What have we Learned Since September 11, 2001

On the Monday following September 11, 2014, I visited what used to be called "Ground Zero", and now is called the 9-11 Memorial and Museum. In 2001, I was in New York during the Christmas break and made my way down to the smoking remains of the twin towers. I smelled the acrid air; I saw the fences around St. Paul's Chapel covered with photos, flowers, missing persons signs--the jutting remains of the iron skeleton like a massive tombstone. Like almost all Americans, I felt anger, sadness, and a sense of wonder and confusion about the vulnerability we had to acknowledge our way of life allowed. I also tussled with the question so many asked, "Why do they (so many in the Muslim world) hate us?" knowing that it was wrapped up in our support of Israel (a country that I support while not agreeing with all of its policies), our support of Arab dictators who kept our oil supply flowing, our way of life, so enticing and yet so evil in the eyes of all religious fundamentalists – not just Muslim.  How would we balance freedom and security?

I understood and supported our attack on Afghanistan, as did many of our allies who sent troops or other resources. After all, the Taliban government there was supporting and protecting our attacker, Al Qaida, which threatened many civilized nations. I did not realize, however, that our attack would mean we would spend more than a decade fighting there. By the time the Bush administration was gearing up to go to war in Iraq, I was highly suspicious of the motives and veracity of the Bush administration’s claims. I couldn't help but agree that Sadaam Hussein was a vicious tyrant, but should the United States be in the business of going to war, preemptively, to remove every dictator who might pose a threat to us?

Coming up out of the subway thirteen years later our troops are still in Afghanistan and the possibility exists that when these troops leave, the Taliban or a corrupt dictator will return to power there. And with President Obama announcing a new campaign against ISIS, a vicious extremist group now establishing a terrorist stronghold straddling Iraq and Syria, I was moved to ask myself what we have learned.

Most of us have learned that we shouldn’t invade every country with terrorists or leaders who may pose a threat. We might be able to invade and conquer, but then we end up having to support them: “You break it, you bought it,” General Colin Powell warned before we went into Iraq.  And our ability to win hearts and minds after destroying a country is limited. Our ability to help countries solve centuries old tribal and sectarian grievances is also limited.

President Obama tells us he’s learned that we can and must fight and destroy terrorist networks that threaten us wherever they are in the world. But we’ve learned that the job of distinguishing between the “good guys” and the “bad guys” is not so easy. Actually, it never has been. Ronald Reagan helped strengthen Al Qaida by supporting the Afghani “freedom fighters” who drove out the Soviet Union. We supported and armed Sadaam Hussein in his wars against Iran. The elected leader of Iraq, Nouri al Maliki, a Shiite, sowed the seeds of ISIS success there by marginalizing and discriminating against Iraq’s Sunnis.

Americans want their president to be tough and strong in response to threats. Everyone recognized ISIS was dangerous, but the beheading of two American journalists made them our enemies: mass murders, rapes, stonings, kidnappings, and various other war crimes against Syrians and Iraqis were not enough for most of us to want to take action. But fighting them in Syria is likely to help the brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad. Some fear we will end up with “boots on the ground,” and some think we should send troops now.

Before 9/11/2001, I, and most Americans, did not know the words Sunni and Shiite. We did know that Iran was Shiite, that there was a Shiite majority in Iraq ruled by an elitist and often brutal Sunni majority led by Sadaam Hussein, that the Saudis protected, funded, and exported an extremist Islamic group called Wahhabis, who had spawned Osama Bin Laden. And not knowing all that, many of us believed the fantasies that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney spun that establishing democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan would be as simple as scheduling an election. And when the Arab Spring began, we allowed ourselves to believe that democracies were bound to flower when dictators were forced aside through mass demonstrations.

We have learned that the world is much more complicated and much less predictable than we wish it were. Too many of us yearn for the simplicity of the black and white world Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush painted. We don’t like the honesty in the shades of grey that Obama has acknowledged is what exists. But in the long run, and it appears that it will be a long run, acknowledging those shades of grey may save us red (blood) and green (treasure).

So what was it like to visit the 9-11 Museum and Memorial? The Memorial on the plaza above the museum is a peaceful shrine, the names of the dead engraved in marble bannisters surrounding waterfalls endlessly pouring into the deep holes of the footprints of the twin towers. The museum is a testimonial and a history, a reminder for those of us who lived through this time, a chance for those who didn’t to get a sense of what those who did saw and heard that day and in the days following. I won’t say you must go, for some it may prove too difficult to relive those times, but having visited, I am reminded that war is traumatic in a way that newspapers and TV can’t convey. We experienced an act of war on our soil in 2001 that killed almost 3,000 innocent Americans, setting us on a path to actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and now Syria. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people have been killed or wounded at the hands of our military and at the hands of those fighting us or each other.  The fact that we try not to kill innocents does not seem to count for much. Beautiful memorials and expensive museums will probably not be built for them. But the memories of our role will not be easily forgotten.

a shortened version of this essay was published in the Charleston Gazette on Oct. 15, 2014: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20141015/ARTICLE/141019604/1134

Lazy, Hazy, but not Crazy

I can't believe it's almost a month since I last posted to this blog. For months after beginning a strategy for losing weight last November, I posted every week, usually to give updates on my progress and delve into the successes or struggles I experienced. I transformed my eating habits and lost thirty pounds, and though my goal of forty-four pounds remains something I'd like to reach, I've decided to live with this weight for awhile without "trying" so hard to restrict my eating. And so far I've done pretty well, though predictably, I'm at the high range of the weight I decided to allow myself for "maintenance"-- 180 pounds (I had started at 209).

I don't feel like I've been sitting around doing nothing, but I've been decidedly less ambitious than in the months previous to July 3rd when the fundraising event for AWARE: Artists Working to Restore the Environment was held. I had put so much effort into making that a success (netted over $3,000, $2500 of which I'll be distributing to WV Environmental Council and member groups, the rest of which will be used for upcoming projects), that my wife had mused that I was working harder in retirement than I had for years.

So the rhythm of activity has definitely slowed, and I've actually had time to sit down and read a little in the last couple weeks, ride my bike regularly, play a bit more music, even actually doing a "bar gig" of sorts (tip jar Tuesday at the Boulevard Tavern), dusting off a slew of my original songs many of which have not been played in public much over the years, some of which have only been heard by Rita and a couple others. Not that they've been heard by many others after playing Tuesday night -- it was a pretty empty room. But it was good practice, and when I finished my second set and called it a night with a solo rendition of the fiddle tune, Catharsis, a complex G-minor rockin' contra dance favorite, the eight or nine people at the bar clapped and whistled.

Tonight, old friend Joe McHugh and his wife, Paula, will play for a FOOTMAD Wandering Minstrel Concert I organized for them. They live in Washington state and came here to do a couple programs at the Appalachian String Band Festival at Clifftop, WV, and this is their last stop before heading home. I may also play a little fiddle before the anti-Mountain Top Removal at Kanawha State Forest rally at the WV Capitol beforehand (5 pm).

Rita and I fly out in the morning for ten days in Colorado Springs (visiting grandchild, Jack Martorella, and his parents), Albuquerque (daughter Hannah and husband), and points in between. So this is retirement during lazy, hazy, not too crazy days of summer 2014.

An Impossible Task

In 1990 after my third year as an elementary school classroom teacher, I attended a 4 week intensive "Invitation Summer Institute" led by Dr. Fran Simone of the WV Writing Project. I eventually became involved in the leadership of that group and in the National Writing Project. Along with 39 others, I was asked to write an essay about my NWP experience to celebrate the 40th summer of holding these summer programs, which started in Berkeley, CA and spread around the country. They published my essay today: http://our.nwp.org/ Here it is:

I (along with 39 others) was asked to contribute 500-1000 words summing up what NWP means to me. I’m not sure I could do it in a book length piece, though maybe I could do it in a haiku:

Young struggling teacher

Lifted by Summer Institute

Retired Director

No, doesn’t come close. Okay, who is my audience? Is it young teachers entering the profession, floundering as I once did? Feeling overwhelmed, small, under a microscope, everyone expecting that college and student teaching has created a professional who knows the answers, but finding that it’s not as easy as it looks, and that these eager or bored or angry or sad or hurting or confused faces cannot be fooled; they know when you are confident and when you are uncertain, and they crave your certainty, your control, they want you to have all the answers, to make it easy for them, and ultimately you learn you’re all in the same boat, learning together, but the lessons are painful and lead to sleepless nights.

What can I tell the young teacher attending a summer institute for the first time—that it’s never completely under control? To have ideals, but not hold yourself to them? To understand that if you’re doing the best you can, that’s good enough? To try to create community? To listen to students, especially the ones who are the most difficult? To give everyone a voice? To write, write, write, and share, share, share? To understand that there will always be far too many demands and expectations, objectives, and content standards, and that schoolwide, districtwide, nationwide goals will come and go and ultimately you should strive to make your classroom a place where learning takes place most of the time? It sounds somewhat defeatist; but it was my Truth. And every student I have met years later has smiled when she asked, Do you remember me? Yes, even the young man last week who was picking up the garbage can from my driveway.

Or am I speaking to the NWP veteran? The Director who has spent a career in the university setting and was asked to take on this extra project and found it taking over his life and career, guiding his research, pushing him toward leadership, management, budgeting, administrative roles he never envisioned. Or am I speaking to the classroom teacher who found a home in her local writing project with like minded teachers who supported each other as writers, who listened to and responded to each other’s stories of divorce, deaths, and illnesses, of births and embarrassing moments, of likes, dislikes, travel stories, fantasy, or poetry. Who got asked and answered, Yes, and found, as I did, it was not like at school where you learned that saying yes could lead you to doing other people’s jobs, to jealousies or politics, to uncomfortable positions making presentations of new strategies or curriculum that someone else decided was best for your school or district or was purchased from a textbook company and you were to follow the script and tell others to be true to the Program. Somehow the writing project was different; the teachers were working together, supporting each other, asking questions, exploring new methods that they truly believed in, and….what is it, what’s so different about this? Oh! They’re listening to ME! They think I have ideas worth listening to! These amazing teachers who have so much to teach me think I have value? I’ve never heard that before! Yes! I will present my classroom demonstration at that workshop; I will help write that grant; I will attend that national meeting. Oh my goodness, here are these amazingly smart people from all over the country, and they all listen to each other, they all work together, they all write, they all ask questions, none of them claims to have all the answers! Yes, I’ll serve on a national committee; are you kidding? You want me, an elementary school teacher to co-direct the Rural Sites Network? Yes, I’ll write an article, participate in a study. Just say yes became my rule of thumb when it came to NWP.

Only when I saw my local writing project in danger did I say no to NWP. No, I can’t right now, I have to lead at the local level. And that was truly the hardest work, at least for me. How can anyone ask busy teachers to do more? And how can an outsider really operate in a university? But those are simply questions, the answers are, in the end simple: It’s never completely under control.  Have ideals, but don’t hold yourself to them. Understand that if you’re doing the best you can, that’s good enough. Try to create community. Listen to the teachers, especially the ones who are the most difficult. Give everyone a voice. Write, write, write, and share, share, share. Understand that there will always be far too many demands and expectations. Oh, I left out one important ingredient…celebrate success! Congratulations on 40 years of changing the lives of teachers through holding Summer Institutes and improving teaching and learning throughout the world, NWP!

A Non-Religious Prayer

*2 Day Diet Report at end

I was musing (isn’t that the promise of this blog?), about how I ended up so incredibly busy working the last couple months, even though I’m now fully retired. Somehow my musing led me down the rabbit hole of religion and my beliefs (or lack of). Because the way that I have approached the creation of the project that has consumed so many waking (and dreaming) hours, AWARE: Artists Working in Alliance to Restore the Environment (www.awarewv.org), is not very different from the way “true believers” approach their lives.

Though I don’t attribute my mission to an outside force, or God, I do feel an inner compulsion that is probably very much like the feeling religious people express when they say they were “meant” to do something or any of the many ways that idea is expressed.

When I consider the compulsion that drives most of the human population to attribute their success or failure, their purpose in life to an outside force, who are willing to give money and time to create organizations, buildings, cities, and even whole countries (and dreams of all humanity) dedicated to worshiping or celebrating that force, I can’t help but believe that there are, at the very least, biological and physical properties that these ideas derive from.

What I mean by that is that the practice of religion or the practices of religion have real benefits for people whether the beliefs of religion are scientifically observable or confirmable or not. For instance, we know that prayer, or meditation, has value whether the mind is focused on a supreme being or on clearing the mind of clutter. Singing and dancing in large groups or chanting has benefits and can result in states of euphoria whether this occurs among groups of worshipers or attendees of rock concerts or dance events.

So, to me, it’s no big surprise that soon after retiring in the months following the chemical spill into the Elk River which tainted the water of Charleston, WV and 9 surrounding counties, after attending meetings and rallies and lobbying on Earth Day, I began to feel as if there was something important I could contribute. In retrospect, my dreams and fantasies about how I would accomplish this were wildly optimistic. Like someone who reports having received a “vision from above,” it was very difficult for people I talked to about this to convince me that success would be difficult, slow, or unlikely.

Stories abound in all human endeavors of people who believe: in their religious visions, their business endeavors, their scientific pursuits. Rarely is it smooth sailing from vision to reality.

On Thursday, July 3^rd, a scaled down version of AWARE’s first event (my first idea for helping raise money for environmental organizations involved a stadium or the Civic Center) will take place at the Woman’s Club of Charleston. There will be some popular local bands, singer-songwriters, and a few artists selling work. There will be snack food and a cash bar with wine and beer. How many people will show up? Hopefully advance ticket sales do not tell that story, because that number is small. How much money will actually make its way to the groups I hope to help? It’s all in the hands of….no, not a magical power. It’s in the hands of a small group of people who are dedicated to the idea that it’s important to be ACTIVE in environmental issues, and the many other people who have heard of this event, seen the posters, handbills, e-mails or Facebook invites, and are balancing the possibility of going out on a Thursday evening before a holiday for a good cause.

Yes, it’s in their hands…your hands. I hope to see you there if you’re in the area! And, I offer this blessing, as blessings and prayers, I believe, need not be solely for the religious to dispense or benefit from: May your life be enriched through generous giving of your thoughts, time, and resources to finding ways to help make our planet a cleaner, healthier, and more beautiful place for all life.


*My 2-Day Diet Progress Week 34, June 30, 2014

I took a week off from blogging last week, but maintained 177 at weigh in both last week and this week. I seem to have reached a plateau for the past month or so, and will now stop posting weekly, but I will continue posting once at the beginning of each month for at least the next 6 months. I'm still hoping to reach my goal of 165 pounds and maintain that weight, but for now I am very satisfied with my weight and as long as I remain below 180 will remain so.

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 62

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 37.5 in.

Weight end of this week:  177 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week:  no change

Total Gain/Loss:  -32 lbs.

Songwriters, Bars, Drinking, and Not Smoking

I’ve never spent much time in bars.  When I reached legal drinking age I was already a self-described “country hippie” with no money, and not much of a palate for alcohol. The stringbands I performed in from 1972-83 occasionally played in bars, and by then I enjoyed a few beers in the course of an evening, but generally found the drunks who hooted and hollered and sometimes got belligerent as the evening turned to morning to be obnoxious and not the kind of people I wanted to hang out with. When I was dating between marriages, I started frequenting the Empty Glass, a Charleston live music, liberal, social watering hole, but that didn’t last long. The fact is, I don’t like drinking too much and waking up tired or feeling sick and don’t like spending twenty to fifty dollars doing it.

But, I’ve started going out to a bar on Tuesday evenings where a couple local singer/songwriters have started what they call SongwriterStage—a “songwriter in the round” format (though it’s not in the round, it’s three songwriters on stage taking turns), which is common in Nashville for showcasing the wealth of talent available there. I’m finding, as are the 10-20 who have been showing up with me on Tuesday evenings from 7pm-10pm at Timothy’s, a basement bar beneath the Quarrier Diner on, you guessed it, Quarrier St., that the Tri-State area has a wealth of singer/songwriting talent as well. Last night I enjoyed listening to TimBrowning, Mark Cline Bates, and Jeff Ellis.

Singer-songwriters are a pretty needy bunch; that is, they need to find people to listen to them. If you know any, you know that they are likely to sit you down and ask you to listen to their latest song. That’s what they need—at least one person to listen. Here in the Internet age, they might record their new song and throw it up on the web for the whole world to hear, and who knows, for awhile two or three people a day might actually click on it to listen, and if it’s good, maybe twenty, and if it’s great and they’re very lucky, maybe thousands. Maybe they’ll get so well known they can go on the road, get gigs, wake up in a different place every day and almost make enough money to live on.

Anyway, I’m not sorry I didn’t make it as a singer-songwriter back when I had several dozen songs about love and loss and made my CD called Lessons Life’s Taught Me, letting my girlfriend at the time take a picture of me with a cowboy hat on, leaning reflectively against a tree. Continuing as a teacher until I had 25 years under my belt and a pension equivalent to half my salary was a much better outcome.

Tonight, after Timothy’s wound down, I strolled over to the Boulevard Tavern where some friends who play celtic music were playing for tips. Okay, it’s not just songwriters who need to be heard, I guess. I had my third drink there and was feeling pretty good, chatting everyone up about the fundraising event July 3^rd that has been consuming my life lately.

A handsome young bearded fellow responded that he’d heard about it, and even been invited to sell his art there. As we tried to figure out why we looked a bit familiar to each other and whether in fact I had invited him to show his art, it was revealed that he’d gone to high school where my daughter had and knew Hannah. A heavy set girl in the next stool turned to look at me and said, “You were my 5^th grade teacher.”

About that time I started feeling a little old. So here I am at 4 am writing my blog, because I’m somewhat prone to insomnia anyway, and while I fall asleep easily after drinking, I don’t sleep that long.

Thankfully, I don’t smoke anymore and they don’t allow smoking in bars in Kanawha County, which makes the whole experience so much more pleasant, and means I don’t smell like an ashtray and hack and cough because drinking used to be accompanied by chain smoking.

All this to say what Larry Groce says at the end of every Mountain Stage show, “Go out and listen to some live music wherever you are.” Yes, socialize, talk (as long as you’re not near the front of the room), but also, spend some time listening carefully. You might be amazed at how talented the folks you’re listening to are, and that's what they want, for at least one person to listen--even more than money, but drop a generous gift in the tip jar, so at least they can pay their bar bill.

My 2-Day Diet Progress Week 32, June 16, 2014 

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 62

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 37.5 in.

Weight end of this week:  177 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week:  +2 lb.

Total Gain/Loss:  -32 lbs.