Congenial-speak #26

Winning Time for Motions

All the wars fought since the American Revolution began in 1775 cost over 1.1 million in lives. They were uniformed lives in service to our country. For want of a equitable motive, some rationale for carnage, they stepped up to thwart our enemies. At times they interceded to quell atrocities, injustices, even genocide. For this I salute them. I remember the today, I think of them in the back of my mind everyday.

Many Americans have just accepted that there are “evil doers” in the world and feel war is a necessary means of life. It is a means to some end. A peaceful world would be nice, but you have people like Vladimir Putin and young Moe Howard in North Korea stirring things up, threatening nukes, using Syria's innocents as bargaining chips.

The other day I was faced with the proposition that every single war has been unnecessarily fought, that war in concept never finds a winner. The speculation was that, in the very long run, no one profits from war. Certainly there is a chain of causation, a manufacturing of fate to the wars. One can choose to be simple minded and unversed in history and say something like the Civil War could have been avoided. That it was not necessary, that 620,000 soldiers died in vain. Or they could pay attention in school, know their history and realize that Lincoln, his cabinet, coalition in the North and South did not go to war over night. I don't know of a more volatile issue than the color of a man's skin, his place in society and, and that time, if anyone be allowed to profit from it. My god, 152 years later a Civil War shrunk to scale is playing out with every shooting or beating from Rodney King to Philando Castile.

I grew up during the most volatile years of our time in Vietnam. I was born in February of 1965 when LBJ was seeking approval for Operation Rolling Thunder, his first sustained bombing raid over North Vietnam. For the next three years napalm burned everything over there and America's anti-war movement grew. Thousands of men, younger than those in each world war, went to fight, many against their will. Many objected, stating religious reasons. Some simply weighed the morality of, the motives, the foresight their government had, and refused to go. They burned their draft cards. Many were prosecuted by the Selective Service. Many lived out the war in Canada.

When Nixon vowed, in 1970, to hit North Vietnam harder than Johnson ever dared I was five. Early the following winter I was struck by a car, suffering a “rather serious cerebral trauma.” From that moment on, my chances of being drafted to fight in any war were off the table. As thousands were flown to the other side of the globe to be disabled, I was disabled right in front of my house. My future though, my service in any military capacity, was rendered moot. When I was eighteen I registered with the Selective Service because a law said I had to, and for the purposes of voting. I remember a day in high school. I came home and got a call from an army recruiter. My first thought was what's going on in the world. We were gearing up for an invasion of Grenada. Reagan wanted to send 2,000 troops there. I thought, the Caribbean, the island I visited on a cruise when I was four. My second thought was I'm disabled, why am I on the list. I heard the guy out, I had been taught to “give democracy its day in court.” The questions led though a rabbit hole, standard issue, but leading to a seemingly pre-determinded breaker. I intimated that I had a disability that would make it very difficult for me to be a soldier in any capacity. That said, the conversation abruptly ended. At various times following that call I have a vague recollection of other branches of the military contacting me. It is a mixed bag of reactions. Most of me loathed having to talk with them, going through standard questions to arrive at disabled. I had a curiosity, taunting them out of some vindictive sense for equal opportunity, to see if I could get past and show up for a physical. Then these great hucksters would have to look me in the eye and tell me why I could not be Radar O'Reily, why I could not sling hash on a tray or be quartermaster. Part of me resented being discriminated against, basically told I was useless in any job the military had to offer. It's nice to be asked sometimes. Given America's history at that point, with all the government's lies, duplicity, cover-ups and ulterior motives, I see WWII as the last war to which I'd have lent my service. But I wasn't alive and if I had been, disabled, I am quite certain that no one would have any use for me. I'd have been lucky to even have received the considerate—if not mandated—Selective Service call—and if grandma had wheels she'd be a trolley car.

For most of my life, fighting, running, dodging bullets, having the dexterity to march in or tote the weight of a weapon and field armor, having a fair chance of over-powering an enemy aiming a gun at me, has been lost for me, not in any picture, totally incongruous to who I am. But, as I wrote in my memoir Ten years and Change: A Liberal Boyhood in Minnesota, there was once a time when I could, if only for peer pressure's sake, picture myself that way. Amid all the liberal teachings of my home environment, I added the paragraph to be honest, to reflect the world I knew as a kid:

“Buried deep in the deadened days of my first childhood, peeking culpably from the veils of jack-o-lantern plants, shuffled in the antitheses of boxes of DFL literature, cowering behind trash cans set on the small rocks of our back alley, there was gun play. When there were no roads to grade, new earth to taste or pretend Star Trek beam ups, I heard the sputters of “Tommy guns” as I or my comrades fell. I was the indulgent disciple of the older kid next door. For me then, majority ruled. My best friend joined their army and I was a peering face in the cross-fire...”

It was me then, when I was four or five. I was coordinated, quick, and might have, in some universe,made a good military man. I was though, if unprovoked, a pretty peaceful kid. I'm more peace oriented as an adult perhaps because I can't even conceive of that world, a world in which I could be included in any kind of military action

Each Memorial Day I think about all who have answered the call to arms, for whatever reason, even if it was just because they took and oath (something I will credit them more now for doing than their commander in chief). I am a fair liberal and truly believe war is rarely the answer to anything. Dylan sang “the loser now will be later to win.” I am skeptical of the notion that anyone truly wins in the long-run from war. Vietnam was a losing proposition from about 1959. Fifteen years later, hours after the last helicopter left the US embassy, the NVA raised its flag above the Independence Palace. South Vietnam's president Duong Van Minh surrendered to the Communists. The US had invested billions of dollars and 361,864 dead or wounded lives to buy South Vietnam a few hours of freedom. No one won, but in the long run, no one really lost. Yes, every war has a loser, and in this case it was the US and its allies, the Vietnamese, north and south. Yes, surrenderers lose in the books. Lee to Grant, Hitler to Ike. Slaves were free, a nation reconstructed. The Third Reich was put to rest, Jews were liberated from death camps. Life goes on, victory's assets get better and worse.

To all those past and current fighting men and women I say, with maybe a little envy or resentment that I never had that option, thank you.

Congenial-speak #25

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prosaic interlude #9

Two Atmospheres to Silence

I see my dept gauge move as though it is possessed. I am getting deeper by the beat of my heart, to the time of luminous apparitions of my bubbles ascending. A vertiginous sixth sense apprises me. It consumes me until I make sense of where I am, what is happening, and what the potential for danger is. I realize then that I am exponentially shrinking to it.

It was my third dive. As three log books attest, the experience was not enough to sway me from the sport. In June of 1980 my dad and I were in the area of open-pit mines, many of which had been allowed to fill filled with water, stocked, and opened for SCUBA diving. Some had names, some were simply Pits left for the diver to name. This was on the Cyuna Iron Range in Ironton, Minnesota. It was called Pit #6 and remained at and undetermined depth. Our objective was to have fun, not to fathom the mine for the DNR.

We arrive, coming in down a long red road hidden in tall grass. The growth, the weed and ferns, make a smacking and then surreptitiously squeaking sound as they hit the windows. They are open cracks and I see mosquitoes fly in and out. I think of suiting up on the tailgate in the 87º heat, getting stained red and continuously getting bit. I flash on the preponderance of doubt, whether the dive justifies the prep-time. It always is a somewhat humbled yes. It is what divers do. They are adventurers, explorers of bodies of water. He parks the car on the only access to the pit. There I see foot prints from past diver booties buried in growing grass. The conditions are good for diving. The sun is high and glints off the brimming water of the pit at 1 p.m.

After surveying the lay of the land, the flow of the water, my dad begins the dive ritual. He goes back to the suburban and returns with a “little playmate” cooler. He takes out an 8 oz. Can of tomato juice and a tablet of sudafed. He swallows it and I watch murky orange drops on his mustache move as he speaks.

“Want some, helps clear your ears. I have no idea how deep we could get today.”

I rarely take sudafed, relying on simple squeezing of the nose, on the dive masks rubber sheath like on Batman's head gear, to equalize pressure as I descend. It it not fool proof. I challenge everything, even physiology. I feel that clammy moist sweaty feel peppering with feasting mosquitoes. It sticks like wax paper to the bulge of fat in the small of my back. It is that last trickle of insecure sweat, of discomfort to be justified, equalized by the dive. I feel it no more after I pull the hanging farmer-john wet-suit up over my torso.

We submerge at 2:35 into a labyrinthine coffin. Descending quickly, crossing the low thresholds of the thermocline, I feel a rush of stinging cold. My mind fleets past the impulses to ascend and get my wetsiut top. I am tough, and enduring cold and the security of the pressure around me builds character. Hovering at 30' we fin through 30' visibility. When we're free fro the mine's periphery, out past the steep grades and shallow ledges, out from the swaying trees and hanging carpets of curtain-like hedges, there is an abyss. We flutter weightless, vertical, pressing our power inflators on our BC vests to “compensate” for lost buoyancy due to physical laws. We exchange an “OK” sign. My dad has wisely worn mittens, and I return the sign slowly making a circle with my shriveled, pasty thumb and forefinger. In the atmospheres of silence the articulation of the smallest joints are audible. The dive began with a tank full to 2,900 PSI and now we expel that air we just added to our vests in order to descend. It is a concerted effort. I hold one hand on y BC's power inflator, the other on the Batman-like nose of my mask, gently squeezing at intermittent levels. The pops are heard and felt. They are like dulling, interminably numbing ear aches rigidly timed, hopefully rationed to the maximum depth.

I find my way through a labyrinth. Through a peripheral window of my mask, trickling with water at the pressure of 65', I see my dad's fins flutter above me. I guess. I am disoriented, and fear the worst. A subtle rip current has weaned us away from the abyss, from the free and clear void of up and down recognition. My mind flashes on the present, past and future. I think of my situation and my training. The power inflator. In the past, in a emergency, a CO2 cartridge was tucked in the folds of a horse-collar BC to be pulled and punctured to jettison the diver to the surface. I press the power inflator, a button on the end of a hose connected to my tank. I press for moments and don't rise an inch. I press more. Nothing. Alright, stay calm I tell myself. I know the 2,900 PSI is being sucked fast and panic will only incline me to need more compressed air. The for-bearers of this mine, the ones who worked it back in the 30s and 40s, I'm sure sometimes did not walk out. I imagine the equipment they abandoned, the cars and trucks and mining tools.

I consider a remote possibility that I will be found someday, like they were, only intact and petrified in an image of a fifteen-year-old diver. A novice who, well within sport diving depths succumbed to the natural elements of pit #6. It would be alright. I had a feeling deep as the abyss.

I had hung weightless before the cracks. I had drifted to the ledged side tracks of the mine. Something pulls at my legs and I power air into my BC to no end. The ambient pressure is to great I deduce. The vest is finite. There is no fight left, no sink or swim response, no buoyancy to compensate for. I reach my right arm up in the path of my bubbles, they are mushroom shapes bursting in compressed air, silent pockets, benchmarks. And then I feel a mitted hand tickle my burning winkled hand. I knew I was OK.

We surface at 3:15 p.m. I have 1,200 PSI remaining. I'm thinking of the positive, what I can take away from this brush with fate at 65'. It was only my third dive. I consumed 1,700 PSI during a 40 minute dive on which I had reason to suck air like it was my last breath. My dad, like any diver buddy, very well saved my life. However, in three log books, Pit #6 is never mentioned again.

Congenial-speak #24

Looking for that timing

There really was a distinction. It looked and sounded different. The opportunities found a copius disproportion. I was still me, but how I was seen, and how I saw the Thems in the world, on my my new faster street, even in my yard, was a different story. My second childhood began—or as I say in my memoir Ten Years and Change—“was due to begin” six weeks from January 8, 1971. The kids on my first residential street were due to grow estranged. They proved, at least twice, that “going home again” in any tangential sense can't be accomplished—ever. I came home from the hospital in March of that year. With the exception of the belated sixth birthday party I detail in the book, I have few remembrances of any interaction with those friends before we moved in 1972. I was busy adapting to Michael Dowling school where, besides going through (again) K then grades 1-3, I received therapies. I excelled there in a pool that was dedicated by FDR. I was rehabbing at the U of M and walking with my dad. I was pushed, I needed to be motivated. For years as an adult getting into the gym was second nature to me. I attribute that to my past. The coaching by my dad and numerous therapists gave me that drive, the determination that it took do do something like competitive bodybuilding (“Exercising Demons” Finding me—and Them: Stories of Assimilation).

The kid, four years younger than me, two doors down, became the first friend I made on our new street. He seemed genuine enough, and it did not begin as a lopsided friendship (something that seems to result, and come out as the bitter truth with many “friendships”). He needed me like I needed him. But then he had three older sisters and a house politically divided. The women were all Republicans, leaving him and his dad to harvest their liberal lawn signs. He spent a lot of time out of he house. It wasn't like, obviously, when I was still able to catch or hit a ball (actually this kid's father, a coach, threw one of the only baseballs to me that I caught in a glove) could run, ride on two wheels or skate on blades or wheels. It's like I slowed down and, on Lyndale Avenue, grew into a world hat would slow down for me. Those kids on Aldrich had their timers set. They remembered the mike Amram that could do all those things, tings I fondly remember in the memoir Ten Years and Change. We were both young. Their lives went on in their time as I was gone from that picture for a little over a month.

Cars went by faster, much faster, on Lyndale. I was slower, much slower, as the new kid on the block. But some, the first being the kid I mentioned, made it work. Then came the mainstreaming. The relatively new program of assimilating kids with extraordinary needs back into the “regular” public school system (today the whole concept is pretty much moot). I returned with a crutch or two on my sleeves to Central Elementary. Near the fall of 1973, with only one occupational therapist there being strongly in favor of my leaving, I moved on from Michael Dowling. I must then have begun the 1974 school year. I was in fourth grade. It was hell (“My Day of Reckoning” in Finding me—and Them). Mid-way through the year I finally made a friend—sort of—destined to be lopsided. Forced friendships are haunted by limping ghosts like Quasi Moto. They find you in time, waiting to ring with their jaded bongs. I don't remember if I heard it said to someone else, or if he said it right to me. It turned out that, after months of slow-paced revelry, the teacher had told him to be my friend. I had friends, a core group that including him, through high school. I never forgot that though, that friend on consignment. That how the current had to go, I guess, back in the mainstream.

Poetic interlude #3

A River Penché

By Michael P. Amram

All those years ago

I danced

on top of the world

all the years ago

I danced

for my face in the crowd

I danced

along the bluffs that

panned the Mississippi

when wind

rhythms and soft

waists were all I needed

I viewed

habor lights from my

youth in ignominity

from my

bosomed cradle of

esteemed security

I danced

when slow songs in sad

eyes were things I needed

to see

to look inside my soul

for my best to free

and in time we peed

in drunken sinks

when urinals were full

or girls gathered

to go in twos to stalls

like Noah's kind

(heh) some drunk mime

always fronted lines

he hopped

and danced, he crossed

his legs to meet

music's beat in time

we were queued eight balls

staring at heads

imagining dancing on

the tops of what led

to my world

for that moment

Congenial-speak #23

Dare to Impeach

James Comey never had a chance. His abrupt termination was yesterday's news the next day. As the POTUS seem to be doing all he can to make America bad, treasonous, untrustworthy, civilly disobedient, and generally seen as a crazy evil superpower, core Republicans try to play house. I hear they a losing their patience with Don.

Evidently Trump, as a businessman, trod a thin line between his world and the one of litigation. He skirted it as a combination con-man and modern day Al Capone. Mob bosses don't aspire to the highest political office in America though. There are some similarities, some common threads private citizens pull. Capone went down for tax evasion. Trump has paid the least amount of taxes legally permissible. He refuses to release his returns, so no one can know exactly how much he's dodged. Now he has put himself in a position to reap millions from foreign investors in America. He is conducting business, buying, selling, trading, subletting, real estate, wile he is president. No middle man. He is the house. No lucky men in the casino.

• Not divesting business holdings
• Violation of emoluments clause by accepting money from foreign governments
• Obstruction of justice
• Treason

If I follow correctly, these are the items on which impeachment will be based. It always seems to be Senator John McCain who is the first domino to fall in the Republican line. It is shy of four month but seems like a year that the circus has been in the White House. It must be drawn to scale—like global warming—to accurately judge the Republican meltdown, the surfacing of their sense of morality, submarined by a man they ultimately see as an idiot who is useful to the party base.

From the beginning, that day in January when massive crowds flooded Pennsylvania Avenue to glimpse the new Don, personal wealth and business were not cleanly and completely put aside. He vowed to not take the salary of the office of president. He said he'd put his business ties in a “blind trust.” He said his sons will run the business. It is customary to do so, to divest, but not legally required. So, as he has for decades in civilian life, he found a loophole as POTUS. In theory the trust is blind, but Trump is far from blind to his assets or holdings.

Trump has towers. He is building towers “in IstanbUl I have a tower. It is two, not the usual one.” Forget the Freudian hallway this echoes, it is riddled with conflicts of interest. Internationally people are staying at his hotels. Heads of countries come here to jimmy intelligence out of Trump and stay at his hotels. The president of India comes to the US. He stays at a Trump hotel to curry favor with him. Emoluments breeches are committed each time this happens.

Obstruction of justice speaks for itself. What if he is doing showy, poorly thought-out stunts, like striking not 60, but 59 missals at Syria in part to divert focus on the Russia investigation, thinking if Putin retaliates it will be lost in the shuffle? Firing Yates was a nail in obstruction's coffin. Shades of The Apprentice. Not playing the game correctly—you're fired. And Comey, the noble FBI director who was the opposite of a G. Liddy, desperately searched for the truth in an insane asylum. Firing your investigator—its impediment to justice is redundant.

Sharing classified secrets with the Russians, the ones who send spies here to get intelligence, is likely the most treasonous thing an American can do. With the era of Reagan, Gorby, Glasnost and the tearing down of walls still not ancient history, Trump brags, bolsters what little of history—theirs and ours—and becomes the WH snitch. He puts the country he pledged, with his stupid red hats, to make great again at mortal risk. News travels much, much faster today than it did when Nixon and Kissinger were trading secrets for a war on the other side of the world. America will not be trusted with intelligence that can thwart another 9/11 situation.

I think the jig is up, we saw the last straws in recent days. Democrats, for the most part, were there long ago. Republicans see now that he is too dangerous and, if left to himself, could do irreparable damage to America. In short, there would be no political base. There would not be a government to politicize, and investigations and the arc of the money's trajectory, the long arms of corruption would be permanently disabled. No Republican wants that. So, when you see McConnell's blow-fish facade stuck with a pin, impeachment proceedings are in the cards. Let us pray.

Shuffling Through London

Fuckface grimaces with subtle nuance. Her face crunches up like a bagpipe poorly played. She inches a snifter of port under her tiny dog's wincing black nose, wet as the walk outside the pub. Mrs. Alerton is a three-time widow. She is also an eccentric to whom life has been cruel. They tell me she comes in a tries to blend in the shadows thrown by the front windows everyday at 4 p.m. She makes faces at the people going by and lifts Bambi's paw to wave. I move away, disturbed by this dyed- in-the-home English eccentric who reminds me of the woman in drag on Monty Python.

Our pint-stop tour of England and Scottish climbs has reached an end. The past week was spent riding the rails, pissing away our stay in local pubs, sleeping in car parks, and meeting locals. What we did not see was Nessie in Inverness, but we saw the pumice stains from the White Cliffs of Dover. We saw everything in between. If a town or a city had a castle or a pub it was randomly found. Waterloo train station was our end, with Nigel, a bloke in a tweed overcoat who went up a down an escalator bellowing “All loos have some water.”

It is 1990 and the final months of HW's war incline me to do some polling. Locals tell of their approval for Stormin' Norman. A good friend is on some sort of work program and is working at a now deduct pub in a suburb of London the Shucks-borough Arms. I sit and watch fuckface and hope I don't look like that in 70 years, that alone, feeding a small dog booze. On our trip I was usually drunk—or at least I did not hold back in the many, many public houses we visited to get a taste of the provincial pallor. Never was I stopped, questioned, called a cheeky lad (story in Finding me—and Them: Stories of Assimilation) or given any indication that anyone cared the slightest bit of my physical state. Even in Earlstown—southwest of Manchester—where we were welcomed into the home of a couple with a lovely looking sister was I thought to be drunk. I was, however, a few nights when I came back to sleep. I finish my last pint at the Shucks-borough Arms before I leave my friend. Bambi is wiggling her nose, sniffing out more ports and fuck strokes her. It wanders in my mind, annoyingly, how Bambi is treated when she leaves the pub, out of the arm of the bar staff that know her and her owner and indulge their eccentricities. I gulp my ale quietly and leave enough not to look too much in need or want of beer, like it was just a memento, a toast to our trip.

“You alright?” A bobby asks from a police car.

“Sure, I guess. Thanks for asking. I'm fine,” I wave.

A distance of a city block of broken sidewalk has elapsed since I went out of the door of the pub. The sun is working over-time to come out, to prevail over the permanent cloud cover, to come out and be queen for a day. It is what we in America call a sun shower, and I guess that England must have them so often that the term loses its cache as slowly as the clouds lose their rain.

“You haven't been drinking?”

“Yes, but not a lot.”

“Well then,” the two smile, suddenly very interested, “how much?”

“Oh, I guess maybe half a pint.”

“That's not much, still you appear to be walking in a pattern on a man under the influence of alcohol.”

I tell them why it looks this way. I even show them the medic alert tag I wear for just such an occasion. The tag has gotten three times the exposure my ID or passport ever have, at least. It states that I am physically disabled and have an “awkward gait.” They look at each other with that clandestine body language only policemen know.

“I just left a friend at a pub back about a block. He'll tell you the story.”

They're disinterested in any testimony from friends.

“Why don't you come with us to the station. We want to make sure you're alright.”

I see the passenger door open as if I've been hitching the last block. Imagine my luck! The sun has won now and bounces of the silver door handle. I shove my pack in and sit down. Shades of Scotland creep into my head offering their empathy. I was going to play it right from the start.

“What the fuck do you think is wrong? You've got a lot of fucking nerve picking me up!”

I smiled, figuring I was in the driver's seat. Again, as in Scotland 2 years ago, my welfare was considered. How nice and warmly fuzzy is the feeling I get each time I visit in the UK.

“Sir, forget oh fuck. We don't care for it.”

“Pardon me. Don't I have a right to be angry. Shit, if a few fucking expletive fly by your jug ears, well I guess you should have thought of that before you picked me up. You just gave e every reason in the book to make you sorry you ever crossed my path!”

I am gone. An abyss of vindictive furry has been opened. I vow to make the London booby hatch pay for their good deed.

We pull up to a brick building with a few Union Jacks waving limply on poles. The uniform men escort me arm in arm inside to busy office.

“Name please?”

An older man, who I assumed was the head booby, asks me a series of questions, each stupider than the last. They wanted to know where I was going.

“It's none of your fucking business. Is this how you treat all Americans? I bet 100 tourist pass this road everyday. They go back o the states without an encounter with the police in their memories. Why me, why should I have to put up with this shit!”

They congregate. They confer in some sort of police huddle. As they come up for air, they turn toward me. I see that same look as the jogging suited constable in Scotland who quipped that I was a cheeky lad. It was, though, this time a speechless look of constipation, like the words wanted to be conferred upon me.

“Well, we're done here. Can we do anything for you?”

Wow, I think. This is nice. Actually I will accept their reparations, their contrition for the egregious injustice they have witlessly committed without hearing the story of a witness I offered.

“Yes, thank you, I am on my way to a youth hostel for the remainder of my stay in your charming borough. Sure, you can give me a lift. Boy, my own police escort,” I say, putting my feet on the chief's desk,” like our president would get.”

They frown at me, sensing it is the hour of retribution. We walk to the car. The task is assigned to a lower ranking booby then the two who arrested me for my own well-being. I figure he is twice the booby and tell him the hostel is on the far end of town. He drives me 30 kilometers to the outer limits of London, looking at the while for the hostel on a map. I sit in back trying not to burst out laughing.

“Wait, I think it is actually closer to where those other two fine officers apprehended me. I'm sorry, now you have to drive all the way back into town.”

I stretch out on the seat and rest my eyes, keeping one on the boob. He finally pulls up to the hostel three blocks from the Shucks-borough Arms.

Congenial-speak #22

The Last Dance

I might have made a life-changing decision. The street rancor justified my priggishness. I disappeared into to crowd as just another stuffed shirt who, by Bill Clinton's word, would learn that it's okay not to inhale. Frankfurters seemed to clear a path for me though, anyways, like I was Moses with my cane as a staff. I was also Jesus, carrying my backpack, staggering under the assumed suspicion, or possession, of the drugs I had rejected.

Safe in my terminal world I knew the end was coming soon. My fix was coming and I had that feeling of euphoric anticipation I imagine those kids in Zurich got daily. I was going home and y nightmare trip to Europe would be over. I thought about what my friends would want to hear. They'd think I was lame for not going with those granola heads with the hacky-sac, for passing up the opportunity for soft (or hard) drugs, booze, women, nudity, sex. If my trip were good, if I'd seen Rome's best ruins, if I ate a fluffy croissant in France, been the toast of the Hoffbrau Haus in Munich, I probably would have gone with those young travelers. I would have gone with them and possibly had a bad trip on LSD or some kind of mushroom that was procured somewhere in college,, in Duluth. I could have easily been talked into ruining a perfectly good trip I'd remember for years with one I'd forget in hours. I limped to my cell at the airport, my perch where I nested and watched for y plane to land. I fell asleep wrestling with my situational paradox.

“Has flight 743 left yet?” I asked breathlessly, having run to the counter.

The gruff SS woman's shift was in its final lap. She did not answer. She just sternly pointed to the board above. They amazed me. Unlike the monitors in America that convey departures and arrivals, train stations and airports in the European countries I'd been to had huge 40 foot boards hanging from the ceiling. The board was sequinned and flipped panels upon arrival and departure time. I sat hours listening to intermittent shuffles. I looked up on time and it reminded me of a warmer place. It looked like how lily pads all flip up when a sudden wind gusts or a storm stirs a Minnesota lake.

“Dammit!” I said, holding back tears.

It is 5 p.m. The familiar smell of poorly tendered airport food threatens to invade the smoky air. The woman at the counter wraps my misfortune in the tight bun she wears as a hat. It is sucked in through her vacuous eyes and she never blinks. It is old hat. There is nothing to do but wait for the next one. At 22 hours away I fear I will miss it if I leave the airport. I could be picked up by the Gestapo for suspicion, I could get lost and patronized, I could be asked the 100 Mark question I fear “bist du betrunken?,” so I man up, accept my predicament, and go back to my nest.

It's déjà vu the next night. Dogs sniff the tarry floor again. Their noses are in sync with those of semi-automatic weapons. The dogs, however, have likely been fed, maybe even massaged. I feel safe and scared at once. Tonight I am there again seen by the same Flughafen Polezi with green hats the have lack and white checkered bands. I fear they will question me now, tonight, November 18, 1991. I will have a record in Germany. I likely have one in Scotland (“Cheeky Lad” in my book Finding me—and Them: Stories of Assimilation). Scenarios of the worst humility pass by me and I try to keep a stiff upper trip. I settle my bill, extemporaneously figuring in my head using my 10^th grade math skills. I try to convince myself that my 1,200$ to go round in vain was an ample investment. I was young, working, fresh out of college and had an ample sum of money in the bank. I could afford a sustainable level of wreckless abandon, of dropping swaths of dough with little happiness—much less paradise—found.

The Final Night

A red ball shadows the tarmac. A few distant planes are run-way models. Like a blood orange squeezed, the interior of the terminal is painted. From my nest, in T-minus 8 hours, I am expecting to fly. Nothing can impede me now. I vow to stay strong, to resist drug trippers, hostile youths, arrested adolescents or Hare Krishnas. A license to embellish y European experience is waiting at the counter 30 yards from me. For a number of reasons I never bother to walk over and get it. My pack has been waiting in some storage area, undoubtedly searched multiple times by now. I have my ticket and I will use the bathroom on the plane. Wild dogs can't drag me from my spot near the gate.

“Northwest/KLM flight 743 to Amsterdam now pre-borading at gate D-23.”

This announcement follows in at least three languages. I peel myself off the seat, the blood rushes upward and my balance is momentarily compromised. No one that I see notices.

“My bags are checked through to Minneapolis, right?”

“Is that what you did? Is that your final destination?”

“Oh yeah,” I enunciate.

The agent makes a few calls and assures me the bags are checked to Minneapolis. I take her word and board the plane.

Congenial-Speak #21

The Seminal Vessels of Speech

People like Sally Yates are catalysts in dishonest governments. She is, in her case, a whistle blower, a despoiler of conspiracy. She's a hallmark to what's right and decent in an administration that was corrupt at least 18 days before it began. She was a profile in courage and refused to endorse an unconstitutional order even if it meant her own termination. She plays by the rules, follows the book, takes oaths at someplace more than hyperbole.. If not for her, I have little doubt that today Muslims from 7 countries would be banned from America. Either that or it would be more of an uphill battle to reverse it. Sally was Rosa. She was in the right place at the right time doing the necessary thing. If Sessions had been AG then, Trump very likely would have succeeded in putting “a temporary ban on Muslims...until we can figure out WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON.” That suspended suspicion always troubled me. Is there a gray area, a chance that whatever element he wants “temporarily” removed my be up to something that is not illicit? Well the courts, and Sally Yates, boiled it down and found the scaly white residue of racism.

Monday May 8, 2017 a senate hearing convened. On the block was the head of the man who, if you read your history, really flouted the parameters of the circle he chose to be in more than Benedict Arnold. Michael Flynn is like an annoying insect, a mosquito who lays eggs in the tall wet grass. Obama warned Trump not to hire him. Flynn did not ave good character. He had accepted money from foreign governments something, apparently, as a military personnel he was forbidden to do. He was caught in a lie to the vice president and, after 24 days (following Bannon's sudden departure from the position) was removed by Trump himself as national security advisor. Are these functionary government wanna-bees stupid or is there a method to the madness. Do the knights at King Arthur's round table tweet irredactible codes that in some convoluted way will in their vision “make America great again?” Indeed, it is a fantastical, mystical dystopia, but perhaps also a parable that will be remembered as when America hit rock bottom. It may be a time to take a look at the grand scheme, the hyperbolic memoir maxim that once coined the phrase “government for,” and maybe even, “by the people.”

From Vietnam to the Challenger disaster, from Watergate to Lewinsky the government has tendered the way it disseminates information to its constituents. Yates played to the benefit of the rules. She was a player, not a dissident, and was true to her oath. But when does playing become dissension and being a player become playing along with dissension? Too much classification prevents honest people from doing entirely the right thing. Why is it classified in the first place? Is our government, composed of our elected officials, legislators who in recent times have had to touch base with their grass root more than any time in history, a bunch of fraternities with secret handshakes? Two reasons for such sequestration, for such thorough gestation, of tempered incubation of information come to mind. 1), and most likely, the government wants to maintain the upper-hand in its relationship with America. 2), I cite just to give them a benefit of a doubt, raw data is too erroneous, alarming or bombastic for constituents to digest. The former deeply disgruntles me. It flys in the face of and denies its very reason for being. It is like the entire mechanical operation of a typewriter somehow working, producing text, without a ribbon.

When Rex Tillerson says “no comment,” or consistently evades journalists, leaving his dealings with our world subject to speculation I am angered. I want my money back. He works, in the end for us, for America and has a implied commitment to be as transparent as those sheets our teachers put on the opaque projectors. There should not, or need not, be any “SCIF” rooms. The clandestine cloak Washington insists on wearing creates a hostile, partisan, debatable environment fertile for dishonesty to take root. It creates the necessary lieing down to truth atmosphere that allows a Michael Flynn to go unnoticed until he has shared his influence on the counter-culture that, in a bizarre irony, is the Trump administration. However most administrations have smesome degree of distrust, some element of conspiracy, of making hiding the facts so common-place that an interloper blends in sublimely. By LBJ's final year in office an interloper was as camouflaged as Charlie in tall grass. Simple arithmetic, the dissection of human conscience, the basest human need for acceptance among peers leads to subverting and deception. In 1968, a week before the general election, is an example of the end justifying depict. LBJ knew Nixon was a peace manipulator. He discouraged North Vietnam's president from making a deal to end the war. Nixon insisted he could do better as president. Johnson chose not to share this outright treason with America. Nixon likely would have lost and Humphrey would certainly have ended the war and saved thousands. All of Johnson's cabinet, including Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, found a story written in the Christian Science monitor detailing the sabotage to be too “inflammatory” for the American people. They thought that the idea that a presidential candidate would play games with a war (the least supported war in history) would shatter any future trust in government, in their guardianship.

Every once in a while a voice, a conscience, someone with courage to play the right game, comes along. But when they do they can't say everything. Therein lies the problem, the enticement to be “problematic.” Yates should be bound by nothing, free to tell everything as she saw it, free to not have to declassify anything. A game player, a truth teller among a POTUS who tells untruths or alternative facts with the placidity with which he lies in bed at night. Many more than the presidents men, those four who went singing into infamy, went to jail for Watergate crimes. They went for purger y or obstruction of justice. It is ironic that Flynn first, at the RNC last year, led the crowd pleaser “lock her up.” Flynn, Kushner, Page, Nunez, Bannon, probably even straight faced Pence should all be tossed in the jug. That has not changed since 1974. What is long overdue to change, and technology that allows people to surveil 10 ways, to create tweets and indelible dossiers only makes matters worse, is the concept of classified. The communication between, to begin very simply, the POTUS and the people that he swore to serve should not be subject to anyone, least of all Sean Spicer. Did FDR have press secretaries lie for him over the radio? I doubt it. You have to go back 80 frickin years to find a time when the government was what it is, what makes it work as an institution. My god, back to the fire-side chats by which—I guess—some people listened to to know if their next meal was going to come. But then there's Edgar Bergen doing ventriloquism on the radio, undoubtedly making a clear path for the future of double-speak and the man behind the curtain.

Congenial-speak #20

Reality's Elusiveness

Is our objective clear? What are the ends of the left's means, the Resistance (I love the Star Wars ring tone of this). Over 70% of America is resisting traveling back in time to the 1950s, to a cold war, Russian espionage as they meddle next with France, try to break up the EU and NATO, and look for their inland waterway. It is objectionable, right? Everyone is agreed and no on is trying to “work with” this joke of a president who makes W. look great, who makes Nixon look a lot less corrupt. Are we going to go back to having to fear the specter of a mushroom cloud? Will Generation Z grow up under their desks?

The mission should be clear, we are all on the same page. History can throw this one out. Maybe it might merit a footnote of a time that showed America how liberty can backfire. It will show how anyone, with the right line of BS, the right celebrity, the right money, can slip through our electoral process. The note will also say how during this quizzical period America's system of checks and balances was given a through inspection. It will reflect a call to the streets, how for the first time since Vietnam the freedom to assemble was not exercised routinely. But even that war took time to lose support. Inklings of underground opposition began as early as 1962. But it wasn't until 1968 and the Tet Offensive that, in response to marches, protests and demonstrations, 80% of America had lost support for LBJ and his war. With DJT it happened less than 48 hours after the fact. More than half of the country needed no time to see the need to either dump the president or fight him every step of the way. The day after he was sworn as number 45, took the hypocritical oath, tens of thousands were assembled with pink pussy hats. Every ill-contrived, liberty-sucking, money-marked order is pounced on with every freedom the constitution affords.

But, what galls me, what makes me wonder whether someone thinks this silver spoon-fed idiot (useful to someone) is going to someday become a kinder, gentler DJT who has a grasp of any kind of politics, is that people accept him as the POTUS, give him respect, like he is to be taken seriously. He is a dangerous man—comical, tragically pathetic—but nonetheless dangerous. The constitution, which he does not defend or respect, allowed him to ascend to a position which requires quick thinking, careful thinking, decisive reasoning, thinking of someone else (ie. The American People), none of which he has any ability to do.

Fingering fibers

Last night I watched the 2^nd part of the documentary “OJ: Made in America.” I'm thinking here is a very gifted athlete, a celebrity, an ego-centric personality. But he seemed to “juice” his way out of being black. He contrived a world in Brentwood and surrounded himself with white celebrities. He snowed himself and everyone and latched on to a good-looking blonde waitress—Nicole Brown. In my opinion he sold out, he was a traitor and turned his back on his friends, his community, his roots. OJ Simpson was smooth, charming, gained college football fame at USC and rarely looked back. He transcended race, even snowing the LAPD. His apprehension was their redemption. After the dramatic low-speed Bronco chase, when this ghostly black local hero, All-American trans-racial favorite son was beaten down, brought to a blubbering 6'2” shell of a man, a trial unfolded. Right there in Simpson's Rockingham driveway the police negotiated with him to give himself up, to admit defeat as the prime suspect of the murders of Brown and Ron Goldman. He had no alibi, but it is America, and as such he is innocent until proven guilty by a jury of his peers. He was not Rodney King. He was not....too many mattering to mention. He was Orenthal James Simpson, as black as Michael Jackson. As black as—any of those putrid embarrassments to a race who voted for DJT. That “African-American friend” who had his 2 minutes of fame at a whistle-up-ass campaign stop last year. When he was told how things could get no worse, how he was living in the dung-heap that had passed as black America all these years.

OJ and DJT share traits. Each has—or had—delusional realities of their respective world. Each used their celebrity to deceive the public, to buck the system. Each is happy, agreeable, negotiable, when the item in some way concerns them. Be it either a spoiled white-eyed black man getting away with double homicide or a spoiled billionaire “reality” star winning the Republican nomination, each duped America. They each tapped that vein, or capillary, the tiniest remote tributary in America that can't use sound judgment, that allows its own fears and need blind them to morality. They said, the 72% of black Americans then, in 1995, how can a celebrity like that, a grinning suave actor hurdling through airports, coldly murder two people he knew and loved. Enough votes to get to 1,237—44.9 percent—won Trump the Republican nomination. From there it was everything but popularity that put him in the WH. They both played America. They played politics and morality. They played on ethics, affluence, and race. That 72% of black population wanted to believe that their hero was innocent. The man who had easily sailed, cleanly, over the hurdles most black encounter could not be convicted. They bought the stage sham of trying to fit a glove over a latex glove as a reason to acquit. DJT promised to drain the swamp, to build a wall, to repeal and replace the monstrosity that is ____care. Enough of America believed him, seriously thought that he would make a better America than Clinton, or they did not vote at all.

Check his watch

Every now and then a reality check is useful, even beneficial. In the coloring, fasting lights of Rodney King, of every black or off-black life that matters, of every delusional greedy sickening Wharton Business School wash-out, there's a trace of a halo. It's a hallucinogenic pigmentation, a manifestation of chances for the scenarios that contradict morality. It's a fingering of the temperate pulsations of America, when the political or moral fiber has been stressed out to its most finite ends. Frayed and cauterized to the point at which that flamboyant A-A friend, or disenfranchised white friend of Jefferson Davis, cares enough to demand their owed 13 minutes.

prosaic interlude #8

The Sieve of hypocrisies and hyperbole

When did America become such a callous place to live? So uncaring, calculating and manipulative? These House Republicans, many of whom claim very Christian-based roots, just eradicated any charitable act they've ever done by voting yes on a bill that will put 24,000,000 off health care. Hand to their god, they will go straight to hell. They wrote The Book, they wrote the bill (and did not read it), and will celebrate both. Thankfully, as Schoolhouse Rock taught the generation Xers, Bill is a few steps from becoming law.

This scrap of success in an administration grasping at held lung-fulls of air for one of the many wins it was to have makes it so clear. Their well-rehearsed, lobbied, money-driven, pro-life balk is a giant load of crap. Is each child, as a barely consolable POTUS said after seeing sarin gas killing babies, deserving of a life or not? Pick one, it can't be both ways. Balk is balk and talk is talk, and you can't have either without the walk. How much legislative energy and taxpayer money has been spent over the decades as the right for an unborn baby to live is contested. Its worth may be weighed, its impact on society, society's impact on it, the ability of the mother and (hopefully) the father to raise it into a healthy child are all considered. Let's say that child is diagnosed with a genetic heart malady by the time they are two. A pre-existing condition. What if the child is not fortunate enough to be born to someone like Jimmy Kimmel who has insurance? Someone who could afford out-of-pocket fees? I hazard that their argument might be that God, in his infinite wisdom, has babies with per-existing conditions, or preemies needing care only to wealthy parents. What is wrong with this idea, even if it is conceived? A struggling family to begin with might not be well fed, so much so that the mother bares a malnourished baby that requires weeks of costly pre-natal care. How does it make sense to fight for the right to life but then when that life begins out of the womb suddenly it is devalued. What is this bullshitted double-speak? Are we talking about humans or cars?

I have never seen such hypocrisy. The US government now is a circuitous route. It is the T-4 they take. It runs from Wall Street past slums, projects, public hospitals, Planed Parenthood, NRA, middle-class America, straight into the pockets of the DeVosses, Trumps, et al. Al should really be ashamed. This diabolical fast-track to enriching the stitching of Armani suits is not the America anyone knew. I highly doubt it's the America those white middle-class back roads baby-makers saw. Some of them voted , negating crooked Hillary (who I can't imagine even thinking of taking merits of the ACA away) for a fraud who swore up and down that he'd make health care accessible to EVERYONE. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot—that parcel, those poor shlubs who felt “economically left behind” somehow see their station in life getting better with this guy? Not voting for Trump and voting for Clinton is the wisest thing I've ever done. It's the thing of which I can be the most proud. I can rest in peace. And, if I want to be a vindictive asshole, when I see a dying man who voted for Trump and had health care taken away, I'll say “I did not vote for the guy.” I'd rub it in if I were so inclined.

Back in the 15 minutes of Sarah Palin, when everyone right of Wall Street feared SOCIALISM, the term death panels was thrown around with a hyperbolic truthfulness. To me the scenario of a team of doctors conversing in the hall, determining your fate, was created. They were more sterile than sterile is, goosestepping like washed-up wanna-be Nazi eugenic medical personnel. It was medicine by the numbers. However yesterday those death panels were wide open, no bars held, no need to pull a plug. These thugs would not even allow a cancer to make it to the plug-pulling, decision of any anal stage.

Actually, in those death panel hyperbole days, I was buying insurance through an HMO. There was no goose dropping lining the walk but I did get the sense it was more of business than anything resembling a helpful, caring, efficient doctor visit. A decade later things have changed, and I am (or was) benefiting from the ACA. My experience has been much better. Smoother, more efficient, less waiting. Doctors do not work under a fat-cat CEO's gun. I know from working in medical records that a doctor is (was) supposed to spend a finite amount of time on each patient. Usually that was between 8 and 15 minuets. Working for the “man.” Clinics like the ACA. Hospitals like the ACA. Every association for any disease likes it. They still have at least an ounce of compassion. They believe the future of the first of the declaration of independence's inalienable right is not hyperbole.