The E.greenbush E.coli Chronicles

(Compiled from Times Union blog entries)

• “E COLI” FOUND AT EAST GREENBUSH TOWN PARK! Confirmed less than an hour ago by the Rensselaer Co. Health Dept. in a telephonic interview. Ongoing problem for 2-3 years (of sporadic nature, theorized that it’s related to run-off). According to Rensselaer Co. the town engineer was tasked with identifying the source of the contamination. No action to date, so the County refused to issue a beach permit this year. Yet nothing from the town to its citizens warning them of this health risk. According to a source at the town DPW both the Supervisor and the head of DPW were aware of the problem, yet the taxpayers are not??? Are you kidding me? People DIE from e-coli! I just came from the beach and took pictures, there are no warning signs other than a cryptic slap-on variety about a health risk which is posted right over the “No swimming when lifeguard not on duty” sign. Shouldn’t there be a sign that says “Swimming here can sicken or KILL you!” Who’s doing something about this? What about all the people that had graduation parties there this year? Any of them go swimming? What about teenagers at night swimming there? The “rumor” is a rumor no longer. Please spread the word to everyone you know to contact the Town Supervisor and demand a mitigation and an explanation!
Comment by Dwight Jenkins — August 17th, 2009 @ 5:19 pm

• Despite the Supervisor’s new web site message about the Town park, the problem was detected 2-3 years ago and there have been a number of beach closures since that time. The County Health Department told the town to identify the source of the problem but the town never did, so the county did not issue a beach permit in 2009. Despite the supervisor’s assurances that the beach was properly placarded, well, it MIGHT be now but it certainly wasn’t as of Monday 8/17/09. I have pictures and it basically just said no swimming when lifeguard not on duty. When I pointed out the required state law placard language the town did put up a sign that said the beach was closed by order of the county health department. Close, but not right yet, as the law demands another clause be included warning against concealment, mutilation, alteration, or removal of the sign without permission of the county, such actions being violations of Public Health Law. Despite the supervisor’s assurances that there was no risk to the citizens, the water condition as it exists constitutes a Public Health Hazard under Section6-2.15 -Water Quality Monitoring. As for e-coli, I stand by what the County Health officer told me on the phone. I told him I’d heard first-hand that there was feces in the water (not even thinking e-coli). He is the one who then stated that there was e-coli and fecal coliform above acceptable levels with no town mitigation action. I have the notes I wrote as he was speaking. Sorry, but it is what it is, and it’s only that way because I raised a stink, not because the town did the right thing on its own. Lots of people swam there this summer not realizing it may have been better to drink from their toilets… Supervisor, we want to see the correspondences between the Town and the County over the last 3 years on this matter, and we want to see each of the offending test results for ourselves, thank you very much. Let’s put them on the downloads page of the web site.
Comment by Dwight Jenkins — August 21st, 2009 @ 5:33 am

• Visiting the Town Park yesterday I saw orange plastic snow fence strung all along the beachfront at the waterline, with a “No Swimming” sign pounded into the polluted beach sand for good measure. That’s a lot of precaution for a condition that the Supervisor says placed no citizens at risk at any time! Unfortunately a father and his young son (I am presuming, based on their interactions) were fishing at the far end of the snow fence, as were two other groups further upstream. Do they know WHY the County Health Department closed the beach? Did they EAT their catch? What exactly DID they ingest? And by the way, Section 6-2.15 of the law (Water Quality Monitoring) states in paragraph 3) When the above described levels are exceeded (which they were, for either fecal coliform and/or E.coli) the permit-issuing official (Rensselaer County Health Dept., in this case) shall cause an investigation to be made to determine the source or sources of pollution… Did the County do its job? It seems not. Did the Town do its job? It seems not. Did the citizens of East Greenbush, including me, do their jobs? It seems not. We have been lazy in our oversight, too busy to get involved, too afraid to ask questions. That is about to change, it seems.
Comment by Dwight Jenkins — August 23rd, 2009 @ 8:09 am

• Got a call at work Friday from NYS Health Department Regional Field Coordinator Mara Holcomb about the Town Park situation. Very pleasant lady, she, and we had a nice chat. Surprisingly, she said there were a couple of things in the recent Times Union story that were not accurate, something about how the newspapers often get the story wrong. I told her I thought the Times-Union probably reported the story accurately based on whatever the county and/or the town told them. I didn’t press her for details, but based on the tenor of the conversation I will predict two things to come out of the FOIL request I made for lab results and for County/Town correspondences 2007-present. (No, I’m not going to air them here, but I will tell the truth about whether I’m right or not once the documents are in. Unlike the political entities involved I have nothing to lose by telling the truth.)
Two different times she mentioned that samples taken in the vicinity of a duck that had just pooped would test positive for E.-coli. She also said that E.coli could be found in almost any body of water you could mention, including Grafton Lakes State Park. She went on to state that if you weren’t testing for E.coli you wouldn’t have any lab results for it. So…can you guess what MIGHT come up in these documents? I will let you know as soon as I know.
Comment by Dwight Jenkins — August 30th, 2009 @ 6:12 pm

• I got my FOIL’ed Rensselaer County Health Dept. records on Friday and, as expected, they contradict the Town’s position and the Times Union story. There WAS E. coli at the Town Park, confirmed by Bender Lab in July – August 2008, each of the 4 times the lake was tested. The 7/10/08 test results were almost 5 times the acceptable limits! Additionally, Fecal Coliform was detected in quantities often well above acceptable standards. Someone lied. It’s just that simple, someone lied. And for what? All they had to do was acknowledge the problem, like many other communities across the country, post the proper signs warning the public, like many other communities across the country, update the web site, like many other communities across the country. But no, this is East Greenbush, so we lie, dissemble and withhold. I think most galling of all were the e-mails between NYS and Rensselaer County Health officials, with the subject line “East Greenbush Poop Pond.” From the County to the State on 7/3/09: “Trouble in E.G. again. I sampled the pond before I would issue a permit and one week after I sent them a permit they had a fecal of over 1,600. One week later: 200 fecal. Of course they have remained closed. This is the third straight year of this crap (no pun intended). I think I would like to permanently revoke their permit. Please advise.” This was after a 6/20/08 recommendation that the Town must “investigate and determine the cause, then eliminate the source of pollution since this has been an ongoing problem and similar historical data can be accessed in the file.” There are no County Health records that suggest anything more than a cursory investigation of the source.

Here’s what I advise: YOU have to be the ones to put pressure on this administration! Call them, write them, e-mail them, hound them! They willingly, knowingly allowed your children to be exposed to dangerous bacteria. Elevated E.coli and Fecal Coliforms get people sick! All you have to do is Google it, like I did, and you’ll find plenty of evidence from coast to coast. Just this past June a whole group of triathletes fell ill in Oklahoma after the swimming portion of their competition.I have copies of all documentation should there be any question as to the veracity of this blog post.
Comment by Dwight Jenkins — September 22nd, 2009 @ 1:46 pm

• Additional documentation about E. coli at the Town Park, obtained today through a Freedom of Information request:

On March 11, 2009 the Rensselaer County Health Department Environmental Health Director Richard Elder sent EG Supervisor Richard McCabe a letter re: EAST GREENBUSH TOWN BEACH. “Dear Mr. McCabe: In the past three years the East Greenbush Town Beach has been closed by this Department several times because the bacteria counts in the lake exceeded acceptable levels. Last summer, after a lengthy investigation, we determined that the source of the bacteria (is) likely run-off. Therefore, before a permit can be issued to operate the Town beach in 2009, the Town of East Greenbush must conduct an evaluation to determine the source of the run-off. Once the source has been determined, you will be required to submit plans for corrective actions… Sincerely, Richard J. Elder, Environmental Health Director.”

This is the very same Rich Elder quoted in the Times Union as denying that E. coli turned up in the water at the Town Beach. On 6/17/09 the Town took 11 samples of water at the beach and at various places along the stream that feeds the beach. The samples were taken between 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM. Escherichia coli (E. coli, for short) turned up in levels exceeding safe limits at the beach, 1/8 mile upstream, at the Broken Bridge (where the stream runs under Luther Rd, just below the new housing development up on the hill), at County Rte 55 where it meets Bink Farm Rd (where levels were highest: 690 per 100 ml) before dropping off to “safe” levels at the Parker Rd and Jope’s/Moore Rd locations. Total Coliform counts exceeded safe levels at the beach, 1/8 mile upstream, the Broken Bridge, County Rte 55 where it meets Bink Farm Rd, at Parker Rd and again at Jope’s/Moore Rd. The comments portion of the results pages typically read exactly as follows: “Sample is POSITIVE for Total Coliform. This result indicates that the water WAS NOT of a SATISFACTORY sanitary quality when the sample was collected. Sample was POSITIVE for Escherichia coli.” All samples were processed by JH Consulting Group, Inc., Newtonville NY.

SO…How could Supervisor McCabe POSSIBLY reassure the Town residents both on his EG web site and in the 8/27/09 edition of THE ADVERTISER that the town “…has at no time put any of our residents at risk. A bacterial problem was detected in late spring in the pond. [Which spring: 2006, 2007, 2008 or 2009??? It was a problem all along!] The proper signage was posted. [No, it wasn't, and I have proof.] I would like to once again assure all of the Town residents, all proper steps have and will be taken. [No, they weren't. We're STILL waiting for a message from the Supervisor's office which acknowledges E. coli in the Town Beach's swimming water.] It was just 2 weeks prior to this, also in THE ADVERTISER, that the Supervisor stated “Despite the weather, the Town Parks have been booked all season and into the fall.” At that very point in time there was absolutely nothing at the beach to warn party-going swimmers (and there were swimmers, as witnessed by my own daughter at one such party) that the water was unsafe to swim in: no fence of any kind and one sign which read “For your safety NO swimming allowed,” placed directly over another sign which reads “Swimming Only When Lifeguard on Duty. Swimming at Any Other Time is Prohibited.” When I showed these sign photos to a local expert in the field of “warnings” his reaction was as follows: “Until the problem is solved, they should certainly put up appropriate signage warning residents of the problem. Whatever the final signage says, it should clearly state the hazard, the likely consequences and their severity, and what people need to do to protect their safety/health…it [the existing sign on 8/13/09] was clearly inadequate, poses a public health risk, and places the Town of East Greenbush at significant legal risk should someone becomes sick as a result of the E-Coli…There is nothing to prevent the Town from publishing the info in the paper, announcing it on local radio/TV, putting fliers out at select places a majority of the public would frequent (e.g.,Hannaford, Price Chopper, the Town Park, etc.) as a broader warning “system.”

It should also be noted that I had requested copies of all Town correspondence with the County Health Department about this matter. I got nothing. Either the Town staff couldn’t find anything in their records (there were plenty of correspondences and e-mails obtained from the County) or they refused to give me what they had! Pick your poison, they’re both bad options!I’ll say it again: we deserve better! What’s the big secret? A lot of communities have to deal with polluted swimming water. But hey, there’s NO EXCUSE for not warning your friends, relatives, and neighbors. None.
Comment by Dwight Jenkins — September 29th, 2009 @ 5:09 pm

Throwing Stones in the River

What if there was a place you could watch your life rolling past, sometimes gently, sometimes turbulently, mostly just generically, one portion the same as the next but for the odd debris or detritis floating by, here or there?

What if there was a way you could take your troubles and condense them into hard, manageable chunks to be thrown, sometimes violently, sometimes softly, into that beautiful life rolling silently past, and thereby rid yourself of the burdens?

What if that life could absorb all that trouble and hide it deep below the visible and far, far from us, slowly working to bury, or change, that trouble, so that you would never again have to throw stones into the river on beautiful days in September?

Would you throw your stones into God's river, never to be seen again? Or would you hold them close, jangling loose in your angry pockets, making open sores on your hips and thighs as you bounce along the rocky way, to be reserved for that time when you needed to throw rocks at some other pained and worried stone bearer?

Would you?

Suburbia

Pink frosted donuts
Pink frosted wives
Pink frosted sneezes set in
Pink frosted lives.

All You Need to Know...

* Photo by Ian Miller, of "Seat Protector" fame.

The Worst Seat

I got to mass late today. I had to sit in the worst seat in the house. The one behind the big, square pillar. You can't see the priest from there, so the voice of the gospel seems to echo out from the small, square mausoleum at the back of the altar, the little box that holds the body and blood of Christ until his return. We won't need it then, I presume.

Not seeing father allowed me to notice other things too, like the crucifix that shines silver and gold, pulled and stretched into shape like taffy at the county fair, like the Christ of the midway, hung between the fried dough and the fresh squeezed lemonade, right there where I am.

Behind the pillar.

At the fair.

Seat Protector

Oh Ian, young Ian, so cautious you are in the early summer of your life. I hear you in the stall next door; the crinkling of your seat protector gives your position away. Just five feet from you but worlds away I void into the void, free, unworried, liberated in my torpid mid-life. "You don't know where their cheeks have been!" is your excuse, but I understand. I am a man, with four-score years of sitting under me. I too have relied upon such frail devices in my youth. But no more. I want ALL that life sends my way, young man. I want to live on the edge, give on the edge, sit on the edge, and shit on the edge of life's seat, to risk ALL for these sweet, seated moments of freedom! Come, join me young man, and put your flimsy paper youth behind you.

Spring

Cherry blossoms pink, and tender as baby's breath. Fresh cut grass.

Birds chirping and chattering love songs in the trees.

Dogs begging for scones, caught between howl and bark, the no-man's land of "maybe," eyebrows and ears alternating between up and down, now standing, now skulking, now sitting...

"Maybe, maybe, all the world's a scone,
and as long as he's chewing it's STILL maybe!"

Yes, a piece, but I'll keep all the orange icing for myself, beloved cur.

The breeze is soft, laden with the edges of rain in some far off place that is not here, and the boy cat chases the girl cat from behind the garage and out amongst the dandelions spotting the grass, the ones that ducked their heads under Jen's mower blades last night. It is good to be in charge of...

...Spring.

A Nice Memorial Day

I hope that you had a nice Memorial Day
I hope that you cleaned up your car
I hope that the sales were all more than ok
And I hope that you cut your whole yard

I hope that your sun shone on Memorial Day
And I hope that your breezes blew soft
I hope that your nice family's picnic was fun
And their laughter helped hold you aloft

I hope that your little white balls all flew straight
And no roughs found their way to your games
But I hope for a moment you paused while you played
And I hope you remembered our names

A weekend-plus-one is the prize that we won
For the deaths we embraced long ago
And I know that it's hard to remember what for
But the boys and me thought you should know

That when you plant plants deep on Memorial Day
We'd like you to think of the roots
That were torn from the earth on that terrible day
When we fell in our worn combat boots

The Best Things

The best things in life fade slowly away.
They die unannounced and unintended:

The last night of passion with a beloved spouse;
Your little girl's last jump into your arms when you come home from work;
The last hug from an aging parent;

It is a mercy, I suppose.

Who could bear it if we knew?

Meditations on Air travel

Rain beads up and drizzles down the window like falling tears, as if the plane itself mourned for the crowded condition of humanity and for the hidden fool that's decided a fart would somehow, in somebody's world, be appropriate for this situation. I don't even know how he or she manages to lift a cheek, so squeezed are we. I got nothing else to do but sit here and think on this gray metal death trap.

I've eaten my pretzels.

The air is solid white. There's no vision, only light, and a wing. I am directly over the left wing, so close I could touch it by leaning out my porthole window.

It's keeping me alive, this wing...

We've been flying low over the clouds for three hours now, and it has been a revelation. In places resembling massed white brains and in others snowy mountain redoubts, I can see now that the cloud tops are where God hides the things he has waiting for men! Innumerable clefts and valleys unseen from below store up his wrath in small, white-shaded packets, scattered across an endless cloudscape as far as the eye can see. No wonder human history is such a long charade of tragedy. God's supplies dominate the battlefield. He can outlast us! If I could somehow crawl out onto that long, bent wingtip and vomit down into those gnarled crevices I surely would, on behalf of all the farting crushed and suffering.

So here's a word to the wise, all you philosophers, theologians, economists, generals, and politicians: now would be a good time to surrender! You cannot possibly win! I've seen the armada, vast as the continent itself, and beyond.

You cannot possibly win.

The Emergency Broadcast System

"This is a test of the emergency broadcast system." Remember those days, when the tv would go blank and you'd hear that atonally high-pitched, unnervingly extended electronic beep? I was just sitting out front on a wet, sullen Saturday morning, having coffee with the slugs. It's easy to see where they've been: you can see their slime trails shimmering on the sidewalk in the haze. Examining those trails I suppose it's reasonable to assume that you can also tell where they're headed, and I wonder:

Is that how God looks at me?

Jennifer slept out at the lake with the kids last night, and all the world smells like a saturated leech field. It's been a very wet July. It's been a lot of other things too. I was reading from the Psalms, #50, actually, when I encountered the following: If I were hungry I would not tell YOU! The world is mine, and the fullness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving, pay your vows unto The Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.

"...call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver YOU, and you shall glorify ME." Okay, God, I will take up that challenge. This IS the day of trouble. That horrible, atonal beeping you hear is me, praying. I have written 5 very specific things on pages 40 and 41 of The Book of Psalms. They should not be unduly burdensome for you. As you deliver me, I will glorify you by writing of your specific deliverances in this blog. That seems pretty straight forward to me. Deal?

Deal.

Searching For Cell Service

It took 29 hours, but it happened, sure as fragrant blue smoke rises from my pine fire to settle out over the Sacandaga River: Levi is bored in nature. Bored by nature. Bored with nature. Bored of nature. How can I tell? He is flopping on granite, working algebraic solutions in the smoothed dirt of our campsite. Yesterday at this time it was all perfect. Today he misses his friends and his cell phone. He chooses Spaghettios over hot dogs on a sharpened stick.

The river below rolls on, grinding boulders into rocks into stones into pebbles into sand, ever "Shushhhing" us in its long journey south. I am content to be "shushhed," even after 29 hours, but I am 48 and my voice has been overused and abused for the last 30 years. I want to be "shushhed," to be soothed and quieted by this maternal spring. But Levis is only 14 and hasn't yet even found his voice.

The river can only do so much in a day...

Some Additional Photos...

Men and their Drums

I spent last weekend with a remarkable group of men at Pyramid Lake, in the Adirondacks. Many were recovering alcoholics and addicts, but all were unique, and brave beyond measure in their openness and honesty with each other and with themselves. Maybe it was the years of Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step principles at work. Maybe it was the lake and the mountains. Maybe it was no women for miles. I've thought long and hard upon it this past week, and decided that it was none of these things.

It was the drums.

Up they drove in their burdened cars, parking in front of the ramshackle lodge to unload their gear. Almost without exception (me being one) they lugged large, Native American-looking drums from their trunks and back seats. These were not sissy high school marching band drums, played by scrawny teens laden with acne. No, these were manly drums made from earthy materials, pounded by real men. Living things died so that these drums could beat. Skin was stretched and antlers sawed. Each meeting began with a circle of chairs and impromptu drumming. The men couldn't wait. Like children on Christmas morning they rudely fiddled with their drums individually as the leader tried to give pre-meeting instructions. I would have said "If you touch that drum one more time I'm going to shove it up your ASS," but he was gentle with them, this leader of men. He was older, and had been through most of life's fires at work, at home, and in his own soul. He had great patience with his drummer boys, understanding their pain, their need to shut the #%$& up after a long week and just pound the piss out of these instruments.

Initially it freaked me out. I couldn't do it. Oh I tried lamely that first night, with a borrowed drum whose girth intimidated me. I'm a quiet person by nature, preferring anonymity when possible, and all I could manage was a timid tapping with my fingertips as the cacophony around me shook the windows. I felt pinned to my seat, unable to breathe, as this ancient war council worked themselves into a frenzy. Good God, there were even Indian war cries. What the hell had I gotten myself into? For me it brought to the fore all the negative emotions and memories of the Corps, all the things I'd tried to escape or bury for the last eighteen years, nothing more. It was my childhood's comic books, my father's Korea, my older neighbor's Vietnam, my own Desert Storm, and my children's GWOT (Global War on Terror), all marching to battle inside this low-ceilinged Adirondack great room. For the next three drumming sessions I sat silently, listening to THEM and to my own heart. Over the course of the next few days and nights I heard the stories of neglectful and abusive parents, saw the tears of injustice, frustration and rage, and felt in my own heart the raw emotion and pain that shapes our worlds...

...but on the third day, in the silence of the morning lake, I heard the music. It reverberated off the rock of the cliffs, bubbled up from the backs of great snapping turtles, and dropped heavy from the weighted boughs of the trees like pine cones seeding a wonderful new symphony upon the earth. The loons already knew this song. Maybe they wrote it? I don't know, but finally I heard it, and when it was time to return to the lodge for our final session I couldn't wait to dig through the box of spares for an unused drum. There was only one left, a small, 6" diameter lollipop of sorts on a 12" stick, but it was of animal hide and I gladly pounded it as enthusiastically as all the others in the room with their great buffalo drums.

Yes, I play guitar, and write songs. It helps.

But I know what I want for Christmas...

TRIBAL DRUMS

Fire and war.
Conquest, power, courage.
We drum them up in a 21st century sweat lodge,
20 ordinary men, for there are no extraordinary men,
just men willing to DO.
Many fall, but the drums beat on.
March to the beat of a different drum, but they are all different drums here.
There is no good, no bad, no rich, no poor. There is only energy, vibration, and freedom. It picks up without signal, develops rhythm on its own, and dies out without cue or purpose.
It is there and it is gone.
It is life.
I am above it, but I am also below it, inside of it while being outside.
Beat on, you beautiful bastards.
I'll beat my paper with pen...


RAGE WORK

Watching the rage work was like watching a southern lynching, or a gang rape. In a small, isolated room, in a building set apart and far away, a rope was hastily thrown over exposed rafter, and dangling dead on the end of it the body of our common ancestor, the limp, heavy, shapeless body of "pain." We watched in awe and horror as, one by one, men took axe handles to their pain, and gave it a name, and a circumstance. They hacked into it with the savage, gloating blows of the outraged victim, set free at last. It was a beautiful and terrible thing to behold, this beaten justice.


21st CENTURY HEROES

Men. Brilliant men. Beautiful, wax-winged, golden-haired men. Each has stolen Zeus' fire. And we flew high with it, didn't we, so high above the heads of mortals. But our wings melted and we fell to earth in pieces, waxy little god-pieces of bone and ash, to be dumped again into the stream of life on a wing and a prayer, carried off to the sea as the rhythms pound against our hearts. I get it now. I do, I get it. Somebody pass me a drum. And, don't forget to wear your life jackets, men.

Limp Flag

The flag hangs limp
Like a dick that is spent
Shot its wad on a course of empire
The political winds have all dried
It's a drought, and the only thing left
Is the fire.

The Rolling Hills of Antietam

I went to visit the Antietam battlefield last week. Located in Maryland, Antietam is only 20 minutes from where I used to be stationed at Camp David. I'd never heard of it when I was guarding the President. In fact, I'd never cared. Only in mid-life does Antietam matter. To me. The one day battle of Antietam was the bloodiest day in American military history. It represented a first, tentative step toward victory in the Civil War. The North lost more men on 9/17/62 but Robert E. Lee's strategic vision was forever squashed on that day. Europe could not be enticed to support a confederacy that was chased back across the Potomac river and Abraham Lincoln would use the occasion to announce his "Emancipation Proclamation," freeing the slaves. The world changed forever at Antietam. I think that deserves a song. You can hear it at http://www.acidplanet.com/components/embedfile.asp?asset=1239236&T=6014.

On Seventeen and September
Back in Eighteen and Sixty-Two
The Civil War was a year and a half
Into bloodshed 'tween Gray and the Blue
Momentum had swung the Confederates' way
General Lee saw an opportune chance
McClellan got wind of old Bobbie Lee's plans
And he marched off from D.C. to dance

On the rolling hills of Antietam
On the rolling hills of Antietam

The armies of Lee and McClellan would meet
On the farmlands of Maryland's peace
One hundred and twenty two thousand young men
Near a creek, on a map just a crease
The canons roared through that bloodiest day
From the rise of the sun till it set
And the cornfield just north of the old Dunker's church
Was as far as the rebels would get

On the rolling hills of Antietam
On the rolling hills of Antietam

North woods, west woods, east woods...fire
Morning in the cornfield...fire
Burnside's bridge is drawing fire, come away

The Sunken Road swallowed regiments whole
The dead like the ties of a railroad in rows
And their afternoon's blood soaked the earth to the creek down below

The Yankees fell like the hard summer rain
And Southerners too who had so much to gain
They were piled up in heaps in that long bloody lane, come away, come away

Now one-hundred and forty-seven years have gone by
Like the sand of an hour in a glass
And the fears of a nation at war with itself
Would retreat as the crisis had passed
For a short time it seemed that the sacrifice made
Would supply all the dead men we'd need
But soon we found out it grew worse without doubt
It was just a down payment indeed

On the rolling hills of Antietam
On the rolling hills of Antietam

Ancient Ritual

We witnessed an ancient ritual last week, my youngsters and I: the victorious homecoming of Fox Co., 25th Marines, USMCR after a tour in the western deserts of Iraq. I felt bad for them, these proud weekend warriors. Despite advance press coverage of the parade route and time, there were precious few patriots to welcome them home. I'm not a patriot in the way we define it now. Oh sure, I raised $1,000 for the troops once and shipped them as many comfort items as I could cram into cardboard boxes. I donate money from every single biweekly paycheck to help wounded Marines get their lives back in order in the land of the free and the home of the brave. I write poems and songs about their pain, and I help them get money from the government when things go to hell and the VA can't be bothered. I've even accompanied several of them on that long, last trip deep down into the ground, into that final six-foot foxhole that will protect them forever, but no, I'm not a patriot, not to those who wave their flags and shout loudest on the radio. But once upon a time I too was a Marine, and I wanted to be there for my brothers. It doesn't seem to bother them that I never stuck a yellow ribbon on my car, these beautifully tanned, dusty-looking young men marching into history along Freeman's Bridge Road in Scotia New York. They march as experienced infantry have always marched, with a tired insouciance, a hint of slouch in the shoulders from carrying things most will never understand, or care to. If you had been there you would have seen a strangely fragmented celebration that only an "I don't really give a shit" America could produce. Old Marines in their Marine Corps League red jackets guarded the entrance to the assembly area as blue-jacketed Veterans of Foreign Wars manned the charcoal pits and lugged cases of beer, all while smiling, white-haired, white-shirted Ladies' Auxiliary handed out flags for those of us with nothing else to do. Strangest of all, a platoon of motorcyle mercenaries, the Freedom Riders, prepared the parade route, rumbling menacingly past in their glinting chrome and faded denim, followed by a green-skirted phalanx of tartan-clad bagpipers, holdovers from those glorious days of yesteryear when wars were simpler for everyone but the dead and the dying. Why, there were even firetrucks. Yes, everyone had their places this day, everyone played their roles, even the scattered media in their sloppy clothes and long lenses, but no one really seemed to care, no one was really there but for the family and friends of the tired men in sandy clothes and short hair, the very same ones who show up for the funerals. Oh we've moved on, haven't we, my friends? Six long years later we've moved on. But maybe we were never there.

Happy Birthday

I turned 48 on Good Friday in the un-holy city of Manhattan. It was a beautiful place to age another year, surrounded by male friends and in-laws, a pilgrimage of sorts, a monastic retreat into the heart of manhood. We took communion with chicken wings and hefeweizen. We took confessions at the Manchester Pub. We recited our creed block after block after block: "Isn't this great? No man, really, ISN'T THIS GREAT!" There was communal singing to hits from the 70's, the sign of peace for every bar maid we met, our blessing upon every pub on 2nd Avenue, the mortifying of our flesh over 100 blocks of aimless ambling, with always the pungeant incense of beer farts wafting to remind us of what we could be. There was a late night vigil at The Waterfront Ale House, and fresh encouragement for the journey from master beerologist Randy Mosher, author of Tasting Beer. Brother Mosher, what shall we drink? "My children, there are many paths to intoxication, but you must choose wisely. Let your palette be your guide." So we took the common cup of unusual brews from around the world, and we found therein a bond of fellowship so strong that not even the persistant pull of distant wives could weaken it...

...for a day.

Good Fences

I cast a long, westward shadow on the earth this morning. Fifty feet at least. I'm not sure I want that kind of influence. Can I be trusted with it?

We leave the rental car in a lonely pull-off about a mile from the Buttercup Ranger Station. Mom, age 72, is wearing a turquoise blue jump suit as I lead her by the hand far out into the desert. I'm surprised she wants to make the trek. We stumble through the flotsam and jetsam of American leisure strewn along the ground as a hard wind from the north blows at our backs, pushing us on like tumbleweeds, out to the dirty black scar in the distance. As we get closer the scar grows immense, stretching as far as par-boiled eyes can see after a day in the brilliant Yuman sun. Ignoring the lilting warning post 50 meters out we press on until the scar towers over us, fifteen feet of six-inch black steel, closely packed, anchored and bolted onto the shifting sand. The wind through the gaps in the immense steel pickets makes the fence moan and scream with the injustices of time, and timing, all along its endless length. Change is coming. Change has come. Change will come again. The Spaniards took our brief footprints from the Indians, then morphed into Mexicans, who lost out to the Americans, who, when nobody was looking...

Walking back to the black KIA Rondo I hold onto mom's hand tighter than before. The coarse grains of America bite hard into our eyes and faces before blowing off into northern Mexico. The fence won't stop them. It can't. I don't know if this is what Frost had in mind when he said "good fences make good neighbors." Maybe. And I don't know if this fence is a good thing or not. Maybe. But one thing is for certain: it is a sad thing, this long, lonely, moaning fence in the desert. Endlessly sad.

Small Kindnesses

I don't know, it's a strange day here. Turbulent. Windy, cold, not sunny but not cloudy, not spring but not winter either. It's nothing. Or is it everything? I had a steak last night, medium Delmonico with fresh mushrooms. Maybe that's it? It's been a day for small kindnesses, small blessings. My mother unexpectedly invited me to the movies when I went over to borrow a chain saw sharpener. While I was waiting for her to finish up the breakfast dishes dad gave me a pair of old work gloves he'd been sheltering, the leather kind with wide wrists. They were brand new. You could tell because they were still stapled together with cardboard at the fingers. New, but old. Like the movie we saw,The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. There's one that will make you think. How did they make Brad Pitt look so old? How did they shrink him down to look like a little baby? Twice! After the movie I re-filled the large $7.50 popcorn bucket to bring home for the kids. The middle-aged woman at the counter stopped me from leaving with the piled-up bucket. She was worried that I'd spill it in my car on the way home. She dug into the drawer under her register and pulled out a yellow plastic garbage bag for me. But she went even further- watching me clumsily try to put the bucket into the bag she said "Here, let an expert do it for you," and she took the bucket from me and quickly secured the popcorn. I told her that was very kind of her.

As soon as I got home I took Levi to get an X-Box 360 for his birthday, but TARGET only had one left and it had been returned. We decided to go to WALMART instead, despite my 3-year boycott for the way they treat their workers and the rest of the world. The clueless kid in the electronics section asked me if I wanted the one with the hard drive or the one without. I didn't know, Levi didn't know, and the assistant couldn't tell me why one was better than the other. There was a gansta-looking young man in the aisle with us, however. I didn't like his looks, but, as he heard the sales associate fumbling for an answer he spoke up and told me, in thoughtful, perfect English, why I should get the one with the hard drive. He said it would save me money and aggravation in the long run, because he himself had made the mistake of going without the hard drive. He even wished us well as we walked off to pay for it! I thanked him for his kindness.

Please understand I've done nothing to deserve this.

Then, when I got home, my brother-in-law Matt called to invite us to his house for the Siena vs. Louisville "March Madness" game. Shortly thereafter a friend called with a similar invitation. Twice invited in less than an hour! Walking into Matt's I was offered cold beer, hot chili, and I'd not yet even said hello. Siena, the local Division 1 school with only 3000 students, very nearly beat the best team in the nation. Nearly.

In summary: I was given a chainsaw file, a new pair of work gloves, admission to an outstanding film, popcorn wrapped by an expert, gaming advice from another expert, food, drink, and friendship- all in one day. Oh, and a great basketball game too.

Like I said, it was a day for small blessings. Maybe there's more of them than we realize?