Five years ago now, I wrote in my first post here, “When all is said, is life meant to be won or should it mean something more?” I’ve written 135 posts in that time to an audience of ether in the netherworld, but I suppose I’ve written for, if not to, myself.

I’ve covered historical anniversaries many times for the perspective that recalling events provides. I’ve occasionally called for compassion, or at least understanding, and to make some sense of why so many embrace lies and division as badges of identity. Occasionally, I’ve posted a poem or two as a moment of reflection.

I can’t say I’ve made a difference here, other than in grounding myself enough to carry on in a world that is sometimes hostile, often indifferent, but still breathtakingly beautiful. Today, as disease and death continue to threaten all, it is good to welcome the morning, to be alive and able to mark the passage of time with a few more words here from my meta soapbox.

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On this day, December 26, in i991, the Soviet flag was replaced atop the Kremlin with the Russian flag, symbolizing the dissolution of the USSR. The night before, Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as leader of the Union, leaving it to crumble into Russia and a host of new states that most of us still can’t name, other than to note that some end in “stan.”

If you are under thirty, the Soviet Union probably seems vaguely like another Ottoman Empire from the later chapters of European history books, and like them all, it too faded into history. It was, however, for half a century, a genuine threat to the West, because of its centralized control of its nuclear weapons, too many of which still exist in Russian hands. The USSR was never Communist in anything but name, but the risks from its ideology to democracy or capitalism, or whatever name you give to the Western way of life, were considered a serious existential threat.

Francis Fukuyama published a book entitled “The End of History and the Last Man” suggesting that in some Hegelian sense that liberalism might have finally triumphed, instead of Marxism. In order to maintain a society however, a common enemy seems to be necessary as a uniting threat, and soon enough we found the threat of terrorism to replace the once Red enemy. The COVID 19 virus should be a real enough enemy to bring us all together, but it seems to have been subsumed in the rush to divide our nation into warring factions, turning masks, or their lack, into symbolic flags.

Russian troops now sit on its border with Ukraine, one of the former Soviet states, testing perhaps whether history merely took a much needed rest, only to return and perhaps repeat itself with its own form of vengeance. We should certainly hope as one that it does not.

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No one knows precisely, or at least has told, when the first case of COVID 19 occurred, but we do know that it was right about this date, December 9, two years ago. Odds are, the experts say, that some version of the disease will be with us forever, though it could already be less front of mind if vaccines were more readily available where they are not and if those where vaccines are had the sense to get them.

I’ve posted before about pandemics, and this post is not intended to look back, but rather to take stock of where we are. Mask wearing has long been common in Japan and in some other Asian countries, as protection and as a gesture of courtesy and respect. It, or rather the lack of a mask, has become an inane political statement here, and seems likely, as a result, to make mask wearing for the rest of us a fairly permanent necessity here.

Travel is apt to become less common for the forseeable future, as will be many things we once took for granted, like eating out and shopping in person. Seeing packed stadiums runs counter to that prediction, but I know there are many who would not venture into such settings for now. In my mind, such mass insanity seems to be one of the side-effects of the disease.

Some once thought that herd immunity might cause COVID 19 to retreat into hiding, but variants and vaccine hesitancy make that a distant dream. Indeed, the beginnings of a fourth wave of infections, on the back of the Delta variant and with the onset of the yet-to-be understood Omicron variant, has put hope on life support for now.

We don’t know precisely who the first case of COVID 19 was and, if we don’t work together as one, we will never see the last. I would like to end this post on a note of optimism, but that seems as endangered as hope for now.

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On December 6, 1941 – eighty years ago today, Japanese fighter planes attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. My father was thirteen at the time and was affected by the day enough to soon apply for the Army, only to be sent home.

The attack was technically a surprise, though tensions with Japan and also Germany had been increasing for some time as America was drawn toward war to defend its allies. Fewer Americans were killed that day than on September 11, 2001, but its impact was even more devastating to the psyche of the nation, steeling it for war in ways that Japan could not have expected.

The attack has been memorialized in film multiple times, but actual memories have faded as Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation have slowly passed way. The eldest son of my father’s family was accepted into the Marine’s and fought in the battle of Iwo Jima. He died not too long ago, but I wrote a short poem about him and his experience. I share it here in his honor.

Nearly ninety now

and still it is hard to speak

of Iwo Jima

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It was on this day, November 14, 1971, that the still-unsolved “DB Cooper” hijacking happened in the Pacific Northwest. It took place in the period before current airplane security existed and during the myriad of “Take me to Cuba” and similar hijackings took place. To this day, no one knows who Dan Cooper (the actual name he used) was, whether he survived his parachute escape somewhere in the area around Mount St. Helens, and what happened to most of the $200,000 he took as ransom.

The Wikipedia article on him and the event is one of the better reads you’ll find on the site, detailing the event and the numerous suspects identified in the 50 years since the hijacking.

Many have speculated that he died after parachuting from the plane at night and during a rainstorm in business dress into the remote area, but Boeing 727 jets had been used for CIA drops in that era, and an experienced, or lucky, skydiver could have successfully made the jump, according to some. No sign of his parachutes (one was a reserve chute that has been disabled and was only for demonstration) was ever found. Three packets of the money (matching serial numbers saved by the FBI) were found in 1980 on the banks of the Columbia river, but the fact that several bills were missing and that they might have somehow washed ashore together only deepened the mystery.

If “Cooper” had died, one would think someone would have later reported him missing, which helped fuel the many conspiracy theories that he did survive and returned to normal life after the holidays weekend. Purveyors of these theories have tried to pedal books, films and such over these now 50 years and theories, no doubt, will continue to surface. Just as an unrelated example, just this week the New York Times printed a new report on where Jimmy Hoffa was buried after his 1975 disappearance.

One thing is certain, as long as such mysteries remain unsolved, someone is apt to try to make money off them.

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October 26, 2021

To lovers of baseball the two best days of the year are Opening Day in April and today, the first day of the World Series. Both are filled with anticipation and hope, so much like a child’s Christmas.

This evening, my home team, The Atlanta Braves, take on the much-hated Astros in Houston. The joke making the rounds is that the Braves may not be able to find Minute Maid Field because the Astros stole the signs. If you don’t get the joke, you can’t be among the true lovers of baseball.

The pundits of sports have plenty to say about the teams, their stars – those likely and not, and even the state of the game, but I have just a few lines of my own to share.

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As it happens (or happened), the iPod was introduced twenty years ago today, which modern historians (if there are such things) are apt to declaim as the beginning of the end of social interaction for civilized society (which I suppose begs a question).

But such talk pales in the face of the fact (well, assertion) that today marks 6025 years since the creation of the world, or at least as Bishop James Usher concluded in 1650. Specifically, by interpreting the Bible and other works, he wrote that time began on the nightfall of October 22, 4004 B.C. (or as now preferred, B.C.E.). The first day, therefore, was October 23, from which he marked the start of creation.

Some rightfully compare his effort to counting the number of angels who could stand on the head of a pin, but Usher was, in fact, a serious scholar and put equally serious effort into his calculation, going so far as to determine that time must have been created before the Creation began, thus the evening before the Beginning.

Stephen Jay Gould, the modern writer and evolutionary biologist, credited Usher’s effort as sincere for its time and a worthy effort, which is more than faint praise from the famous religious skeptic. The fact that Usher’s now ancient work is still claimed as support by modern Creationists, however, is sad at best. Even Usher, in what amounts to a forward to his work, tinkered with the timing, ultimately concluding the Beginning as beginning at 6:00 P.M. on October 22, 4004 B.C., which I presume was Greenwich Mean Time (or U.T.C.), though that was not created (if you will) until 1884.

Perhaps someday when computers replace us, they might date the dawn of their creation to twenty years ago today, in honor of the iPod.

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It is October and the League Championship Series are in (yes) full swing. The Astros took the Red Sox 5 to 4 in Game 1 of the ALCS and meet again today. The Braves meet the Dodgers this evening. If you’ve followed the game for 50 some-odd years like me, as you enjoy today’s games, you will surely note that it was today, October 16, that the Mets won the 1969 World Series.

The expansion Mets had never previously had a winning season and became the Amazin’ Mets by simply making it to the World Series. They were up agains the world-class Orioles and the likes of Frank and Brooks Robinson, and pitchers like Jim Palmer and Jerry Koosman. The Mets, managed by the great Gil Hodges, had future greats with now familiar names like Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan, whose appearance in Game 3 was his only World Series game in 27 years pitching.

When the season started in April, the Mets had a 100 to 1 chance of winning the World Series. Tom Hanks may have said there’s no crying in baseball, but now and then there are miracles. Looking back on my life not that long ago, that serendipity inspired this little piece, that seems appropriate to share today.

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As best as I can determine, John Lennon’s Imagine was released in the US on this date in 1971, fifty years ago today. At any rate, it has been half a century and is still beloved by old and young.

The best of any art, even a popular song, ages well, and this is a perfect example. It’s a simple tune and impossible to forget. I’d repeat the lyrics, but I imagine you know them by heart.

If you really consider what it says – no country, religion or possessions – many would pause at all it proposes, but it does challenge you to imagine this world being a better place. I so hope we can all agree on that.

In the fifty years now passed, we ended one war and eventually embarked on what became our nation’s longest. If we’ve learned anything, it should be that if wars could ever be won, they certainly cannot any more. Perhaps we are finally learning that wishful thinking that the climate will take care of itself is too little and perhaps too late.

I could go on, but imagine what we could do if we learned to live as one.

Imagine.

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Pandemics have plagued (yes) humanity since perhaps before recorded history, although history records its first in the reign of Justinian in 541 CE, later confirmed to be the same bacterium that caused the Black Death or Bubonic Plague of the Middle Ages.

The deadliest of modern times was the 1918 Influenza, which killed an estimated 675,000 in the US and perhaps 50 million worldwide. I posted a note about that flu in March of 2020, as the reality of COVID 19 began to emerge. Even with modern testing, COVID’s toll is necessarily an educated guess, but it has killed at least 4,739,231 worldwide as of today and counting. In the US it has now killed 687,096, more than the 1918 flu, and growing at a current pace of about 2000 daily deaths.

Some point to the Delta variant as the reason that COVID remains with us at the levels we suffer, and certainly the disease has grown more contagious and perhaps more deadly, but this also happened in 1918-19 as the flu circled the earth twice. That argument, however, overlooks that COVID has killed a vastly higher percentage of Americans than worldwide: far less than 1% of the world, by my calculations one in about 1600 worldwide, yet over 1 in 500 here. One would hope that our costly medical resources would have made us safer than elsewhere, and they may have helped, but have been overcome by whatever has led so many to live in, and too often die from, vaccine denialism. One’s odds of dying from COVID are now substantially greater than a pedestrian crossing the street, and probably much more among the unvaccinated.

I find it tempting to rail against those who endanger themselves and the vaccinated by refusing to take two shots but being willing to take untested remedies such as horse dewormers. Many of the unvaccinated deny natural selection, but somehow have chosen to risk the Darwinism of herd immunity, even at the risk of their own lives and those they love. They render aid to the first horseman of the Apocalypse, riding his white horse and spreading pestilence upon the world.

When all is said and too little done, will enough be left to speak the last words of regret and of woe?

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