tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49292877953043312942024-03-12T21:47:48.972-07:00Rhetoric and Road TripsJason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-34385007644019190392022-05-14T12:36:00.006-07:002022-05-14T12:36:59.195-07:00An Old Friend A friend wrote me an email <div>lengthly in its words</div><div>it was larger in substance</div><div>as the small words formed </div><div>to reveal the details of a life
lived </div><div>at times alongside
mine </div><div>and other times far away</div><div><br /></div><div>We live in different places </div><div>but both are married</div><div>both have children </div><div>both tried to be better parents </div><div>than the examples we'd seen
before </div><div>the continents different</div><div>but the struggles still very similar </div><div><br /></div><div>What anxiety is left from a past moment</div><div>that we feel in the present </div><div>as if the past
is somehow catapulted </div><div>into the now, into the present </div><div>How can it be that my breath comes in bursts</div><div>and my heart somehow tries to beat out of my chest </div><div>As breath calms, and my heart returns to its normal rythm, </div><div>I think what was that? Why did I
feel so scared? </div><div>Who can help me if it happens again </div><div><br /></div><div>Where do we turn as
adults when the fear, </div><div>the panic, the pain of our childhoods stands up before us?</div><div>But a friend writes me an email </div><div>and we talk about how we laughed </div><div>we talk about
how we danced all night sometimes, </div><div>running to catch the ferry to go home to
houses </div><div>that weren't always as welcoming as they could've been. </div><div><br /></div><div>we write back and
forth about the time </div><div>when we only thought about what the next song was </div><div>and if it
would be good enough to continue dancing </div><div>or should we go sit on the steps and
drag a breath </div><div>of sweet clove smoke from an aquaintance we found outside.</div><div><br /></div><div>We
write about our pain, and our loves </div><div>write about our history and a hoped for
future </div><div>we continue to tell each other stories that we shared </div><div>and stories we
didnt but we continue to write, emails, </div><div>back and forth across time zones and
oceans, across time </div><div>a friend wrote me an email.</div>Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-42075328814981461802020-04-03T23:02:00.000-07:002020-04-03T23:02:18.922-07:00Co-Vide<br />
<br />
I want to sit<br />
In a small cafe<br />
And drink an espresso<br />
As people walk by the window<br />
Uninterested, unafraid<br />
Unaffected by the death<br />
That seems to lurk<br />
In every person, table, shopping trolley.<br />
I want to go to work<br />
And smile at people<br />
A visible smile<br />
Not hidden<br />
By a mask.<br />
A mask not of death but of fear<br />
For myself<br />
For those I love<br />
At home, sad from<br />
The news that keeps coming<br />
The stories telling of more<br />
Out of work<br />
Trying to decide<br />
What to do without.<br />
<br />Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-24839700354785627562017-12-07T19:16:00.003-08:002017-12-07T19:29:52.427-08:00<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Death in Portland</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">When I die</span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">I want you </span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">To put me out</span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">On the curb</span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Put a sign </span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">On me</span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Free, and maybe </span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Some hipster</span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Will take me home</span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Prop me </span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">In the corner </span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">And hang their coats </span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">From my rigor stricken</span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Hands and place </span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">Their hats</span><br />
<span style="color: #f3f3f3;">On my head.</span>Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-80910160380041770892017-11-13T20:51:00.001-08:002017-12-07T19:18:01.701-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Apple Pie</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">---Jason Murray</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-8c3fbdc4-b8dd-4149-1f84-deb0158c62d4" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mother’s kitchen is lit </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Only by the glow of </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The oven’s feeble light. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sitting framed by the glass </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the oven door</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A pretty little pie</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alone, but not lonely.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Basking in the heat of the oven</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Turning form</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pastry pale to a flaky,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Golden brown.</span></div>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mother walks in</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Changing the light</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With a wave of her hand</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Across the switch plate.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Glancing at the pie</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Through the glass</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And at the timer’s</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Slow turn of the time</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She pulls out a bowl</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And starts on the process </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of cooking dinner. </span></div>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Aunt Daphne walks in </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eager to talk about her day</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Potatoes are peeled and eggs boiled for potato salad.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A piece of carrot</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Disappears among the little details of Daphne’s day,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">People and things </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That have little to do with the </span></div>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Details of dinner. </span></div>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #eeeeee;">Apa</span>Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-3932408363532308262017-11-13T20:15:00.002-08:002017-11-13T20:15:36.010-08:00Olive Murray<br />
---Jason Murray<br />
<br />
<br />
Loss weighed heavily<br />
on his mind<br />
the sense that they<br />
all were leaving<br />
first his son<br />
then his mother<br />
now, his wife.<br />
<br />
30 years<br />
together<br />
less than a life<br />
but more than<br />
most are together<br />
he left then<br />
<br />
left his home<br />
left his work<br />
left his country<br />
and went walking<br />
about the world<br />
<br />
across marble plazas<br />
polished by years of<br />
quiet feet<br />
these plazas now ruined<br />
by bombs and civil war<br />
a plaza where terrified<br />
civilians hid from<br />
a snipers rifle<br />
<br />
He went to the<br />
home of his people<br />
the quiet pubs<br />
full of men drinking<br />
and talking of the same things<br />
they've talked about<br />
a hundred pints before<br />
He walked quiet<br />
through the graveyards<br />
and thought of the love<br />
he had buried back home.Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-56002808362929896482017-11-13T00:21:00.002-08:002022-05-14T13:01:35.706-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">11/12/2017</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fishing,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By Jason Murray</span></div>
<span style="color: #999999;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-c08b10a4-b477-001f-19e7-df1fee44188b" style="font-weight: normal;"><span><br /></span></b>
</span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m bored</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I said, staring </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At nothing in particular</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s go fishing</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She said</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A gleam in her eye</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I said </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How can we go fishing</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We don’t have a boat</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes we do</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She replied</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Its behind the garage</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the large lake</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Out back</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I thought</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There was only the </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Horse pasture</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With an old boat</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tipped upside down</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sitting against the garage</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where the MG sat</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Currently</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We don’t have any fishing poles</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I said</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes we do and she </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Picked up two good sized sticks </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From the ground</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And so we went fishing</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the lake</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Behind the garage </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In an old boat that just minutes</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Before </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Had sat abandoned behind </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The garage where the MG </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sat waiting for the day</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That it could be an </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Airplane. </span></div>
<br />Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-48687570750117895682017-11-03T21:53:00.001-07:002017-11-03T21:53:11.066-07:00Jason Murray<br />
May, 2012<br />
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At the End, A Single Tear </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On August 18, 1984 a few months after I graduated from high school William Stafford wrote:</div>
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“Twenty years ago or so it began to dawn on me how weak and fallible people are, how habits and limited environments had fostered institutionalized smugness and vainglory: when saber toothed tigers died out bravery began to be possible; lack of association with superior sensibilities allows the assumption that we apprehend all that is around us; success at customary activities enables us to assume that we are in control of anything we put our minds to. This mirror that we admire will shatter if touched by any real rocks around us.” </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Twenty years before Stafford wrote about saber toothed tigers and superior sensibilities my father in law, a marine, left for Vietnam for the first time. He had already stood on the beach at Guantanamo bay, Cuba and attended a state dinner with Marcos and his famous wife. Three days after marrying my mother in law Christine in a Quonset hut at Camp Pendleton he shipped out. Hit in the face with shrapnel he was shipped home and awarded his first Purple Heart. But Stevenmichael, or Steve as he asked me to call him, was a Marine and he went back to Vietnam. This time a land mine got him but the field hospital was able to not only save his life but save his leg, putting him back together unlike the egg that fell off the wall. Again the Marines awarded him a purple heart. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Steve knew how to be a Marine and went back to work, walking with a limp now. His duty took him and his family to Philadelphia, where my wife was born, and when he was shipped to Okinawa his wife and two children ended up back in Christine’s home town of Portland. My wife Lisa was about 5 at the time and she remembers seeing her dad rarely. Duty in Okinawa drew to a close and Steve came home to a new home to be with his family and was assigned to the Portland, downtown branch of the Marines. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Little did Steve, or pretty much anyone else for that matter, know but his time in Vietnam had not only cost him his knee, and left him with a limp but during his deployment to Cambodia on missions kept secret from the American public at the time his exposure to Agent Orange was going to change his life. </div>
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By the time I met my wife, Steve was already walking on a cane, taking twice daily insulin shots due to his diabetes, and had survived a small battle with a benign form of colon cancer. As I got to know him I began to see the pain he lived with every day. His knee caused him great pain, his back bothered him and he was beginning to get neuropathy in his feet. While the source of some of his pain, the damaged leg, was obvious what he didn’t know at the time was that the diabetes, the neuropathy, the struggle with his blood pressure, and even the benign form of cancer they removed from his colon were all the responsibility of the defoliant, Agent Orange. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Vietnam was damned from the very start. A people’s struggle against an indifferent government dictated by colonial sensibilities and a Catholic agenda supporting a very few wealthy people over the larger masses of undereducated agrarian society across the country. Elections didn’t go well for the ruling party and civil war broke out with the Northern more agrarian part of the country fighting for a communist, populist solution and the South more urbanized part of the country trying to keep the status quo.</div>
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The United States had come out triumphant in World War two and most of its citizens didn’t feel the effects of the conflict in Korea. Our prosperity led us to believe that the safety and security we had garnered in the middle of the twentieth century was permanent and lasting. We had firmly defeated the Nazis and now had to turn our attention elsewhere to fill our need for an outward foe. Communism, a growing spectre since shortly after the end of World War One, had expanded from Russia to China, North Korea, Eastern Europe, and finally to Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis just seemed to confirm the threat and with Vietnam we saw a problem that our “superior sensibilities” convinced us we could deal with. </div>
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Into this picture came people like Steve. Primarily our poorest citizens, mostly minorities, who joined up and were sent overseas. Steve had no other future. When he was only five his mother died of heart failure. Joe Gastelum, Steve’s father, took him down into Mexico and left him with distant relatives. While the rest of America was moving to suburban communities with cul de sacs and two car garages, eating wonder bread and American Cheese, Steve was working his way back into the United States, and back to the few members of his family who cared what happened to him. As a child Steve went to school, worked on a farm, and lived in a dirt floor shed burying his peanut butter so that the other kids wouldn’t steal it. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The fifties and the early sixties saw a migration of middle class whites to the suburbs. Modern communities were born centered around the ranch home. The modern home came with automatic dishwashers and attached garages. Fences surrounded perfect yards. A television went into every living room and the world was brought into our homes. The sabre toothed tiger was gone and we had the freedom to be brave. As Vietnam grew into a larger and larger war the images began to filter back to us in the United States. The wall was broken down and many Americans saw, for the first time, the gruesome reality of war. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>For Steve the fifties wasn’t filled with suburban communities and automatic dishwashers. There was no television set in Steve’s living room. Steve spent his youth not watching Howdie Doodie but riding freight trains to rodeos and fighting and getting into trouble. While the rest of America began to see everything as easy and our success as guaranteed, Steve and others like him found in the military an escape from a road with no turns and no choices other than back breaking work or crime. While most of America watched the first images of Vietnam come through on their televisions Steve saw the war first hand. As men and women in the suburbs used a finger to turn on the TV and change the channel, Steve used a finger to kill the “enemy.” An unseen people in “black pajamas” who were shooting at him. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The sixties and early seventies were a time of awakening for America. The rocks around had broken the mirror with which we admired ourselves. We saw a President shot in the middle of the day sitting next to his wife and waving to the crowd, and thanks to television the terrible moment was seen in every living room. Vietnam was next, appearing on our television sets in all its terrible imagery. The world had changed for America. The horrors that oceans had separated us from came home. We learned that our government lied. We learned that our President committed crimes. And Steve came home. Steve came home to a world that didn’t want him. To the two children born in his absence. To a family he wasn’t taught how to love. We taught Steve how to march, then we taught him how to fire a gun, then we taught him how to kill. But no-one ever taught him how to love. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>America had changed during his absence. Steve had been changed during his absence. He left for Vietnam young and whole. He came back with pain and a limp, much older than the thirty years that he had so recently turned. He eventually retired from the Marines having attained all but one rank that an enlisted man can attain. His medals were impressive but they went into his foot locker. His uniforms were immaculate but they were hung in his closet and stored away only to be worn again after he died. He never found that civilian job he always thought he’d get. He never finished the schooling he started after he retired. He worked on his yard, and tried to be a dad and a husband. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Steve grew sicker throughout his life struggling with his diabetes and never quite managing to stick to his diet. His heart grew weaker, his knee troubled him more and more, the inch or so in length that leg had lost to the mine made his back hurt and made him walk with a cane. In 2005, just a few days after his grandson Jack turned two, Steve went to the emergency room at the VA hospital way up on the hill over Portland. While alone in the room with his daughter Steve had the first of several strokes and suffered two heart attacks. The doctors again saved him as they had so heroically in Vietnam after he stepped on that land mine but while he remained alive and breathing he wouldn’t regain consciousness for over a week. He eventually came back but had lost most of the use of his legs and had trouble talking. The next several months were spent in two nursing homes eventually coming home confined to a wheelchair. He lived a progressively more disabled life as his sight slipped away and his hands and legs became more and more useless. He tried to stay in the middle of things but the failure of his kidneys had him at the hospital for exhausting dialysis three days a week eliminating the possibility for travel and for living even a reasonably normal life. Two years ago we were all informed that he had contracted a form of lung cancer that had already moved to his liver. His health was already too far gone for any concerted effort to rid him of his cancer and his death sentence was pronounced.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On a rainy spring morning, April seventeenth, 2012, with a single tear running down his face Steve finally passed from this life in another emergency room, surrounded by doctors, his loved ones either in another room or hurrying down to the hospital. A few days later I visited Steve for the last time. He was dressed again in his Marine Dress Blues, lying in a fancy box that was draped with the American flag. As I sat alone with Steve in that tastefully furnished room, just me and the fancy box Steve lay in, I thought; what was he crying about at the end. </div>
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Stafford, William. Every War Has Two Losers. Edited by Kim Stafford. Milkweed Editions. Minneapolis, Minnesota. 2003. Print.<br />
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Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-29420691265254428312017-11-03T21:42:00.003-07:002017-11-03T22:03:43.852-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jason Murray </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Musicals assignment</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Oklahoma” the musical, manifest destiny and optimism during World War II. </span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are introduced to the character Curly in Oklahoma right at the beginning of the movie in a scene of grand corn fields, wide open vistas and Curly belting out “it’s a beautiful morning.” With this we get an optimistic greeting to the day and really to the life he is living. This was an important sentiment at the time this movie was made as we were embroiled in a war larger than any that had occurred up to this time. America needed to be reminded continually of our national identity; one of manifest destiny, optimism, and good versus evil. Oklahoma in its song and setting embody that American Spirit. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stephen Whitfield points out the “disjunction” of the musical Oklahoma in his book </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Search of American Jewish Culture </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in his chapter simply titled Musical Theater. Whitfield points out that during the time this musical first appeared on Broadway the Stalingrad battles had ended only shortly before, the Warsaw ghetto uprising was only a month away and the Germans were already exterminating thousands of Jews every day. “Only in America could Curly’s optimism have seemed remotely credible.” (Whitfield, 66) </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Flowers on the prairie where the Junebugs zoom. Plenty of air and plenty of room.” (Oklahoma) Sings Laurey’s aunt after Curly and Laurey are married. As they exalt that they are beginning at just the right time, and that soon it will be a new state as Manifest destiny takes hold of the country and a wandering cowboy sets roots down to become a farmer. Again there is great optimism for the future of these two young people as they start out in life, as well as room for them to set down roots and to start a great farm. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">America entered World War II grudgingly and only after the Japanese had brought it home to us. By 1943 we were bogged down in Italy, people started to understand what was happening in Germany, and Britain was under continuous bombing campaigns. Americans were anxious that the war might come to our shores. Through this all the spirit of Manifest Destiny and Optimism continued to burn bright. Rodgers and Hammerstein captured the spirit of this in their portrayal of good versus evil, the optimism of a young man starting a new life in a permanent home, and the bright future of living in a new state. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like many in America they looked at their country and saw a country of hope and possible prosperity and wrote it down in song. The good man triumphing over the bad man, with the fight between Jud and Curly as well as their competition for the same girl. The forgiveness implicit in the song “Poor Jud is Daid.” The message about sticking together in the song “The Cowman and the Farmer Should be Friends.” And of course the grandness of the country and the territory in the song “Oklahoma.” Like America they preferred a happy ending. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally In Curly we see the American identity, not too young, not too old. Lived a life free of commitments that was missing a home. Stepping into the role of a husband Curly is old enough and secure enough to put down roots and become a farmer. America was stepping up to its responsibility as a world leader. That Rodgers and Hammerstein were able to put this all in a musical was a statement of their genius and understanding of the American Character; optimism and Manifest destiny, happy endings and good triumphing over evil. These were the facets of the American Character that these two men found important enough to write songs about. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="color: white; white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oklahoma. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dir. Fred Zimmerman. Per. Gordan McRae, Gloria Graham. 20th Century Fox. 1955. Film. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whitfield, Stephen. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Search of American Jewish Culture.” </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brandeis University Press. Hanover, MA. 1999. Print. </span></span></div>
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Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-21705538094965745002017-11-03T21:41:00.000-07:002017-11-03T22:06:19.627-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jason Murray</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 2.4; white-space: pre-wrap;">February 1,2013</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Rise of Abraham Cahan</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When one looks at pictures of Abraham Cahan in his role as editor of the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Forverts</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> you see not a pious son of a Russian Rabbi but an American businessman. His orthodoxy he was raised with gone Cahan stood between the worlds of the Eastern European orthodox Jewry of his youth, the socialism he always believed in, and the world of the American businessman. In the opening and closing passages of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Rise of David Lavinsky </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">his main character, Lavinsky bemoans the emptiness that his success brought him.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The novel begins with his statement of his success in a rise from</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">penniless immigrant to a businessman and leader in his industry and ends with a</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">statement of loneliness and loss and a desire to trade with someone of</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">education and learning. Was Abraham Cahan bemoaning his own feelings of</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">emptiness that his success brought him to the deprivation of his youth?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cahan was not writing an autobiography but rather a portrait of his</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">contemporaries, many of which, like himself, adapted to life in America but</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">felt a longing and loneliness at the loss of their Jewish identity.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Abraham Cahan came to this country suddenly, much like his young protagonist, the difference between them being education and politics. Levinsky doesn’t care for politics much except when they get in the way of making a profit, where Cahan supported the Unions and fought for them Levinsky in his rise to power fought against them. Cahan fought for his beliefs while the evolved from supporting communism to his realization that communism wasn’t working in his former country and his coming out against it. Levinsky forgoes his precious education that he dreamed of as a child to go into business for himself, Cahan had received his education in Russia and continued a mostly intellectual pursuit in his early years here on the staff of the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Arbeiter Zeitung </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">making a name for himself as a jounalist and reformer “One wrote to change the world, and changed the world by writing.” (MyJewishLearning.com)</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In David Lavinsky, Cahan wrought a character who much like himself was raised in an orthodox world and taught not a trade but to be a scholar, to study the Talmud, to be an intellectual leader. Lavinsky begins to dream of a world away from the Talmudic world of his daily life. He begins to dream of love, of women, of replacements for his mother, taken from him at too young an age. He transfers his loss of motherly affection to dreams of more carnal affection. This in turn drives his ambition towards America where he can pursue his dreams of an education and still support a wife and the family that comes with such an attachment. Matilda becomes the focus of his desires, as do older women in America as his loneliness for his mother is confused with his loneliness for female companionship. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lavinsky’s rise to power leads to his sacrifice of his education and the values of his youth. This is something he has in common with many of his contemporaries in 20th century Jewish American fiction such as the character of the father of “the Swede” in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">American Pastoral </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">whose success, and the</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">later success of “the Swede” leave the characters empty of their character.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(Roth) Lavinsky, like Roth’s Swede can talk about their success but</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the bragging is hollow and the reader comes away with the feeling that these</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">characters don’t feel much beyond their outward success, that this success does</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">nothing for them inwardly.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cahan on the other hand while successful as an American was also true to his feelings and his racial identity. The </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Forverts </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">allowed him to stay</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">connected to his people through articles, the Yiddish language and through his</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bindel brief letters, many of which had to do with orthodoxy, family matters</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and relationships. His character Lavinsky never had any such outlet or</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">connection to his youth and Cahan shows it through Lavinsky’s use of</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">prostitutes and his determination to be a successful businessman to the loss of</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">everything else. Cahan obviously worried about this loss of identity in</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">his compatriots of the time, more the loss of identity than the loss of</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">religion. With his stories </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yekl: A Story of the Jewish Gheto, The Rise of David Levinsky, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and some of the other short stories that he wrote during the time Cahan identifies a loss of identity, whether it’s the character that becomes Jake in the movie Hester Street, the movie version of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yekl, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or of David Lavinsky the loss of the ability to pray, to connect with your language and your roots, the Americanization of formerly pious Jews, is a theme that Cahan fought against, all while becoming a successful American businessman taking the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Forverts </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to the height of its economic and political power in the early forties. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cahan kept at it until he was 91, neither apparently lonely nor dissatisfied in his position or accomplishments, unlike his characters he seemed at peace with his transformation to an American. The continued use of Yiddish, and the help he gave other immigrants in finding their way through the morass of America and the seeming obstacles to remaining Jewish, and orthodox while becoming American seems to have kept him occupied and at peace with his world.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So why did he write so much about Jews who found it difficult to stay true to their heritage? The aforementioned daily contact he kept with the mass of recent emigrants and their families, not to mention the contacts he made through his support of unions and workers’ rights kept him informed of the daily problems the modern American Jew faced everyday. To Cahan this was the Jewish American identity. A group of people who shared religious, cultural, and genetic heritage that were finding it hard to fit in without divesting themselves of their shared identity. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For this reason Cahan found it important to continue to write about this in the paper he edited off and on for almost 50 years. He read and answered letters to these people who were struggling to find a way to remain Jewish yet become American. The more successful many of these jewish emigrants and second generation American Jews became the harder it was for them to hold onto their roots, the Yiddish of their parents and still fit into a country becoming increasingly suspicious of foreigners and non-Protestant Christians and adjusting its immigration policies to match. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, Cahan shows in Lavinsky a summation of his beliefs in the political system of Capitalism and the American dream of financial gain to the detriment of your inner beliefs. Cahan structured the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Forverts</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as a successful business in a socialistic model. He believed strongly in appealing to the masses of everyday emigrants in his case primarily Jews. As such he saw people like his character Lavinsky as missing something in their success. He saw a basic hunger, as Rosenfeld mentions in his piece “America the land of the sad Millionaire”, (Rosenfeld) that the Lavinskys of the world could not satisfy. Cahan wrote about a hunger that no amount of success and riches, no amount of illicit sex with women of ill repute, no amount of triumph over former teachers could ever fill. Cahan wrote about the sadness of a man that turns his back on his heritage. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MyJewishLearning.com. “Abraham Cahan Biography”. Internet. 2013.</span></h1>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></span></h1>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rosenfeld, Isaac. “America, Land of the Sad Millionaire”.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Breakthrough: a treasury of contemporary American-Jewish literature. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New York, McGraw Hill 1964. Print. </span></span></h1>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Roth, Phillip. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">American Pastoral. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Boston, Haughton. 1997.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Print.</span></span></div>
<br />Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-16360932429831905662017-11-03T21:37:00.003-07:002017-11-03T22:16:19.485-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jason Murray</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 2.4; white-space: pre-wrap;">March 20, 2013 </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A liberal sensitivity in an era of the neocon.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘The creel would not fit on the rack with the bags, nor would the bowl, so he kept these on the seat beside him.’ (Trilling, p.310)</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thus ends Trilling’s novel </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Middle of the Journey, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as Laskell sits in his seat on the train waiting to get under way. The creel and the bowl, both things Laskall saw as extraneous sit next to him, one a utilitarian basket designed to hold the fish one has just caught, the other a former tool, painted and unusable except as decoration. Like these things Laskell sits next to his friends in the book, people caught at the end of a political movement, the beginning of the next, not sure where they stand. The Crooms, Laskell, Simpson, and Maxim, all attracted by what they saw as injustice, all working for the “party” to differing degrees, and all friends are at a dividing point. Maxim has rejected the party, and thus rejected everything they have all worked for. Laskell, through the death of Elizabeth Fuess, and his own near death experience has found that he doesn’t feel strongly about the cause anymore. Simpson, comfortable, wealthy, is still committed but in a way that only someone not worried about his future, not driven by ambition, fear, or passion could be. The Crooms still passionate, taking risks with Arthur’s job through protests, and their stance still believe but in differing amounts. </span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the time progressive politics had achieved many of their ambitions through the implementation of Roosevelt’s new deal, the enlargement of the ranks of worker’s unions and the greater freedom young people were experiencing. The enlargement of the movement of course started generating fallout that we were not going to see for a few more years with the advent of the Alger Hiss trial, the McCarthy hearings and what most here in the United States saw as the failure of the ideals of communism in the Soviet Union. Out of this success, and this failure to see the dictatorship in the Soviet Union for what it was came a disillusionment in the ranks of the progressives and out of this disillusionment came breaks in the fabric of the party and in the ranks of the progressives as a whole. What for many was an intellectual pursuit began to fray in the light of reality. As the intellectuals, brought to the cause through their education and given the opportunity to discuss, digest, digress, and generally examine what they believed was wrong with the world; housing, food, and worker’s rights, the intellectuals found friendship in like minds. But as this period came to a close, and the horrors of World War Two gradually gave way to the promises of the next decade and the growing middle class many stopped seeing need and started to see dependency and lack of personal responsibility. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gifford Maxim may be based on the real life Whittaker Chambers but he could be based on a fair number of the New Intellectuals who began to break ranks. His initial attraction to the Fellow Travelers and to the communist party was one of revolution and an honest desire to help his fellow man. The depth that the character Maxim was willing to go showed his commitment to something exciting and fulfilling. As he became more and more deeply embroiled in the cause he began to see the cracks in his ideology and the problems with the system in place in the Soviet Union. Maxim began to leave behind his indictment of society and began to believe in the absolute responsibility of the individual, “ I reverse your hole process. I believe that duck Caldwell--like you or me or any of us--is wholly responsible for his acts.” (Trilling, p. 299) In this statement, a response to Nancy’s discomfort with her feelings about Duck Caldwell, Maxim begins a divided conversation, the Crooms on one side, Gifford Maxim on the other and “An absolute freedom from responsibility--that much of a child none of us can be. An absolute resoponsibility--that much of a divine of metaphysical essence none of us is.” (Trillling, p. 301) puts Laskell absolutely in the center, on neither side and opposed to both. Maxim, a man obsessively involved with his cause to the point of disappearing both literally and ideologically into the cause. Maxim had put himself in true danger unlike anyone else in their group and had seen what he thought was the truth. His break from the party and his break from the ideology of his friends had to do directly with how deeply he had believed what he had been fighting for. His reaction could only be that of anyone who fights on dogmatic principles, to go entirely the other direction. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Crooms, safe for the summer in their country house, believe strongly in their principles and live on the edge of the communist party. What attracts them to the Party is the same thing that attracts many young intellectual and intelligent young people to similar ideologies both then and now; the thought that you are working for the good of the masses. To have a noble purpose, that thing that many young and well educated people have the time for. Those that don’t have to work in a factory, or on a road crew have the time to join these causes. Causes that are still relevant today. Maybe moreso now than at the time this book was written. The reactionary rise of the neoconservative movement grew out of the discontent with what had been accomplished, the realities of communism and the end of World War Two. Many of the intellectual set began to feel that their youthful ideologies were wrong and the boom that accompanied the end of the war as well as the truth of what lay behind the iron curtain formed a foundation for this argument. This movement grew in opposition of the liberals and split many friendships, just as you see the end of the friendships at the end of </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Middle of the Journey. </span></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: #eeeeee; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Crooms particular subset of ideology with its extreme acceptance of the ideas of Marxism and Leninism would not fit in the world in today’s political environment. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the poverty of Cuba, and the strange mix of communism, capitalism and totalitarianism in China has made sure that Marxism is a passe ideology. However, the liberal movement that would have them today would be one of similar ideas, housing for all, no one hungry, no worker oppressed. The Crooms today would be working for immigration reform, health care rights and for worker rights. They would be dismayed by the loss of union jobs and the plight of the middle class. They would not have as much time because unless today’s arthur published more than one book on economics they would both be working full time. The economic realities of today have made the life of the intellectual a rarity. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Middle of the Passage </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">begins and ends with a Laskell on a train. At the beginning of the book he is totally dependent on his friends, still weak from his sickness, still hurting from the loss of Elizabeth, and confused by and unsure of Maxim. Through the book and his eyes we are shown the idealism of the Crooms, a little naive and very fervent, the betrayal of Maxim, the Rogers with their utilitarian socialism, the simplicity of the Caldwells and the reality of death. Laskell leaves, independent and healthy, leaving behind his friendships and his past. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trilling, Lionel. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Middle of the Journey. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Charles Scribnor’s Sons. New New, New York. 1947. Print. </span></div>
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Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-27308657375835788882017-11-03T21:35:00.001-07:002017-11-03T22:13:32.144-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jason Murray </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Auntie Daphne and Jason’s Really Excellent Adventure</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My mother and my father had two children; my brother Keith and myself. We were both born before my mother even turned twenty two, Keith following our parents marriage by about seven months at a healthy eight pounds six ounces and I thirteen months later at seven pounds six ounces. Keith was at a disadvantage at the start. Mother became pregnant around the same time as her sister in law, her older brother’s wife. Since Tommy was her favorite sibling and she had looked up to him from a very young age mother was thrilled. This was short lived because my uncle always walking the fine line between mania and severe depression took his life in a fairly dramatic fashion in the backseat of a Seattle taxicab while seated next to his pregnant wife. She miscarried my cousin a short time later while my mother continued to carry and eventually give birth to my brother. He represented loss. Whenever she looked at him she could see her brother and imagine her niece or nephew she should have had as well. She saw the loss of a sister in law since she and mother shared the same intense pain over the death of Tommy. </span></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then I came along. I was a new start. There was no stigma, no reminder in my eyes. My happiness invaded her heart and she shut my older brother out even more, eventually leaving he and my father behind and going to St. Louis with Jeremy Landsman, a man I called father. My real father meanwhile stayed with friends, leaving my brother with his sister, my aunt Anne while he continued drumming with his jazz trio, working a day job and playing in smoky bars at night. He didn’t let the fact that he had type one diabetes keep him from his music. One night, while his friends went out, he stayed home with a bad cold. He didn’t have a gig so he thought he’d stay home and try to get over “this bad cough.” When his friends got up the next morning they couldn’t rouse father. He died a couple of days later from pneumonia. He was only twenty seven. Keith was only two, I was only one. Mother and I came home for the funeral and the two brothers were together again, but this was short lived. Aunt Anne offered to keep the both of us, and my mother agreed to let Keith stay with her but took me back to St. Louis. </span></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Six years later, in 1973, mother and I shared a house with her sister, my aunt Daphne, and a friend of theirs, Barbara Aftergut on Bainbridge Island, just a 35 minute ferry ride from Seattle. One Saturday, shortly before my seventh birthday mother took me down to the docks in Winslow. This wasn’t uncommon because we knew many people who owned boats, such as the Wild Turkey, a light racing day sailer with a cabin and a mounted bottle of Wild Turkey whiskey, but we weren’t visiting any boat I already knew, we were visiting a small fishing boat. My mother introduced me to its captain, a middle aged Norwegian named Jerry. My mother announced that she was going to spend the summer in Alaska, on this same small boat, fishing for Salmon. I was to stay with my Aunt Daphne, something that didn’t bother me because she was like a second mother anyway. </span></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mother left with little fanfare, sailing away on the small plain fishing boat, a gillnetter that would be home to she and Jerry for the next two months. Daphne and I watched them go and went home where Daphne packed my little backpack with a few things for me and a larger bag with a few things for herself. Sitting in our little living room Daphne then explained that we were leaving as well. No boat for us, not even a car. It was 1973 and neither Daphne or I were unfamiliar with how to get around without a car. We got a ride as far as the Winslow Ferry and from there hitched our way to the interstate, relatively new having only been installed 11 years earlier in time for the Seattle World’s Fair. Thumbs out Daphne and I were on our way to introduce me to a brother whom I didn’t remember. </span></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The trip to California was without incident. I remember riding in a station wagon with a family, being told that if I swallowed my gum it would build up in my stomach and never go away. While riding with the family we drove through an area with beautiful views and bridges. The person I remember most of all though was the trucker that picked us up shortly after Daphne got written up for being too close the freeway. Apparently we were allowed to hitchhike but needed to stand on the other side of the swale built along the side of the freeway. Dave the trucker is how I remember him now. A long nose Freightliner with a small bed behind the two front seats was the tractor he drove and I sat in that little bed watching out the front window and listening to him talk on the CB. </span></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dave drove us all the way to Berkeley and to the apartment that my recently divorced Aunt shared with her child, my brother, now eight. Now I was thrilled to suddenly have a brother. I followed him everywhere and instead of using his name I addressed him as brother, a fact he pointed out to me on a later visit I made to him on slightly more normal transportation. Keith and I had little in common since he had been adopted into a pretty normal household with his new mother, our aunt Anne, and his new father, her husband Dave Brubacher, while I was raised by our mother but also an aunt, and a friend as well as a couple of different “daddies” at different times. Despite this we seemed remarkably similar. </span></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For me it was a great summer. In spite of missing my mother I had gone on a great adventure and met a brother I didn’t realize I had. The adventure wasn’t over yet. Dave the trucker was making a return trip that went North all the way to Seattle and didn’t want Daphne and I back on the side of the freeway. He lived in Los Angeles and felt the easiest way for him to get us was to fly us down to LA. Daphne and Anne realizing we’d be in LA decided that we should all go and make a stop at Disneyland. I remember getting to the little park in Anaheim. Keith and I each got one book of tickets, realizing pretty quickly that there were only two E-tickets and a bunch of A-tickets. E-tickets got you on the Pirates of the Caribbean, A-tickets the dumbo ride. But that was Ok because I got to eat lunch at the Blue Bayou where you watched all the boats bobbing past on their way to the drop into the pirate’s cave. </span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><span style="color: #cccccc;"><br /></span></span>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That summer was the type you want to be able to write about when the teacher asks you to write about your summer vacation. While my mother fished for steelhead and cut eight foot sharks out of the net while they bobbed below her mouth gaping open I ate a birthday cake shaped like a tugboat. While Nixon tried to stop the Watergate scandal from awaking the American public to his misdeeds, I had clam chowder at the Blue Bayou and drank glasses of Coca Cola. America was reeling from the Vietnam war and the Civil Rights battles of the sixties and I was reeling from the excitement of learning about my brother Keith. </span></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-14911853205458748422016-05-23T10:08:00.001-07:002016-05-23T10:08:12.282-07:00Coffee house home<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Again, at home</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Away, in a coffee house</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Not my own</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The sounds</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Background noise </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Coffee grinder</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Someone's phone</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Playing a video</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Interrupting the noise</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">With a foreign sound</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Tinny, alien</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But in my language</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Not understandable</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As if in another </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Tongue.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The cup, hot steaming</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Sits waiting for my touch</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Black, really deep brown</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A little bitter</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Biting the back of my mouth</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">And realizing the promise </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">That comes with its smell</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">now and again</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The movement of </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">My fellow patrons</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Ordering, carrying their </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Prizes to their tables</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Two men talk of their plans</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Two women talk about their work</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Refilling their mugs </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">And continuing</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Caffeine fueled ambition</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Coffee scented hope</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In this chaos, ordered, </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I am myself. </span></div>
Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-63144507044675330122016-04-08T22:07:00.002-07:002016-04-08T22:07:37.360-07:00AthiestGod existing where?<br />
In the minds of believers<br />
I do not live thereJason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-64805557045969338282016-04-08T22:05:00.003-07:002016-04-08T22:05:42.328-07:00fried eggTeflon pan butter<br />
Egg sits and fries lazily<br />
Egg over easyJason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-21848516949574566752016-04-08T17:08:00.000-07:002016-04-22T09:38:22.406-07:00He asked me<br />
Do you believe in God<br />
I said No<br />
And he said why not<br />
So I<br />
Told him this<br />
That while I had seen many things<br />
To convince me God exists<br />
My daughters face<br />
Seconds after she was born<br />
My son's laugh<br />
When he is watching some<br />
Ridiculous show<br />
My dog's sleeping form<br />
The dogwood in the back yard in full bloom<br />
Pink blossoms glowing in<br />
The Afternoon sun<br />
I had also seen things<br />
To show me his Absence<br />
The wars that continually rage<br />
All over the planet<br />
The hatred people have for<br />
Others who are different<br />
The child dying from a disease<br />
He did nothing to receive<br />
I see people search for<br />
God, mostly to have someone to blame<br />
For their failures and someone to<br />
Credit with their successes<br />
I see people use God to<br />
Condemn others for simply<br />
Loving someone<br />
For trying to live a life<br />
Deserved, a life loved<br />
I see families split<br />
Over nothing<br />
But a misguided belief<br />
In an absent God<br />
No, faith doesn't satisfy me<br />
I cannot simply accept<br />
Because in simply accepting<br />
People found themselves led to<br />
Gas chambers<br />
Or clearings in the South American Jungle<br />
And disappearing<br />
Or simply stopping living<br />
Waiting for the next life<br />
No, I told him. <br />
I don't believe in God.<br />
He said OK<br />
I kinda Get it<br />
And lifted his beer<br />
And drank.Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-91289814846288011722016-04-08T16:56:00.000-07:002016-04-08T16:56:22.240-07:00Her Eyes<div>
Jason Murray</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So dark</div>
<div>
Her eyes</div>
<div>
Iris bleeds </div>
<div>
Into the pupil</div>
<div>
The first time </div>
<div>
I saw them</div>
<div>
Fell deep into </div>
<div>
Those pools</div>
<div>
So deep </div>
<div>
I couldn't climb out</div>
<div>
Hair floating </div>
<div>
In a halo </div>
<div>
Around her </div>
<div>
Perfect face</div>
<div>
How it snares me</div>
<div>
Traps me</div>
<div>
Takes me in </div>
<div>
And comforts me</div>
<div>
In its hold</div>
<div>
Her hands</div>
<div>
Small, blunted nails</div>
<div>
Touching my face</div>
<div>
And I drifted off</div>
<div>
Asleep on the floor</div>
<div>
Late for work</div>
<div>
She simply had</div>
<div>
To kiss me</div>
<div>
And I thrilled</div>
<div>
Lifted deep </div>
<div>
In my soul</div>
<div>
Captured, trapped</div>
<div>
And Oh!</div>
<div>
What a wonderful</div>
<div>
Trap</div>
<div>
May I stay in it </div>
<div>
Forever. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-80322516513035746352016-02-01T21:32:00.000-08:002016-04-22T09:38:41.159-07:00February 1st, 2016<br />
<br />
The night is rainy<br />
wet streets and dark<br />
the street lamps strain<br />
to light their small world<br />
and provide the small<br />
sense of security<br />
as people splash in and<br />
out of the puddle of light<br />
left like a stain on the sidewalk<br />
this light<br />
like a moon<br />
suspended above us<br />
sees everything directly below it<br />
it does not see the cat<br />
skulking beneath the car<br />
the dog in the house<br />
silently barking<br />
through the window at the cat<br />
it does not see the lovers argue<br />
while sitting in the car<br />
neither getting out<br />
it is blind<br />
to the pigeon that sleeps<br />
securely on its top<br />
while into its sight<br />
walk friends laughing<br />
at an unheard jokes<br />
lovers who holding hands walk slowly<br />
reveling at their brief<br />
privacies<br />
as they move from light to light<br />
protected in their darkness<br />
revealed by the street lamp<br />
left there by city planners<br />
to help everyone feel better, safer, seen, unseen.Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-54805838206441824632015-07-02T21:59:00.001-07:002015-07-02T21:59:31.495-07:00July 2nd, 2015<br />
<br /><br />
I played pool <br />
today in a <br />
hotel in Green Bay, <br />
Wisconsin. <br />
I didn't play <br />
well but neither <br />
did she, however, <br />
I still lost. <br />
2 balls left <br />
on the felt<br />
when her last <br />
ball made its <br />
dropping clunk<br />
the sound<br />
as it sunk below <br />
the line of the table.<br />
I played pool <br />
today with a <br />
sense of irony <br />
since I am <br />
remarkably without <br />
talent in the game <br />
nor the spirit to <br />
compete to win. <br />
But, in Green Bay <br />
it just seemed right <br />
to play pool. <br />
<br />Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-29640134330975424572015-03-07T15:59:00.000-08:002015-03-07T15:59:09.245-08:00I'm lost<br />
I knew my path<br />
once but then<br />
you left and left<br />
me blind.<br />
<br />
I have no<br />
white cane<br />
or seeing eye dog<br />
only a blind heart<br />
in the woods<br />
<br />
<br />Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-7856771506689454992015-02-15T20:32:00.000-08:002015-02-15T20:32:53.239-08:00anger and terror<br />
Feb 15, 2015<br />
<br />
anger mounts<br />
climbing a terrible<br />
mountain to yell<br />
impotently from the top<br />
the red at the back<br />
of the neck<br />
the flush of the<br />
face and the flaring<br />
nostrils breathing in<br />
violent bursts of breath<br />
flashing back out<br />
as the nails dig in<br />
leaving marks<br />
in the palms<br />
terror of the<br />
flash and the flame<br />
the sudden burn<br />
no reason no spark<br />
sudden fire rising<br />
up spiral flames encircling<br />
the torso<br />
leaving only blackened<br />
bones and cracked<br />
glassine porcelaine<br />
bursting forth<br />
and ripping through any<br />
obstacle.<br />
<br />Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-1881077762714672832015-02-06T12:34:00.001-08:002015-02-06T12:34:38.724-08:00His name was Mace<br />
He asked me for mine<br />
And wanted to know<br />
About Lucy<br />
It sure is wet here<br />
I think I'll go<br />
To computer lab<br />
Today he said<br />
I nodded and<br />
Continued looking<br />
At my phone wondering<br />
Where the money<br />
Kept going<br />
Lucy worked on<br />
Her bagel<br />
It kept raining<br />
We talked about<br />
Baseball and<br />
The blazers and<br />
That his class<br />
Was from 2-4<br />
Downtown<br />
We talked about what I did<br />
Or didn't do<br />
That I write and help<br />
Lisa but that I<br />
Didn't write enough<br />
He talked about<br />
The blazers and again<br />
Said that he thought<br />
That he would go to his classJason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-39395786279672242622015-02-05T12:29:00.000-08:002015-02-05T12:29:18.044-08:00This morning after dropping my daughter off at work I went to the laundry mat. This was a unique experience because this was the hipster laundry just off Mississippi called Spin Lounge. They give you free Eco soap, have a small cafe that offers coffee pastries snacks, beer, wine and free wifi. This is much better than the laundry up the road that has either shows like the apprentice or if you are there late Mexican game shows on their giant TV. I'm drinking my second cup of costa rican coffee and waiting for my things to finish drying.Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-24375858256901696692014-12-08T20:37:00.001-08:002014-12-08T20:37:08.507-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0.00009999999747378752pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">ason Murray</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">The Reverend Dorothy Enslow</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> “Name one good Republican President.” My grandmother challenged me. I stood before her only 14 years old, already taller by several inches then this diminutive lady but completely cowed by her power and knowledge. I had made the mistake of saying in a light tone “Oh, I think Ronald Reagan might make a pretty good president.” How could I know better, I was only fourteen? My grandmother had been only half listening to me up to that point. Her challenge once dropped had to be answered. You did not ignore a question my grandmother asked. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> “Well,” I said quickly “ it seems to me that Eisenhower must have made a good president, after all he was a great general.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> “Eisenhower was a useless president.” grandmother replied tersely, “He got nothing real accomplished during the whole of his presidency.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> Stopped, briefly, because I didn’t have an endless supply of Republican presidents at my fingertips and the only ones that were alive during my life were Nixon and Ford. Even a 14 year old knew better than to bring them up, I paused to think. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> “Benjamin Harrison!” This man, pulled out of my meager hat, belonged to my family tree. The only grandson of a former president to be elected president, he was not my direct ancestor, as was his grandfather William Henry Harrison, but family is important to women like my grandmother. I felt I had a strong candidate.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> “Benjamin Harrison was a crook.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> Shot down again. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> Now I had to think hard. A general wasn’t good enough, my family tree wasn’t good enough, I had to really reach down deep. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> “Abraham Lincoln!” I declared with the surety that comes with knowing that you have the right answer.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> As soon as that name fell off my lips I knew I had misspoken. Grandmother’s face took a form I know too well today. Tight lips, enlarged eyes, compressed pupils, all signs that a storm is coming. I see the same face in the mirror today when someone has pushed the wrong button. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> “Abraham Lincoln allowed General Sherman to roll through the South, Burning down homes and killing innocent people. My great aunt’s family had the tragedy of being in his path. My great aunt was severely ill with Scarlet Fever and her mother plead with Sherman’s men to spare her house. They drug a mattress from the house and threw it on ground as the only accession burning her house to the ground. She died soon thereafter.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">I stood there, proven wrong, but not defeated. This was the beginning of my transformation into the Kennedy Democrat and the little gentleman that Grandmother Dotti wanted me to be. Carter was the first Democrat I watched and supported and whose defeat I mourned.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> Grandmother (never grandma) Dotti almost always had it her way. The way we opened presents on Christmas day, the way we spoke, the way we treated others. There were always rules. Who knows from how many generations these rules came, whether they came over with the people who arrived at Jamestown in the early seventeenth century of whether they were written in stone by my Grandmother personally. No-one tended to disobey Dotti.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> I spent a lot of my childhood at my grandmother’s house. Between extended visits such as the time my mother needed a place to stay between moving from Bainbridge Island to Whidbey Island, or the two times mother left her second husband, (the second for good) my grandmother always opened her house We never paid a price with money but often my mother paid a high price emotionally. My mother was a champion of Southern guilt. I of course didn’t see what it cost my mother until much later in life. In my early adolescence I went to Chinook Junior High which was only a few blocks away so I stayed there frequently. So often, in fact, I had my own bedroom. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> It was during this time that grandmother addressed titles. After having asked her a question which I began with the title “grandma” that she turned to me and said “Jason, in the future I prefer to be addressed by grandmother, or grandmama, or Dotti, but please, not grandma.” Being that I was a teenager at the time and grandmama felt too childish to me and I couldn’t imagine calling her Dotti she became forever “Grand-mother. I always figured this was a throwback to the south and the stiff and formal people that raised her. Our ancestors were aristocratic plantation owning southerners who had money until their side lost the Civil War. I think that my grandmother’s generation simply didn’t want anyone to mix them up with the people who never had money. This may seem snobby or trite to some but they were very proud people who had to live with the knowledge that they had participated in slavery and lost a war. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> Grandmother was raised by her grandparents. Her father killed himself and her mother became unable to take care of herself, let alone her children. Her grandparents were from a time when ladies didn’t cook, or do the cleaning. You always had people to do that for you. Her Aunt married an Astor and lived in a grand house in Chapel hill, keeping up appearances of a well founded family. The grand house, however, was in disrepair due to lack of finances and they lived for a time on things like dandelion salad when they could find enough weeds on the grounds. Because of this my grandmother never learned to cook well, and her house while superficially clean always had a layer of dust and a disorder behind the closed doors. This did not matter to me, children love disorder. As for her cooking, one of her signature dishes was hot dog casserole. A dish she came up with during my mother’s childhood when she received 50 pounds of hot dogs as an incentive for buying a deep freeze. This dish while getting carefully covered sighs from my mother, aunt, and uncles, delighted me. Her liver, on the other,was the kind of food that could cause starving men to scatter in front of a plate of it. She would take the liver out of the container, boil it until it was gray, fry it until it was black and dry and cover it with under cooked onions. To this day I can still smell the aroma of liver and feel the texture in my mouth. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> A woman with strong religious conviction and strong ties to the church my grandmother followed her husband into the seminary after he died. She continued going to school even after driving her little sky blue Carmen Gia over an embankment smashing her face and hands. She had to hire someone to read her lessons to her but she endeavored and was one of the first women to be ordained in the Olympia dioceses. The ordination was performed in a stone church on first hill in Seattle and of course the whole family came. She became the Reverend Dorothy Enslow instead of Mrs. Hamilton Enslow. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> She started out as a chaplain at Overlake Hospital in Bellevue Washington I used to visit her, sitting in her office listening to the documents and communications fly through the tubes overhead. She had a box under her desk with a large cross on it that was labeled “Bear Aid.” Opening this one would find a dozen teddy bears Dotti kept for sick children that visited the hospital. When she finally felt she couldn’t handle the four bedroom 3 bath house in the suburb of Clyde Hill she moved, with mother’s help, to a condo in Seattle and worked at a small church a few blocks away. As a young adult I visited her a few times in that little condo. I spent the night on her sofa, cramped and uncomfortable. I woke up to find my grandmother wearing her clerics uniform of black with the white collar making herself a small breakfast. Upon seeing me awake she asked if I needed a shower. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">“I don’t really go to church anymore, grandmother.” I replied.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> There was that look again, and I hadn’t even mentioned republican presidents (Reagan was still in the White House at this time and I had long since become an extremely liberal democrat.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> “As long as you are in my house on Sunday morning you are going to go to church and take communion.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> I went to church and took communion from my grandmother’s hand that Sunday. I remember that while my religious feelings had changed greatly and I did not any longer believe in the church I still felt a swell of pride in seeing my grandmother dressed in her robes, on the dais, the sacrament in her hand. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> Rituals such as going to church were important to my grandmother. When I was little I remember the pre-dinner snack that grandmother and grandfather shared each having one bottle of beer. On Fridays however, they split one beer. Visiting my grandmother a couple of years after my grandfather had been taken by Leukemia I noticed that she still shared a beer on Friday. She would Carefully reseal the bottle with the intention of drinking the other half on the coming Friday. Opening her fridge you would always find carefully wrapped items waiting, slumbering, hoping to be opened and finished. Most would stay until someone came along and emptied the rotting things from the fridge. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> The last conversation I had with my grandmother was well into her Alzheimer’s and she could remember me, and even my girlfriend whom she’d only met once, but couldn’t remember which child was my parent. Shortly thereafter she was moved from independent living to a care facility where she could get the help she needed. She died in 1999 after having spent thirteen years of her life with advanced Alzheimer’s. I went back up to Seattle to attend the inurnment ceremony when her ashes were placed next to her husband’s under St. Mark’s Cathedral, the dioceses headquarters for the Northwest area. I’d said goodbye to my grandmother years before when she ceased remembering all of us but seeing that little box with her ashes put away in its tiny crypt made her death real. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"> I will always remember my grandmother as the southern bell she was. A tiny strong willed woman who but couldn’t tune her clock radio. Stern and a little stiff, but still full of such love for me. She taught me many things, southern gentility and restraint, a love of family and the importance of ancestry. Many people and experiences contributed to who I am today but my grandmother helped build the foundation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">I still miss her, and probably will till the day I can no longer what it was like to be a child in my grandmother’s home. </span></span></div>
Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-70646072255101450152014-12-08T20:29:00.003-08:002014-12-08T20:29:28.129-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jason Murray </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">North and South</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">January 20, 2011</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">I am Southern, I am Northern</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">I am the Northwest.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">We came here before</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">The country we now pledge allegiance to</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Was even an idea.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">I am the pursued, the hunted, the annihilated.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">I am the pursuer, the hunter,</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">I am father, I am husband,</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">I have one hand in a novel</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">While the other stirs a bubbling pot.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">I read Vonnegut amongst the smells of chiles,</span></span></div>
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Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4929287795304331294.post-55066317082448655142014-12-08T20:24:00.001-08:002014-12-08T20:24:42.621-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Jason Murray</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Scott Dionne</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">May 31</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">st</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, 2010</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">The bombing started in the outskirts. To the men in the now mostly empty meat locker, a few American prisoners of war and their ragtag German guards, these were felt as faint rumblings barely heard or felt three stories under ground. Growing closer they sounded like drums, then like the footsteps of giants and then they rained down right on top of the meat locker. Great crashing sounds making everything shake like earthquakes and hurricanes at the same time. Kurt Vonnegut and his companions in imprisonment sat in the dark of the locker of slaughter house five safe from the bombing, unlike the many thousands of citizens of Dresden who died in houses, bomb shelters, wine cellars and simple basements as the incendiary bombs lit fires that sucked the air from the rooms and left many asphyxiated where they sat, teacups still in front of them (Vonnegut, slaughterhouse, 226)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;"> The American prisoners were given the job of cleaning this mess up. They had to wade into the wreckage, the broken buildings and the buried basements, the simple bomb shelters and the wine cellars and lift the rotting corpses out. With bulging eyes and rotting skin these horrors were carried to piles in the center of town and burned ignobly. Eventually the American prisoners dug only to find the bodies and someone with a flamethrower came and burned the bodies where they lay, a makeshift grave beneath the rubble. Vonnegut and his comrades, silent at first, began to harden at their task and talk and joke about it. Their humanity lost in the face of the horror that had been wrought by their own countrymen. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In his semi autobiographical book Slaughterhouse Five Vonnegut explores his experiences through fiction and science fiction. His character Billy Pilgrim experiences Dresden as he did, arriving in an overflowing city intact and spared the bombing runs that had scarred many other cities in Germany. As his character sits in the bomb shelter and later sifts through the ashes Vonnegut is right there with him. Witnessing the atrocity wrought by his countrymen. Billy Pilgrim masks the awful experiences of war, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the stress, the death and the continual sound of fighting by disappearing and slipping off to another time and place in his life. Billy doesn’t do this in a fantasy according to is own belief, he does this in reality having come unstuck in time. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vonnegut explores in this book his survivor’s guilt, his remorse over America’s involvement in the bombing of Dresden, and his clinical depression by using humor, wit, and compassion for the human race. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">Vonnegut is unwillingly thrust upon our world</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;"> Vonnegut was born to Kurt Vonnegut and Edith Lieber on November 11th 1922, sixteen years after the first Vonnegut in the United States as well as Indianapolis died while taking his daily exercise on a cold winter day. So it goes. He first met his wife, Jane Marie Cox, while they were still in grade school at the Orchard school but he waited until after the war to marry her. Later in high school he reported for, wrote for and edited the CV /Shortridge Daily Echo. After high school he enrolled at Cornell University to study biochemistry rather than architecture as his family had expected. In 1943 Vonnegut enlisted in the army and the army moved him to the University of Tennessee for training in mechanical engineering, something that he didn't use in the army or professionally. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">World War II</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The next year, 1944, turned into a big year for Vonnegut. On May 14</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the day before Mother’s Day, overwhelmed by depression Edith Lieber Vonnegut, his mother, committed suicide overdosing on sleeping pills. Six months later the Army decided it needed Vonnegut in Luxembourg and he found himself immediately in the battle of the bulge (Kurt).</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The Battle of the Bulge, so named for the bulge it created in the allied line, was the last major offensive by the German army during World War Two. Hitler believed that the alliance was weak and could be easily broken by a strong offensive push. The fact that the German army had been in retreat since D-Day didn't matter to him. Three armored divisions, the Sixth Panzer Army, the Fifth Panzer Army and the Seventh Army hit the allied armies in a surprise attack advancing sixty miles into the allied line. The allies also experienced the first ever jet bomber attack with the Luftwaffe attacking train lines and rail yards in order to crush the Allies ability to supply themselves. The initial success was short-lived however since the Germans lacked the fuel to refuel their armored divisions and the First Panzer Division had to abandon their vehicles and make their way back on foot. Six hundred thousand Americans were involved in the Battle of the Bulge. The Americans lost eighty thousand, the Germans one hundred thousand killed, wounded or captured. But Vonnegut said in his letter home to Kurt Vonnegut Sr. dated May 29</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, 1945 “but not me.” (Battle)(Vonnegut Letter).</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Like Billy Pilgrim, his character from </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Slaughterhouse Five</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Vonnegut was in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge. They both arrived in Europe in December 1944 right before the German offensive. They were both caught behind German lines for five days before being part of the largest mass surrender of American troops during World War Two. Both Vonnegut and Pilgrim had come to Europe and within two weeks been captured by the Germans without ever having killed anyone. Billy Pilgrim didn't even have a gun, a decent coat or reasonable shoes. They and the others were marched 60 miles to a train depot loaded on unmarked boxcars and left waiting for several days. They were bombed by allied bombing raids and froze in the unheated boxcars as they waited to be moved. Eventually they ended up in Stalag 4B and as Vonnegut was not an officer he was transferred along with others to Dresden for work Duty. So was Billy. Many characters that make brief appearances in his book were people who had made brief appearances in Vonnegut's experiences in Europe. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dresden was overflowing with refugees. As one of the only cities not bombed up to this point the beautiful Dresden overflowed with people. Pilgrim and Vonnegut and the other American prisoners were housed in a barracks that were formerly a meat locker the name of which in English translated to Slaughter House 5, the name eventually given to the semi-autobiographical novel that was both the birthplace of Billy Pilgrim and his finally his book describing the experiences he had in Dresden. He speaks of Dresden in many of his writings. He loved the city. The beauty and age of the city fascinated him and he wanted to see it for its beauty. But allied firebombing annihilated the buildings and killed over thousands of Germans. Vonnegut mentions 250,000 in his letter home (Vonnegut letter) but the number was really about eighteen to twenty-five thousand according to the most recent findings by the Dresden Commission of Historians for the Ascertainment of the Number of Victims of the Air Raids on the City of Dresden on 13/14 February 1945 (Taylor). </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;"> Slaughter House Five, or the Children's Crusade</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Slaughterhouse Five </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">came out Vonnegut's desire to write about his experience in World War II as well as about the city of Dresden. He carried the idea around for years first really talking about it during his time at General Electric in their publicity department. Trying to get some resolution and to prompt his memory he called an old friend that had been their with him. He visited this old friend, Bernard V. O'Hare, another private that was with him in Dresden. He arrived to find his friend was hospitable but Bernard's wife Mary was not. She imagined Vonnegut was going to write another war hero story with parts played by Frank Sinatra or John Wayne in the movie version. Vonnegut assured her he was not going to do that. That there would be no parts for Sinatra or Wayne in his book and that he thought he might name it "The Children's Crusade". The book is dedicated to Mary and Gerard Muller, the cab driver that they met while in Dredsen (Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse, 17-19).</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;"> Vonnegut took twenty-three years to finally finish his "short, and jumbled, and jangled" (Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse, 24) novel. Why so long? Vonnegut looked into his head and found it empty of memories of the bombing. He called buddies from that time and asked them about their memories and found that they were lacking as twell. It seems that they had buried the memories as well. the long process of unencumbering his memories and piecing the story together was "an important step in the recovery from PTSD" or post traumatic stress disorder (Vees-Gulani). Vonnegut struggled with depressing memories, survivors guilt, and PTSD all his life contributing to the depression that was already present in his family. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;"> Billy Pilgrim, his main character from Slaughterhouse Five represents how Vonnegut saw many of his fellow soldiers on both sides of the war; propelled along by the circumstances of their individual situation. Somewhat helpless they are in a way like those bugs in amber the aliens mention to Billy, frozen in time. Billy is an unheroic hero. Not too connected to his fellow man he was in a way Vonnegut's Charlie Brown. He represented the loneliness that Vonnegut often felt, disconnected from his fellow man. If he tried to tell of the air raid in Dresden as he saw it often people would come back with the awful things that the German's did as a University of Chicago professor did at a cocktail party when Vonnegut tried to do just that. "All I could say was, "I know, I know, I know." " (Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse, 13).</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Vonnegut caught sometimes in the position of saying "I know, I know, I know." wrote Billy as a valve to release his feelings about the war and his experiences in Dresden. Vonnegut once said in an interview as Robert Merill and Peter Scholl point out in there essay </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five: The Requirements of Chaos,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> "Everything is a lie, because our brains are two-bit computers and we cannot get very high grade truths out of them." (Merrill, Scholl). Billy Pilgrims comfortable lie was that he had come unstuck in time and that everything was unchangeable as if we were bugs in amber. This allowed Billy to deal with the havoc he had seen his countrymen inflict in Dresden as well as helping him cope with a life that he didn't feel comfortable in. His fear of change became acceptance of the inevitable. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;"> Vonnegut also uses Pilgrim to counterpoint his beliefs. Billy Pilgrim blandly accepts his marriage, his life, his son fighting in Vietnam. He sees everything as inevitable so he doesn't fight it or try to change it. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;"> Kurt Vonnegut finally got his wish on the 11th of April, 2007. A fall at home finally ended the "comfortable lie" of his life two weeks after his regular "If I should die letter to his son "Two weeks later he fell, hit his head, and irreversibly scrambled his precious egg." (Vonnegut, Mark). He passed away later in a Manhattan hospital. So it Goes. Ironically his Pall Malls didn't do him in. Gravity did. A fact he would have loved. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vonnegut, Mark. "Introduction." </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Armageddon in Retrospect. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">G. P. Putnam's Sons. New York. 2008. Print.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vonnegut Jr, Kurt. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Slaughterhouse Five or The Children’s Crusade</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. New York. Randon House. 1997. Print. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kurt Vonnegut Jr. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Encyclopedia of World Biography</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Advameg, Inc. 2010. Web. 28</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, April 2010.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vonnegut Jr, Kurt. Letter to his father. May 29</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, 1945. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Armageddon in Retrospect. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">G.P. Putnam and Sons. New York. 2008. Print.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Taylor, Frederick. “Death Toll Debate; How Many Died in the Bombing of Dresden.” </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Spiegel Online International.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> 02 October, 2008. Spiegel Online. 2008. Web. 28</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> April, 2010.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cccccc;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vees-Gulani, Susanne. "Diagnosing Billy Pilgrim: a psychiatric approach to Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five." </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> 44.2 (2003): 175+. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Academic OneFile</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Web.</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #cccccc;"><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Merrill, Robert, Scholl, Peter A. " Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five: The Requirements of Chaos." </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cccccc;">. Ed. Robert Merrill. G. K. Hall & Co. Boston. </span>1990. Print. </span>Jason-Vincenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03330931440139060831noreply@blogger.com0