Veterans Week, Part II: Adam's Table

We got into Nashville late yesterday and checked into our motel, exhausted. The rush hour traffic from BNA was swollen by folks arriving for the Country Music Awards this weekend and slowed by the unaccustomed total darkness at 5:30 p.m.; on this easternmost edge of the Central Time Zone, darkness falls fast and early when Daylight Savings Time ends. We were weary, aching from sitting all day in cars, airports, and planes (oh, the wacky routes we fly to save a dime!), and starving. We settled for the chain restaurant within walking distance of our motel.

Our handsome young waiter, with the fast-talking, Yankee ways, was unexpected in this most Southern of southern towns. And much too much for a couple of fagged out seniors. Mr. Razzle-dazzle, high energy, hard sell. I hate that even when I'm at my best. He was Adam and he would be HELPING US OUT!  He moved like Tony Manero headed onto the dance floor on Saturday night. I wondered if he was hopped up on something or just manic.

Of course, we should know that the bottle was a better deal than the glass and the premium wines were so far superior to the cheap ones that he hated to even discuss them with us. We could do this or that or some other unintelligible thing...But, hey, it was obvious that the choice was hard. He'd make it easy for me; let's start with White or Red!  I quietly and wryly told him we'd start with the crappy Blackstone Pinot Grigio, for me only, thanks...and clamped my mouth in a way that spelled STFU, Adam.

And he did, briefly. He brought the wine and tea and water with barely a beat in his step and left us alone for a few minutes. We hardly noticed how much time had passed, because we were past tired and into punchy. I think we jointly analyzed America's entire problem, and from a unique perspective--which I can no longer remember, but it was sublime.

And then Adam was back, empty-handed. He squatted and rested his elbows on the edge of our table in a way that said, "Now that we've become so close...," and informed us that he 'd screwed up with our order, had failed to push some button or something and our food would be up as soon as humanly possible and he was abjectly sorry. And, somehow, he mentioned a son. And that lots of regular "guests" asked for him when they came in. He offered us free salads and slipped away.

DH was waxing a tad sarcastic by this time, mugging to me, comically annoyed and impatient, blood sugar bottoming out. I was laughing at him, promising that I would personally ask for Adam each and every time we returned to his restaurant and we WOULD return, since it was right next to our motel. And the food came. It was surprisingly good. We felt much better. And Adam refilled DH's tea glass after each sip.

When we were ready for our check and feeling so much more human, thank you, and the place was clearing out for the night, Adam settled in for some serious talk. He asked where we were from, heard our standard answer, "We're from the Air Force, originally." Adam said he'd once had no respect for the Air Force, buncha pampered wusses, but he'd changed his mind. And then the story that Adam had been waiting all day to tell--the story that, we sensed, so often inserted itself into his days--came tumbling out.

Adam wasn't used to Tennessee. He was an Ohio boy and was only here for a few months to take care of his mother. The girls in the South were hell-bent on getting married from Date Number One and it was freaking him out. He'd taken the wait job just until the end of the month, and then he had to head back home. He had a young son, but was never married. He'd been in Afghanistan and, after 9-11, in Iraq as part of the 10th Mountain Division.

His group was IED'd in Fallujah and combat disabled, having lost at least two-thirds of their number. They were under ambush attack and he was hit twice, one in the chest that his body armor stopped and one upward from his armpit through the shoulder. He found himself trying for the first time to call in an air attack. He asked an A-10 Warthog to drop ordinance within 300 yards of his position, a range the Warthog questioned. When he got agreement and the Mark-82 was dropped, the concussion blew him backwards. The Warthog circled back to use its Gatling gun to pick off the one machine-gun mounted Toyota pick-up that almost got away. Warthog pilots saved his life.

We shook his hand and thanked him for his service. We honor the warriors despite condemning the war. And we'll be asking for Adam's table.

Veterans Week, Part I: The Sunken Road and The Angel of Marye's Heights

Headstone, Civil War Veteran, Fredericksburg, VA

Veterans Day falls in this week. My head is full of America's conflicts, present and past. We are a warrior nation, a fact some of us only regret in the aftermaths of our actions. I have two bits of American history to share that I believe are instructive right now to remind us that America has known harder times than these. There are responses to national stress that are to be avoided at all costs, recourses that were suffered pitifully and should not be forgotten. Reasons to find solutions rather than escalate rhetoric.

One story comes from Fredericksburg, VA, which we visited last week, and the other from near Franklin, TN. (I'll be visiting Franklin this week and will tell that story in a second post).

Fredericksburg, VA: A perfect little college town, walkable and so packed with Revolutionary and Civil War history and livable charm that I was pricing housing...again. We made some beautiful shots of the charm, but Fredericksburg is a town with a job and that's what I want to convey: it works to preserve America's stories so that we may be informed by them, so that we may not repeat them. The story of The Battle of The Sunken Road haunts me.

The Sunken Road And The Stone Wall

The Army of The Potomac (114,000 engaged) met the Army of Northern Virginia (72,500 engaged)  at Fredericksburg in December, 1862. Union troops under Generals Burnside, Sumner, Hooker, and Franklin and Confederate troops under Lee, Longstreet,  Jackson, and Stuart, combined in Fredericksburg to comprise the largest armed engagement of the Civil War.

From the movie "Gods and Generals"

On the northern end of the battlefield, Union troops under General Sumner charged a low ridge called Marye's Heights. They moved up a long plain that rose very gradually to about 45 ft. at its crest. Near the crest of Marye's Heights, a narrow lane, known as Telegraph Road and later called The Sunken Road, crossed the plain, set in a declination behind a 4-ft. stone wall. Behind the lane, the ground rose sharply to the crest. Under cover of fog, the Confederate troops, under Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws, were dug in behind the stone wall. 7000 Confederate reserves were hidden behind the ridge. Massed Confederate artillery guns were placed on the rise behind the wall, aimed low to rake the enemy, skimming just over the heads of their own men. The Union Right Grand Division attacked across that long sloping plain directly toward the wall, the sunken lane, and the guns massed on Marye's Heights.

It was Pickett's Charge, in reverse. Lt. Col. Edward Porter Alexander promised General Longstreet, "General, we cover that ground now so well that we will comb it as with a fine-tooth comb. A chicken could not live on that field when we open [fire] on it."  And so it was.

Restored home next to the Sunken Road, nearly cut to timber by
bullets. Some inner walls are original and bear the damage today.

Seven Union divisions were thrown at the the Sunken Road, one brigade at a time for a total of fourteen charges. All of them failed. Between 6,000 and 8,000 Union soldiers and 1,200 Confederate soldiers died that day. Longstreet later wrote that, "The charges had been desperate and bloody, but utterly hopeless." Through that long December night and all the next day, Confederate fire prevented the Union troops from attending to their wounded.

The Angel of Marye's Heights
 by Felix de Weldon

Sergeant Richard Rowland Kirkland, with Confederate Company G, 2nd S. Carolina Volunteer Infantry, could no longer bear the cries for help from the Union wounded. He asked and was granted permission from his commander to provide aid. Kirkland gathered canteens and, in daylight, with neither a cease fire nor a truce flag to protect him, brought comfort to the enemy lying on the open plain. Known as The Angel of Marye's Heights, Kirkland was memorialized in a statue.

I found Fredericksburg so dear and, at the same time, so sad. It's residents live in an idyllic American town and they tend their stories as tenderly as Kirkland tended the Union wounded and dying. We love our history in this country. We honor and cherish it. But we thereby live in danger of romanticizing its battles and its armies--an error that contributes to the ease with which those who call themselves patriots tossed off threats of "second amendment solutions" to our troubles during the recent mid-term campaigns.

I am nervous to hear hawkish rhetoric from the newly elected congressmen like Rand Paul and from old hawks whose numbers are reinforced. On the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, Paul stated, "I think we need to have more discussion on it, but it doesn't sound like I'm probably going to be in favor of that." And Lindsay Graham of SC, who needs to read up on Kirkland's story, told Time Magazine,“the likelihood of a precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq has gone down.” Mr. Graham will be hearing from me. 


Some of my friends are so distressed, so disgusted by the changes in The House of Representatives and the rhetoric of some voices on the right, they are moving to emigrate. Some are so angry, they sound like the tea party gone progressive. Certainly, I can imagine conditions under which I would consider leaving my country, but I do not think those conditions prevail today. I believe there are no answers for America in those responses. The harder thing is to stay, to remain calm, and to work, heeding the lessons of history.

Civil War Cemetery, Fredericksburg, Maryland 

The Absence of War

I believe in compromise and bipartisanship. We have to live together; we can't separate ourselves into liberals, lefties, progressives, conservatives, tea partiers, libertarians etc. and each group stake out their own territories. As righteous as I think my beliefs are, I cannot force my neighbor to share them nor can persuade them to do so by telling them that their own beliefs are stupid and so are they.


Spinoza wrote in the 17th century, “Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.” I don't know that humankind has ever been at peace. We mistake rationality and thoughtfulness for weakness. Liberals are as bad as conservatives although all I read lately are protests to the contrary. I also read words that hold nothing but contempt for others, a massive disdain for those whom we determine to be less intelligent than ourselves. I'm not talking about blatant lying which is so often the modus operandi of the right. I'm not even talking about the public voices on the left. I'm talking about the blogs of the left; we regular folks who decry all who haven't reached our level of enlightennment to be virtually unworthy of existence. Those of us who refuse to recognize that most of the people who are swayed by the Tea Party rhetoric are just angry and scared and feeling adrift, and the Tea Party offers them a convenient anchor. They aren't the enemy; provide them with another anchor and they might even jump ship. However, that's sort of impossible to do while you're calling them stupid. Most people just don't listen when you start the conversation with an insult.


Don't get me wrong, I'm no saint. I get angry and frustrated, and there are days when I really want to slap somebody. However, I'm not proud of my irrationality and I work to let the anger go and focus on what I can do to make the society in which I live a better one.


I've been an activist ever since high school when I refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I didn't feel that the final part about "liberty and justice for all" was even close to true. I still refuse to recite the pledge or stand when it's recited by others. I suspect that I may well go to my grave still having my personal little protest. I believe in taking a stand, being involved, doing something rather than just thinking about doing something.


I grew up in an age when being subjeted to blatant racism was just the norm for a black child growing up in America. My memories of racial discrimination, bigotry and cruelty from the larger white culture are intact but I let the anger go a long time ago. There was a time when I thought that white people in general were evil because my experiences had revealed the evil inside of far too many. But as I grew older, I recognized that humans are complex creatures and evil is an oversimplication of the motivations for any human action. Spending my life hating and mistrusting white people seemed an incredible waste and I chose to exhale and let my anger go.


My point is that holding on to hurts, no matter how real, is not productive; it's crippling. Anger is a temporary release and it can serve a purpose. However, holding on to and nurturing anger and despair only eats away at you until you become a bitter shell of a human being.


There is nothing wrong with disagreement. I do not accept racism. I challenge it whenever I encounter it and I have no qualms about calling people out on their bigotry. I am neither naive nor Pollyanna's twin sister. However, I do believe in working to find common ground and I don't think that we can give up because the ground is rocky.


We are at a crossroads as a country. We have had one civil war when competing ideologies grew until there was no chance for common ground. The aftermath of that war was the end of slavery but it was also the inception of more than 100 years of Jim Crow. Our unrest as to race relations in this country continues and is at the heart of much of the current Tea Party fervor.


Do not mistake my call for rational responses as a willingness to lie down and roll over. It's a given in my world that one speaks out loudly, and with clarity against injustice of any sort. When necessary, direct attack is appropriate. However, anger must be tempered with reason in order to develop an effective strategy for change. I don't have any admiration for the Tea Party. They have no idea what they really want. They have some vague platform about taking their country back, a meaningless concept. Ask them what it is that they need to accomplish in order to take back their country and about the only concrete action that they have is to remove Obama as president. So hopped are they on their irrational anger and fear that they don't even recognize that they have channeled all of their anger into a personal animosity for one man--Obama.They state with all sincerity that it is not about race but about his corruption of the constitution but cannnot articulate one specific action that constsitutes the aforementioned corruption.


My concern is that we need to think rationally and determined precise goals and methodologies for achieveing those goals. I've never advocated being nice because it's important to be nice. I have been consistent in speaking of reasonableness which is not a synonym for nice.


We have fallen into the trap of responding rather than intiating. The Tea Party comes out with some far right position and we decry their beliefs and pronounce them stupid. It accomplishes nothing. Those who are already TP supporters are just further convinced that tehy are correct in their beliefs. But those who are not so sure about the TP haven't been provide with an alternative path by us, instead they are left confused and looking for guidance.


We have to devise an action plan. We have to present a platform that refutes the TP and proposes an alternative view of the world. We have to understand how the political system works and how to effectively use the system to promote a progressive agenda. We can't do that while we're caught up in anger and frustration. It takes cool heads to strategize.


I have no problem with progressives bitchin' and complaining in house, but to the opposition, we need to present a united front. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I do have a problem with bitchin' and complaining and failing to offer any concrete steps that we can take to effect change. If that makes me a moderate, so be it. I'm also an activist and I never sit any battle out.

Me, An Optimist?!

"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.
"So it is."

"And freezing."

"Is it?"

"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately."

Nobody has ever called me an optimist. Not once in my entire Eeyorian life. So, by all accounts, I should be slumped into my soup on this gray, chilly, post-Midterm Elections day. And I'm not feeling gloomy at all. Not at all! "And why not?," you naturally ask. What's got me feeling positively excited today? I'm not sure, really, and maybe I'm nuts, but these things come to mind:

The Republicans did not take the Senate, thanks to the horrible/laughable candidacies of Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle. O'Donnell was just silly, but Angle was malignant and I'm glad I won't be stumbling across her in the news for a while. It's a relief. Yeah, we have to deal with Rand Paul, but there's just something so squirrelly about the guy, I can hardly wait for the scandals to start rolling in! That's a prediction.

The House doesn't have the muscle to wreck Obama's foreign policy all by itself.  Despite Marc Lynch's hand-wringing over the message the election sends to foreign leaders--his fears that Netanyahu will be emboldened to hang tough, that Iran may conclude that Obama can no longer bargain in good faith--there's hope in the tea party's fiscal agenda when it comes to troop draw-downs in Afghanistan and more targeted uses of foreign aid. It's possible, as John Norris points out at "Foreign Policy" that the tea party's insistence on spending cuts could work to the benefit of Progressive foreign policy.

With the Blue Dogs' muzzled, December might bring a more productive Lame Duck Session.  I expect to see Don't Ask; Don't Tell shot down permanently. Michelle Bachmann is worried about the Bush-era tax cuts...and I love it when she's worried. A renewable energy standard that will require utilities to source 15% of their energy from renewable sources by 2021 has a chance now, I hope. Social Security recipients may get that one-time, $250.00 they need. And another extension of unemployment benefits is likely to pass. And the DREAM Act, which Harry Reid pledged to push in this session regardless of the outcome of his own election, should finally be put to the vote.

Most of all, I'm chomping at the bit for 2012. I've been reading the pundits' predictions all day--some Eeyores, some Tiggers--and here's the one I like the best, from David Von Drehle of Time Magazine,

What comes next is anyone's guess. Can we take heart from the fact that Florida's mouthiest Congressman, freshman Alan Grayson, was trounced after calling his opponent "Taliban Dan" in an egregious television ad? Can we find hope in the fact that a surging politician — the early Tea Party adopter Marco Rubio — can still get away, in this climate, with calling his campaign-trail foes "gracious ... worthy opponents"?

Probably not. The election of 2010, momentous as it was, marks the beginning of a bigger battle — not the end. It presents, in the words of Rubio, who won Florida's Senate seat, "a second chance for Republicans to be what they said they were going to be not so long ago." That is, the party of smaller solutions and lower spending.

It also presents Obama with a fresh opportunity. The Republican Party has won the midterms by moving to the right. That leaves the rest of the spectrum wide open. If Obama can settle his differences with moderate voters and seize ownership of the middle ground, he will find a lot of the electorate waiting patiently for him.*

You see, the story of huge midterm losses is shelved in the library of political campaigns right next to the tale of presidential comebacks. Barack Obama just lived through the first edition, and starting today will try to create the sequel.

 *Emphasis, most emphatically, energetically mine.

Old News Really Fast

DC: Glad to sit down at last

Thank you for your patience, Dear Readers! Our journey to the Stewart/Colbert Rally For Sanity was a six-day trek to the most happening (some say, irrelevant) event of last week, via the distant past. The day after this weary shot, our hostess led a tour for us of Fredericksburg, VA--a charming little town that has more Revolutionary and Civil War history per square foot than any other I've ever visited.

I'm watching MSNBC moments before the polls close on the East Coast, wondering if sanity even has a shot tonight. The Rally was fun, both relaxed and energizing. There were either 215,000 (CBS) or 6 Billion (Stephen Colbert); whichever, there were more people than we'd been led to expect. Well-behaved, nice people with great senses of humor. Okay, there were some kids who didn't hear the cop say to get down from the wall (see first picture), but that was the only misbehavior I saw.

More sane humans than I'd expected

This was not my first Washington rally, so I knew the drill: you focus on the people you came with, try not to lose them, try not to trip, say "excuse me" a lot, be satisfied to add your presence to the whole, and don't drink much before or during. I couldn't see the stage. Frankly, my hearing is going and it was hard to differentiate the amplified program from the ambient noise, so I can't say I heard a lot. But I was deeply gratified by the turnout. And the reliability of my bladder.  Let's face it, when it comes to marching on the Capitol, I've still got it.

Captain America loved our sign!

I met a nice man about my own age who carried a sign that read, "Bob" with a big arrow that pointed down. He really needed to sit down, so he borrowed some time in one of our lawn chairs and seemed reluctant to give it up. The sign was to help his wife find him if they got separated; apparently she was prone to leave him behind. We were both amazed to find someone else from South Carolina. In fact, our sign drew Southerners to us: Texans, Carolinians, Floridians, and one woman from Kentucky. Dozens of people wanted pictures of The Sign. Some wanted their picture made with our sign...without us. Would the kind of people who'd gone to the trouble of attending The Rally To Restore Sanity actually claim our sign for their own on Facebook?  I don't think I want an answer to that question.

We left early for a lovely late lunch...four old people who felt lucky to be in D.C. on such a beautiful day and lucky to avoid the exit crush. We caught a cab back to our car and learned more about being American from our Sudanese driver than from the Rally. And we didn't feel the least bit shortchanged.

Very clever, but bad for American voters

We found this sign the cleverest...clever being the order of the day...but I fervently hope that Democratic voters overcame their apathy today. Right now, I'm signing out to devote myself to the tube and the returns, so I'll post the pictures of Historic Fredericksburg tomorrow or the next day. Depending on the mood. If you're reading this, I know you voted and good for you, good for us. As of 8:05 p.m., Alvin Greene has gotten 40% of votes counted against Jim DeMint's 54% here in SC. I call that a statement of some sort, but I have no idea what the hell it means.

The Rally Take-Away: A marvelous example of Americans enjoying First Amendment rights.

P.S. Looking forward to catching up on your posts.