The Greatest American Moment in American History

I'm a firmly middle-aged white woman living in southern California, born fifty years and one day ago, the one day, today, that the great Martin Luther King stood up in front of the Lincoln Memorial and let loose one of, if not the most, amazing speeches in the history of my country. I listened to the speech today while I folded clothes warm from the laundry. The hair on my white arms rose, tears pricked at my eyes, I wondered again at the preternatural magic that man possessed, how he wove history, the present and the future into words -- that glorious cadence of his oratory. As sabers rattle and metal machines lie in wait to drop bombs, yet again, in desolate places across the globe, I wonder, too, whether the words he spoke of, that dream, will ever be realized fully, whether the principles of nonviolence will ever take utterly and completely. I know better. They will not. But I know that I will take those principles into my own heart and teach them to my children and hope that by so doing we will be that many more added to the peacemakers.

Here's the speech:




And here's an excellent article for those of you, like me, who struggle with so-called patriotism and honoring soldiers and killing and dying for liberty. 

It's also for those of you who don't understand people like me.

No, thanks: Stop saying "support the troops."

The Unwritten Word

I was an ugly cry mess this morning driving home after dropping the boys off at school. I was listening to NPR, to a story about one of the soldiers who spent more than six years as a hostage in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. John Borling was shot down from his plane, captured, tortured and held in a six by seven foot cell with no windows for years, and hearing his old, rough voice explain how the composing of poetry in his head and then the tapping out of that poetry in code on the wall kept him alive just undid me. You know - the irony of a soldier fighting in an unjust war, bombing civilians in what would ultimately become a lost cause was not lost on me. However, I was so moved by the power of what Bowling called the unwritten word, the nearly unbelievable impulse to create and to survive. He said this in his newly published book of poetry, Taps on the Walls: Poems from the Hanoi Hilton:

The essence of the human condition is the ability to create. Jail me, hurt me, hate me, but the mind and spirit are weapons. No books, no writing materials, nothing—just the mind. Find a way. One of the ways for me was to mentally create poetry. Create poetry and keep it memorized — lots of poetry. It was a way to fight back and provide legacy for my wife and daughter should I not survive. I tapped those poems through the walls and others helped carry that legacy for years.

Here's one poem that describes how he got through the day as a knight, but you really have to listen to him (I dare you not ugly cry), and you can do so here:

The Tourney

The scepter raised and silent challenge made,

Again I mental summon lance and shield,

And somehow last till regal colors fade.

It's now, the victor absent from the field,

Hard pallet draws me, huddled down upon,

A distant tower tolls a muffled chime;

Another muddled day has eddied on

To join the addled streams of tousled time.

Embittered languor blankets captive man;

So armored, sally forth at dawn, consigned

To stand alone, and parry best I can

Until appointed tourney's end, resigned.

For time's an old and boring enemy.

Too cruel to kill forgotten men like me.

Dulce et Decorum est

Civil War family via Dream Dogs Art

I never have much to say on these holidays that memorialize soldiers and war and killing and dying. I shirk from expressions like freedom isn't free. I feel a roiling conflict when asked to honor the soldier and not the war and risk the censure of those who take to these easily. I might even envy them. I don't begin to understand the life of a Marine, the dedication, the camaraderie, the duty. I saw the movie Lincoln this weekend and was struck, again, by the simpler brutality of the Civil War when men fought against men, most of the time, in hand to hand combat. It is at once heroic to watch and absurd. I also happened to read an article in the New Yorker magazine called Atonement about a very young Iraqi veteran tortured by a debacle in 2009 when his unit in Iraq opened fire in a street battle and brutally murdered members of a family, including a baby. He eventually tracks down the remaining members of the family and asks for forgiveness, which they give to him, but the cost of this atonement took my breath away. Over 4,000 American soldiers died in Iraq and over 150,000 Iraqis died. This morning, the Los Angeles Times newspaper includes an article titled 2 Wars, 11 Years, 725 fallen Californians. The article states that 41% of these soldiers who died were not yet 22 years old. Sixty-three of them were still teenagers. Those numbers don't make me feel proud; they make me feel ashamed. No, freedom isn't free, but sending boys away to fight and kill never works, has never worked and will never work. On Veterans' Day, I will honor those who have fallen and those who have had to kill others in the name of freedom or liberty or God, but I feel sad for just about everyone.



Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Kids, Soldiers and Drugs

Boys in the trenches, World War I

I have a lot of friends whose kids are on psychotropic drugs. These are seemingly normal children, not those with special needs, and their problems range from attention deficit disorder and ADHD to depression and more serious issues of mental health. I'm in no position to judge this, cognizant of the fact that nearly all of those friends are wonderful, careful parents doing what they believe is best for their kids. But every time I read an article like the ones I've linked to below, I wonder. What, exactly, is going on that so many kids are being drugged at ever younger ages? Is this necessary? Is this a cultural shift? Is this a new "normal?" Is this going to backfire eventually? Is this a result of the pharmaceutical/industrial complex? Is it all about money? Are these kids at an advantage or have we created a monster?

I come at this predicament from a very biased position, of course -- while both my boys are free, blessedly, of any kind of drug, my daughter has endured an arsenal of them, and I can honestly say that nearly all the twenty or so that she's been on in seventeen years have been of no use to her whatsoever. In fact, they've probably done more harm than good. We are not an exception to this rule; 30% of people with epilepsy do not have control with multiple drug trials. Yes, 30%. I've grown extremely, if not irrationally, opposed to the seemingly careless way drugs are prescribed to children with refractory epilepsy (epilepsy is considered refractory when you've had a trial of at least two drugs and seizures are not controlled) -- I hear of young children on three and sometimes four combinations of AEDs all the time, still, in 2012 --  and I'm starting to get really creeped out by the numbers of "normal" kids being prescribed psychotropic ones as well.

I remember one neurologist years ago telling me that taking anti-epileptics was like peeling back the scalp and tissue underneath and pouring medicine over the entire brain -- a neuro-bath, I believe he described it back in the ancient 1990s. That meant the entire brain was affected by the drugs, and I do remember looking at the insert (that lovely piece of paper written in infinitesimal writing listing side effects ranging from irritability and bruising to constant laughter and death) and feeling like I was drowning in terror. I have never gotten used to giving her this shit. Never. I suppose I would have should her seizures ever have been controlled. I might have even been grateful. But even now, the drugs that Sophie takes are so new no one really knows what the hell they're doing to her, beyond the dizziness, headache, stomach cramping and tiny bit of seizure control. Years ago, when I first began exploring alternative treatments for Sophie, I asked her neurologist at the time whether it was all right to give her Chinese herbal teas that I'd gotten from a very trusted Chinese doctor. I don't see why not, the neurologist said in her clipped British accent, They couldn't be any worse for her than the stuff we've been cramming down her throat for the last decade. Poor little chip.


Evidently, more than 100,000 American soldiers are currently on psychotropic drugs. Yes, that's right. More than 100,000 of them, for issues like attention, depression, psychosis, etc. I suppose the justification is the constant stress and terror many of them have endured during more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We're asked, all the time, to honor our troops, to admire them for their bravery, their sacrifices in ensuring our freedoms. It makes me sick that the powers that be are loading them up with drugs so that they can do their job. And some of these soldiers have had alarming behavioral side effects -- outbursts of extreme aggression, psychosis, suicide. Have we replaced the shell shock of old in an attempt to "help?"

The image of the brain, bathed in chemicals, comes to mind.

I hope some of the brightest and best minds are trying to figure this out -- outside of commerce. My biased gut that feels like I'm poisoning my daughter every time I give her doses of Vimpat and Onfi tells me that something is just not right about any of it.

Articles referenced: Growing Up Drugged by Caitlin Bell Barnett, Salon
                               A Fog of Drugs and War by Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times

Genes and Tolerance

United States Army Recruiting Station, Los Angeles

When I pulled into the parking lot of Sophie's high school this morning, it was hard not to notice the array of camouflaged tents, trucks and soldiers spread out over the huge parking lot. It's gray in Los Angeles this morning, and when you don't have the patriotic gene , the sight of army recruiters at a city high school doesn't make you feel a surge of pride in your country. Call me unpatriotic, but I don't like teenagers to be recruited to fight for their country in the parking lots of their high schools. I don't care if they're promised an education, glory or one hundred vestal virgins in heaven. You're not going to see this scene a few miles away in the parking lot of a prestigious private school, peopled with the tender and the privileged. And no, I don't have an answer for how we're supposed to find kids to fight wars in countries like Iran and Afghanistan. I don't have an alternative, so I'll just sit in my car and steam a bit while I wait for Sophie's aide to come and get her.

The other day, Kim of Art in Red Wagons left a great comment after I posted about my struggles with moderation in politics.  She spoke of tolerance and directed me to a very interesting and eye-opening statement of tolerance as dictated by UNESCO, in 1995. Here's an excerpt that struck me, in particular:

Article 1 - Meaning of tolerance

1.1 Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world's cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. It is fostered by knowledge, openness, communication and freedom of thought, conscience and belief. Tolerance is harmony in difference. It is not only a moral duty, it is also a political and legal requirement. Tolerance, the virtue that makes peace possible, contributes to the replacement of the culture of war by a culture of peace.

1.2 Tolerance is not concession, condescension or indulgence. Tolerance is, above all, an active attitude prompted by recognition of the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of others. In no circumstance can it be used to justify infringements of these fundamental values. Tolerance is to be exercised by individuals, groups and States.

1.3 Tolerance is the responsibility that upholds human rights, pluralism (including cultural pluralism), democracy and the rule of law. It involves the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism and affirms the standards set out in international human rights instruments.

1.4 Consistent with respect for human rights, the practice of tolerance does not mean toleration of social injustice or the abandonment or weakening of one's convictions. It means that one is free to adhere to one's own convictions and accepts that others adhere to theirs. It means accepting the fact that human beings, naturally diverse in their appearance, situation, speech, behaviour and values, have the right to live in peace and to be as they are. It also means that one's views are not to be imposed on others.

You can read the whole thing here.

Wouldn't it be great if the thousands of kids at our high school could learn about that document instead of signing their lives away under bullshit pretext to fight in countries whose cultures are grossly misunderstood ?