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Little Free Library

Posted on March 1, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Little Free Library

Have you seen them? These cute and brightly painted little houses are to be found in front yards all over town. Bigger than a birdhouse, but much too small for a child’s playhouse, Little Free Libraries are popping up everywhere. In fact, pretty soon Bill and I are going to have one in our front yard too!

Can you tell that I am excited? I first ran across the Little Free Library concept on line sometime last fall. As soon as I read about them, I knew I had to have one. A career as a librarian always came up on the Strong Vocational Interest test when I was in school, and now I am finally going to be one.

Right now our Little Free Library is sitting on a table in our new garage waiting for the final coats of bright red paint and protective glaze. While the snow flies, it is too cold to paint. Instead, I turn to my advance review copy of The Little Free Library Book by Margaret Aldrich (Coffee House Press, 2015).

If I can’t paint, I can read about other LFL librarians around the world who are finding so many pleasures in establishing small colorful libraries and sharing a love of books and reading with friends, neighbors and passing strangers. I’ve learned that I wouldn’t have a chance to join this global community if not for Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisconsin who built the first library in 2009 as a memorial to his book loving mother. His library is No. 1. Ours, received in January, 2015, is No. 21,265.

My favorite thing about this book is the many photographs of LFLs set up along city streets, suburban lawns and country roads from Bellingham to Bogota and other unexpected places around the world. Many are elaborately decorated and embellished, but others are created out of found objects like discarded kitchen cabinets and even old microwaves.

Another exciting thing about the libraries is their power to build community. Some librarians (they are called “stewards”) comment that they meet more people in a week since their library went up than they have met since they moved in to their neighborhood. A big part of the fun is seeing who stops to poke through the books, which of the books are taken and what new books appear.

The Little Free Library Book contains suggestions for inviting others participation in library activities from a grand opening ceremony to organizing bike trips to visit other libraries nearby. One steward met a family who had organized their vacation to visit LFL’s in distant communities. What about making room for the distribution of original writing or setting up a small seed sharing project?

The Little Free Library Book offers many practical suggestions from how to install a counter to track visits to your library to how to deal with books that no one takes out or how to respond to problems that might come up with neighbors or city authorities. While problems have arisen in some places, mostly the reception is very positive. The Los Angeles Police Department has gone so far as to install LFL’s at their stations to encourage better community relations.

You might want to buy your LFL from the website or, if you want to build your own, there are detailed plans to be found in The Little Free Library Book. You can even find information on knitting your library a custom designed sweater!

By now you can tell that the LFL community is a zany and wildly creative bunch. The Little Free Library Book is an exciting report filled with beautiful photos, great stories and inspiring ideas. It’s worth a read even if you don’t want your own library. But beware. If you don’t want one now, you will after reading this book. Look for it in April, 2015. You can look for my library then too.

This is a guest post. My wife Carol wrote it. I am very much involved in the project, but Carol won’t let me paint.

Posted in Books, Current Activities, Home Improvement, Little Free Library, Stories, Winter

A Volkswagen in Italy

Posted on February 27, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

I had a good U.S. Army career, all three years of it. I was in electronics school for almost a year, on the Jersey Shore and in Huntsville, Alabama. Then, it was the USNS Buckner to Germany. I was trained on an obsolete missile system and my first duty station was with a unit that operated another obsolete missile system.

1963 VW

The unit was about to go out of business, so they were pretty lax with us. I bought a car. A new 1963 Volkswagen, black. It cost $1389. I paid cash with 20 Deutschmark bills (about $5.00 back then) in a paper bag. Freedom! At least part of the time. This was unusual for an unmarried junior enlisted man. We also had real jobs doing electronics, so they didn’t mess with us too much. I could get away evenings and weekends most of the time. I was stationed in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria for five months then in Hanau, Hesse. Something like 28 kilometers apart on the Main river, they were different cities. Bavarians just seem happier. Those Hessians were nice people, but more reticent. Did Martin Luther bring that about?

Palatine Hill, Rome

After I was in Hanau for a few months, two buddies and I did a big road trip to Rome. What a trip! We did some of the standard tourist things, but G.I.’s on the loose in Europe see the places from a more earthy perspective. There was Michelangelo’s David in Florence and the whores on the Palatine Hill in Rome. 2000 lira for us, 1000 lira for a local. The whole thing was so sordid I could not partake. I liked Switzerland. Nice people, great scenery, and so orderly. We partied some in Zurich and got to talk to some of the locals. Everyone knew we were American soldiers, of course. The haircuts gave us away. Then onto a train that carried everyone’s car through the St. Gotthards Pass tunnel to Italy.

Milan Traffic (modern)

We loved Italy. Beautiful country, from the Alps to Tuscany and Rome. Wonderful people. Warm, friendly, helpful, and lots of wine. The most striking view was approaching the walled city of Siena from the Tuscan countryside. The most terrifying experience was driving in Milan during rush hour. We got onto a traffic circle in downtown Milan that had about eight cars abreast, all jockeying for position. Italians are good, aggressive drivers, and drove those little Fiat 500s like they were Ferraris. We were out of place in that VW. It just didn’t fit in. We also had engine trouble. It would start missing and stuttering until it lost enough power that we would have to go to a shop about every 300 miles. That is where the language problem really took over. There was no language problem in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland, but the Italians had no English. The best I could do with Italian was the phrase book and some Spanish. The Volkswagen’s ignition points were burning up. We could communicate that and get new points, but we couldn’t get across to them that it was a chronic problem. So, for the rest of the trip it was new points every 300 miles. The mechanics were all eager to help, but the language problem was too much of a barrier. Back in Germany, my mechanic fixed it in about 30 minutes by replacing a burned spark plug wire. I learned about having difficulty while traveling and still having a good time. The car trouble added to the adventure.

Roman Forum

We were in Rome several days, staying in a Pension not far from the Vatican. One night we hooked up with some local college students who took us to the suburbs, no tourists, and a great time. Sitting here thinking about Rome, lots of images come up even sixty years later, but the Roman Forum is most memorable. It was the center of the world for a long time. I steeped myself in the history. Going back to Germany, when we crossed from Italian Switzerland to German Switzerland, we dropped into a beautiful glacial valley. At the head of the valley was a Gasthaus. Wiener schnitzel, pommes frites, and beer never tasted so good after all that tomato sauce and wine. That trip remains one of the highlights of my life.

Posted in 1963 Volkswagen, Memoirs, My Story, Rome, Stories, The Army, Traffic in Milan, Traveling in Europe

The Buckner Banner

Posted on February 24, 2015 by Bill 4 comments

USNS Buckner

One of my first literary adventures was as editor of The Buckner Banner, the ship’s newspaper on the USNS Simon Bolivar Buckner, a troopship sailing from New York to Bremerhaven, Germany. It was 1963, and the U.S. Army was shipping me to Europe. Just out of technical school, I had one skinny little stripe on my sleeve. I must have been chosen as editor by some random process, as I had no experience. I guess that has always been the Army way. The Banner ran a news digest from the radio room every day, and had a lot of canned content used on every nine day voyage. My job was to come up with some original content. I had a crew of clerk typists who made mimeograph masters we ran off every morning. The most valuable thing I learned as editor is to listen to your people. One of the guys suggested we serialize a Sherlock Holmes novel. The passengers on the ship were a lot of GI’s headed to their first real duty station in Germany, stacked four deep in bunks in the cargo holds, and a large number of dependents, family members of career Army personnel. There were daily movies and a library, but little else for people to do. The Banner was a major defense against boredom. That Sherlock Holmes novel was a big hit. The mimeographed paper was hard to read. The machine was worn out, and the reproduction quality was terrible. We made no effort to make each paper entirely readable, so the passengers were forced to share their copies in order to be able to read every page. A detective novel became a shipboard community building event. People loved it, and I got a lot of compliments for someone else’s idea. I also had the run of the ship as the editor and got to explore the entire vessel, from the heads in the bow to the fantail. I was also exempt from all the nasty little jobs the Army gives troops to keep them busy. I was on the same ship on the way home, and knew all the places to hide. Mostly, the voyage was routine. There were stories about previous trips with bad weather. Those cargo holds full of troops had waves of vomit sloshing back and forth as the ship rolled and pitched. Then it had to be cleaned up. The most excitement we had was the lifeboat drill the first day out. The dependents lined up behind the lifeboats. All the GI’s in their life jackets lined up facing the water. We used to joke that part of the Army nomenclature for us was “expendable, non-returnable, with cover”. There have been some interruptions in my literary career, such as as the need to make a living, but the Army gave me a start.

Posted in Memoirs, My Story, Stories, The Army, Troop Ships

Book Review: Battles and Massacres on the Southwestern Frontier

Posted on February 21, 2015 by Bill One comment

Here is a book review I wrote for the Overland Journal, the quarterly magazine of the Oregon California Trails Association. I am Vice President of the Colorado Cherokee Trail chapter of the organization. The review is the reason for a delay in getting a post up. I had trouble with one section of the book which has poor graphics and some errors, although it is important research. It took weeks of ranting at people about it until I was able to calm down and include a short paragraph pointing out the problems. Maybe next time I won’t get so personally involved in someone else’s work.

BATTLES AND MASSACRES ON THE SOUTHWESTERN FRONTIER: HISTORICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

Edited by Ronald K. Weatherington and Frances Levine

Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014

248 pp., photos, maps, illustrations, extensive references, index

Paper, 5” x 8”

Battles and Massacres is a book that looks at several battles or massacres in the mid-nineteenth century from the perspectives of historians and archaeologists. This is important because the historical record is usually written by one side of the conflict. The archaeological record does not engage in cover ups, obfuscation, or have a political agenda.

The book examines four nineteenth century events in the American southwest involving Native Americans and Euro-Americans and the conflicts rising from westward expansion. The encounters are the Battle of Cieneguilla in New Mexico, Adobe Walls in Texas, the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah.

The first three were direct conflicts involving Indians and soldiers or buffalo hunters. Mountain Meadows was between Mormons of Southern Utah and a train of emigrants headed to California. Some Paiutes acted with the Mormon militia.

This book is important in illustrating how modern archaeological methods can apply objective information to a historical record that can be essentially accurate, as at Adobe Walls, or what amounted to a cover-up at Cieneguilla.

Adobe Walls was a trading post in the Texas Panhandle occupied by a number of hide hunters engaging in killing as many Bison as possible for profit, while destroying the Native Americans livelihood. A large group of Cheyenne warriors, believing that their medicine would protect them from the hide hunter’s bullets, attacked twenty-eight men and one woman. The medicine did not work. The big buffalo rifles were able to outrange the attacker’s weapons and many Indians were killed. Three of the defenders were wounded.

The archaeological data showed that the majority of the Indian weapons were relatively short range rifles like the Henry and Spencer carbines, easily outranged by the big Sharps rifles of the hide hunters. There were bullets from muzzleloaders and steel arrow points as well.

The recent archaeological investigations at Sand Creek have established the actual location of the massacre and validated the conclusion that there was a slaughter of people who were not able to effectively defend themselves, believing that they were under the protection of the U.S. Government. Almost all of the recovered artifacts were from Army weapons. The massacre was the result of John Chivington deciding that the Indians should all be killed.

Mountain Meadows is different, mostly Euro-Americans killing other Euro-Americans. The essay in this book is unusual in that it comes from a Mormon Church historian and places culpability on the Southern Utah Mormon leadership for the massacre. Given the tensions prevailing between the Utah Mormons and the U. S. Government, it was understandable there would be some conflict between the Mormons and a wagon train from Arkansas, but how it escalated into the slaughter of all the migrants over seven years old remains obscure.

Archaeological investigation at Mountain Meadows is difficult because of repeated disturbances over 150 years and the resistance of the Utah political leadership. A study that was halted by the then Utah Governor, a descendant of one of the attackers, did provide forensic information that reinforced the conclusion that the emigrants were disarmed and slaughtered.

The studies of the battle of Cieneguilla in 1854 illustrate how an archaeological survey can refute the historical accounts dating from the time of the battle. Of sixty troopers of the First Dragoons led into battle by Lt. John Davidson, twenty four were killed and twenty three wounded by about 100 Jicarilla Apaches.

The official report by Lt. Davidson is a story of a gallant attack by Dragoons against a superior force. In fact, the troopers, after leaving their horses in a canyon bottom, attacked uphill and were outflanked and hunted down by the Apaches as they tried to retreat. A Lt. Bell attempted to correct the report, but never received a hearing and was subsequently killed in action.

While the Cieneguilla study is important, there are some flaws. The archeology is well done, the maps are not, making it difficult to visualize the entire battlefield and the movements of the combatants. In addition, both essays explore the Battle of Cieneguilla, but fail to mention that what was Cieneguilla in 1854 is now Pilar, not far south of Taos.

The real tragedy of Cieneguilla is that the Apaches were then hunted down, starved, and sent to a reservation.

Overall, the book does an effective job of showing how history and archaeology can come together to provide a more accurate picture of events that occurred more than 150 years ago.

Posted in Battle of Adobe Walls, Battle of Cieneguilla, Mountain Meadows Massacre, Sand Creek Massacre, Southwestern Archaeology, Southwestern History, Stories, Writing

College Towns

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Bill One comment

I have lived in college towns for most of my life. They tend to be more liberal, have a vibrant cultural life, and steady infusions of young people having some of the best years of their lives. The energy inspires me.

Grand Junction, Boulder, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, even Greeley are all good college towns. Here in Denver we live near the University of Denver. I drink coffee and write in a coffee shop near the campus. I write mornings, and the shop has a rush every hour when classes change.

We go to concerts at the Newman Center on the DU campus. The student productions from the Lamont School of Music are always a lot of fun. The musicians are excellent, and the operas are good, but the student voices are not always top quality. I always want to hear Baroque music, and we go to concerts put on by Friends of Chamber Music.

The Newman Center also regularly presents professional artists from most everywhere. Most notable recently are Cameron Carpenter, a wildly flamboyant and talented organist. We just saw The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, a post-modern dance group from New York. I was entranced by the dancers and the music, performed by Lamont students.

I am a little sad because Carol now refuses to ever see The Nutcracker again, and this year she would not go to see Oklahoma! I just don’t know what is wrong with her. When we lived on Capitol Hill we went to some productions at The Denver Center of Performing Arts, but the events at DU are less expensive and the Newman Center is one of the best venues anywhere.

I am not much for sporting events, but DU’s Lacrosse team is good and I have seen several games. It’s a good game, fast, with more scoring than soccer, making it more fun to watch. The crowds are fun as well, with a lot of youth lacrosse players watching the college boys. There are always some fans of the other teams as well, because Denver draws people from all over the country. It is also good that DU dropped football in the1950’s. I used to watch Colorado College hockey when I lived in Colorado Springs, but haven’t been to a DU game yet.

Denver is a big city with several colleges. Some of the colleges have neighborhoods that are part of the big city but qualify as college towns. The area around DU is an example. The Auraria complex has CU Denver, Metro, and Community College of Denver, with many more students than DU, but the area is a downtown complex, with most of the students commuting. There is no college town feel there.

Washington Park

Capitol Hill has some of the feel, with a young population and a diverse, eclectic cluster of communities, but no college of any size. DU, however, has dorms, lots of apartments, rental houses, and fraternities and sororities. A real resident population, much like Boulder, Greeley, and Fort Collins. People walk, go to events, party, and hang out in bars,restaurants, and coffee houses. I didn’t know how much I missed all that until we moved into the neighborhood. Evans Avenue, University Boulevard, Old South Pearl, Washington Park, and Observatory Park are places that tie the community together, with a fine University at the center. I lived near Colorado College in Colorado Springs that had much the same feel, just on a smaller scale.

College towns, my favorite urban settings, I want to live in them always.

Posted in College Towns, Current Activities, Memoirs, My Story, Stories, University of Denver, Writing

The Meaning of Life

Posted on January 30, 2015 by Bill 2 comments

Sitting in the coffee shop I see that the meaning of life for the two year old running around the room is love, connection, and the joy of moving. That little boy, expressing sheer joy, has managed to communicate that feeling to everyone in the room. That is as it should be, and is probably as far as we really need to go.

As we get older, it gets more complicated. Pain, loss, death, and suffering come into our lives. Finding Meaning in the midst of suffering is difficult for many of us. Many people find their meaning in following. They follow gods, rulers, gurus, preachers, the girl next door, teachers, or their family and tribe.

Some of us, however, refuse to follow. One of my mottoes is “Don’t trust anyone who says he knows the will of God.” I prefer to think for myself. I search for answers and have for as long as I can remember. I am 72 years old and I am still searching. I have had a number of peak experiences. These experiences have come in several contexts, Christian, Buddhist, chemical, and in nature.

Every experience was life changing, giving me a new way of seeing and being. Sometimes they are brief, fleeting. Other times I have dwelled in the grasp of divine love for as long as a year. I have prayed without ceasing, done mindfulness meditation, spoken in tongues, laughed in ecstasy, cried with joy, and had years of no spiritual connection at all.

I know that a spiritual connection does not have to come in any specific religious context. I do not, however, know how to maintain that connection all the time. It is just not “After enlightenment, the laundry.” It is not being able to sustain a practice for a sustained period.

Do I lack discipline? No. I have maintained a discipline for an extended time and had an event that broke the connection. Am I a spiritual dilettante? It seems so. Most of the time,however, I am a spiritual nobody.

It’s a mystery. I know without any doubt that there is more to life and being than this round rock we ride through space. I have seen the eternal web of universal connection and oneness. I have been wrapped, enveloped in God’s love. I have received spiritual gifts. I have shared those gifts.

Now it seems that my task is to live in the world as a householder and writer. I do a ten minute meditation every morning and that’s it. Most of the time the meditation is clutter. Sometimes I get an experience of complete peace. That, for now, is enough.

I am not called to lead, to take action in the world. I learn, reflect, write a little, try my best to be a good husband and friend. I have family, which is saying a lot, as I come from a family with weak ties. Today the ties are strong and growing. Love.

Another task before me is to smooth out the bumps in my brain. I get angry, irritable. I obsess about meaningless things. I get depressed. I forget and procrastinate. I eat too much and don’t exercise. Lots to do. It is time to be in the world and find meaning here, not out there.

Posted in Current Activities, Memoirs, My Story, Stories

The Third Grade

Posted on January 21, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Old Fruita Elementary

I had a turbulent third grade. There were things I couldn’t do. I am so left-handed that I produced terrible cursive handwriting. It was so bad as to be almost unreadable. My ADD didn’t help, I tended to be disruptive, especially when I didn’t like the subject material or the teacher. I did not like Mrs. Bastian. To me she was just old, ugly, and mean. To her, I was rebellious, noisy, inattentive, and defiant. In retrospect, she was burned out and could not afford to leave.

My defiance showed up on the health chart. Every day, Mrs. Bastian graded the class on several things, including cleanliness, combed hair, clean fingernails, and other things. My thing was clean fingernails. While walking to school I would rub my fingernails in the dirt, getting them as filthy as I could. My health chart had all good marks except for the row of black marks for my fingernails. Big black marks. Bob Silva also had black marks, but not because his nails were not clean but because he was so dark the teacher thought his nails were dirty. She was so mean.

The other problem was with my dog. Spanky was a black Cocker Spaniel, as exuberant and careless as I was. Some mornings he would get loose and follow me to school. I think he wanted to go to school. If I saw him before I got to school, I would take him home and be late for school. Mrs. Bastian did not like that and would not accept my excuses. Other mornings he would make it into the classroom. The other kids loved it. The teacher was livid, and sent both of us home. I had to have a parent bring me back to school. Sometimes I just stayed home.

My father was the town telephone man, and my mother was the high school secretary. I know I was an embarrassment to them, but they also knew how much I hated that woman. The parent-teacher conferences must have been quite interesting.

I don’t think I learned a lot in third grade, but it didn’t matter a lot. I was a good reader, and drove my parents crazy with my questions about everything. I learned third grade on my own. I don’t understand why they did not move me across the hall to the other third grade class, but that woman and I got to dislike one another for the entire school year.

Fourth grade was a complete contrast. The teacher was fun, actually liked children, and encouraged learning. The only difficulty was multiplication tables. My ADD has never let me be a good memorizer. My mother drilled them into my head, bless her.

So, third grade didn’t create any lasting trauma, just some lasting memories. I can still see that row of black marks I was so proud of. My dog somehow missed out on fourth grade as well. I still can’t write cursive. I finally gave up trying and went back to printing everything but my scrawl of a signature.

Posted in ADD/ADHD, Memoirs, My Story, Stories

Winter Blues

Posted on January 17, 2015 by Bill One comment

Winter Blues

Here it is January. It was cloudy and snowy for days. The sun is shining today, but bleakly. Christmas and the rest of the holidays are over. They served as a temporary lift from the dark, depressing days of winter that every year remind us of the inevitable destiny we all share.

But, no, it isn’t all bad, just mostly. I don’t know why, but my regular seasonal depression is worse this year. I started feeling flat and unhappy sometime around Halloween, a holiday that was started to point out the return of darkness, the time when the spirits of the underworld again manifest here in our vale of tears. Recent news events have not helped.

For weeks I could not write, and painful memories and feelings arose. I read worthless trash, and was even drawn to watching mainstream television programs (I mostly resisted). I was crabby, restless, and had trouble sleeping. In times past when the melancholy struck, I would turn to drink, but I know it is only a temporary bit of oblivion that makes the everyday reality even more painful.

I got my meds changed, and the depression has lifted enough to allow me to write and get out of the house for a movie (Into the Woods). I feel a bit better, and the return of the sun is helping.

Abraham Lincoln said that the secret of happiness is happiness. That is true but he remained a melancholy. Maybe we have these times to remind us of the good times we so often take for granted. Maybe depressions force us to go inward, to leave daily life out there and look into those corners of our being we try to ignore.

Carl Jung wrote about the need to integrate the shadow, that part of the psyche that lurks behind the face we try to present to the world. If that part of the personality is ignored, it will surface as beliefs and acts that seem to be the opposite of who we want to be. The tragedies of twentieth century point out how the shadow operates in society as well as in the individual.

Depression brings the shadow out, especially at 3:00 AM. When it happens to me, I get to look at the events in my life I regret. I have to acknowledge that I have hurt people, been a bully, lied, shirked responsibility, had rage episodes, cheated, stolen, and overslept. If one tries to bury the dark side, it will surface in a more virulent form.

Learning to accept my shadow allows me to see when it wants to come out, and I am better able to deal with it. Carol, my wife, calls it the other Bill. Now my shadow mostly surfaces as irritability. I usually am able to recognize it and deal with it before I make a big ass out of myself. Depression makes me more irritable.

Today I am sitting in the doctors office while Carol has a procedure. With a few days of the medication change and some sunshine, the depression has eased somewhat, even with less sleep than normal. I think things are improving, even with the bad coffee here.

Posted in Current Activities, Depression, Memoirs, My Story, Stories, Winter, Writing

Terror

Posted on January 10, 2015 by Bill Leave a comment

Paris Terror

The events in Paris this week bring back memories of all the terrorist incidents we have lived through for many years. Why? Why kill innocent people for some cause they have nothing to do with, or they are only making fun of political situations?

Terrorism works. The goal of terror is to put a spotlight on a cause, to get people emotionally involved in an issue they would not usually care about. They become passionate and affiliate themselves with the side of the conflict they agree with. The middle ground, where truth usually resides, becomes obscured as fear and rage take over.

Most people are reasonable and just want to live and let live, whether Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Protestant, Catholic, black, brown, white, wealthy, middle, or working class. Terrorism divides people into opposite camps, where people view others as suspicious and dangerous. The others must be controlled, removed, or eliminated. There is no longer any room for dialog.

This depiction is somewhat extreme. We have seen decades of terror and hate end in Ireland as the two sides finally stopped the killing mostly out of sheer exhaustion and the work of excellent negotiators. An example of where terror achieved its end was in 1950s Algeria, when years of bombings, repression, and hate in Algeria and France ended with Algerian independence.

The Battle of Algiers, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Algiers a movie about that struggle, illustrates how terror works. It has become either a textbook of terrorism or a lesson for those who wish to end the process of fear and hate. Algeria was a French colony with a large population of relatively wealthy French amid a large population of mostly poor Muslim Arabs who resented French rule.

An Arab liberation movement began a campaign of terror, bombing public places where French people gathered. The French army responded with a policy of repression. People were arrested and tortured, curfews imposed, matters escalated and the bombings began in France, especially Paris. The polarization, radicalization, and repression escalated as well, finally ending when the French government under DeGaulle granted independence to Algeria.

The parallels with Israel and Palestine are obvious. The situation there is so divided that many view any peaceable resolution as unlikely, at least in the short run. In Europe, the parallel is with Muslims living in a secular culture that are marginalized and discriminated against, just as the Catholic minority was in Northern Ireland.

The reasons for terror are not only religion. Religion often becomes the justification for acts of terror, but race, class, ethnicity, and alienation are often the underlying reasons. What is needed is tolerance, dialog, and human connection.

Keep calm and carry on.

Posted in Current Activities, Fear, Polarization, Stories, Terrorism

Hate, Faith, and Polarization

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Bill One comment

War Children

I read recently that if people with strong conservative or fundamentalist beliefs have their beliefs challenged, their position hardens. I don’t think that applies solely to conservatives. When I see some outrageous statement form Michele Bachmann or others of her ilk, my negative feelings tend to strengthen my position.

Back when I was taking Political Science courses, the prevailing mantra was that the underlying strength of American democracy was a spirit of compromise. Legislators on opposite sides of the aisle would come together and work out a deal that accomplished some of the goals of each side. There was an atmosphere of give and take.

The nation has had periods of cooperation. The Truman and Eisenhower years may be an example. Polarization has also been a repetitive theme in our history. Slavery and race are the issues dividing the nation since the eighteenth century. We seem to be inching toward a resolution, but don’t look for peace and harmony yet.

The current impasse in congress is, on the surface, Republicans versus Democrats. The rhetoric on both sides is “The American People want this” or “The American people want that”. The members of congress want campaign contributions and more money.

Most Americans don’t know what they want or don’t care. Under the rhetoric is ideology. One the one side are the dedicated progressives with a broad view of how the country should change. They see social issues that need to be changed. They like the money.

The other side is composed of two main groups. The true conservatives just do not want change. They want retreat to a simpler time without the complex, baffling issues a huge, diverse culture is facing. Think Norman Rockwell. They also like the money. The other group is ideological. They see themselves as engaged in a global struggle between the forces of evil and the true path they represent. To compromise would mean giving in to temptation and the path to destruction. They like the money. They want power to overcome the Enemy.

The true believers on either side are resistant to opposing views, and when confronted their views tend to harden. The Karl Roves are mainly interested in power. The true believers are preparing for the end times, the final confrontation between the Antichrist and the faithful.

This confrontation has, of course, been a constant theme in Christianity since the Book of Revelation was written. It was written about Rome during the time of the destruction of the temple and the Jewish diaspora. The imagery is about Rome. The Beast, the seven hills, all refer to Rome, not today. This theme came up again around 1000 A.D., at the time of the Black Death, and often in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, whenever some True Believer sees prophecies and does some calculations.

Almost every generation has applied it to their own time. Christ continues to tarry. The faithful are not deterred. The consequence of this hardened ideology is congressional gridlock. Compromise is not an option when confronting demonic forces. It doesn’t take too many fundamentalist Christians in Congress to lock things up.

The current trend goes back to the Enlightenment, which was followed by the Industrial Revolution and the beginnings of a secular and progressive society. Concurrent with the secularization was the growth of literacy and people reading the Bible for their own selves. Now there is a book with a lot of themes. There is rich soil for a fundamentalist ideology, a return to the City of God.

The Bible and the Quran came from a region where people have always fought over for land and power. They also fought over ideas, moving from paganism with a God for every purpose to a God wanting everyone to follow His purpose. Jesus and Paul wanted us to find God’s law and purpose in our hearts. That takes a lot of work, and most are content with the law. Mohammed laid down a new law and people went right to war over who should enforce the law.

Those who want power use the law for their purposes. They are not too concerned with eternal truth. Check that with Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. Some want to use to use the law and power for what they see as spiritual purposes. Check that with Ted Cruz, Michele Bachmann, and Sarah Palin.

The struggle in the Islamic world is much the same. Secularization and progressivism contend with a reactionary attempt to return to pure times that never really existed. Old tribal and religious hatreds return with true believers armed with computers and AK-47’s.

There is a broad movement of people seeking to use the common bonds of humanity to work and pray for peace. I hope the peace seekers will prevail. I pray with them. There is a universal web of love that can overcome hate.

Posted in My Story, Polarization, Stories

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