North of 78

At church yesterday a friend who reads my blog asked if I’ve recovered -- that is, from whatever was bothering me to write such distressed posts last week. One of which so appalled me the next morning that I deleted it, which I’d never done before. Probably I’ll try to do better, or refocus. Back off and write more about Panama City. I remember Panama City where I grew up in the 1930s and 40s and 50s. That noisy wooden bridge over Massalina Bayou at 4th Street. The wooden draw bridge at Tarpon Dock. The Ritz Theatre. The cable system at J.C. Penny's on Harrison Avenue. The wooden Glen Bridge that was half a block north, and why it's "the Glen Bridge." And then the Dixie-Sherman Hotel. And Bay High School where my father and I graduated, Bay High when it was real. The Bud Davis Drive In Theater. And the Isle of View. The USO at the turnaround at the south end of Harrison Avenue on the Bay. And how everything changed over the years, especially my hair from thick jet black to white and hardly. We were in Japan 1963-66 and when we returned, my beloved town had changed, but so had I and I realized it and expected change, and it was OK that time.

But 1969-1971 and after was different: not to do Shakespeare and The Tempest, but it was my personal sea change. I had been at sea and we lived in California and we were in the Vietnam War where so much of my mind and thinking and realizations and feelings about my country not so much changed as were changed by force, literally by force. We didn’t come home to Panama City those two years, and when finally we did come home the town had somehow changed such that I got lost out somewhere north of 15th Street that hadn’t existed and was all woods when I was a boy, and now there were streets that I didn’t know and everything seemed different and not at all mine. Out there beyond our city’s northern border reared against the sky it was all new; it was still the same here by the Bay. But I’ll never forget the horror of feeling lost in my hometown for the first time. 

In my mind the city still ends at 15th Street and the Tally Ho, and I can still get lost way up north at night if it’s raining. 

Instead of sitting down and blogging after reading TWP and the NYT online mornings, I could write about those hometown things and memories. And, maybe, hopes. A man can still have hopes north of 78.

Or cars, I could write about cars. A friend snapped and sent me a 1941 Plymouth pic that unleashed a flood of memories from long ago, I have that down to remember one morning. Not only will I enjoy all the remembering and writing and coming up with the car pictures, it will keep my mind out of the national and international news for a bit. 

Religion. I can blog about religious stuff, eh? Bible, theology, especially theology. Religion. Which brings to mind the inscription in the lentil over the library door at one of my seminaries, "Seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will." Religion with my personal skepticisms expressed in my slogan, “just because you believe it, that don’t make it so.” And delightfully this Episcopal cartoon that several called to my attention. Episcopal meme or something, although I have absolutely no idea what “meme” means. But this is perfect:
   

But politics. National and international. My resolve had been to stay away from politics, and I broke that resolution last week. But unless one is blind (and I’m talking about morally) it’s hard to live in this world and not be angry. Ariel Sharon just died, who had a stroke when he was the age I am now and lay comatose for the next eight years, God forbid. I didn’t know much about him except I thought he was a hero of Israel whose language and history I have loved. But there are two sides of every man, and what I’ve read about Sharon the past couple of days is a nightmare of a human that, how could a Jew who lived through the Holocaust possibly deal with other human beings so? Say it isn't so.    

But last night I read about a real man.


A big difference in a real life visit with a man as opposed to another writer, one with a vicious political agenda:

 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/12/gates-dont-ask-dont-tell-fight-was-only-time-obama-showed-passion-for-military/

In my life there were those years after Pearl Harbor when we had all the news and propaganda and newsreels that created terrible feelings about Germans and Japanese that I’m still working through seventy years on. Somewhat immorally the Japanese seem to prefer forgetting and excusing their past and moving on. Thankfully, the Germans seem determined to be introspective and cleanse and cleanse and cleanse such that everyone knows what they did and never do it again. Today's children haven't lived in Peace. We had wonderful years of pretty much general peace in my lifetime, from summer 1945 when the War was over to summer 1950, then after Korea and before Vietnam. And then after Vietnam during those years when it seemed that, stirred by songs, the music and the body-bags, the nation had acquired a self-awareness and conscience that would prevent our ever going there again. But here we are. 

It isn’t all that simple though, is it. FDR hates war, and his dog Fala hates war,  


and I hate war. But Secretary Gates is right, after 9/11, Afghanistan must be made a place from which nobody could ever again attack us, and the cost to us is heavy in the lives of young heroes and in the lives of older heroes like Robert Gates who agonized about what they were having to do and wept at the new graves of American youngsters. 

Voluble, Anu Garg? Thanks for the word. I’m tired of writing, whoever is tired of reading go home, be my guest.

In all this, the most disturbing is hatred, not only watching the cultural hatred in the Middle East, but hatred here at home. Political. Washington. Irrational hatred of a president who when all is said and done is just another president for history. The vehemence is a strange stir of blind racism into a blatant new age of hatred that is somehow acceptable to Americans. Solution? Perhaps time heals all wounds. Religious. The greatest sin is certainty. That everyone else must believe and think and live as I think and live and believe that everybody else must believe and think and live. Our sin of religious certainty and thank you very much Snoopy the Dog. 

 We need to take a century off to think about it and start over. Genesis 6:5 - 9:1. 

TW