Category Archives: America

Grandpa, are you famous?

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Earlier this morning, 11 day-old Elijah saw David Ellis’s author interview with his grandfather when he awakened from his morning nap. Hours later, Elijah harkened to his grandfather’s voice, smiled, and did his best to focus his eyes on mine for another conversation.

Grandpa and Elijah1“Grandpa, are you famous?”

“No,” I said, “I’m not famous. If anything, I’m infamous!”

“Are you infamous in England? David Ellis lives in England. Mom says that’s far away from Minnesota.”

“No, actually, I’m infamous in Minnesota but David in England must think I’m famous ’cause I wrote a book.”

“Yeah! Mom told me last night. She said I should follow Grandpa’s advice. She said I should ‘Be still!’ What’s that mean, Grandpa?

“Well, it means be calm, be quiet. Did you keep Mom up again last night?”

“Yeah! I should be quiet at night so Mom can sleep.  That’s what Grandma said. Otherwise Mom might lose it and use another bad word. She might tell me to ‘shut up! Don’t be a cry-baby!’ I’m not a cry-baby, am I Grandpa?

“No, Elijah, you’re not a cry-baby. You’re just a baby — the grandson of an author who’s famous in England and infamous in the United States of America.”

“What’s the United States of America, Grandpa?”

“I’ve been wondering that myself lately, Elijah. I’ve been wondering myself.”

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, June 3, 2017.

 

 

 

Trump’s Paris betrayal: the stupidest decision of the 21st century.

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SERENDIPITY re-blogged Sean Munger’s post on the president’s decision to abandon the Paris accord on climate change. Here’s a taste:

“Fighting climate change is not about choosing ‘helping the Earth’ over job security or economic prosperity for Americans. Fighting climate change is job security and economic prosperity for Americans.”

Marilyn Armstrong's avatarSerendipity - Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth

Posted on June 1, 2017 by Sean Munger in Climate Change, News // 5 Comments

I don’t often write blog articles with the sole purpose of commenting on news items, but as a decision today by President Donald Trump deeply implicates climate change–without a doubt the most serious problem facing every American and every person on earth right now–I felt I couldn’t let it go by without at least a few words. My academic expertise is in the history of climate change, I’ve taught courses on the history of climate change (and wrote about them, here and here), and most post-academic career involves climate change, so I believe I’m qualified to speak on the subject.

Trump’s decision to abrogate the Paris climate change accord, at least where the United States is concerned, is not merely a strategic misstep (though it is), a betrayal of American trust and power…

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“We’re still in! You’re Wacked out!”

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June 1, 2017 was a day of moral, spiritual, and economic bankruptcy.

What a much beloved president once called “the better angels of our nature” are weeping. They know that you can’t mess with nature without consequence, that in the world of nature’s economy, less is almost always better than more, and that only fools rush in where angels fear to tread. They know a fool when they see one. They mourn a people and a world when the fool isn’t fooling and when there’s no separation between the king’s fool and the king himself. The king’s a fool but doesn’t know it. All that matters is the theater spotlight.

Meanwhile our better angels have been rehearsing a new musical with a massive chorus that opened late yesterday on Broadway and across the world:

“We’re Still In!”

Among the better angels joining to produce “We’re still in!” are scientists and religious leaders. Neither kings nor fools, two of them immediate issued official responses to the president’s Rose Garden announcement:

The Union of Concerned Scientists and The Episcopal Church.

Yesterday the foolish king extended the right hand of fellowship to our new closest allies — Syria and Nicaragua — while raising his fisted left hand in a power salute to traditional friends after putting a match to a cherished line from the American canon of Scripture:

“The mystic chords of memory . . .  will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”  – Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address.

But you can’t burn away American memory with a match.

On June 1, 2017 the stage lights centered on a kingly fool. But no sooner had the curtain come down on the White House Rose Garden than the new musical of our better nature was premiering under the lights in the king’s home town on Broadway . . .  and in London, Paris, Berlin, Ottawa, Mexico City, Moscow, Brussels, Pretoria, Cairo, Tel Aviv, Beirut, Beijing, and everywhere else across the planet . . . except Managua and Damascus:

“You’re wacked out! We’re still in!”

A Question for Grandpa

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Elijah and Gordon

“Grandpa,” asked a very concerned four day-old Elijah, “will Donald Trump still be President when I get to vote?”

Ich bin ein Berliner

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President Kennedy in Berlin, June 26, 1963[10]It was an American president who said it years ago standing in front of a wall that needed to come down. “I am a Berliner,” said John F. Kennedy.

The world applauded.

Decades later another American president kept his words and his hands to himself when his German guest from Berlin, German Chancellor Andrea Merkel, asked,

“Do you want to have a handshake?”

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The world frowned, remembering the student of American character Alexis de Tocqueville‘s observation. “When the past no longer enlightens the future, the spirit walks in darkness.”

Older Americans, recalling with pride the old president’s “handshake” at the wall, found ourselves speaking German.

“Heute, Herr Präsident, Sie haben uns peinlich gemacht. Heute sine wir Berliner –“Today, Mr. President, you embarrassed us. Today we are Berliners!”

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, May 31, 2017.

Taps in different keys

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Sixty-three years ago, the American Legion recruited two 12 year-old trumpet players to play “Taps” for the Memorial Day Service at the Glenwood Memorial Cemetery in Broomall, Pennsylvania.

It was a rare privilege granted the few. One of us would play a short refrain — “da ta daaaah…”; the other would echo it from below the wall.  The next refrain would follow, as would the echo until the special rendering of “Taps” had moved everyone to the respectful silence appropriate to Memorial Day.

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It was a nice idea. We practiced. All went well. Very dramatic! Until Memorial Day when Alex’s echo came back in a different key.

The 12 year-olds lost it!!! The only sounds were a few choked back laughs. There was no “Taps” that year. The 12 year-old weren’t invited back when they were 13.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, May 29, 2017

Memorial Day – a Call to Silence

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Memorial Day calls more for silence than for speeches — the silence of the living standing before the graves of fallen soldiers.

Silence alone is golden today — a deep silence broken only by the haunting sound of a bugle calling us into the presence of that which is deeper than many words.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Memorial Day, May 29, 2017.

MEMORIAL DAY 2017 – REMEMBERANCE

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Moment after learning that “Memorial Day and the Soldier’s Helmet” was too long to air today on MPR’s “All Things Considered,” Marilyn Armstrong’s SERENDIPITY Memorial Day 2017 stood out from the in-box. Best wishes for a thoughtful Memorial Day.

Marilyn Armstrong's avatarSerendipity - Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth

Memorial Day

Memorial Day (formerly Decoration Day) is observed on the last Monday of May. It commemorates the men and women who died in military service. In observance of the holiday, many people visit cemeteries and memorials, and volunteers place American flags on each grave site at national cemeteries.

A national moment of remembrance takes place at 3:00 p.m. local time.

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Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of Union veterans — the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) — established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared that Decoration Day should be observed on May 30. It is believed that date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom all over the country.

The first large observance was held that year at…

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The Amish Pope with the Trumps

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The Amish don’t like cameras. Humility tells them to shun photographs. Why? Because a photograph draws attention to oneself. Christ calls a human being to be humble. Christ calls a person to be modest. Christ calls a person to take a place in the community and to shun “the English” love of ostentation and self-aggrandizement.

There are no Bentleys or Fords among the Amish, no one-percent and 99 percent, or, if there is the latter, no one can tell it by the buggies they drive. It’s the community that counts. They all wear black.

Maybe the president and his family thought the Pope was Amish? Although the Pope is robed in white linen, the Pope’s facial expression leaves one to wonder whether perhaps the Trumps were right.

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American Gothic and the Amish Pope

Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, May 26, 2017.

When a megalomaniac is cornered

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150th anniversary logo of The Nation

Sasha Abramsky’s article “Trump is a Cornered Megalomaniac — and That’s a Grave Danger to the Country” (The Nation, May 21) examines the growing crisis in the White House and the clear and present danger it poses.

“Men like Trump,” says Abramsky, “do not fade gently into their political night. Rather, with all nuance sacrificed in pursuit of their senescent need for the spotlight, they scrabble and scratch, lash out and fight. With no self-limiting or self-correcting moral gyroscope, they go down whatever paths they believe offer them the best chance of survival.”

I read Abramsky’s article yesterday and recalled a brief conversation last December aboard ship on The Nation Annual Cruise.

This morning the President was playing from the script, doing Abramsky warned he would: fighting back, lashing out at the “fake media” who don’t want him to “drain the swamp of Washington bureaucrats” in order to “make America great again,” the media who have treated him worse than anyone in American history, against those who keep making stuff up like “the Russian thing.” Donald Trump was using “all the tricks of the demagogue as he fights for his survival” (Abramsky).

A Facebook “Friend” posted a Trump call for readers to rise up in support of the victimized people’s President. This afternoon I can’t seem to find it and wonder whether perhaps Facebook, which revised its policy that allowed splattering false news in the 2016 election, had censored the post as faux news. Whatever the reason for the post’s disappearance, the reason for its initial appearance was clear.

But three things seem clear.

  1. The game is on. “Donald Trump’s grotesque presidency now hangs by a thread. By the hour, it seems, the possibility of impeachment, of him being declared incompetent to govern—or, at the very least, of his own party bringing irresistible pressure on him to resign—grows.” (Abramsky)
  2. This President has shown repeatedly that he is capable of almost anything, including, God forbid, creating or exacerbating an international crisis of epic proportions, in the megalomaniacal struggle to survive.
  3. My Facebook “Friend” doesn’t agree with any of that. She still believes in the President. She’s a good person, a fallen-away Catholic. We’re still “friends” on Facebook and in real life.

But, hey, who knows what may happen?

The President’s trip includes a meeting with the Pope. Maybe Pope Francis will hear his confession, convince the beleaguered, lapsed Presbyterian president to resign, and convince the likes of my lapsed Catholic Facebook Friend that wise people don’t confuse demagogues with victims.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, May 20, 2017.