This, and only this, is patriotism

Monday, wet, grey, and low-ceilinged. For me, no commute this morning. Today is the compensating federal day off (here in the US) because Veterans Day (11/11) falls on a Sunday.

Veterans Day was officially established to note the formal end of the Major hostilities of World War I, which happened when the Germans signed the Armistice at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. Now, it is a more-general (no pun intended) holiday to honor all the men and women who have been or are in military service.

These days, though, Veterans Day has become an impatient holiday that many acknowledge only as a day off. While some communities still hold parades with flags and veterans, most mark the day with retail sales. Restaurants offer free or discounted meals for veterans as a marketing opportunity, some homes will stick a flag in a bracket out front for the day.

Wars are no longer "Great" or generational, and they rarely require our entire country's collective and visceral sacrifice the way World Wars 1 & 2 did. The collective sacrifice to war these days is huge national debt and the resulting impact that has on politics, taxation, and social services, all kept deftly and patriotically distanced from discussions about balancing the federal budget. Instead, the debt of war is blamed on those who need social services ("takers"), the size of "big" government (never mind that military spending is government's biggest growth program), and that rather vaguely-defined monster "Wall Street."

As a result, our contemporary wars are not daily-headline-daily-life stuff. Identifying what our soldiers serve for is harder to honestly define these days, though we have our comfortingly simple patriotic slogans to fall back on. We have our yellow ribbon stickers to place on the rear-ends of our gas-sucking oversized consumption-mobiles, so we can both ensure the need for more soldiers in the field and pretend to be patriotic on their behalf. We have red, white, and blue sales at the mall.


Meanwhile, countless men and women continue to enlist, serve, and sacrifice. For those who return home we offer an impatient holiday once a year, gutted social services and difficult-to-obtain medical care just when many of them need it most, and a total lack of understanding for the experiences many of these men and women have been through or the adjustments they have to make as they attempt to return home to what for the rest of us has remained a steadily-normal uninterrupted life. War? What war?

So long as we continue to send our men and women to war zones around the world, then, we owe it to them to be consciously informed and aware. We must hold our politicians (who, after all, are merely an extension of our votes and of the corporations who fund them) accountable for this cost, and we must only allow them to spend military service when and where truly necessary. We must make sure we fully fund the full range of services and support our military families need during and after service. We must also fight against the comfortable illusion that war is something other people do or that it has little to no impact on our lives here at home. We must also ensure that our military is only an extension of our country's values, and not allow it to be used for any other reasons.

We are paying dearly for our wars, and it does not honor that sacrifice when we pretend otherwise. This, and only this, is patriotism.

To the men and women of our nation's several military services, to those who have served or who are currently serving, I offer my sincere thanks for your service and commit to do everything in my power to make sure such service is not taken for granted.

I wish you all a very mindful Veterans Day!

- Posted via Hermes.

Frost and Pumpkin

The frost is on the pumpkin this morning, as well as the rooftops, lawns, and the cars parked along the curb. Clear skies, already lightening to faint blue in the early morning first-sunlight, are here and there strung with wisps of thin clouds that look like leftover Halloween decoration cobwebs.



The trees outside my office window are now mostly denuded. Only a few days ago they were full of leaves ablaze in orange and gold. Now they cling to the last few shriveled browned leaves, those of the recalcitrant sort that cling on through winter. The only gold left is fading on the ground along the roots, matching the yellow fire-lane strip on the parking lot in front of them.

Today's random "spin" of the Poetry Foundation app brought up an Epiphany, by Joanie Mackowski, which begins:

A momentary rupture to the vision:
the wavering limbs of a birch fashion

the fluttering hem of the deity’s garment,
the cooling cup of coffee the ocean the deity

waltzes across. This is enough—but sometimes
the deity’s heady ta-da coaxes the cherries

in our mental slot machine to line up, and
our brains summon flickering silver like

salmon spawning a river; the jury decides
in our favor, and we’re free to see, for now.

Fortunate we are for that. A clear autumn morning like this is achingly ripe for seeing, smelling, feeling. (Do take a few minutes to follow the link above and read the rest of Epiphany. It's worth it, I promise.)

More seasonally and descriptively apropos to this crisp and clear fall morning is James Whitcomb Riley:

They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here –
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees,
And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees;
But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock—
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

Indeed!

Today's full commute playlist:
- Brandi Carlile: Tragedy
- Philip Glass: The Chase (from the music of Undertow)
- Buena Vista Social Club: El Cuarto de tula
- Sixpence None The Richer: Don't Dream It's Over
- Five for Fighting: Angels and Girlfriends


- Posted via Hermes.

As orange-toned as the 70’s

Mid-October brings the all-about-orange season. Orange-toned leaves on trees, dark orange-toned (brown accented) leaves along the ground, pumpkins and sweet potatoes, and the candy corn and Halloween decorations already cluttering up stores and yards create a pallet straight out of the 70’s, ready made for dark green shag carpet, rust colored furniture, and avocado trimmed appliances. Is it just me that always forms a link between this time orange-themed of year and the deep 70’s?


Heavy rain last night brought normalcy back to our season. Driving in this morning I felt comforted by the rain. This is what I know so well, this is the fall weather of "home." By February, if not earlier, that cozy home-coming feeling will have been replaced by an impatient claustrophobia of wet and grey, but for now the rain is comforting.

Comforting as in the snug-nested mouse in William Johnson's Explaining It, "...a mouse lies snug in a crib of roots, its fur sleek as babyskin, Lord the body warm," as it/we, "...orphan the dim of a cold October sun."

There is a lot of poetry written about this beautifully melancholy time of year, and about October in particular. I particularly love the imagery of Jacob Polley's beautiful poem, October:

Although a tide turns in the trees
the moon doesn't turn the leaves,
though chimneys smoke and blue concedes
to bluer home-time dark.

Though restless leaves submerge the park
in yellow shallows, ankle-deep,
and through each tree the moon shows, halved
or quartered or complete,

the moon's no fruit and has no seed,
and turns no tide of leaves on paths
that still persist but do not lead
where they did before dark.

Although the moonstruck pond stares hard
the moon looks elsewhere. Manholes breathe.
Each mind's a different, distant world
this same moon will not leave.

As for music, what radio station (Remember those? They were also big in the 70’s) would dare follow Weezer with Billy Joe Walker or Tingstad & Rumbel with Medeski, Martin And Wood? Brilliant, though.

Today's full playlist:
- Weezer: Falling For You
- Billy Joe Walker, Jr.: The Enchanted Forest
- Tingstad & Rumbel: Elysian Fields
- Medeski, Martin And Wood: Off The Table
- Big Head Todd & The Monsters: City On Fire
- Bruce Cockburn: See You Tomorrow


- Posted via Hermes.

Until it bleeds daylight

Cold, I know, is a relative notion. To describe a morning as cold in Khabarovsk, Russia means something quite different than to say the same thing in Tucson, Arizona. Here in the PNW, chilly or brisk is probably a more accurate word for this morning, but cold is the word that comes to mind as I first step outside. A quick check shows 36° (2° C) with a projected high of a digitally-inverse 63° (17° C).

The sky is clear and fades from a pinkish-orange horizon to a very pale blue dome, boldly dotted by a bright, clear, and mostly-round moon. The top on the Miata is still down from yesterday afternoon, so I step back in to grab my wool cap, then head out with the top still down, but the side windows up and heat on. It makes for a beautiful commute, with the moon shining above me, cool air on my face, and the rest of me comfortably warm. Like sitting in an outdoor hot tub on a cold morning.

Cockburn pops up again on the drive in, this time singing:

When you're lovers in a dangerous time
Sometimes you're made to feel as if your love's a crime --
But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight --
Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight

- Lovers In A Dangerous Time

Puts me in mind of a wonderful song/video a colleague of mine posted to Facebook last night. The video is in support of Washington's Referendum 74, which would finally allow same-gender marriage equality. The song is beautiful and beautifully explains what is really important. That we are still having to debate the basic human rights afforded to love is sometimes hard to fathom. Kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight pretty well sums it up. Do take time to watch the video (linked above) if you can spare 7 minutes.

As the parent of two beautiful children, one daughter and one son, and two wonderful son-in-laws, I would very much like to see both of my children afforded the same full suite of human rights in our society.

Speaking of bleeding daylight, we have been blessed by some stunning sunsets recently. I snapped this one two nights ago:



Doesn't get much better than that, does it!

Today's full playlist:
- The Guggenheim Grotto: Sunshine Makes Me High
- Bruce Cockburn: Lovers in a Dangerous Time
- Bob Dylan: Forever Young
- Cake: Cool Blue Reason
- Sigur Rós: Gobbledigook


- Posted via Hermes.

Wearing my shadow where it's harder to see

Monday early morning under a large bright moon, a 98% full waning gibbous moon, to be precise. The autumnal crispness, all 41° (5° C) of it, combined with my own porridge-brained-morning-tiredness, made me just lazy enough not to push the top of the Miata down. Consequently, I drove in peering up at the moon out from underneath the low roofline of my little car, wishing the top was down but not being energetic enough to make it so. Looks like it will be a beautiful sunny day.

It is officially October today, and the world around us is starting to take on naturally produced Halloween/harvest festival trappings. The view out of my office window is one of sun-limned parking lot trees, liberally sponged with orange and gold highlights and the long shadows created by early morning's low-hung sun.



The iPod was in a Bruce Cockburn mood this morning, granting him a full three quarters of the short commute playlist. Birmingham Shadows is a wonderfully poetic song with a long instrumental section of guitar-rich jazz. I love one line in particular:

I wear my shadows where they're harder to see
But they follow me everywhere
I guess that should tell me that I'm travelling toward light

Cockburn goes on to sing:

I guess something you sang made me remember that
I guess I'm saying thanks for that

Indeed, thanks for that, Bruce. Mondays sometimes need to come with gentle reminders as well as alarm clocks.

Today's full playlist:
- Bruce Cockburn: The Blues Got the World...
- Bruce Cockburn: Birmingham Shadows
- Fountains Of Wayne: Valley Winter Song
- Bruce Cockburn: Dust and Diesel


- Posted via Hermes.

Fog, fall, and anticipating the next course of the meal

Wednesday, early morning, padded in with the soft tread of a big cat, wrapped in just enough gray fog to blur its movement across our peripheral vision until it was already upon us. Too late - Mr. Malleable has sprung!

I like driving top down through a light to moderate fog. Not really sure why. There is a certain muffling to sound in a fog, a refracting of sound waves (if sound waves can refract, if they cannot, then let's blame the effect on the God Particle) that makes me want to listen more intently as I pass along the familiar pathway from home to campus.

Like bodiless water passing in a sigh,
Thro’ palsied streets the fatal shadows flow,
And in their sharp disastrous undertow
Suck in the morning sun, and all the sky.
- from Fog, by Louise Imogen Guiney



Though we have been enjoying a beautiful spate of summer-come-lately, even with temperatures in the low 80's (upper 20's C), the sun is no longer as warm and intense, the days are noticeably shorter, leaves are starting to fall, and there is that particular crisp in the air that we instinctively know in our bones of ancient wisdom means summer is leaving. It is the hinge in Stanley Kunitz' End of Summer:

An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.

If we're honest, many of us greet this with at least a flicker of nostalgic relief. By the end of any given season we may tire of its signature taste and yearn for the remembered favors of the familiar next course. From this vantage point at the end of still-warm-but-fading summer I can appreciate the idea of a warm sweater, a [politically correct gas] fire's warmth controlled incrementally by proximity, curling up with a good book in a circle of lamp light because it's too dark and wet and cold to do anything useful outside.

I was in the mood for some Belle and Sebastian this morning, so today's soundtrack hails from their most-recent album, Write About Love.

Today's full playlist:
- I Didn't See It Coming
- Come On Sister
- Calculating Bimbo
- I Want the World to Stop


- Posted via Hermes.

Today, I will be a cloud

Sunday, summer, and a brief respite from sunny. We had the top down on the Miata on the way back from meeting mom for Sunday breakfast at our favorite local breakfast spot. The clouds were sagging like a late-hour toddler's diaper, and I was watching for leaks around the edges just in case I needed to quickly yard the top up.

Rain is forecast for this evening and tomorrow, which will break a near-record-breaking run of dry days. The forecast also suggests more unbroken sunshine after Monday, so this storm of wetness exists only in the eye of the dry spell.

The first sign of this brief change in weather was a beautiful scatter of small white clouds stretching across the blue above us:




John Keats, in To Autumn, says:

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

or to lift a couple passages (one early, one concluding) from Henry Timrod's amazing Vision of Poesy:

For oft, when he believed himself alone,
They caught brief snatches of mysterious rhymes,
Which he would murmur in an undertone,
Like a pleased bee’s in summer; and at times
A strange far look would come into his eyes,
As if he saw a vision in the skies.

VII
And he upon a simple leaf would pore
As if its very texture unto him
Had some deep meaning; sometimes by the door,
From noon until a summer-day grew dim,
He lay and watched the clouds; and to his thought
Night with her stars but fitful slumbers brought.

and...

“And therefore, though thy name shall pass away,
Even as a cloud that hath wept all its showers,
Yet as that cloud shall live again one day
In the glad grass, and in the happy flowers,
So in thy thoughts, though clothed in sweeter rhymes,
Thy life shall bear its flowers in future times.”

Like this short respite of weather, I have enjoyed the last two weeks as a respite from the weekday routine. I toggled off my campus email and voicemail and am pleased to report I have not once checked it. And won't, until tomorrow (Monday) morning. I enjoy my job and love the campus I have the opportunity to serve, but it is good to take the occasional, complete, and unplugged break. Sometimes healthy perspective requires breathing space.

It is still Sunday, though, so I will say no more about that. My chores are (mostly) done, football beckons, and I intend to float through this day like one of those small inconsequential clouds from yesterday. Shhh...

- Posted via Hermes.