Eighteen Years Gone

This morning I walked into the backyard. The sun was newly up giving that special light that both starts and ends each day. It’s difficult to described. Golden, muted, I don’t know. I don’t know many things, which may not be a good way to start a day of thought and reflection on the 18^th anniversary of 9-11. Anniversary? My wife and I celebrated our 23^rd anniversary this past weekend. It's been a good 23 years. Shouldn’t there be a different word for dates of disasters and horrors, to mark the passage of time for things that are not good?

Many of us have our 9-11 stories. I have mine. I was not at home to hold my wife to protect my kids. I was out-of-town on work with my friend and boss Rob. We were in Philadelphia prepping for an over the road train test. We were at the Amtrak yards just starting to set up our instrumentation car when we were called to the break room.

As we entered that shabby room with scattered tables, a tattered sofa, I wanted to know what was up. Somebody pointed at the TV with the image of a single World Trade Center tower with heavy smoke pouring from the uppermost stories. He said I think something is happening.

Something was happening. A passenger airliner had crashed into a tower of the World Trade Center. The news reporting was chaotic. The first thought was some terrible accident had occurred. The screen switched to a reporter in some New York high rise. You could see the city spread out behind the reporter and as we watched, the blur of a second airliner going past the window could be seen. At least that is how I remember the coverage. Perhaps that memory is simply apocryphal and fits my internal narrative well. Add that to the list of things that I don’t know.

I do know that coverage switched back to the towers in time to witness the unbelievable, the second plane plowed into the second tower. In an instant, the possibility of an accident changed into the probability of a terror attack. The break room was silent save for the television. Everything was unfolding rapid fire, not slow motion. We sat there and watched the flames, the smoke, listening to reporters babble none of it making sense – none of it, not the images, not the words, not the reality of it.

Slack jawed I watched as the first tower collapsed, then the other. Coverage switched to street level to capture people fleeing the dust and smoke from the collapsing towers that boiled out of the canyons of New York City. It is all a blur. I don’t know how long any of that took (another item in the pile). At one point a panicked woman paused in her retreat to scream at a reporter, It’s 9-1-1! This is happing on 9-1-1!!!

My most tangible memory of that day was walking the streets of Philly and being stunned by just how much silence there was. I could hear the cars going by, I could other city sounds, but I never realized how much air traffic there was over a major city until there wasn’t any. The sky was shut down. The trains were shut down. I came upon a news stand and purchased the afternoon special editions from Philadelphia’s two dailies. Both had screen captured pixelated pictures of the twin towers billowing smoke. The stories reported already began to provide information about terrorist links to this attack. The government was moving fast. I kept those papers until our recent move. I paused to look at them while cleaning and packing, and I thought I didn’t need them. I wouldn’t ever forget.

I mourn those that lost their lives in New York, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon. But I also remember not only the sad of that day but the good as well. The acts of heroism of a plane filled with hostages turned heroes flying over Pennsylvania. The individuals who risked their lives and, in many cases, sacrificed them saving others. The first responders who are still giving their lives because of what they endured. I honor the soldiers that went to the middle east (where we still have a presence) following 9-11 to put themselves in harm’s way. All selfless acts that define the best of humanity.

In contrast, I was struck watching the news this morning as they mentioned that the first generation to be born following 9-11 will be entering our military. I guess the same could be said of newly minted first responders as well. The youngest of the military, of the first responders knowing of 9-11 only in the abstract and not the visceral. How will that shape things? (and a blanket is draped over my pile of things I don't know)

Farewells

To lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth –

-Whereon the pillars of this earth are founded, toward which the conscience of the world is tending - a wind is rising, and the river flows.

Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again

     It is difficult to be more eloquent about death than Thomas Wolfe’s voice. Ever since I found this quote it has spoken to me. I have gone back to it time and again. It has spoken to me particularly over the past three weeks. During that time, I have had to say goodbye to Cathy McGrady, John Elkins, and Eugenia Robinson in turn. These deaths have caused me to stumble while at the same time the Earth has continued to turn and as always has called me to turn with it allowing me no time to fall.

     We met Cathy when our children were young. Our youngest Louise went to school with Cathy’s daughter Carolyn. Our family bonded with their family and thus Louise’s school years are intertwined forever with memories of Tim and Cathy McGrady and their children Carolyn and Chris. You could not meet Cathy and then not remember Cathy. She had a full personality. She was always very real, very direct, and very honest. She had a wonderful sense of humor as her easy laugh and infectious smile could attest to. She both had a temper and was openly loving. I regret in recent years we had lost touch. We missed the McGrady’s, but lives often take different paths. Still we would run into Carolyn at odd times at Home Depot and catch up a little. Carolyn is quite like her mom and so it was doubly good to run into her. I had recently exchanged messages with Cathy on Instagram (the internet being the great shrinker of time and distance) because she wanted to see our new house. I had told her to drop by anytime, and we would love to see her. Anytime will now never come.

     I learned of John Elkins before I ever met him. As a research assistant at Clemson University to Dr. Harry Law, I learned that John Elkins was a pre-eminent railroad researcher. From there, I ended upworking with John Elkins at the Transportation Test Center in Pueblo, Colorado, following my graduation. John was the first and best of my mentors and he became a good friend. I remember any number of excellent technical discussions and cannot overstate how much I learned from working with him. It takes no effort to conjure any number of images of John and I talking over some engineering problem. John would be leaning back in his chair, eyes half lidded in concentration as his right hand pointed and rotated as he was thinking in 3 dimensions as defined by the right-hand-rule. It’s an engineer thing. We also enjoyed personal moments as when several engineers and I went over to John’s house armed with a Do-Drop-Inn pizza and a bottle of Johnny Walker for an afternoon of Scotch and pizza. I admit to having gone a bit heavy on the Scotch and ended up climbing over John’s backyard fence where his yard met the yard of Roy and Sue Allen. Like John, they were British and Roy was also the big boss where we all worked. I had hopped the fence and fended off a particularly aggressive and spiny Russian Olive guard tree to ask Roy to come join us. Roy couldn’t join us as he and his wife Sue were on their way to the gym, but apparently I was drunk enough that they insisted on driving me back to John’s (all of one house away) and depositing me on the front porch. There were other fun times such as a visit to Club La Supre Sex in Montreal – a strip club John wanted to go to, and the first one I had ever been to, and perhaps a story for another time. Suffice it to say, the evening was defined when the bouncer/doorman followed us to our seats and suggested rather strongly that it was “customary” to tip the doorman $20. This elicited a classic John Elkins “oh my.” As with Cathy, I lost track of John as the years and work moved in separate directions. I had hoped to reconnect with him, but that didn’t happen, and sadly never will.

     Eugenia Robinson was my wife’s (and her siblings’) only cousin. I got to know Genie at first through her many phone calls to Jean-Marie. Both are night owls, so late at night when the phone rang, we knew it would be Genie. From time to time, I would talk to her on the phone as well and got to love her. Genie was a bright and intelligent woman of strong opinions and crystal-clear memory. She told stories of her life, her parents’ lives, and of what growing up with Jean-Marie was like. She had no problem holding your attention. Often you didn’t even need to speak as Genie could get on a streak and go and go. Listening was just fine to Genie, she was good with an audience. In recent years, the recession of the early 2000’s took its toll on Genie and left her in bad straights. She eventually had to leave her home and moved in with Jean-Marie’s brother Chris and his wife Mary Jane. She was able to stay there until Chris and Mary Jane sold their house to downsize. Genie then moved in with a friend Amy and her family. Recently Genie was diagnosed with a malignant mass on one of her ovaries. Before it could be removed, it ruptured. This combined with Genie’s unwillingness to take chemotherapy lead to the cancer spreading everywhere. She called us two weeks ago to let us know the cancer was back and that she was in the hospital and headed to hospice. She had no idea how long she had left. We were able to visit her in the hospital where we found her thin, but as bright and intelligent as always. Not a week later, reports from Chris and Mary Jane said Genie had deteriorated very quickly. Shortly after that we got a phone call that said Genie might not survive the night. Jean-Marie and I packed and hopped in the car and drove through the night non-stop to Memphis, a seventeen-hour drive. We went straight to the nursing home where Genie was sent for hospice care. We found Genie barely alive. The horror of cancer was writ over her. Her arms and legs were drawn in, her mouth was agape and making labored swallows of air while her eyes were opened but glazed. It was heart breaking, it was Genie yet it was not Genie. We held her hands and prayed the rosary. We sat with her and talked with her. We told her we loved her. We were there through the afternoon and were joined by Chris and Mary Jane. Around 4PM we all left with so that Jean-Marie and I could get cleaned up and get something to eat. While we were gone, Genie died. I loved what I learned about Genie at her passing. I had assumed that Genie lived a sheltered and lonely life. But she had friends that were family to her. Amy, who was just half her age, had known her for 20 years. At sixteen years of age, Amy was Genie’s grocery delivery girl. Their relationship started there and just kept going (Genie was never shy). She was friends with Amy’s husband and mother and daughter and grandchildren. All of whom we met at the funeral and found them quite easy to like and share our grief with. Amongst all these passings, Genie was the only one we were able to say goodbye to. Goodbyes make a great deal of difference.

    As we head home, we are emotionally drained. I look back on Cathy, John, and Genie and feel sad. Grief is the curse of the living. But it is nice to think, that these friends have found a land more kind than home and more large than Earth.

Squirrels: Watching Me, Watching You

The bible speaks of the Ten Plagues to befall Egypt. Each horrible, and as-a-whole a clear indicator of the stubbornness of man that it took ten plagues for God to get his point across. Squirrels were not among them, though they feel like a plague to me. And this one plague has lasted longer than Egypt’s ten – by millions of years. What does that say about our stubbornness or God’s for that matter?

Perhaps I am being a little harsh on these furry creatures, but not without reason. Squirrels and I have crossed paths (both directly and obliquely) many times over the years. At one time, I did consider them friendly. As a young boy I recall innocently feeding them McDonalds’ fries while sitting on a park bench outside South Carolina’s capitol building. But that represented a rare instance, and it was not long before squirrels showed their true colors (other than gray).

I may sound paranoid. But squirrels have a way of getting under my skin, invading my thoughts. On Jethro Tull’s Beast and the Broadsword there is a song called Watching Me, Watching You, and though the first line of the refrain goes, “Watching me, watching you, girl!” I honestly thought from the first moment I heard the song that it said, “Watching me, watching you, squirrel!”

Why should I feel that way? Let us take an example from my college years at Clemson University. One day I was out behind Riggs Hall to see what progress had been made on the Mechanical Engineering Department’s rehabilitation project of an old steam shovel. As I walked around and looked at the rusted hulk, it seemed that not much had been done to this point. Thinking on this I was startled by a shriek. Looking around I found its source. A squirrel was clinging to the brick wall and shrieking at me. Not chittering, shrieking.

Recently we moved into an older neighborhood, and there are a lot of squirrels here. In our last neighborhood lynx, coyotes, and the odd mountain lion kept them in check. Not so closer to town. As one of the many projects turning this house into our home, we had a sprinkler system put in. When the crew had finished the work, I was going over the new system with the foreman. Laughing he told me about one of his young crew members who had brought a sandwich with him for lunch the previous day. The young man had the sandwich in his coat pocket, had his coat set to the side as he worked in shirt sleeves. At lunch time, he went over to his jacket only to find that a squirrel had chewed a hole through the pocket and taken the sandwich.

Occasionally I turn my thoughts to the problem of squirrels, and I have come around to the thought that maybe their behavior is not all their fault. Most of my life I had taken a very biased approach to squirrels, but when viewed objectively I have developed a theory. Admittedly it is one that is more religious than scientific. I speculate that the diminutive stature and natural mischievousness of squirrels mark them as easy targets of possession by demons.

Before you start casting the first stones, hear me out. It is not unheard of throughout history that human beings themselves have been known to put their life in imminent peril to rid themselves of demons. It goes like this, the possessed individual in a moment of lucidity will put themselves in actual harm’s way hoping this will scare the demon out just as they make their way to safety at the last possible instance. This does not always turn out well for the person, like so much in life timing is everything.

To me it seems that squirrels exhibit this behavior. We all have witnessed it. A squirrel dashes in front of a car for no reason, often to escape at the last second (sometimes to end up as a tenderized tidbit for magpies and crows). I witnessed one particularly harrowing example of this when I was a student at Clemson. It was a Saturday, and more importantly a home football game day. Back then, I would guess that the residents of the town of Clemson numbered about fifteen thousand. So when the student body was in full force, the population doubled in size. On a home game day, that number more than doubled. The only way to accommodate this flood of orange and purple humanity is to turn all roads (except one lane) into inbound routes prior to the game.

In college, I was younger, thinner, faster than I am now (note no mention or claim of agility is made – you will understand why). I was a runner. On this particular Saturday, the Clemson Tigers were hosting the Southeast Reginal Cross Country Championships with a good chance to win. I was joining my running mates at a golf course some five miles outside of town to watch the race. I was pumped!

No way was I driving, so I got into my running gear and headed out. Early on as I was running on the sidewalk along the edge of campus, I looked to my left at a sluggishly moving sea of cars jamming all four lanes of the road. Looking up ahead I saw a squirrel make a mad dash into that slow flow of iron. I was panicked. I didn’t want to see the squirrel die. I kept watching, hoping beyond hope that it would be alright. It made it across two lanes then made an abrupt left to run with traffic! By this time, I was running down the sidewalk while looking back over my left shoulder in horror as the squirrel was running underneath cars. Without any show of reason, the squirrel turned left again and made for the sidewalk. I gasped, I was afraid, I was compelled to keep watching as the squirrel miraculously made it back to the sidewalk safe-and-sound. At that moment, I literally ran into a speed limit sign, stumbled backwards and landed on my pride. I got up as quickly as I could and resumed my run at a stagger, this time with my head down to avoid the likely laughing stares of a host of drivers and passengers.

On second thought screw demons, maybe squirrels are just naturally evil.

Time for Valentine's Day

There is a clock here in our house, an antique Seth Thomas. It hangs in our dining room. I love winding it, so does my wife. First, I wind the counterweight that controls the gong, and then I wind the counterweight that keeps the time. All the while my eye on the weights, watching them rise into the shadows at the top of the clock. There is just something about the antiquity of this act and this clock to me.



At least once a day, I will stand in front of the clock and simply watch the brass pendulum swing to-and-fro. Each “to” marking one second, each “fro” marking one second, audible ticks at the apogees. Those ticks settle into the background breathing of our home, mostly unnoticed until they stop.



The sound of the clock’s gong is made by a small hammer striking a coil of iron. In the clock’s long life, this coil has become bent and distorted resulting in the sound of the gong being damaged and blunted. Somehow the survival of this sound in its fractured state brings me comfort and the feeling that the clock has lived its long life that was both easy and hard in unknown measure. I think I can relate.



My favorite time of day with the clock is when both hands are joined at twelve. It is a moment that lasts precisely twelve seconds. The longest this arthritic gong will sound at the top of an hour. It almost never fails to give me pause twice a day. I will go silent, I will listen, and I will hold my breath as I keep count listening to each word and hoping for understanding. I am thankful for those moments and realize to keep them I must share my attention with the clock once each twenty-four hour period, this is about the longest our clock will go without our touch.

And maybe that is it, maybe the magic in the clock for me is in the symbiotic nature of our relationship to it. We keep its heart going and it whispers and sings to us thanks in its cracked voice. I really liked my wrist watch, but when the battery died, I simply put it away in a drawer. It didn’t really need me and I didn't really need it.  If I need to know the time, I have my phone, my computer, my tablet, my oven, my clock radio, and even my microwave. I am surrounded by impersonal time. These electrified and battery-operated descendants of our wall clock don’t need us much. They don’t ask for attention unless a battery dies, or the electricity fails. Their call for help could take weeks, months, or years. Otherwise they could not care less. But our clock relies on us as we rely on it, every day. It is a ritual. If I want to know not the time but the hour, I must listen for our clock. And in that instant of the gong I step from outside time and into it.



Today is Valentine’s Day, and the clock by its presence and not its talents reminds me of that. It keeps me present in the understanding that love is not all passion. It is more ritual and care and understanding. It is being with someone who enjoys being around you at least as much as you enjoy being around them in good times and in bad. My wife is and always will be that person to me. Later today, my wife and I will go to a movie then out to eat. We will hold hands as often as possible and share those soft quick kisses that I cannot resist sharing whenever, wherever I am near her. At home, the clock will continue to keep time in ticks and gongs, breathing steadily because we wound it, eased because we rubbed oil into its elderly wood, clear because we clean its glass. It will wait for us to come home, and we will smile when we do as the ticking hits us and then settles into the house. We will look at it, making sure we have remembered to wind it, then we will retire into each other for the rest of our evening.



Happy Valentine’s Day

Gothic Cathedrals

There are few things more powerful than being raised both Southern and Catholic. It amounts to a boyhood steeped in intimacy and ritual. It results in a lifetime of Gothic views and spirits.



Not everyone is Catholic. So it may be difficult to see how being Catholic reinforces being Southern and vice versa. From baptism, Catholicism is a road of ritual, a path through shadows ending in the light. Baptism is not the simple daubing of blessed oil in the symbol of the cross on a child’s forehead, or the pouring of water through the infant’s fine hair. The source of water must be flowing, it cannot be still. One does not simply receive communion, they must go through appropriate training and instruction by both laity and the ordained. They must have made their first confession to God through a priest. They must take to heart and soul the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the holiest of flesh and blood. Life is marked and recorded by these moments of sacrament. Each sacrament cataloged on your baptismal certificate held at the church of your baptism, held where you were born in Christ. We are fed the mysteries of the saints of our Church throughout the millennia. St. Francis of Assisi, his life a roadmap to sainthood and forever naming him as patron saint of animals and the environment. St. Erasmus is the patron saint of sailors simply because he was martyred by having his entrails wound upon a capstan. St. Jude is the patron saint of lost causes. Lost causes, is there anything better to have a patron saint of, anything more gothic, anything more truly Southern.



Being raised Southern was not as well documented as being raised Catholic. But being born in the South there is an immediate link to the land, to the earth by an inseverable umbilical cord. Life blood no longer coming from your mother, but from the red clay beneath your feet. It is a link that is spiritual, but not pagan. It is the sense that there is no smell like that of pine sap and the rotted leaves of a forest floor, or of salt and death in the scent of the pluff mud that fills the coastal marshes. It is seeing winter not as domineering, but as flirtatious with the springtime as her skirts flare out in flaunting enticing unequal wisps of hot and cold. It is embracing the humidity which embraces us, telling us that we are both loved and possessed. Instead of saints, we have our ghosts. Lost family, neighbors, even the occasional stranger that is still tied to us rather than making the step into what is next. Beyond these ephemeral qualities, there are rituals to be learned, to be passed down from father to son and mother to daughter.



I was raised to be a gentleman. To open doors for girls, to yes ma’am and no ma’am no matter what age I was speaking to. I was raised to tend my own garden of a soul alone and in quiet no matter how rocky the soil or how blistered and blooded my hands got. To be a man is to bear up, to take the load and carry it unblinking. Girls are raised to be fierce and to be the foundation of the family and the keeper of our dead. They are raised to smile sadly and with complete empathy as they pierce you unnoticed. The presence of blood (actual or metaphorical) the first and most lasting impression that the argument is lost, and you have just been killed with kindness.



My life has been and will always be entangled in the mysteries of my land and my faith. There are shadows in both but no place to hide. Whether it is the red of the clay or the red of Christ’s blood, whether it is the humid kiss of summer or the oily smearing of ashes on my forehead, my life will always be guided by the symbols of my birth and baptism. My life will always lie on this beautiful and flawed foundation because I know nothing else. Bless m’heart.

Romancing the Moon

Last weekend gave rise to a Super Blood Wolf Moon. A very special moon. A moon at its closest point to the earth. A moon full at mid-winter when it is said that wolves would howl into the night from the snow covered land surrounding Native American villages. A moon eclipsed by the earth, kissed with red. As with so many things in life, there are multiple aspects but it is blood that is most important.



The first Blood Moon that I witnessed preceded Halloween of 2004, a spectacle that I shared with my oldest grandson who was just five and half years old at the time. This was our first “guys’ trip.” We could have just as easily called it our Dinosaur Volcano Blood Moon trip.



We traveled from Colorado Springs that weekend, setting our course south (a direction that brings me much comfort). The first leg of our journey saw us cross the Colorado/New Mexico border by way of Raton Pass then turning east in the direction of Texas.



At the border with Texas, there is Clayton Lake State Park. The park has one of the most extensive dinosaur trackways in North America. What better way to start our trip than walking where dinosaurs walked, by witnessing the fossilized footprints of creatures that now only live best in our imaginations.



My grandson ran me ragged over those grounds. We saw every site of interest. The highlight of which was my grandson and I looking out from a foot bridge over a dry shallow river bed the color and texture of moonscape. It was covered with the rounded prints of thick-skinned herbivores and the three toed prints of the long-toothed creatures that pursued them.



From Clayton Lake Park, we headed back west the way we came making for Capulin Volcano State Park. Capulin is an extinct volcano (my level of courage only extends so far!). Visiting something so ancient, something that helped to define the landscape, define the earth with my young grandson at my side grants a particular perspective on past, present, and future. Our trek was not limited to the rim, but we also followed a trail down into the crater. We walked on rocky ground and among stubborn ragged vegetation aware that at one time this hole in the mountain was bare and gaping and spewing ash and lava into the air and over the land.



Exhausted from miles of travel and long hikes, we made our way back into Colorado for fast food and our hotel in Trinidad. We ate our food and watched tv waiting for nightfall and the lunar eclipse. When the time came, we went out into the cold. Scrub oak and small pinon pine trees were dark twisted silhouettes in the night. Above us the moon shone dully in the sky, a celestial eye, unblinking and bloodshot. My grandson pointed up toward the orb and breathlessly uttered, “Look, Bumpa. The BLOOD. RED. MOON.”



As a post script to this trip and to my grandson’s beautiful innocent enthusiasm, I took one of the many photos from the trip and scanned it into my computer. Ineptly, I did a rough cut and paste of a T-Rex image into a picture of my grandson looking at a Clayton State Park sign. When I showed this composite to him, he looked at me wide-eyed and said, “Bumpa! I didn’t even see that when we were there!”



For me, the moon makes time fluid. Starting from the moon, I flow with ink black waters from one memory, one story to the next. And those stories are not only behind me. As-long-as the moon rises in the sky, the headwaters for those stories are not yet reached, and there are memories upon memories to be made.

Knots

I am not sure what everyone else goes through when feeling stressed, I can only speak for myself. There were times growing up when I would feel a nervous twinge in the pit of my stomach. A feeling of being a little disconnected, a little lost to the moment. If my parents were home, I would seek their proximity and would feel better. If they were out, I would go to their bedroom. There was something calming about just crossing the threshold. I would sit in one of their chairs or explore my father’s top dresser drawer until I felt at ease. In that drawer I would touch his tie pins and cufflinks, poke at his pads containing notes and bits of his life, and feel the wooden beads of his rosary slip through my fingers. In finding my parents or the symbols of my parents I was reassured and made safe.

It has been several decades since I have lived with my parents, in fact they are no longer around to visit much less live with. But I feel they raised me well, and the strength I once sought from them I have attempted to pass along to my wife and children (and have watched them do the same with their families). Still there are times as an adult that I get worried, that a knot twists in my belly. For the past two years especially, I have felt that knot daily.

This is not a tangle within me that can be eased by a visit to mom’s and dad’s bedroom, or by the cool feel of wooden beads on my fingertips. It cannot be eased in talking to my wife, or children, or friends. In many ways sharing my feelings just tightens the knot because there is no one to invalidate my fears.

In the microcosm of one’s life, parents, family, the circle of close friends help smooth rough spots. Similarly for American society, our government functions much the same way for citizens – at least for me. When the world turns frightening as on September 11^th, knowing my government and my president were there to defend us and to rally a world of allies in support of us gave me some calm upon those turbulent seas.

I don’t have that security now. Our president works to divide people. Our president works to subvert faith in the judiciary, the congress, law enforcement. Our president works to separate us from a world of friends while embracing well known enemies. I cannot at this time look to my government to untie my knots, the government has become fractured, ultra-partisan, and contentious or servile depending on the side of the aisle that is viewed. It has been made this way by the master of knots, Donald Trump.

When the nation’s “father” is the stressor and the uncertainty, we are without a core. Rather than a cohesive orb, we have become fractured flotsam in irregular orbits about a volatile center that seems to threaten a big bang or big crunch at any moment. We have no room to enter for peace, no words to read that can bring comfort. Even our founding document is being used and taken advantage of in ways the framers never imagined.

I want better for my country. I want better guardians than the polarized few we have elected. I want a president and representatives that think first of what is best globally, nationally, and personally for the citizens. Now it seems all about power, the president has it, his party wants to keep it, and opposition wants to take it away. Where has love, peace, and understanding retreated to in the presence of paranoia and fear? Where has the security gone? Where is my parents’ bedroom, and the drawer with the icons of my father?