Tom Glenn's Blog, page 61

The World’s Greatest Country

The United States of America is the greatest nation history has ever seen. It is not the largest country by territory. That’s Russia with a total area of about 17 million square kilometers. Nor is it the most populous. That’s China with its 1,397,897,720 people. But the U.S. is a resource-rich land, and it is the biggest economy in the world.

We are a great country because of the freedoms we allow our people. The first amendment to our Constitution specifies five freedoms Americans will enjoy: speech, religion, press, assembly, and the right to petition the government. But the U.S. is a great country in another sense. It allows its citizens the freedom to achieve in any field they choose. With hard work and application of talent, an American can earn a comfortable living while finding fulfillment in doing work one loves.

All that said, the U.S. is far from flawless. With a history stained by slavery, prejudice continues to weaken our civic achievements. We still have laws and civic structures which favor the well-to-do over the middle class and the poor, and economic inequity plagues us. We still allow voter suppression at the state level, and our unwillingness to ban fire arms from our society makes us one of the two countries in the world with the most gun deaths per capita (Brazil is the other). As one of the nations that has failed until now to address global warming, we have joined others in inviting world-wide disaster.

But we have the means we need to improve. We can elect legislators and leaders who will help us correct our faults and guide us toward “a more perfect union.” We can do it, so let’s get on with it.

Hanging Plants

Among the begonias I planted last Spring are those I put in hanging baskets consisting of a basket perhaps eight inches in diameter with four strings about a foot long joining at a hook above the basket so that the basket can be hung in the air. I first became acquainted with hanging plants as a child growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area where hanging baskets of fuchsias were common. My attempts at growing fuchsias in Maryland failed—the climate’s not right for them. So over the years, I tried various other flowering plants in hanging baskets. This year for the first time, I tried red begonias. Even though they don’t trail over the side of the pot and hang below it, the hanging pots of begonias make for a handsome display.

The inside of my house has a series of places where I can hang the baskets to create a winning show of color. Their presence is festive and bright. When company is expected, I use the baskets to spark up the house.

When frost comes, it will kill the begonias. But I plan to bring in the four hanging baskets and many more begonias in pots to brighten my house during the winter. I can put them by a window where they’ll get some sun. How long they’ll last and whether they’ll go on blooming remains to be seen.

Internet Surveys

Every day I receive email messages asking me to complete surveys online. They are all politically progressive and cover a great variety of subjects—Republican vote suppression, vaccine mandates, support for President Biden, opposition to Post Master DeJoy and Trump’s crippling of the post office, statehood for the District of Columbia, and, most often, Donald Trump, his guilt in inciting the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and the need to ban him from seeking election again. I dutifully fill them out and submit them. They nearly always ask for a contribution. I never contribute.

The surveys never stop flowing. Sometimes I get more than two dozen in a single day. Maybe responding to them does some good by expressing public opinion against, for example, Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

I wonder sometimes if the surveys are not really a disguised scheme for getting people to contribute money. Maybe so. But in hopes that they do some good, I’ll continue to fill them out.

Sundays

When I was a child, life came to a standstill on Sundays. The churches were open but everything else was closed. It was a day of worship and a day of rest. When I got to Vietnam starting in 1962, I found an entirely different world. Sunday was just another day of the week, and life went on as usual, with markets and retail stores open for business. That was because only about a quarter of Vietnamese were religious, less than ten percent Christian.

In the years since I left Vietnam for the last time in 1975, Sundays in the U.S. have come to resemble those in Vietnam. Retail enterprises are now routinely open for business on Sunday. And we have become much less religious than we used to be. Only about two-thirds of Americans and less than half of our millennials identify as Christians. Over the past decade, the number of those who classify themselves as belonging to no religion has grown by thirty million.

For all that, Sundays remain special days for me. What sets the day apart is what I listen to on the radio. My radio is nearly always on set to the local National Public Radio station which is news all day. But on Sunday, most of my regular programs are replaced with special weekly programs that emphasize a single aspect of the news.

So our world is changing, but some of us hang onto old ways of seeing. I guess that describes me.

Television Interview

Last Friday, WMAR Television ​(Baltimore) ​interviewed me. They came to my house and spent the better part of the morning filming me and all the memorabilia I collected during my career that took me all over the world. The interview will be telecast on Wednesday, November 3 at 6 PM on WMAR-2 News. Please do watch ​if you can ​and let me know what you think.

The Dao

In an honored place on my desk is a plaque with the Chinese character 道 on it. It’s pronounced “dao” with a down tone, and means “way” or “path.” The most accurate pronunciation is “tow” (to rhyme with “bow” meaning bend at the waist) with the “t” unaspirated. In Vietnamese, where I first learned it, the word is Đạo with a barred D and a glottal stop tone.

道 is also the name of a religion or philosophical teaching, what we call Taoism in English. According to Wikipedia, “Taoism (/ˈtaʊ-/), or Daoism (/ˈdaʊɪzəm/), is a philosophical and spiritual tradition of Chinese origin which emphasizes living in harmony with the Tao (Chinese: 道; pinyin: Dào; lit. ‘Way’, or Dao). In Taoism, the Tao is the source, pattern and substance of everything that exists. Taoism teaches about the various disciplines for achieving ‘perfection’ by becoming one with the unplanned rhythms of the all, called ‘the way’ or ‘Tao’. Taoist ethics vary depending on the particular school, but in general tend to emphasize wu wei (action without intention), ‘naturalness’, simplicity, spontaneity and the Three Treasures: 慈, ‘compassion’, 儉, ‘frugality’ and 不敢為天下先, ‘humility’.”

I don’t remember where I got the plaque, but it was probably during one of my trips to China. Dao as a way of life appeals to me because it emphasizes gentleness and tenderness, the veritable opposite of Vietnamese and Chinese communism which now dominates the region where I worked for so long.

Republican Vote Suppression

Members of the GOP know they can’t win elections. They’re greatly outnumbered by Democrats. So rather than doing the honorable thing, shaping their policies to appeal to voters and selecting attractive candidates, they instead make voting more difficult for those opposed to them. They especially target Black and Brown voters.

One recent internet notice says it all: “Republicans have introduced 425+ Voter Suppression bills in 49 states this year.” All that makes me wonder how anyone with even a smidgeon of conscience can possibly support the Republicans who are doing all they can to obstruct our democracy.

The rest of us, whether we’re Democrats or independents, must do all we can to reverse this unprecedented attack on our voting rights. One way to do that is by voting despite all the roadblocks the Republicans have thrown in our path.

My sense, as reported here before, is that the Republicans, having slavishly followed Donald Trump, have dealt their party a fatal blow. If I’m right, the GOP will fade until it is no longer a force in U.S. politics. The 2022 elections will show us what direction we’re heading. As that happens, the Democrats will gradually develop into two factions. It’s already starting. The progressives are battling with the moderates over President Biden’s proposed bills.

I think the future is already here.

Tom, the Stingy

As a result of my regular promotions during my government career, I was able to retire with a generous annuity very early so I could write fulltime. The end result is that I now have six books and seventeen short stories in print. Because I have plenty of money, I have bought and live in a beautiful split-level house looking out on a pond surrounded by trees.

But by habit, I am extremely careful with money. That was the result of having been so poor as a child. There were times, as noted here before, that I didn’t have enough to eat and insufficient clothes to keep me warm. So starting as a child, I worked part time at odd jobs to earn enough money to keep me going. That pattern lasted through college where I missed my own graduation ceremony because I was in the college hospital with exhaustion from working twenty hours a week while attending classes.

Even today when I have no money worries, I am a miser. I watch for sales to fulfill my needs at the lowest cost. I buy only the cheapest meat, pork butt roast at 99 cents a pound, to provide the small amount of meat that I eat. I shop for wine at the cheapest liquor store I know of.

All that said, I am generous to those who suffer, as I did, from a scarcity of money. I contribute to my local National Public Radio station and to my political party, the Democrats. And when I invite people in for dinner, I go out of my way to provide a sumptuous meal.

So maybe it all balances out in the end. I have yet to hear anyone complain about my penny-pinching.

Pink Eye

I have come down with a malady I haven’t suffered since I was a child: pink eye. The proper name is conjunctivitis. It turns the eyes red and makes them swell and tear. It made me look especially bad for my interview yesterday morning with the television station WMAR (about which more anon). My primary care physician prescribed first one, then a different eye drop. My eyes are better but still look bad.

I believe I will just have to wait until the disease runs its course and I get better. I hope that’s soon, because I’m scheduled to do my presentation on the fall of Saigon twice in early November in celebration of Veterans Day. And I always go out of my way to look my best when I’m presenting.

But I guess I’m stuck for the time being with looking hideous. And the tearing makes reading more difficult. That’s a real problem because I have to read just about constantly, partly because I’m a writer, partly because I review books.

A minor difficulty but an annoying one. I’ll take all the sympathy I can get.

The Marines and Me

As readers of this blog know, I have a long history with the U.S. Marines Corps. I first worked with Marines in 1962 during my initial trip to Vietnam. As the war grew and expanded, I supported troops on the battlefield with intelligence derived from intercepting and exploiting North Vietnamese radio communications. I worked with the Marines less often than with the army simply because there were fewer Marines in country.

During the thirteen years I spent more time in Vietnam than I did in the U.S., I sometimes ran into a situation that I coined a term for, the Cassandra Effect. That was when the unit I was working with didn’t believe and act on the intelligence I was providing. One of the worst examples was during the battle of Dak To in 1967. I warned the U.S. 4th Infantry Division and the 173rd Airborne Brigade that a large North Vietnamese force was in the hills along the Cambodian and Laotian border preparing to attack us. They didn’t believe me and didn’t prepare. The result was one of the bloodiest battles of the war which ended without any territory changing hands.

But I never encountered that problem with the Marines. They invariably took my information seriously and acted on it. That resulted in some remarkable victories.

One of the reasons the Marines always exploited signals intelligence was that one of their leaders, an officer named Al Gray, had worked in signals intelligence early in his career. When I first met Al in the early 1960s, he was a captain commanding units engaged in combat. Over the years, as I supported troops on the battlefield in Vietnam, I kept running into Al. Then, when Saigon fell in 1975 and I escaped under fire after the North Vietnamese were already in the streets, it was Al Gray, by then a colonel, who rescued me. Al continued to rise in the ranks until he became Commandant of the Marine Corps. Nearly every Marine I have ever met knows who Al Gray is. He’s one of their heroes. Despite his renown, General Gray is a humble man. And he has continued to stay in touch with me over the years.

So to this day, I have the utmost respect and admiration for the Marines. That is why I always capitalize their name.