Message to Spartacus (part 47)

 

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 7)

(part1)
(part 2)
(part 3)
(part 4)
(part 5)
(part 6)

Clearly decades-long friend Spartacus was not in the least interested even in my direct answers to his coldly hostile questions... let alone the reasoning that undergirds my perspective.

He didn't want a dialog. He wanted only to attack, to beat his chest and bellow as king of the hill... while standing in a cesspit. His lifelong open-mindedness was gone; his patient manner had evaporated; his respect for others wrenched into a whip, a goad, a dagger in the back, a sickening fecal firehose on full power.

He responded the next morning to my long, sincere note, where I'd outlined areas I both in fact agreed with him on, and where his vaunted stance was weak, deficient, and unsustainable... and he would have none of it. The admirable open door of his heart and spirit was slammed and soldered shut; and there he stood, arms tightly folded, chin arrogantly thrust out, Mussolini... not the mature man of moderate mind.

From: "Spark" le Klaus
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2020 8:34 AM
To: Aging Child
Subject: Re: Tar Nation

So the short answer to my question is yes you would. Theoretical life trumps ALL other considerations. A perfect example of the utter stupidity of religion.

Hitler was against abortion too...

My previous reply had gotten nowhere; now, in replying yet again, I would have to repeat a number of things I'd already said clearly – and respectfully – as well as push back even harder... again without taking my gloves off or stepping away from being a patient and respectful gentleman. Something had clearly snapped inside my close friend Spartacus, and I would need to address that, too, and fairly directly. I would lighten things up and counterbalance it all by continuing to sincerely compliment him overall – and point out the terrible contrast between where he was now, and how he always had been. 

From: Aging Child
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2020 10:52 PM
To: Spartacus
Subject: RE: Tarbrushing Only

Spartacus, my friend, I don't know for certain where you've suddenly broken down inside, or how you've let it happen to you, but in more than twenty years of email, phone calls, visits together, music and laughs and hurts shared, and so much more, you have never attacked my faith, let alone called me a Nazi.

Your determined, relentless, righteous, superficial crusade directed against me is utterly out of keeping with the rare character of the man I've long admired. Your strengths and skills and knowledge I've appreciated and envied and grown from; your experience and perspective have counseled and helped direct many of my more-troubled steps.

Of late your maturity is seemingly out the window, your deep incisive intellect looks to be silted up to a tiny trickle through a flattened gully, and your gentlemanly acceptance that many people do not follow your roadmap… appears utterly snuffed out. Right now you're coming across as a righteous, arrogant, crybaby know-it-all, uninterested in anyone else's perspective than your own, certain of all the quick, easy, pat solutions to the world's array of immense problems, and are utterly disdainful of any other answers to be offered.

Maybe out of your justifiable anger, frustration, and outrage at the course this president has taken, you've grown genuinely frightened; are feeling yourself impotent in the face of a great unconquerable threat. And so, finding yourself in a tight corner, you have to lash out and attack. That's reptile-brain reaction and fear moving you, and guiding your keyboard into vitriol, where for so much of your life there has instead been patience, grown-up reason, and level-headedness. Your commendable restraint and acceptance are devolving badly and alarmingly into juvenile cowardice, arms folded, pout on lips, and choosing personalized tantrum where a deep breath and greater thought and self-reflection are so truly needed. That's il Duce's pose to threats and fear. It was never yours.

Here where you might wisely seize this time of crisis as an opportunity, say, for patient persuasion, you are persuading only a profoundly troubling perception that you are not the least interested in a dialog; that you are unconcerned with a comparison of viewpoints; that your sole focus is the sound of your breast-beating and righteous posturing. I must posit that you're not reading anything that I've written because it runs counter to the mantle you've now chosen to wrap yourself in, and from which you're moved only to take cheap, low-brow potshots. Right now you are choosing to read and see only what you want to see, and nothing else is of worth in your little red book. Come on.

I say that you're much, much better than that. That you're choosing such a low course tears at my heart, and claws deeply and bloodily at my lifelong respect for you. That type of closed-minded self-obsession belongs at the far-far right of the social spectrum, where one finds tea parties, and rifle-toters, and conspiracists, and unyielding hands clutching unacceptable tokens, such as dixie-flags and hooked crosses. The left-of-center, where you've always stood, is about open minds, healing, learning, growth, compassion, conciliation, consensus, common goals and vision — ideals that at the moment you look to have turned your back on; none of them are evident in the cold, unreasoned words and stabs you've been mercilessly taking at me from out of the blue.

This is not the Spartacus I've known and admired and warmly appreciated all these years. He was never shallow, never self-focused, never narrow of mind, never brutal, never vicious, never cruel, never demeaning, never sadistic, never arrogant, never unthinking. What has become of him?

So. Having once again laid out difficult, yet genuinely respectful, words to stake out my parcel of parkland, and certain it'll again be bombarded by further gas-laden shells and jets of flame devouring any waving white flag, let me try once more to address some things you've said. I know you won't read them because of who you unaccountably choose to be at this moment; yet respect for you (and for myself) requires what you've said not be ignored. I challenge you to try the same.

One.

Life in the womb is not "theoretical". It is alive now, today, growing. The child — zygote, embryo, fetus — is not a potential human, but a human with full potential; from day one, its DNA is fully human and is neither the mother's nor the father's. Tearing the child out, dismembering her, decapitating him, because the mother (or/and father) wants to continue living their shallow self-serving life, is every bit as much murder as choking a baby in its crib because it's crying in the wee hours; the difference is one of locale only.

It's not a religious matter. It's pure, raw, demonstrable science: read an embryonics textbook. Religion is simply recognition of the value of life. But it's science that tells us that this, the child in the womb, is alive, is life itself.

Having so easy an out as abortion in a challenging personal situation cheapens the value of life, and of responsibility, and encourages self-service, rather than devotion to and love of others. Being okay with still-warm baby body parts, being fine about a newborn drowned in a bucket in a Planned Parenthood procedure room, means that some essential part of an adult's heart is dead as well. That's inhuman, and inhumane. It poisons our entire culture and species. It is monstrous. It has to end. It brooks no compromise. The struggle against the abortion-minded is a human-rights struggle.

Two.

A common trope is that more wars have been caused, more people have died, because of religion than from any other cause. Simple, stark counterpoint: which religion was Hitler pushing? What spiritual faith was Stalin extolling? Which church did Pol Pot fight on behalf of? Which deity commanded those millions upon millions of deaths? Name the religion. Now name original great Western universities and hospital systems that were not founded by religious organizations.

"Utter stupidity" in fact lies demonstrably in the closed mind and unflexing agenda — and it sincerely troubles me to point out to you that this is the thickest vein coming through your most recent emails. I repeat, and will keep repeating: you are far better than that.

Three.

Your disgust and horror and outrage at the lousy leadership implicit in tens of thousands of American deaths this year is something I share with you. You're attacking me because you've personalized your disgust, and thus I myself must be fully to blame for all those dead countrymen/women, through my agonized choice behind a closed curtain one November. If mine had been the one tiebreaking vote that had kept the president's main opponent out of office, you'd have a case to come at me personally. Since mine wasn't, then you are honor-bound to track down every person who did not vote for that opponent, and berate them every bit as rudely and harshly and immaturely as you've been attacking me; anything less would make a fool and hypocrite out of you… something else my dear friend Sparks has never been.

Is it that the only thing you value in someone today is how much they think and act like you? Where is the mature adult mind in that? Where is the big heart that embraces the differences in all your fellow humans, inside and out? Since when were undifferentiated clones your lone company of choice?

If I am to follow your role model, then, and hold someone solely and unmeritedly, directly responsible for our present great ills — which is what your latest very rude and shallow words have been implying — then you must accept that there is a whole suite of things I am required to coldly and brutally hold you accountable for, or you are embracing a lousy double standard.

Total guilt by clear association:

• Other husbands have knocked their wives' teeth out; you're just as guilty as they, even though you've only been loving and nurturing to your wife, whom I also respect and regard highly; you're still guilty for those other women's batterings because you, too, are a husband, and some husbands see their wives as punching-bags.
• Every bit of woodworking machinery used to tear apart a fresh corpse has your fingerprints on it.
• As a man, you're complicit in the rape of every child.
• As a half-Sicilian, you're also responsible for every bloody machine-gunning by the Cosa Nostra; and as a half-German, the blood and ovens of Buchenwald are under your name.
• As a Caucasian, your knee also was on struggling George Floyd's dying neck.
• As a former-USAF man, you must answer for every American bomb and cruise missile that leveled a hospital and took out a school and apartment block.
• As a resident of a super-big metropolitan area, you're responsible as well for all polluted waters, for stench in the air, for the dead wilds.
• As a man with a beard, that's you sitting on a park bench, eying little girls with bad intent.

Please tell me that the total absurdity of this line of personalized unhelpful response to evil is coming through.

That I have to repeat myself about something so basic and obvious underscores, again, that you're not reading what I've been writing, nor care to. Yet out of love for you, and of unyielding appreciation for all our years, I'll say it again. I did not put this man into office so that he could kill tens of thousands of Americans. The virus that took them was all but nonexistent three and a half years ago; the lousy decisions and nondecisions that exacerbated the plague had not been made. A vote for any candidate is never carte blanche for them to run roughshod over their people.

You have set yourself on a crusade; stop battering your lance and sword on this weathered windmill that is me. What are you personally doing to actually solve this problem? How does shamefully kicking into pitiable ruins a long and deep friendship… redress all the flu-dead? How does that shallow, immature, cowardly betrayal put Trump and his cronies in their proper, deserved places?

I repeat as well: you've personalized your outrage and fear, and are taking repeated aim at an easy target. That's part of why I regretfully have to assert "cowardly" of you, even though till now you've never been a coward.

Get in your car and drive your roiling sense of injustice to Washington DC, to 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, and raise a placard so big and bright that Agent Orange himself can see it, and don't stop until he's on a rail, in tar and feathers, being held down under the waters of the Tidal Basin. Engage your legislators and local electorate to tear them out of office, to sell off all his holdings in full recompense to the parents and children and brothers and sisters of all the dead. Put on some scrubs and volunteer in a hospital, a testing center, a funeral home, and stick with it until the virus and the president are dead and gone.

All those would be worthwhile and honorable, positive channels for you to leverage your great anger and justifiable sense of absolute mission, and sensibly put them toward righting what's badly awry. To instead take the easy, lazy, arrogant, cowardly path of visiting it all on an aging child here at his dilapidated desk, is immensely dishonorable, shameful, unmanly, immature, and disgusting. It is being a pompous, self-righteous playground bully. That's not Spartacus. Make a real difference, not the futile, fruitless, whining, bitter, baby's tantrum you're veering into.

You are far, far better than that… or used to be. I hold you to a much higher standard, one that long inspired and encouraged me. That's Spartacus: hope, not hatred; hand out, not fist drawn; peace, not petty pugilism.

Be your best. That is the man to admire and emulate.

Regards,

Agïng Child

This time, Sparks actually did not respond, and it was a little while before I heard from him again... attacking me from a new angle. (Why?) Before I lay out his next thudding steps, though, I want to dig deeper into how I responded to him here, and earlier, and contrast it with his own bullied tunnel-vision thrusts. Stay tuned.

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 6)

(part 1) 
(part 2) 
(part 3) 
(part 4) 
(part 5) 

Another recap is in order: In a longer email to our friend Spartacus, in late June of 2020 (see previous parts here), I'd mentioned – just in passing, and only very briefly – my great worry that the most-recent gatherings of unmasked Americans, whether to celebrate life events or sports, or to protest deep social issues, would serve to spread the unstoppable virus even further, taking many, many more lives.

Overlooking everything I'd shared with him at length in my note, about personally and professionally meeting the virus; about seeing to my mother's (and fellow frail seniors') needs under that virus; and about a possible ray of hope amid it all – even the just-passed (and for now postponed)  Fathers' Day, let alone my family's grief at the recent untimely death of our cousin... overlooking all of this, Sparks had leapt onto a negligible, small piece of my brief afterword, rewritten and recast it, adding an incendiary layer on politics and racism. Where had that come from?

So I took a deep breath, and began the first of three further responses to him that would each be the product of many hours of hard thought, rewrites, and conscious effort to make sure I wasn't directly critical of him in any way – we'd been friends for quite a long time, and knew each other well... didn't we? Weren't we?

There must be no possibility of his mistaking my meaning again. So I took pains to lay out that viral-spreading worry of mine in far greater detail, stressing that I didn't – don't – "demonize" the most-recent protestors, and underscoring as well my full support for their cause. The timing of these protests was tragic, in that they were certain to lead to increased death. I explained that I did find the protests' swerve into violence greatly disturbing, unacceptable, and utterly at odds with protesting in peace for a just grievance – which the movement had. Had had.

Concluding my long note to him, I wrote – and I believe this with all my heart: "Black lives matter. All life is sacred and precious and must be protected and nurtured. The life of a helpless man of color whose neck is under the knee of a coldhearted bigot; the lives of each person in CoViD's relentless crosshairs; the lives of children in the womb; the lives of senior citizens warehoused and forgotten – these matter. And the loss of even one is indeed needless."

His terse reply came in the next afternoon. Once again, he ignored everything I'd worked hard to lay out and explain for him, instead shallowly seizing on a lone piece of one concluding sentence, twisted it utterly out of shape and context, and swung it hard across me like a steaming tarbrush:

From: "Spark" le Klaus

Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2020 1:37 PM
To: Aging Child
Subject: Re: "Not a Single Sparrow Falls to the Ground, Without..."

How ironic. So many "good, conscientious" people of faith helped elect 2 monsters in order to theoretically protect theoretical life, but instead of protecting life, their words and actions have resulted in the very real death and destruction of countless lives of actual people. After 3+ years of daily increasing horror and debacle, will you remain a "good Catholic" and help re-elect them if your bishop tells you to?

Okay. Now I had to push back – without losing my cool, and my decades of respect for him. This outright rudeness and hostility was completely out of keeping with how we'd always interacted, and with how he dealt with other people; again, he truly has a big and compassionate heart. It took me over five hours to write and hone an answer that addressed his bitter, near-irrational, veering screed.

Where had it come from?

I was hurt, and worried... and had an idea about the cause behind his bizarre, unfathomable twist. I have never known anything to frighten him or even bring him heavy anxiety, beyond what each man – especially husband and father and breadearner – must confront. Here though, even in his tightly secure home, he was vulnerable to a killer virus that could not be negotiated with or beaten back, could only be – hopefully – held at bay with mask and gloves and buckets of sanitizer and a couple injections and an abundance of social caution. He could only hope it wouldn't catch him and kill him, or his wife, or his children, or all of them. Beyond that, and his few basic safeguards, he was powerless and impotent.

Our Spartacus spent years in the military. If he couldn't stop this direct assault, he could still track down and eliminate its cause, and save this country greater harm. And that's a noble line of response. Could he have concluded, in some bizarre, twisted way, that I myself must be the cause of all the "increasing horror and debacle", because I hadn't voted against the current administration, whose response to the virus had been woefully inadequate?

I signed off with an apt quote from Chesterton – a writer he's read and respects:

From: Aging Child
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2020 6:55 PM
To: Spartacus
Subject: RE: Tar Nation

Whoah, whoah; down boy!

Spark, please don't take your frustration and anger and justifiable rage at this administration out on me. My vote three and a half years ago was to keep a committed baby killer out of office; it wasn't a mandate for her opponent to kill some 125,000 Americans through arrogance and indifference.

The administration's bullheaded obliviousness to the virus, as threat and grim reaper, has been a heavy factor in all those deaths. So has our culture's, and individual people's, own stubbornness and wishful thinking in the face of the threat and its horrid toll. It is not okay yet to go back to the beach, the coffee shop, the crowded department store.

My daughters, my mother, my pastor, my bishop, my pope, even Jesus Christ Himself, does not pull my strings, let alone my election-booth levers. I vote by my conscience, which is informed by my faith, which holds all life as sacred and deserving of nurturing, protecting, and improving.

So: let's change the 2016 election, and put Trump's main opponent into office instead. Let's say she took heavy-handed steps against the virus early on, and kept the mortality rate closer to Germany's of some 5% – not bloody likely in our culture, so let's assume a 7% mortality rate, still, rather than the current almost-16% (as of 4:33 this afternoon). And let's assume half as many positive cases at this point – again, not likely; the lion's share of the vectors aren't under federal control, short of breaking out the brown shirts and goose-steps.

That would yield about 400,000 domestic positives so far (versus the actual 805,000+), and some 20-30,000 Americans dead. Is that a number you could be happy with? You'd be content that 30,000 Americans would now be dead under her administration? Or is your contention that a different backside in the oval office would have kept the virus out of this country entirely, and there'd be zero deaths stateside, while the rest of the world is bulldozed into mass graves?

125,000 deaths is unacceptable. 20-30,000 is unacceptable. 104 dead Australians is unacceptable.

During the prior administration, this country averaged over 2,700 babies murdered in the womb daily: nearly 8,000,000 from 2013-2018 – these are Guttmacher numbers... and gut-wrenching numbers as well.

That's what I voted against: a world where it's okay to kill a baby, and okay to kill a senior citizen, an invalid; where life is cheap, and is measured only by its convenience to someone else who has the power to take it away mercilessly and without a second thought.

Out of faith, out of valuing the lives of the oldest and youngest and most vulnerable, I made the only sane and compassionate choice I could make, short of withholding my vote entirely (and thus failing of my civic duty), or selecting a less-distasteful candidate, who hadn't a chance of defeating the pro-abortion juggernaut.

And I'm as aggravated as you with nearly everything Trump and his yes-men and -women have done with their executive power in the maddening span since. He has also defunded abortion organizations domestic and international, and pushed back prior regulations requiring religious organizations to provide abortion and related services, a violation of the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment.

All this does not excuse or make acceptable his willful ignorance in the extent of the death and damage this pandemic has brought our country. It does not; nor am I a supporter of anything he or his people do that is not good for Americans collectively and individually. To assume otherwise of me is to blindly wield a tarbrush as wide and indiscriminate as any that's disgustingly used on the far right. You are better than that, and I've always liked that about you.

Spartacus, my friend, please take a deep breath, and step back. I'm not Donald Trump; I'm not anywhere in his corner of lowbrow kowtowers. Please hold fast to your very own commendable words and outlook, that "the most horrific thing about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all of humanity into a partisan political issue".

Nobody said it was easy. It's not; I know.

Regards,
Mïchael
The world pays a compliment to the Catholic Church by not tolerating in her all the transgressions that the world willingly tolerates everywhere else. — G. K. Chesterton

[More follows; Spartacus would shallowly ignore every step of my reasoning that I'd laid out for him here, as well as little olive branches I'd scattered among my robust counterarguments to his rude characterizations. He was not interested in a rational, intelligent dialog; and his increasingly malicious posturing would only worsen. The stench of tar and feces from my many-decades' friend was thickening... and sickening.]

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 5)

(part 1)
(part 2)
(part 3)
(part 4)

Partial recap: friend Spartacus hadn't heard from me in a few weeks, so he dutifully checked in to see that I and my family were okay... after all, a very, very deadly pandemic had seized the world – the nation – and many, many people were dying: family, friends, helpless strangers. Though there was no cure, there were still very sensible precautions we simply had to follow, and an antivirus vaccine that had made tremendous headway in protecting and saving lives. How had his friend, A. Gene Childe, and Gene's family made out? I reassured him that all were well, and laid out for him how our medical practice was facing down this great threat to our patients and staff.

And yet – counter to prudent, sensible precautions – people unmasked had been gathering en masse to loudly and very-visibly protest recent brutal killings of unarmed African-American citizens by Caucasian members of city police forces. These gatherings, and the anger and hurt and sense of betrayal behind them (besides added frustration at unending quarantine and self-isolation), were very understandable... yet foolish and downright dangerous, in that thousands of people were thereby exposed to frightening illness and death for themselves, and for loved ones they'd convey this unrelenting virus on to.

Worse, their to-the-streets justice-seeking movement had clearly been – can I say "infiltrated" without sounding conspiracist? No? – had clearly been alarmingly and unacceptably redirected by criminally-minded opportunists bent on looting and destruction... hardly a protest against race-based police brutality anymore. My heart being solidly with the original protests, and the families of the victims of those brutalities, the destructive turn of the protests sickened me.

Just for a moment in my reply to Spartacus, I shared my worried thought, first at the violent detour these protests had taken, in particular the threat they thus presented (regardless of intent, good or bad) in providing a rich and ripe means for the virus to spread even further and more quickly, and kill even more of us. And not just the protests themselves; too many fellow Americans – self-focused, and fed up with restriction – were casting aside their antiviral precautions and getting together for parties, vacation destinations, and so on. And the grim reaper would soon swing his sickle even more vigorously and viciously.

So in closing my note to him, I wrote to Sparks: "how much have the protests, and the merrily oblivious rush to beaches and parklands and bistros, caused the virus to spike once more, maybe even nurture a second wave? We'll see in another week or two. So stay masked and wary, kids!"

His reply came in a few days later... and took a disturbing shift:

From: "Spark" le Klaus
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2020 4:34 PM
To: Aging Child
Subject: Re: Cheese pasta?

Glad to hear you and yours are doing well. I hope that continues.

Do we really need to further demonize the protesters? Please let’s not forget that if justice actually existed in Amerikkka there would be nI need for protests. Meanwhile, your boys in the Whitehouse, in addition to fanning the flames of racism, have only exacerbated the pandemic. In addition to the tragic, needless loss of life, the most horrific thing about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all of humanity into a partisan political issue.

Spartacus

Please reread the last two or three sentences in my email to him, and feel free as well to look over my note's full text in Part 4 here. Where had I "demonized" the protestors at all? I was baffled, and reread that note, and just couldn't find that such a slant anywhere in it. I'd simply very briefly expressed my concern that unmasked gatherings like theirs, and others', could well have spread this nasty virus even further and wider. That's a reasonable, prudent worry; it's not a condemnation – let alone "demonization" – of their just cause. Nor had I made mention to him at all of the protests' alarming violent detour. (And besides with the viral-transmission risk to bunched-up marching people, was he in fact okay with the risk to people crowding into stadiums and bars and shopping centers? He hadn't shared a word on that.)

I definitely like his respelling of "America", and agree with his closing sentence, that "In addition to the tragic, needless loss of life, the most horrific thing about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all of humanity into a partisan political issue."

Very troublingly, however, Spark himself had himself quite starkly climbed onto and proudly ridden out on that "perversion... into a partisan political issue", in firing away at the Trump administration. Yet I'd written nothing at all about politics, or politicization. Friend Spartacus is very intelligent and incisive (he has at least one more degree than I do!); how could he possibly have so poorly misread me? Especially two quick sentences in a much longer missive? He had skipped over almost everything else I'd had to tell him – in a polite and upbeat answer to his earlier questions to me – and had seized harshly onto something... I hadn't even written.

Out of respect and friendship, his words – his (mis)impression, and bizarre recasting, of what I'd written (and hadn't written) – of course required an answer from me... and not a brief one; this had somehow twisted into a very serious and sensitive matter. So:

From: Aging Child
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2020 8:06 PM
To: Spartacus
Subject: RE: "Not a Single Sparrow Falls to the Ground, Without..."

Sparky, I apologize if anything in my wording even suggested an impression that I demonize our protestors. When I wrapped up my last note, I was wringing my fretful hands over the likelihood that the virus had been given fresh vulnerable victims, with so many short-sighted people rushing back to the pre-CoViD status-quo world of close physical association (especially unprotected). And: too many marching folks have been shoulder-to-shoulder without masks and with too little caution, even while pushing hard to resolve and redress a long-overdue injustice.

I strongly support this hard thrust against racism in our country and culture, and my heart is marching with our brothers and sisters out there in the street. I'm also apposed to disbanding police forces en masse, and to the use of a legitimate social demonstration as an opportunity to smash and grab. You and I know that this is utterly antithetical to the committed method of civil disobedience that Martin Luther King insisted on. Just by association, that violence dishonors both the movement itself, and specifically King's values and teachings.

Much of the violence has been instigated by a) arguably criminal opportunists; and b) anarchists seizing a spotlight and soapbox. Both groups, especially the latter, care far more for their own personal (and/or collective) gain than they do for generations of bloodied racial and social grievance long in need of resolution.

The timing – regardless of any commendable objective or execrable antisocial agenda – is absolutely lousy, with our being in the midst of an incurable plague/epidemic/pandemic. This morning's number of forty-some thousand new U.S. cases of CoViD was the highest single-day jump we've seen since the beginning of the health nightmare. And much of the cause of that huge spike lies in just what I was feeling very edgy over: protest-mobbing, and social-center reopening.

Most certainly a hefty chunk of the blame lies in Trump's pathetic response, in his arrogance and determined obliviousness; I'm with you there, and my blood truly heats up at the opportunities he and his administration have had to do great good and achieve profoundly wondrous results… and done nothing with those opportunities, or/and made the worst-possible response when those opportunities were clearly there (underscoring how he and his backbone-less boys aren't my boys). This morning, I saw a big fat pickup truck that was flying a huge Trump flag, and I was disgusted.

I'm totally with you, too, in how "the most horrific thing about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all of humanity into a partisan political issue" – even where some of our words, mine and yours alike, themselves veer into the partisan political; we need to remain on guard against that. This virus and its great threat to every one of us on this globe most decidedly isn't political. It could unify all of us in goal and purpose and ultimate achievement. But we've grown too inflexible, divisive, and entitlement-focused. We have become a stupid people, sheeple and lemmings.

Black lives matter. All life is sacred and precious, and must be protected and nurtured. The life of a helpless man of color whose neck is under the knee of a coldhearted bigot; the lives of each person in CoViD's relentless crosshairs; the lives of children in the womb; the lives of senior citizens warehoused and forgotten – these matter. And the loss of even one is indeed needless. These lives I treasure and support and pray for and march for, and with… even when the current viral world requires us to march socially distant, march while sheltering in place.

Stay healthy and vigilant, my friend! LeRoux was right: nobody said it was easy.

Regards,

Gene

By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion; and we hung up our harps on the aspens of that land. There our captors asked us for the lyrics of our songs, and our tormentors urged us for joy: "Sing for us a song of Zion!" But how could we sing a song of the Lord in a strange land? — Psalm 137:1-4

More soon; again, I did have to point out to him – very, very, gently, and just in passing – that his political comment had made the high standard of his last sentence profoundly hypocritical. His next reply would shock me with its direct and unprecedented hostility; we've never been at odds, all these years… although he had chewed me out over my vote in the previous election.

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 1)

Both readers of this long-running (and at times long-dormant) blog likely remember many-years' friend Spartacus. A quick visit to the searchbox there on this page's northwest corner will turn up a warm number of times where he's very illuminatively weighed in on something I've passed along here, or has himself shared something of particular note. He's even taken the blog's mike – well, keyboard – more than once. Go ahead; check 'em out.

We met in elementary school more years ago than I can believe, and with mutual friend Eileen were the Huey, Dewey, and Louie of the playground. Then after just a couple fun and busy years, Spart's family moved a number of state lines away, and after a few letters we fell out of touch.

About three decades later (that can't be right), I located him online and reached out... and in a particularly short time we were close friends all over again. I found him to be sharp-minded, knowledgeable among a dizzyingly wide range of fields, including avionics and history of both Europe and of music. He is skilled in a number of art media, from intricate model aircraft, to palette and canvas, to fine-crafted (and rough-hewn) wood, to electronic music, and far more yet. I admire (and have envied) these exceptional skills... and have very few equivalents of my own.

We found ourselves on largely parallel paths politically as well, pitched well to the left of center: distrustful of entrenched politicians; advocate of the overlooked and underrepresented; anti-NRA, anti- big-business, anti-conservative, and so on. Economically, he considered himself an anarcho-syndicalist, while I was beginning to discover distributism.

And thus we were for a good many more years, buddies over the miles and internet, armchair scientists (and SF-readers), fellow snarkers via email, occasionally visiting each other's homesteads and families, and sharing tales of respective journeys and discoveries, and the every-so-often off-color chuckle.

Yet at the time that our now-adult friendship began to coalesce, my Catholic faith was returning to me, and vice-versa. Over the succeeding years it continued to deepen and flesh out, and enrich and inform and direct my inner life and values... in turn directing my outer actions.

Spartacus is (I believe) agnostic, and distrustful of organized religion... and I can't blame him, given the wealth of religious hypocrites and the hypocrisy of the wealthy "religious". Throughout nearly all our modern-years' friendship, he has been especially polite and respectful in regards to my ever-deepening faith, keeping his own read and opinion silently to himself. This was very rare to find, and I appreciated it. Nor has it ever been in my nature be a proselytizer, so I had no sense that what my heart had come to embrace could come across to him as obnoxious.

The growth in me of faith led to a shift in how I applied it to the world around me, most especially socially and politically. I was proud to have voted – twice – for an African-American for president, even while finding a growing discomfort within at how closely the Democratic Party, and seemingly its entire slate, from Commander-In-Chief to downtown dogcatcher, had blindly and resolutely aligned itself with values and objectives I could no longer align myself with, not and be the Catholic I wanted and needed to be. I've been a registered Democrat since my late teens, but, to paraphrase St. Thomas More, I am the king's good servant – and the Lord's first.

One of those troubling political thrusts is abortion... and long before Barack Obama finished out his second term, I realized I simply could no longer mark the ballot checkbox next to any candidate supporting that issue. At some other place on this blog, I'd like to detail why it's glaringly clear that abortion is cold-hearted infanticide, hand-in-glove with racism and entrenched political misogyny. Right now, and in immediately following posts, we're looking at a maelstrom-sized, inexplicable sea-change in a greatly valued friend, man, buddy... and that same rich and world-spanning sea turned shallow and stagnant and unnavigable.

And so at the next election – 2016 – I greatly wanted to cast my vote for the country's first major-party woman candidate for president... and simply could not. The alternative was to not vote, which would be to abandon my social duty, or to select another candidate. Decades ago, faced with a similar pair of unpalatable opponents, my father defiantly wrote in Mickey Mouse on his ballot.

I considered that, but chose instead to vote for the candidate most likely, if possible, to beat the former First Lady... and that happened to be the arrogant, pompous, womanizing jerk Donald Trump – who had also come down firmly on the pro-life side, where I myself was anchored. So come election day, I pinched my nose hard enough that it nearly bled, and pulled his box's lever.

We know how that election turned out; more later.

From the Quill: Why I Love June

A couple weekends ago, I was feeling a particular delight in the wonderful late-spring weather, and on impulse sent a note to my retired nurse-friend:

 

Yesterday evening, first night of June, there was still enough blue in the sky at nine o'clock, that Maxfield Parrish would immediately have set up his canvas and begun capturing the sight and sense forever… especially for the cold months, and shriveled days. It was tinted something like this:

 

…and is part of what I was crowing about earlier: no bugs to speak of (excluding teeny ants and a few fat flies), no blazing heat; lovely sky with only puffs of happy cloud…

 

Given the choice of when I die, I'd select mid- to late April, with all the blooming trees, and the full return of light to days. Second choice, I would be the very beginning of June, I think now, with fingers crossed against the chance of too-much heat.

 

Also…

 

You know my big heart, sometimes helpless and hopeless, and always given to dream and trust even today, despite scarring and scoring, bruise and betrayal. It's alive and well!

 

The summer after Beej and I separated – 1986 – I was burned up and left for ash by a powerful, two-month relationship. Torie could have been a model, looking like then- Ally Sheedy on one of Ally's very-best days (less jut to chin, and much more permed, thick hair). We'd met each other at a dance in April, fell out of touch awhile, as she gave her failing marriage one last futile try.

 

We got back in touch – probably Torie with me – and on the last day of May, drove up from northwestern Virginia up into western Maryland, ditched another dance, and took a long, secluded walky-talky to see where we wanted to go on the inside. Midnight found us in a perfect movie scene: full moon above, thick moonshadow cast on us by the lush trees in that community park, and standing on a wooden bridge over a whispering creek. There in my arms, Torie's eyes widened at moon and shadow and stars and couldn't-ever-be-better ambience, and she gasped in wonder, "You planned this!" And I smiled, innocently sharing her wonder, and wished I could take credit for the moon, as I wrote years later, looking back.

 

And midnight made it the first of June, of course. The summer quickly became all ours (and our children's, yes), and ultimately – as I said – the flame between us roared into a mighty blaze that burned me up completely (and burned Torie out completely). Almost no ash was left when, two months later, I found my arms and life empty again, head spinning and heart sore and reeling.

 

I love June because sometimes it spurs the muse; the month that escorts us into summer, and paints storybook weddings… also gives great sweeps of life to fill the grandest canvas – be it with palette, once-blank paper, musical instrument of choice, wood and marble and chisel.

 

I was years healing from the near-bottomless intensity of dating lovely Torie. To this day (and there's absolutely no way it was thirty-one years ago), I can't say I regret a moment spent with her, though I see areas where a little fuel should have been withheld from the flame.

 

One of my avenues of catharsis – as you patiently know – is writing it out. And if it's the heart being cathartized and cauterized, then the finished canvas is filled with verse. If there were a market for modern poetry, I'm ready to publish at least three books of verse; one would be called Verses to a Ghost… I wrote many about her as I healed.

 

Ten years after our golden summer, in mid-September, as summer '96 was about to be rolled up and put away until after spring of '97, I took up pencil and once-blank book, and wrote:

 

Verse #37 to a Ghost: Endless Summer:  When Time Stood Still

 

Each person, I’m sure, carries deep inside

      – almost safe –

A heart and home of many doors;

      behind the doors, their private rooms;

And in the corners and cupboards and closets

      are special precious boxes

      holding letters, pressed flowers, smiles, tears.

(Some hinges fuse, rust shut;

        some, well-worn, slide smoothly;

        some rooms bear no doors at all – )

 

We carry within us sweet moments or eras

      frozen in time:

Ageless lovers, gentle hands, skillful dancers.

We bring along, inside, unforgotten places,

      realms of rain and moon and sun and star.

We close our eyes (or open), and hear long-gone sounds

      of music, whisper, ocean, thunder, embrace.

We never forget, nor leave long aside, each tender touch:

      caress of skin, surge of love, leap of faith.

 

These are things that feed our souls,

      that build our lives, and make us real;

These are our refuge, our comfort, our hope;

      our beacon, our surcease, our dream.

These are all I have, sometimes, or can hold,

      when the silence or solitude floods my valley;

Each memory and touch and realm and voice,

      though frozen, is rich with warmth and life,

      ...and some are quite wealthy indeed.

 

Here, in these pages, this box, this corner, this room;

      behind unknobbed door on well-spun hinges,

I still feel her lips and hear her laugh,

      hold her close, feel her silken skin,

      smell her perfume and move deep inside her

– Ever less, I know, ever fading, ever long ago;

      oft forgotten, far, remote, yesterloved.

Even now those warm days and steaming nights

      are near-unreal, clutching me no longer.

 

            ***

 

Yet I think there is a land of Summer:

At times I still can hear it

      through closed doors, shuttered windows,

      over forgotten paths and distant hills behind me,

I still can hear it,

      whispering in cherished voices,

      caressing with old yet freshened fingers,

      singing clear notes of songs dim-recalled,

Walking yet behind me

      (away? approaching?)

      almost touching me

            with love...

 

            ***

 

...It was the endless Summer

For me the ’leventh Wonder

A Spell I’d fallen under

The Dream without a slumber

 

Did I mention that I like June?

 

Regards,

Gene

Christ loved us and washed us clean of our sins by His blood, and made us into a kingdom, priests for His God and Father. — Revelation 1:5-6

 

Either one of my astute readers, when they wander back to this teeny blog at some point, might recognize the heart-parallel with another summer girlfriend, sweet-and-sassy Jane, 1979. And there are some others, of course; this human heart by reflex swims best in the deep end of the pool, and so my life and heart and summers have been blessed by a handful – an armful – of wondrous swim-companions.

 

PS: As always, unless I say otherwise, my writings – verse, meditations, maudlin meanderings, and so on – are mine. Feel free to read… but not to take; that's not nice. And I've got the originals, the drafts, the backstory… and the rights. I may someday publish; who knows?

 

Please pardon my disclaimer though… and enjoy your June. See you in the pool!