctors have documented dozens of reports of rare cases.” (I wonder if they’ve reported the not-rare cases.)

As I write this, cringing and whimpering in the corner from this final revealed burden, I almost don’t have the courage to think of and pray for my friends (and everyone affected) who wait, evacuated from their homes, waiting to hear if one of the fires along Colorado’s Front Range has destroyed their houses. But I will, and even from my corner of fear, my heart goes out to them.

All of Shakespeare Before the 450th: Fourth Down

It took more than 12 nights for me to get through it, but it was fun doing it. Over the weekend, I finished my fourth Shakespeare play—“Twelfth Night; or, What You Will”—in my effort to read all the Bard’s works by April 2014.

My first exposure to Twelfth Night was as a very entertaining movie version where the play had been transported to 19th century England. So I was looking forward to reading the play. The play was fun with confused identities, misunderstandings, devious pranks coming together for a great romantic comedy. “She’s the Man” is a more modified modern version (this time in an American high school), but the movie goes out of its way to use names from the play: Viola, Illyria, Sebastian, Duke Orsino and Olivia. I think I’ll watch both movies again.

Quotes that appealed to me (for various reasons):

Duke: Enough; no more; ‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before.

Viola: There is a fair behaviour in thee, captain; and though that nature with a beauteous wall doth oft close in pollution, yet of thee I will believe thou hast a mind that suits with this thy fair and outward character.

Maria: Now, sir, thought is free.

Clown: Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage…. (My favorite.)

Clown: Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

Sebastian: My stars shine darkly over me….

Viola: O time, thou must untangle this, not I; it is too hard a knot for me to untie.

Clown: Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

Malvolio: Is there no respect of place, person, nor time, in you?

Maria: …a horse of that colour.

Fabian: O, peace! Now he’s deeply in; look how imagination blows him.

Malvolio: …be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Clown: A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit. How quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!

Clown: She will keep no fool, sir, till she be married.

Sir Toby Belch: Taste you legs, sir; put them to motion.

Olivia: ‘Twas never merry world, since lowly feigning was call’d compliment….

Sir Toby Belch: …since before Noah was a sailor.

Olivia: I’m as mad as he, if sad and merry madness equal be.

Sir Toby Belch: …defy the devil: consider, he’s an enemy to mankind.

Fabian: If this were played upon the stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.

Antonio: In nature there’s no blemish but the mind; none can be call’d deform’d but the unkind: Virtue is beauty; but the beauteous-evil are empty trunks o’erflourish’d by the devil.

Clown: For as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, That that is, is….

Clown: …there is no darkness but ignorance…

Next up: Measure for Measure

This Can’t Be Right.

I grew up in the radio shadow of the Washington Senators, version 3.0. I can still remember as a child falling asleep in hot, humid, air-condition-less summers to the hum of the old-style, metal-bladed, rotating fan and the blare and excitement of the radio carrying the Senators play-by-play on WTOP. I easily fell asleep every night; and maybe that’s the point. It was the early years of the new expansion team Senators. Version 2.0 (which sometimes during its history had officially gone by the name of the Nationals) had just moved to Minneapolis. Version 1.0 was a few years before my time: in the 1800s. But back to the Washington Senators team I remember: guys like “Hondo” Frank Howard (our home-run-hitting local hero), Eddie Brinkman (I was convinced he was the best shortstop in baseball, maybe best to ever play that position.), Don Lock (Wasn’t he the only guy to ever hit a home run that left old DC Stadium, before it was memorialized as RFK Stadium? I heard he bounced it out one of the exits.).

Baseball teams in the Nation’s Capital were notoriously weak. A book (The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant), later a Broadway hit and a movie based on the book, had captured our sorrow with its Faustian tale of a man, Joe Boyd, selling his soul to the devil, Mr. Applegate. In exchange, middle-aged Joe would be young again and could suit up with the Senators and wrest that pennant flag away from the dreaded Yankees. Of course, if you left the world of fiction, there wasn’t any real rivalry between the two teams because the Senators were never competitive with the New York club. The oldest and most often used quote ever cited by man or woman captured the franchise’s and Washington’s frustration: “First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.” But it couldn’t have been the teams, owners and managers: It must have been something about the town. After all, both Senators teams tasted success once they abandoned the Capital: The first as the Minneapolis Twins with their one-time Senators slugger Harmon Killebrew and the second as the Texas Rangers.

So its been with “shock and awe” (the non-military version) that I’ve been watching the progress of the Nationals this season. Things have changed. They’ve got a good, reused name. They can’t be in the American League cellar anymore, because they’re in the National League. They have a new stadium. And Washington is having its best season since the ’30s. Of course, I don’t know how it will end, but it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas for Washington baseball fans. Tom Boswell, long-time sports writer for the Washington Post recently wrote a column headlined “The Washington Nationals have Arrived, as Sweep of Boston Red Sox Shows,” suggesting that the Nationals are quality and here to stay: great young players and fast-learning owners.

Well . . . maybe. For a kid raised on the Washington Senators (mostly the 1960s edition), with thoughts and dreams of Faust, Joe Boyd, Mr. Applegate and Lola filling my head, this may exciting to watch, but there’s something nagging at me. Something just keeps saying, this can’t be right. I can only wonder which player made the deal.

Free Will: Losing it.

I’ve had the opportunity to volunteer in a 12-step addiction recovery program for the past several years. I represent the sponsoring organization at the meetings, hopefully giving support, but mostly personally benefiting from the courage, strength, experiences and friendship of participants. I have an obligation of confidentiality and anonymity, but I believe what I have already shared and what I want to write today is within the bounds of those obligations.

I’m prompted to write about this topic after reading a column in the New York Times several days ago entitled “The Fallacy of the ‘Hijacked Brain‘“ by Peg O’Connor of Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. Ms. O’Connor writes about the relationship between of free will and addiction: Is it a choice or a disease?

Linking choice and responsibility is right in many ways, so long as we acknowledge that choice can be constrained in ways other than by force or overt coercion. There is no doubt that the choices of people progressing to addiction are constrained; compulsion and impulsiveness constrain choices. Many addicts will say that they choose to take that first drink or drug and that once they start they cannot stop. A classic binge drinker is a prime example; his choices are constrained with the first drink. He both has and does not have a choice. (That moment before the first drink or drug is what the philosopher Owen Flanagan describes as a “zone of control.”) But he still bears some degree of responsibility to others and to himself. It reinforces what I’ve heard countless times: There is a choice and free will involved in addiction, but it’s only early on. At some point, the will begins to diminish and eventually is extinguished by changes in the brain.

The quote reminds me of a similar quote by Boyd K. Packer from the 12-step manual we use: “Addiction has the capacity to disconnect the human will and nullify moral agency. It can rob one of the power to decide.”

Both of these quotes reinforce what I’ve heard dozens of times in our group.

So, I am left wondering:

1) Why aren’t we doing everything we can to keep people (especially children and young people) away from free-will-sucking activities (drugs—including alcohol and nicotine, pornography and early sexual activity, gambling, maybe even excessive added sugar, etc)? Why are we permitting industries to prime the addiction pump before the most sensitive portion of our population has fully developed its moral agency? Of course this involves sensitive trade offs of freedom. However, who has the first claim to freedom: a child, a 14-year old boy, an 18-year old young woman still developing their will power and maturity or business interests and wealth-accumulating adults some of whom understand exactly what they are doing and willfully chose to “capture” and “enslave” their audiences.

2) Why are we abandoning the best protection an individual child can have: the stable, long-term, committed, intact family. In a culture of freedom, society as a whole (government included) cannot adequately do the job of protecting the young. It can help, but the final protection comes best from involved, loving and acutely aware parents (father and mother). We have to stop talking and acting as if the “traditional family” is the enemy and something we don’t want to talk about because it might exclude someone. Not everyone will be fortunate enough to have an intact, committed family unit, but we should still hold it up as the model. If people stop striving for it (as many already have), it will continue to diminish, just when it’s needed the most.

Awards Luncheon for Cooke Award

I’m waiting at Hobby Airport (soon to be international I’m told) for a Southwest Flight home this morning. Over the weekend, I attended the Military Order of the Stars & Bars (MOS&B) Awards Luncheon in San Antonio (at the historical Menger Hotel, across the street from the historic Alamo). I had been invited to the luncheon to receive the John Esten Cooke Award for Southern fiction. I’ll post a photo from the luncheon when I get it.

It was a very pleasant afternoon, and I was grateful to be there and to have the opportunity to thank the members of the literary committee, the organization’s leadership and its general membership for this kind honor. I sat with Charles Smith, head of the literary committee, and had a delightful time visiting with him.

The luncheon was one of the final activities at their annual convention and was focused on giving recognition to members and others for their service accomplishments during the last year. The group focuses on Confederate heritage related to the war and ancestors, and their service flows from that focus. To give you a flavor of their efforts, one project completed during the year was placing headstones on the grave sites of dozens of formerly unmarked Confederate graves. Links to our families are crucial to understanding who we are, and doing genealogy and honoring and remembering our predecessors for their sacrifices and efforts seems to me ever a worthwhile and meaningful purpose.

Among the several awards they announced and presented, there were three literary awards. From the program:

1) The Douglas Southall Freeman History Award is given “to the author of a published book of high merit in the field of Southern History beginning with the colonial period to the present.” The 2012 winner was The Perfect Lion: The Life & Death of Confederate Artillerist John Pelham. Regrettably the author Jerry H. Maxwell had passed away after the book was published.

2) “The General Basil W. Duke Award recognizes the publisher of a re-printed volume that accurately represents the War for Southern Independence.” The winner was Refugitta of Richmond: The Wartime Recollections, Grave and Gay, of Constance Cary Harrison by Nathaniel Cheairs Jr. Hughes and S. Kittrell Rushing.

3) “The John Esten Cooke Fiction Award is given to encourage writers of fiction to portray characters and events dealing with the War Between the States, Confederate heritage, or Southern Fiction in a historically accurate fashion.” That these men (and women) who know the Civil War honored Beyond the Wood is very meaningful to me.

Glad I went, honored to have new friends, very grateful to the MOS&B for the recognition, the hospitality and a great time.