Category Archives: Ruminations

The Great American Battle Cry!

Posted on by under and Ramblings, Reflections, Ruminations

The War of 1812 saw the White House burned to the ground during a British invasion of Washington D.C.  War was here, on our soil.  It was during this war that Francis Scott Key penned the poem that would become the National Anthem of the United States of America.  An anthem about war for a nation birthed by war in the name of liberty and justice for all, an ideal that would send that nation to war nearly every other generation from its inception to today.

The idea that all men are created equal and are endowed with certain unalienable rights including the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not always a popular one.  There are those greedy for power who see weakness in such ideals and others who grow envious of those living with the bounty provided by those ideals.  And so it becomes necessary to stand and fight, not only for the ideals, but the reality that accompanies them.  On September 11, 2001 we were violently reminded that our ideals and our way of life are not shared by all, that there are those in the world who would do us harm simply because the very idea of equality and the unalienable rights granted us by our creator and secured through our Constitution are appalling to them.

Yesterday, on the thirteenth anniversary of those attacks, we honored those who paid the price for the simple act of having freedom.  Today, we celebrate the 200th anniversary of that dear poem that, with eloquence and timelessness, describes the American resolve to fight for, and to defend, those ideals upon which our nation was founded.

May it serve as a reminder for us of the sacrifices laid for our freedoms and let it continue to serve as a battle cry to our enemies, a vocal reminder of the resolve of the American people and our never-ending desire to defend those rights we hold to be self-evident here in the land of the free, and the home of the brave.  Here is the poem, written by Francis Scott Key during the British bombardment of Fort McHenry, in its entirety.  Enjoy.

The Star Spangled Banner

Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

ARGH! I’M FLAWED! (DEALING WITH FAILURE)

Posted on by under and Ramblings, Life and Death, Reflections, Ruminations

We all fear it. We all try to avoid it. We all commit it. There really is no way around it, but when it happens, damn does it feel bad. Like coming out of the boxing ring defeated, or sulking off the baseball field having dropped the would-be-third-out to lose the game, or throwing the interception that allows the other team to march into your end zone, you replay the moment over and over in your mind thinking ‘if only I had done this instead of that’. Then you look for someone else to blame, ‘you know, had so-and-so blocked his man, that never would’ve been an interception’ or ‘I told my coach I needed work on catching flies’ or ‘hey, my boss should’ve known he’s been overworking me, and he gave me no budget, and the support staff was dismal. I had to do everything!’. But those excuses quickly dissolve because deep down, we know better. It was my fault. I screwed up. I made a mistake! Argh! I’m flawed! Son-of-a-bitch, I’m flawed! (I knew that, but I didn’t want anyone else to know. Now I’ve shown the whole world!)

Then the self-hate starts. Every girlfriend who ever dumped me was right! I am a loser! I suck! Every group of guys who picked me last to be on their team knew I had the capacity to be this sucky one day. Every human resources person who has thrown my resume away after a brief glimps was a hiring genius because they knew I would be a horrible addition to their office or any office for that matter. Woe is me. Let the dog piss on my leg, I am that low a creature that I deserve it. At least then, I’d be contributing something.

Of course that’s not true either. There is a difference between being a failure and experiencing failure.

We all experience failure and we do it from a very young age. Every infant who stares up at you with that cute little voice and says, “aba aah dah ooo gah” is a failure. He has something to say to you and he can’t. He speaks gibberish trying to emulate the language he hears you speaking everyday, and the little angel fails! Can’t do it. Wants to tell you your earrings are shiny and he likes them but it comes out “eeeee ooo mah-bah”, little failure that he is. When he’s hungry and wants to eat, he goes “ah-ah” fails to communicate then reverts to crying, because that is a proven tactic. Then, he tries to move. First he scoots his belly across the floor. Then he does the military crawl, belly on the floor, elbows doing the work. Then he realizes he can go faster on his hands and knees. The final goal of course is to do what he sees everyone else doing, which is to walk. Then one day, he pulls his chubby little butt off the floor by holding on to the coffee table and he stands. He looks around, proud of his accomplishment. Then he turns, lets go of the table and… falls flat on his chubby little ass. Failure! No walking for you!

But think of the courage it takes for someone who knows nothing of the world, to venture off into an act he has never once attempted before. It would be so much easier to wait for Mommy or Daddy to pick him up and carry him, but instead, this little person who’s been on the Earth the length of a mid-season TV show, decides it’s time to get up and try this walking thing. Granted, he doesn‘t know he’ll probably fall down on his fat bum, but he also doesn’t know he might fall forward on his tender little head either. In time, he’ll learn about both, but he doesn’t give up. He’s fallen on his butt a hundred times, and he’s fallen on his head at least a half dozen, and yet, he keeps pulling himself up on the coffee table and venturing away from it step by step, whatever may come be damned.

He has failed. Over and over again, he has failed. But he is not a failure. He’s not a failure because, despite his failed attempts, he keeps trying, keeps learning, each time he does better, goes farther, until one day, he’s running through the house so fast, his mother has given up her spinning class because chasing the kid is exercise enough.

Experiencing failure doesn’t stop him, and that is what prevents him from being a failure. The only real way to experience anything is to be open to the possibility of failure. Whenever something is new, or different, there is a good chance that we are going to fail at first. However, as the old adages go, practice makes perfect, and if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. By keeping at it, you not only lessen the experience of failing, you prevent yourself from becoming a failure. Yeah, yeah, we know that. It doesn’t make it any easier though, does it?

That shitty feeling stays with you like a punch to the gut. It hangs in your belly, then moves to your brain, then weighs on your soul. Wouldn’t it be great if, like in the movies, you could just commit yourself to something, become great at it, and, after a short musical montage, show the world you’re a hero not a zero!   But it doesn’t work that way either, does it? Sometimes you try and try and try again, and no matter how hard you work nor how hard you try, you simply cannot succeed. Well, you know what, that’s okay. Not everyone is destined to be Lance Armstrong, including Lance Armstrong himself apparently. Sometimes the hard work doesn’t pay off. Sometimes you fail again anyhow. Does that make you a failure? Maybe in some people’s eyes, but it shouldn’t in your own. The only true way to be a real failure is to let the fear of failing prevent you from trying, from stepping out of your comfort zone to try something new, from taking the chance that she might say no, that you might drop the fly, that you might embarrass yourself in front of people, that you might lose, forget your lines, trip, fall, hit a the wrong note, get beaten, screw up, mess up, fuck up, throw up, or bust-up, be gawked at, laughed at, spit at or frowned upon. There is no reward without risk. You have no guarantee that you will succeed, but without taking the chance, you are guaranteed to fail. I know, we’ve all heard that before, so what to do after you’ve tried and fallen flat on your face?

I don’t know. You do replay it over and over in your head. You go through the five stages of grief. And eventually, you come to terms with it. You eventually have to shake it off and face the chance of it again. It sucks, but you have to. It’s the only way to keep on living. So you try and try again. In love, in work, in play. There really is no other option. Anything else is immediate failure. So you have to take that chance again, and when you do, at least take some comfort in knowing that you’re not alone. Even the most successful people in the world, the ones who seem perfect, fail, and they’ve been doing it off and on since they first tried to talk to their Mommy.

Echoes

Posted on by under and Ramblings, Childhood memories, Family, Life and Death, Reflections, Ruminations

The voices of the dead

are ringing in my ears.

Family long ago lost

speak to me as if still here.

I find peace and comfort

in those familiar voices of then.

And, though homeless,

I feel at home again.

I’ll Begin With The Gettysburg Address

Posted on by under and Ramblings, Reflections, Ruminations

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate… we can not consecrate… we can not hallow… this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task before us… that from theses honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

— Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

President Lincoln delivered those words at the dedication of The Soldier’s National Cemetery on a battlefield in Pennsylvania. Though that civil war is over, I can’t help but think that the fight for a ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people’ is an ongoing one. Not all wars are fought with bayonets and rifles, with missiles and tanks. It seems to me that whenever people are free, wherever there is liberty for the masses, someone is at work to take that freedom away.

As a result, the war for the idea of America… the idea that all men are created equal has been fought on the battlefields at home and abroad, in courtrooms, town squares, and in our city streets since we won our independence so many years ago. We have won some battles which have brought us closer to the ideals on which we were founded, evidenced by a Presidential election that saw a Latino, a black man, and a woman vie for the Presidency of the United States, as well as the increasing recognition by individual states that sexual orientation should not be used as grounds for withholding the basic human rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

However, the fight continues with new and resurgent attacks against our liberties. New technologies that invade our privacy by both government and business interests have infiltrated our daily lives and invaded our homes. The oft effective and readily used excuse of safety and security is once again at the forefront of reasons why we the people should relinquish that very basic and human right to privacy. That argument is being wielded as it has been throughout the course of history by those in power to leverage their will upon the people by convincing the people to voluntarily give up what was so violently and costly won.

There also seems to be a contradictory struggle between those fighting for liberty against the tyranny of those who would impose his own religious beliefs upon society at large. I call it a contradictory struggle because the basic strategy in that fight is to attack and suppress the basic freedoms of religion. It is no more your right to extinguish your neighbor’s right to worship as it is his right to force upon you his beliefs.

We must rediscover a balance, or find a new balance in these changing times and shifting mores, in which we are all free to worship or not, believe or not, in the manner which we choose for ourselves. The global war we find ourselves in these days is the result of religious extremism and lack of tolerance. Why is it then that our response to that threat is to scatter to our own corners of intolerance and religious or secular extremism. We are strongest when we are one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Whether you feel that nation is under God or simply under the clear blue skies of freedom, our collective response should be in the spirit of Liberty. Under that spirit, we are indestructible by outside forces. Respect your neighbor’s belief in God. Respect your neighbor’s lack of faith in a higher power. Share the earth hand in hand and let God or nature prove who’s right and who is wrong at the end of time, but don’t spend your life fighting over what is so personal and unprovable. To fight over that is contradictory to the both the Bible and the ideals of Liberty. So live and let live and stand together as Americans. That is what sets this nation apart from so many others on earth.

This is a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people. It is our duty as citizens of this great nation to educate ourselves, to read, reason, and react rationally to the issues of our day and to become involved in a process that has been hijacked by special interests and greedy politicians. In this way we can ensure that those who have fought for, died for, marched for, and lived for our freedoms have not done so in vain.

If America is ever to crumble, it will be from within. Our greatest enemy today is the corruption of our government. Of the people, by the people, and for the people does not exist if those whom are elected to power are there to serve only their self-interests and are willing to do so at the expense of our nation’s. It seems to me that that is becoming more and more the case. Record tax revenue is met with record spending and yet so many of our population goes without the basic necessities of life. Our bridges and infrastructure crumbles, our schools fail, our elderly go hungry, our veterans go without medical care, our borders are porous, and our debt rises all the while rich men and women get elected to public office to be servants of the public but behave only as servants of themselves and they become richer on the backs of the American people. This trend has got to stop. Without a representative government, this notion of Liberty and justice for all cannot survive.

We cannot forget what President Lincoln so eloquently said that day in Pennsylvania, “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task before us… that from theses honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Happy Fourth of July everyone. Stay safe. Put aside your political and theoretical differences for the day and embrace the ideals we share despite our differences and celebrate that great notion upon which this country was founded. Celebrate that idea because that idea is America, and America is beautiful.