Michael J. Roueche's Blog, page 18

Context: It's all in the Meaning!

A couple of nights ago, my wife and I were on our way (late, of course) to an appointment when we came on a short traffic backup. There was already a police car ahead of us with its lights flashing, and just as we got to the scene, a second police car and a fire truck arrived; the fire truck completely blocking the road for a few seconds. The traffic pause gave us a chance to search for clues as to what the problem was. From the three or four cars all pointing different directions, we assumed it was a multi-car crash, but there was someone lying by one of the cars. Was it a pedestrian accident, then? Our concern and sympathetic pain increased. The fire truck moved forward a bit so cars could squeeze by, and we slowly passed the scene: It wasn't a pedestrian; it was a motorcyclist. We involuntarily cringed again. We weren't sure, but it looked like a woman. Her blue motorcycle lay on its side just below the driver's side door of one of the cars. Lying by her bike, she was prostrate and covered by a blanket as first responders administered aid.

My wife and I spoke for a few minutes about the accident, wondering how it happened and hoping the rider had been wearing a helmet—which you don't have to do in Colorado.

Yesterday morning, wanting to check on the motorcyclist, I turned first to the on-line version of our local newspaper, then to Google. Our local paper is a weekly, so I doubted there would be news of the accident yet, but I looked anyway. My expectation was spot on, with no coverage of the injured woman. Instead, the local paper was brim and excitedly breathless with current local coverage of the first Denver-area IKEA store opening.

It was Google's turn. I typed: "motorcycle". . . "accident". . . "our town" . . . "colorado." The listings that appeared were unexpected, starting with: "Places for motorcycle accident near" our town, Colorado. Google couldn't give me information about how the woman was doing or even that there had been an accident. But they substituted an "added service": Now I know the appropriate places to have a motorcycle accident, if I ever decide to have one. Then came the shocker (but maybe it shouldn't have been): The first page of google hits–including all information under "Places for motorcycle accidents"—were links to personal injury attorneys (one lawyer even offered a YouTube video, which I did not watch). There actually was one exception: an expert witness who reconstructs motorcycle accidents. I didn't want to look at additional pages. Google had helped me understand it all: Who would have thought the only appropriate places in our town for motorcycle accidents were at the offices of personal injury attorneys. I guess it makes sense: It would be after all most convenient for the attorneys. They can just come out of their offices as you lie on the ground, get the information they need, have you sign appropriate documents and immediately begin legal action. Efficient, don't you think?

The second bit of news, and it was unexpectedly good for me, was a friend of mine was among those personal injury attorneys listed—I knew he was an attorney, but didn't know he did personal injury work. So, all of this fortuitous googling simplifies my life: If I ever take up motorcycle riding and choose to have an accident, thanks to a simple Google search, I know exactly outside of whose office I'll have it. It will be convenient for my friend at least—and isn't that what friendship's all about?

Without tongue in cheek, my search, of course, says something about us–that litigious lines begin even in hyper-link space. But, it also reminds us of something just as important about the dichotomy that is the Internet: it has the power to add order, information and meaning to our lives, and it is just as good at giving us useless data out of context, minutiae and often highlighting the unimportant. In the end, we still need the humans—we're still responsible for making sense out of the world around us, stewarding it well, and caring for one another.

Most importantly today, my thoughts and prayers are still with all those involved in the accident. I hope they're all going to be fine.

The King did good!

This morning, my wife handed me a magazine article that very briefly sketched the history of the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible up to 1611.

The article alluded to the fact that the King James Bible was produced at the high water mark for ancient language scholarship among the English. But, mostly the article reminded me of how much I like the English of the King James Version. It's sometimes antiquated, sometimes obscure, sometimes completely confusing (although I'm sure that's mainly due to earlier translations and manuscripts), but it's so often beautiful in its iambic pentameter and imagery. Maybe it is the language itself, separated as it is from every-day English, that adds to its ability to inspire and comfort the downtrodden, and don't we all sometimes find ourselves among the downtrodden.

Earlier this year, to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible (never let a significant anniversary go without reading up on it), I read a couple of books about the translation (there seem to be endless number of them out there right now), and I quickly concluded that both books (God's Secretaries by Adam Nicolson and Bible: The Story of the King James Version 1611-2011 by Gordon Campbell), while sometimes interesting, point to the fact that we don't really know much about the process or about the people involved. The latter in particular takes us, as the title suggests, well beyond 1611 and talks about its influence in the world and on latter editions of the bible perhaps because we just don't have many of the details to tell.

The books highlighted for me:

1) This was no major money making scheme by the scholars—none of the translators got rich off this venture.

2) While most anniversary celebrations focused on May 2nd as the official date for the 400th anniversary, we really don't know the precise date the KJV was printed.

3) A committee really can create beauty, as 54 scholars were involved to some extent in the translation. While some will suggest that it is because most (estimated at times as about 80% plus or minus) of the translation was a refinement of the work of William Tyndale in his translation of 1526. And maybe that's right, but still: how do you get men who have strong opinions on ancient languages to agree and how do you smooth the work of so many into one flowing document? And it appears they did it without much fanfare or public ego. These accomplishments alone make the KJV a miracle of significant proportion.

4) While I previously believed the language of the KJV represented the common language of the world in which it was translated, it apparently does not. The language was already dated when it was published, suggesting to me that the translators meant for it to stand out from common, every-day speech, in spite of their suggestions otherwise.

5) The 1611 version of the King James Bible is not the final version, as it was refined and modified for 150 plus years afterward, eventually culminating in a seeming seesaw battle between Oxford and Cambridge about which could produce the latest and greatest versions, the battle continuing till Oxford won the deciding round in 1769, giving us what we generally think of as the KJV.

6) Both books had fun with the early printing and other errors in early versions of the KJV. Some of those errors are noted in on online article, "A Full Account of the English Bible" by Christopher Mulvey, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Winchester: "Some misprints were infamous, leading to nicknames such as the Wicked Bible for an edition that read 'Thou shalt commit adultery.' In the Place-maker's Bible, there was a beatitude that declared: 'Blessed are the placemakers, for they shall be called the children of God'. The Printers' Bible was so called because it replaced 'princes' with 'printers' to produce the lamentation: 'Printers have persecuted me without cause'. . . ."

7) The KJV included multiple documents, alternate translations, and maps that are no longer found in the KJV, including most importantly a preface, written by Miles Smith, one of the translators.

8 ) The effort was a sensitive effort by the King to balance the perspectives of the Puritans and those more interested in a high-church approach, which the King preferred. The King began the project, amazingly, at the suggestion of the Puritans. But, he made sure to "put them in their places" before listening to them and thus sponsoring a new, better translation of the Bible that still bears his name.

All in all, the King James Version is astonishing in its history, influence and language. The King did well to lead such an effort; and in doing it well, the King, born a victim of the conflict between Mary Queen of Scots, the Catholic mother he never knew, and the Protestant Queen Elizabeth, did good for us all.

"Too fond of it"?

Today, 150 years have passed since the First Battle of Bull Run.(1)  Just about at this hour of the day of the battle, a rout and confusion reigned. Lots of big talk, skirmishes and small battles had defined the War until July 21, 1861; First Manassas changed it all—this war was convulsing into a blood and guts battle for shifting objectives: Larger battles, greater casualties would follow–at first to save the right to hold slaves or to save the Union; but by the end when "the tables had turned" and the hot summer battles were virtually unending and the casualties were free-flowing, the cause had morphed to free the slaves or save the Confederacy. Bull Run changed it all: No longer a fantasized chivalric day dream, a war now presaged by Manassas would cost more in death, disrupted lives and resources than President Lincoln could have ever dreamed in his darkest, loneliest nightmares.

At a later Virginia battle, when the "Secesh" were crushing the "Yanks," Robert E. Lee reportedly said something to the effect of, "It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we would grow too fond of it."(2) I can't imagine he would have spoken or even remembered such words in the not-too-far-in-the-future moment when the promise, beauty and pageantry of so-called Picket's Charge faded into ashes, and the South's greatest general greeted his surviving and demoralized men as they finished their return parade across the open farmers' fields with words of his own personal culpability.

And when we talk about the costs of war—the "terrible" Lee allegedly referenced, it never does rest on some set of broad, impersonal, big-brotherish governmental shoulders or even on the shoulders of generals and presidents–shoulders to cushion all pain and suffering and loss, it falls in the end only on individuals, each in his or her own time and way and who is left, often without needed support, to deal with it in his or her own way. An article by staff writer Michael E. Ruane appeared today in the Washington Post recalls one example of the terrible: a now famous letter given to Ken Burns during his production of The Civil War. The letter from Sullivan Ballou was written just days before his death at Manassas to his wife Sarah, and was made a memorable part of the final documentary that aired on PBS. Ruane notes that the letter comes from "the 'if I do not return' genre, often written by soldiers on the eve of battle" and quotes "Andrew Carroll, editor of 'Behind the Lines,' a compilation of war letters" as saying, "'It's the hardest letter . . . for any service member to write. . . . They're putting all of their heart and emotion into what they know will be their final words. It's especially poignant when there are children involved . . . because that letter will become sort of the touchstone to their lives, and how they remember their father.'"

Bull Run and the Civil War, for all the positive changes they have brought, also brought "terrible" things to the lives of many. While I'm remembering the battle fought at Manassas and all that came after it (including Iraq and Afghanistan), I'll be thinking of all the lives sacrificed and the lives changed forever because willing men and women chose to do what they thought was right in spite of the cost to them and their families. And I'll be remembering Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

(1) For two descriptions of the battle, see today's New York Times where Gary Gallagher, a professor of history at the University of Virginia and Civil-War-books author, outlines the battle, and the July/August issue of The Smithsonian Magazine, viewable at the Institution's web site, where Ernest B. Furgurson, journalist and also author of several Civil War, gives us a little more detailed description of July 21, 1861 in Northern Virginia where they battled for a nation.

(2) See Kevin Levin's 2008 blog at Civil War Memory on origin of the quote.

Remembering What Must be Remembered

I note there was an official ribbon cutting today at a new museum in Washington, DC. It will be on my next Washington, DC-new-museum tour, along with the not-so-new now Smithsonian Portrait Gallery. The ribbon cutting was held at noon for "The New African American Civil War Museum." Of course, since I haven't visited yet, I can't review it, but it brought to my mind the great, perhaps still unheralded and nation-saving role that African Americans played in the Civil War and the challenge black soldiers faced and conquered.

While the nation as a whole was busy in the relatively straight-forward fighting for or against the Union and for or against slavery, slaves were hoping and often fighting for freedom and struggling to prove to a disbelieving or at least skeptical country, government and military that they could be, when and if given the chance, the equal of any other group of soldiers. But it didn't stop there, those who successfully enlisted in the army were demeaned, ridiculed, abused, mocked, resented, sometimes unpaid and officially for a long time paid less than white soldiers. They were forced to do more menial work, especially in the early days, than white soldiers. Their families–as much as they could get official recognition of their families–suffered when the men tried to enlist, often at the hands of former slave owners, and sometimes at the hands of the very government they were trying to serve. Even in battle, their burden was more onerous as they learned early on that the anger of Confederates brought wrath and death sometimes even after the battles quieted down. "Remember Fort Pillow!" became a motivational cry for African American soldiers. The African American experience during the Civil War was different in different parts of the country, but the experience everywhere (whether among slaves, freed slaves, escaped slaves or freedmen; whether in loyal states, states in rebellion or border states) was always beyond difficult. And, they proved they could endure and prosper in "difficult." I doubt that we, pampered and proud as we have become thanks to the accomplishments of those who went before, would or could measure up to their accomplishments.

According to one of the classic books on the Civil War, Dudley Taylor Cornish's "The Sable Arm, Black Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865," 178,892 black men served as Union soldiers.(1) While African Americans fought in the American Revolution and the War of 1812, "The regular army was closed to him; state laws generally prevented his belonging to the militia because militiamen bore arms. It was during the Civil War that the [African American] permanently won the right to fight." Nearly 20 percent of all black men in both North and South ended up serving as Union soldiers, 36,000 of whom died in service.(2) At first they were excluded from the army, but recruiting and enlisting African Americans gradually grew in popularity, especially as the war dragged on and on and the draft threatened more and more lives—New York went from riots where African Americans were indiscriminately killed to cheering black soldiers who marched through the city. Later in the war, the Union even impressed unwilling blacks into service (sounds like just another form of slavery).

The Civil War was just one step toward legal and social equality for African Americans, and the post-war prejudice and politics destroyed some of its promise and probably made it of less interest to African Americans (see "Should African Americans Care About the Civil War?" by Allen C. Guelzo at www.theroot.com) But, the great progress in equality before the law and in society has come in the last half century or so only because of the huge step of sacrifice made by Americans of all races 150 years ago.

 

(1) The book was copyrighted in 1956, and while the title of the book has been modified, its text continues to use language accepted at the time, but that now may be offensive to some.

(2) "Free at Last: Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War", Edited by Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland. The book was produced by the Freedman and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland.

 

Mowing in Thunder

We've had a week of rain here, which was a nice summer break from the usual constant summer lawn watering and the consistent dry conditions of a high plains desert. Just last night more than an inch of rain fell according to our rain gauge during a sometimes impressive display of celestial pyrotechnics. This morning, everything is green and some trees and smaller shrubs are weighted down with accumulated moisture. We were gone for part of the week, but according to weather.com, it rained at least some every day for eight straight days—a month's worth of precipitation.

By last Saturday, we were home, and the grass was getting long. I went out to mow under threatening clouds and was about half done with the lawn when the darkened clouds began shedding their water along with earth-bound thunder and lightening. I didn't care about the rain, but I did wonder about the safety of mowing grass in a thunderstorm, and it reminded me of something that happened several years ago. We were in Virginia at the time, and I was mowing a lawn when a significant rain began, again with flourish of thunder and lightening. A similar question came to mind: "How stupid was it for me to be mowing the lawn in a thunderstorm?"

At the time, we had lived in the same house for many years, next door to a wonderful neighbor family which had moved in at the same time we had. In my mind, the husband was the neighborhood expert on all things related to well-groomed lawns and mechanical processes or machines. He also was mowing his lawn in the same storm, and I remember thinking to myself: "As long he's out there mowing in the storm, it must be safe, because he understands all this stuff." Both of us stubbornly finished our lawns without harm to grass or human.

Several days later, I happened to visit with the same neighbor, and the storm and mowing the grass came up. I mentioned that I had determined to stay out there during the storm as long as he did because I knew he would know when risks outweighed benefits. His response was quick: He said that he had determined the same thing: he would stay out as long as I did. I could only chuckle as the lesson of the experience was impressed permanently (at least so far) on my mind: We have a significant impact, whether we like it or not or whether we are aware of it or not, on the behavior of others. Thus, all talk of "doing my own thing" or "it doesn't matter to anyone else what I do" or "I can do what I want" or even obsessive concern with one's own rights all smacks of selfishness, with potentially destructive impact on the lives of all around us and accumulatively on the world's societies and environments. Perhaps, choosing our thoughts and behaviors should be considered in a greater context than what do I want to do or what will benefit me or what can I do. Maybe the question should be "In this situation, what can I do to improve the lot of my fellow man." Christ's apostle Paul wrote a like challenge to the Philippians: "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others."

It all comes to light with a slight twist of context of oft-cited John Donne words: "No man is an island… ." We do have a direct influence for good or bad on all around us, and in the words of that intellectual visionary Buzz Lightyear that influence may well extend "to infinity … and beyond!"

The Real Ghost Town

I just got back from a week-long family reunion in the Colorado mountains where, unexpectedly, I found myself in downtown Vicksburg, virtually untouched by time. I thought it only appropriate to visit Vicksburg, after all, it was the 148th anniversary week of end of the seige and fall of Vicksburg. But how did I get there? What modern miracle was a foot? Was this some kind of time and space travel? Perhaps a secret government initiative?

Nothing so exciting: I was actually there courtesy of a hike my brother had planned for several of us. We arrived in two cars searching for the trail-head parking lot a little before 5 am. It was still dark, made darker and more mystical by the low clouds and the rain that tapped heavily on the roofs and hoods of the cars. Unfortunately, the darkness of the hour and weather and the graded but wash-boarded dirt road distracted us, and we missed the small trail-head parking lot entrance. And just, as we found out later, a short ways beyond the missed parking lot, we passed another parking lot–this better-marked and more visible lot was for the Vicksburg Museum. I chuckled—surely not the first to do so–at the coincidence. But the chuckle was short-lived as we drove on looking for the trail head. Eventually, while still ominously dark, we backtracked till we found our destination trail. The day my brother had planned was a hike on a nearby mountain trail (the Missouri Gulch Trail) in the Sawatch Range. And as soon as we could put on boots, jackets, etc, and confirm that the rain was a short-lived event, we began our hike. We immediately passed over a thrashing Clear Creek, still super-charged by late mountain snow melt, and soon thereafter passed a small picket fence just a couple of feet wide and maybe four feet long. I was curious about the fence, but more anxious to get going on the trail as we wanted to hike to the top of at least one 14,000-foot peak—Mt. Belford, so I didn't bother to explore and figure out what the little fence delineated.

Only when I came down after making the peak of Mt. Belford and while waiting for some who had conquered two peaks that day (Mts. Belford and Oxford), did I take the time to figure out what Vicksburg and the picket fence were all about.

Turns out, I hadn't been transported in time or space (and contrary to the rumors there was no government conspiracy here). Instead, I was visiting an old mining town established in the 1800s. It's sometimes called a ghost town, but doesn't meet the official criteria as it's been continually inhabited by mortals since its founding, and it's small cottages are still privately owned and at least sometimes occupied. The museum—not open at the time of our visit—had a button-activated recording that told about the town and the museum's yard boasted several large-equipment reminders of its mining heyday.

Only Grave in Vicksburg Cemetery

The small picket fence sounded a sad note, as it turned out to be the, as I understand it, the entire Vicksburg Cemetery. It held just one occupant: a small child, William Huffman. William's father, according to the grave marker, was a miner and his mother ran a boarding house. He died of pneumonia at one-month; a single, indirect casualty of man's battle to wrestle from the earth its mineral wealth (in this case I think it was silver). I didn't have a camera with me, but imposed on a gracious nephew to take a picture of the fenced-in grave.

Of course, I couldn't help but think of the other Vicksburg—the real ghost town with its tragic memories, much larger cemetery and devastated lives. My wife had an ancestor, James Parrot, in Vicksburg. According to his wife's application for a widow's pension (which someone sent us several years ago), he was from the mountains of east Tennessee and served in Company B of the Confederate 61st Tennessee Infantry. He enlisted in September 1862, and his wife was told that his regiment surrendered at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Unfortunately, he like so many others, was already dead, having died a little over a month earlier of small pox. He left behind his wife and five children, all of them indirect casualties of man's battle to control one other.

We struggle with all this still today. Man still continues and must continue to try to control nature, and in many cases that's a good thing, making modern life possible. But, we're always trying to control for our own purposes those around us: our children, our spouse, our employees, our employers, our partners, our fellow citizens, citizens of other countries, governments of other countries, even God. I think the general rule must be that this is not ok. In the end, it brings front-line casualties and indirect casualties rippling painfully outward to the end of man. Next time I think of trying to force my will on the will of others, all for my own purposes, I'll try to remember Vicksburg, Mississippi and Colorado, William Huffman and James Parrott, his wife and their five children.

Characters of the Best Kind

This morning, I read Andrew Delbanco's New York Times review of David S. Reynolds' book "Mightier Than the Sword." The review, "The Impact of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,'" follows by several weeks a New York Times Op-Ed piece by Reynolds who wrote claiming that Uncle Tom, the book character, "was physically strong and morally courageous" and unfairly became the epithet by which African-Americans were sometimes stained if they were perceived by others as betraying their own race. Several letters-to-the-editor followed, one seeming to suggest that Uncle Tom deserved every nuance of his later negative, "minstreled," often-used and dreaded image; and the other claiming "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had a positive, significant impact on African-Americans in the early half of the 20th century and, interestingly, was a source of information about slavery for the children and grandchildren of slaves. Delbanco, today, concludes his review with, "Perhaps the fact that readers today have trouble taking seriously its heroes and villains is a tribute to its achievement — since, in some immeasurable way, it helped bring on the war that rendered unimaginable the world that Stowe attempted to imagine."

It's been years since I read "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and I don't remember the details of Tom or the story, but I remember liking and admiring the character very much. I felt without analysis that his reputation had been unfairly soiled. I remember thinking at the time that he reminded me of the book version of Jean Valjean, from "Les Misérables," created just a few years later and popular among soldiers during the American Civil War. Both characters may have been strong physically, but their value to me was the depth and size of their souls. In both works, they were far bigger than the Lilliputian-sized characters that for the most part surrounded them. They pioneered difficult trails and traits which few are willing to trudge or cultivate, continually making choices to help others and to ignore their own needs and desires even when it caused them pain, personal difficulty and in the end, directly or indirectly, their own demises. Both, I suppose, if they had chosen differently, could have lived on. But they didn't, and they live on in memory, influence and discussion because they didn't. They were selfless to their respective deaths, and their author-created strength reminds me to try a little harder to distance myself from the easy, slick and natural trait of selfishness.

Of course, when I look at them with late 20th and early 21st century eyes and thoughts, I see both of them out of context: I don't hear Valjean's French language nor even a substitutable French accent, and I know virtually nothing about and have little interest in the French revolution of that era. While I've read some about American slavery, I can't begin to imagine Tom's living experience or even living under slavery's more modern descendants and influences. But, in my life and context, I need all the positive inspiration I can find, and I see them both (out of context) fitting in rather nicely.

We live in a world where confusion and conflict seemingly reign supreme, and I can only believe that as a society, we need more inspiring, selfless characters like Tom and Valjean, even if some may believe they are not "realistic" or denigrate them for their very selflessness. And, it doesn't stop at literature. We need more selflessness from the flesh and blood types, including and maybe especially me. I've heard of, seen and known enough selfless human beings to know that it is possible to be alive and selfless. Selfless characters—literary or flesh and blood–inspire me to try harder to be a bit better. I aspire to be more like them.

 

It's Not in the "Average"

 

As I write this note, we're a day from the official beginning of summer. Yet, the digital gauge outside the family room window boasts unsummer-like, mid-morning heat of 48 degrees. The average high for June 20 is a sunny and comfortable 81.

We sit at about 6,000 feet in altitude, on a high plains desert that averages about 15 inches of rain a year. Much of our precipitation comes from quick, often-times powerful, summer afternoon thunderstorms. June is one of our wettest months, averaging just below 2 inches of rain. Yet, it's been raining constantly since last night, and my informal rain gauge (the squirrels broke the official one because it was mounted on a fence post and got in their way—they kept throwing it to the ground till they were sure it was cracked and I'd never again post it) notes that we're getting close to an inch and a half of rain in a storm that began yesterday well after dark.

"Averages" tend to hide some of the meaningful realities and experiences of life. So, the unexpected happens—a hard-working Bach is born to capture and catalog the Baroque; an obviously ambitious Washington refuses to be a king and chooses to leave office after only two terms; a Lincoln, with brilliance, patience and "charity for all," arrives on the scene just in time to shepherd a country safely through its best effort to self destruct. If we average out everything in our history and our lives, we forget the beauty, the deepened meaning and the crucial course corrections that come from the unexpected, and, most importantly, we overlook the divine hand shepherding us not to where we want and had so long planned and prepared to go, but to some more exotic and salvific shore. I cannot look at the American Civil War and not see all of that.

Likewise, this book and the experiences in my life that prompted its writing and now its publication were unexpected and have enriched my life experience in ways I could never have imagined. Romance, adventure, and consideration of how we look back at the Civil War: I've tried to include them all, and I hope you'll enjoy it.