Three Cups of I Don't Know What to Think.

Hooray!!

Several years ago someone loaned me Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, probably because I'm a male nurse, like him.  I liked it.  I thought "Here's someone doing good in the world.  I could do that!"  The story goes that Mortenson got lost on a hike near K2, was taken in by a local village and was so moved by their lack of education that he started a foundation to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

No, wait - Booooo!!

Then I read Jon Krakauer's Three Cups of Deceit  which details Mortenson's dubious claims and alleged mishandling of monies and now I don't know who to believe.  I love Krakauer's writing - Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, Under the Banner of Heaven - so I'm inclined to believe him when he says only a few schools were built and even those are mostly used as horse stables.

The whole thing stinks of paternalism and the law of unintended consequences.  Sometimes I think it's best to follow the bumper sticker's advice to Think Globally, Act Locally.  Or maybe not even act at all, just sit like a lump and watch the world burn down around you with detachment.  At least then you can smirk with moral superiority, as your skin starts to crackle, knowing you didn't start the fire.

Madlanta

Atlanta's motto: "It's not road rage, it's natural selection."

I spent all day yesterday in Atlanta, home of the planet's most versatile form of self-destruction - Coca Cola - and I left feeling curious how people who live there get anything accomplished.  Workdays are 12 hours long, but only 4 are spent actually working; the other 8 are spent in traffic.  I secretly wondered if General Sherman was back in town, so many people clogged the roads in a rush to get somewhere else.  My work took me downtown to Peachtree Street, the quiet avenue where Rhett and Scarlett pushed their baby carriage under sun-dappled trees in Gone With the Wind.  Today, that same street is a canyon of concrete, treeless for miles, thick with zooming cabs, and echoing with impatient horns. Despite my concern that Charlotte wants desperately to be just like Atlanta, I'm glad to be home.

Now I Want A Rowing Machine Like Frank Underwood.

Cant... Stop...Reading!

Oh heavens. Some books are good for dipping an oar in occasionally, others are a full-on sprint to the finish, chest heaving, pulling for the good guys for all you're worth.  The Boys in the Boat is one of the latter.  I finished it today to the exclusion of all else.  It details the 1936 University of Washington crew team and their journey to Hitler's Olympics where they may or may not have wiped the smug grin out from under his silly mustache.  It's like Hoosiers and Chariots of Fire had a baby and it grew up to be even more awesome.  Amazon has the Kindle edition for $2.99, which is the equivalent of getting a Ruth's Chris fillet from the dollar menu - eyes closed, head back, groan-filled mouth-watering goodness for couch change.  Now I need to go rearrange my furniture to fit a rowing machine so I can work off my stress like Frank Underwood from House of Cards - only without all the creepiness.

Men... and machines.

War & Peace.

Korean War memorial - Mint Hill, NC

In a park close to my house is a war memorial, the only one in North Carolina dedicated to honoring veterans of the Korean Conflict.  It's a small, serene place where one feels the need to walk quietly and conteplate the human condition. Interest in wars seems common to most men over 40, but America's police action on the Korean Peninsula during the 1950's is often overlooked and usually overshadowed by the big, brawling wars that ended with the U.S. as the obvious winner.  The Korean War, in contrast, is a complex unresolved stalemate.

His last book, published posthumously in 2007.

I ignored the Korean War like everyone else, despite the fact that my father served in the military during that period and my mother grew up in China just across the Yellow Sea, until about 5 years ago when I walked into my patient's room in the Neuro ICU and was immediately told by the family - gathered around the broad-shouldered man sleeping in the bed - that he was a Korean War hero, the obvious unspoken message  being that I should treat him well, and with deferential respect.  His actions 60 years ago were so important to them that not only did it define him, it elevated them by association.  Of course it rankles to meet people and have them promptly pull rank (no matter how marginal) but I also understand the layman's fear (no matter how irrational) that their hospitalized loved ones will be treated like leprous immigrants and require champions to verify their value.  I met their eyes, smiled, and promised them I'd care for him like the hero he was.  They exhaled hugely, smiled back; a beautiful friendship blossomed.

Good for opening boxes, cutting apples, fixing machine guns....

As we got to know each other they told me he'd been on night duty, manning a machine gun on a cold, front-line hill when Chinese soldiers attacked in the dark.  He and his unit fought furiously, his men dying all around him, enemy soldiers swarming like ants toward his icy foxhole when his gun suddenly quit firing.  He fixed it in the dark with frozen fingers using a pocket knife and resumed sweeping the slope until, after several hours of attempting to overrun their position, the Chinese finally retreated.  When dawn broke, they counted nearly 1,000 enemy bodies at the base of the hill below his gun.  "David Halberstam wrote about Daddy in his book - the last book he ever wrote", they said.  Observing my interest, they presented me with a thick, hard-bound, signed copy of The Coldest Winter - America and the Korean War on our last day together.  I devoured it over the next three weeks, utterly fascinated.  The conflict was fought using WWII soldiers and WWII techniques in terrain tragically unsuited for both - it became a foreboding precursor to the Vietnam war 10 years later. Halberstam's research and writing are so well-knit and engaging it's a hard book to put down.

Red Sox' Ted Williams vs. Yankees' Joe DiMaggio - gripping.

If you haven't discovered David Halberstam, you're in for a treat.  A soft-spoken man, he wrote about battles in war and battles in sports and little else. He cut his writing chops in Vietnam, where he won his first Pulitzer,  On April 23, 2007, at age 73, he was on his way to an interview for his new book about the NFL when he was killed in a car crash in California.  He was known for being generous with his time and talent, for his prodigious research on his topics, and for his subtle jabs at leadership he considered inept. If you're looking for context and backstory on last century's notable martial and athletic events you'd be hard-pressed to read a finer author.

It's Halberstam's Korean context that I mull as I wander peacefully through the Mint Hill memorial. Should we label it a war?  A conflict?  A police action?  Whatever it's called, it's still happening - concentrated down to a thin swath of minefields and razor-wire along the 38th parallel where soldiers still man machine guns and stare daggers at each other.  The bullet-flying battles are over for soldiers like my patient, who found peace and passed away a few months after I met him. The defining moments of his life were fortunately captured in breathtaking prose by another man, who spent his life unraveling the complexities of moments like that cold night on a dark hill, hopelessly outnumbered yet fiercely defiant. I treasure their stories. I hope they both rest in peace.

I Learn To Selfie.

Am I doing it right? Hey!  How'd I get a tiny butt on my chin?!!!

Buttermilk Bonanza

Friday night is Breakfast Night at our house.  What's better than mountains of steaming buttermilk pancakes?  Nothing!  What's better than a nearly-empty bottle of HFCS-free Log Cabin maple syrup drenching those pancakes?  A fresh, full one, waiting in the pantry!

Patriot Project

I made a shadowbox for my friend who shares a love of U.S. History.  The box is raw, sanded pine, with a copy of the Declaration of Independence I bought in Philadelphia last year mounted to the back.  The inside corners are decorated with birch bark from Northern Wisconsin. The flag, given to me by a friend who served in Afghanistan, was retired after being flown over Bagram Airbase during Operation Enduring Freedom. A fine copy of the Sayings of Poor Richard was found in a resale shop, the bald eagle feather I discovered at a remote waterfall in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and the inkwell I found 35 years ago on our Illinois farm, buried in the sand.  I like to imagine the inkwell being dropped by Illinois Militia Lt. Abraham Lincoln as he and fellow officer Lt. Jefferson Davis pursued rebellious Sauk chief Black Hawk through woods I would explore 145 years later.

Whaaaaat!?

River built his own computer!  All by himself!  In one day!  And loved doing it!  It's enormous!  And super fast!  It took him six months to do the research, save the money, and buy the parts; once everything arrived - zip, zip - he had it together and running in 8 hours!  So proud!

What Do I Know?

You'll see potatoes with brand-new 'eyes'!

I finished 1493, Charles Mann's companion book to 1491.  You know how small bits of new information can completely shift your paradigm about something?  For instance, a nurse might feel a secret loathing for a disheveled emergency room patient who acts drunk or drugged until a quick test reveals no drugs or alcohol but a dangerously low blood sugar and under normal conditions the patient is a cancer research Nobel prize winner.  This set of books, containing thousands of small bits of new information, will do that to your prior knowledge of, oh well, let's see - everything!  I recommend as Standard Core textbooks for everyone who thinks they're the center of the universe, which is, well, everyone!

"The love of money is the root of all evil."

Who knows?  Fisher knows.

Before Jack Reacher emerged from the mold of laissez faire crime-solvers, Horne Fisher warmed it up.  I'd never read Chesterton before finding this freebie on Amazon; I'm hooked!  It's a series of short mystery vignettes with seemingly impossible solutions until Mr. Fisher applies his powers of observation and deep knowledge of the human condition.  Great nightstand read!

Assassination By Association.

This is a work of fiction, inspired by the fantastically close North Carolina Senate race in 2014.

The alarm woke him at 0430.  He swung his legs over the edge and sat groggily, aware only of the dark and the stench, emanating like a freshly opened sepulcher from his rotten mouth.  He smiled into the dark.  It would be a good day.

                Heaving himself to his feet he carefully groped through the hotel room to the tiny kitchen, snapped on the cool florescent light, dragged a small pot out of a grocery bag and placed it on the stove.  He tossed in four garlic cloves and some dehydrated anchovies he’d picked up at the Korean market.  He snapped the burner on medium and dumped in a jar of dill pickle brine.  Reaching into the bag he pulled out a plastic quart container, splashed in a healthy dollop of whiskey and stirred in a smear of limburger cheese.  The space filled with the odor of unwashed feet and burnt corn. 

                He sat naked at the writing table, reviewing his calculations from the night before.  He was certain his counterpart was making the same preparations up in Raleigh right now.  The things we do for friends, he chuckled to himself.  It was Election Day, and the Tillis party meant to win.

                There are nine million people in North Carolina.  Statistically, maybe half would cast a vote. Of the four-point-five million voting, easily a third lived in two counties, Mecklenburg (home to the banking center of Charlotte) and Wake (center of NC government in Raleigh) - one million four hundred eighty-five thousand voters in each county.  Up to today, the polls showed those voters closely split along party lines, seven hundred thirty-nine thousand Republicans, seven hundred forty-five thousand Democrats, with a few Asheville Libertarians thrown in.  Republican Thom Tillis, the capitalist’s contestant, was up against incumbent Democratic Senator Kay Hagan, the working man’s champion.  Thom’s top lieutenants were sent to break the tie: if they each could sway .5% of the voters their way, just six thousand, four-hundred twenty-five hesitant sheep, the rest would be history. It was a desperate number that called for desperate measures. Last day – Election Day - it was time the gloves came off, time for fourteen straight hours of foul, furious, fevered stumping; time to find out what issues constituents really cared about!

                The brine began to bubble; he heaved to his feet, shambled to the stove top and scooped the softened garlic and fish into the cheese-liquor gravy, swirling it quickly a few times.  He popped on a lid, placed it carefully in the bag, and padded toward the bathroom to perform his morning ablutions. He shaved with his electric razor, because he wanted an early five-o-clock shadow, but used a blade to make a small nick near his Adam’s apple, to which he applied a dot of tissue. He washed his face then blew his nose, leaving one small, white booger just visible in the stiff, tangled hairs. He checked the mirror.  Perfect. 

                He dressed quickly in a dark, tailored suit, red silk tie with a matching kerchief peeking from the left breast pocket, Baume and Mercier black alligator watch, black leather Ferragamo shoes bossed to a liquid shine and a large “I Heart Kay Hagan” button on the right lapel – he knew most right-handed people will look to the right when they shake hands.  He slipped a small spritzer bottle filled with saline into his coat pocket.  He loaded his Oldsmobile with the redolent grocery bag, a tent, two tables, boxes of Kay Hagen pamphlets, two bags of cheap Dum-Dum suckers, and most importantly, a kerosene heater.  He stood a moment taking stock, smiled grimly, slammed down the trunk lid and slid behind the wheel.  He took a big breath: Show Time!

                Voters lined the sidewalk at the downtown library despite the early hour, shivering in the cold; breath hanging in the air as they murmured.  He backed his car into a slot near the entrance and greeted them cheerily as he popped the trunk. The nodded and watched as he removed the tables and tent, breaking into applause as the heater appeared.  He chatted amiably while nimbly erecting his display, the heater tucked in back.  Once the tables were covered with brilliant red Vote for Kay Hagen cloths he dumped out the Dum-Dums and messily spread the pamphlets.  With his back to the spectators he surreptitiously peeled off the lid from the noxious concoction and placed it at the base of the heater, hidden behind the bold tablecloths; the foul stench of kerosene and garbage-heaped tidal flats immediately suffused the small tent.  Coughing a little, his eyes watering, he moistened his hands with the saline then turned to the crowd with a fatuous, beefeater grin and invited them to share his warm tent.  They shambled over, red cheeks wreathing smiles of gratitude, crowding into the tiny space.  He performed a few damp handshakes then launched into his canned speech praising Senator Hagen’s 98% record of voting with Obama, her “reaching across the aisles” to encourage bipartisanship, her tireless efforts on behalf of education reform.   Silent glee spread through his chest on observing the smiles fade in the front row, replaced with gasps and flailing elbows as they fought against the press from behind, casting occasional horrified looks over their shoulders at the moss covering his teeth and the booger shining in his dark, hirsute nostril like a beacon.

                That scene played a continuous loop throughout the day: thousands swarmed in and just as quickly stumbled out.  The unnerved escapees would gulp fresh air and whisper together as they hurriedly made their way to the Vote for Thom Tillis tent where Thom’s friend and fellow Little League coach - the handsome and gregarious Senator Jeff Tarte - held forth on Thom’s virtues over hot chocolate and fresh snicker doodles while two heaters blasted in the background.

When the polls closed the lieutenant was hoarse and his hands were pruney, but he had nearly as many suckers and pamphlets as when he’d begun.  He was smiling as he wearily packed up the tent, trashed the brine solution, loaded his car in the dark and headed to the hotel. He undressed quickly, stuffed his clothes into trash bags, took a long, hot shower and collapsed into bed.

He was snoring deeply at 11:30 p.m., when the winner of the North Carolina Senate race was announced: Thom Tillis carried the vote by 48.8% over Kay Hagen’s 47.3%, the closest race in NC history.  Ms. Hagen was teary and a bit befuddled during her concession speech – the polling numbers up until that morning had her victorious by a slim margin – what had changed the people’s minds?

  Senator Tillis isn’t above quoting the occasional folksy aphorism, but there’s one in particular he swears by: Bad Company Corrupts Good Character.  Hot limburger liquor and re-constituted pickle-fish don’t help much, either!

First Editions.

She remembered vividly her first sight of him:  second grade, riding the school bus along a dusty gravel road in rural South Carolina.  Brakes screeching, it stopped to pick up a student, waiting by the mailbox at the end of a long farm driveway.  The doors opened and there he stood, “a tall, handsome drink of water, with the bluest eyes you ever saw.  My heart fairly leapt out of my chest!  I was smitten from that day forward.”  He was 8 years older than her and initially, they were like brother and sister but as she developed, romantic attraction blossomed. They would meet at a great oak tree exactly halfway between their houses, sit against its trunk, shoulders touching, and read books to each other in the cottony southern summers. Dismayed by the age difference, their parents forbade their relationship, “but we snuck around anyway – for years! They never found out.”  Like Romeo and Juliet, they’d found their soul-mate – nothing could keep them apart.

                On graduation, he joined the Army and was shipped to Italy to fight the Nazis.  They wrote long letters to each other every day for 18 months, great stacks of letters - tied with twine and stowed neatly in his duffel, piled messily in her dresser drawer.  The letters detailed the war effort, farm conditions, Italian scenery, family events, books they’d read, future plans and, of course, their undying love.  Until one day, when he received a letter from a mutual friend back home full of the latest hometown gossip, including his lover’s activities. The letter was short, but it contained one small sentence that he interpreted as meaning she’d been unfaithful. Jealousy engulfed him, his heart shattered; his eternal love for her morphed into rage, and the light went out from his cobalt-blue eyes.   He stopped writing and when he did, her heart shattered too.  Ignorant of the friend’s letter and innocent of the charge against her, she flooded him with entreaties damp with tears, begging him to explain the silence.  The silence remained, unexplained, for 42 years.

                After the war he returned to the states but not to his home, finding work in Ohio as a book-binder.  Within a decade he’d saved enough to open his own bookstore, gluing his splintered heart with soothing prose and dusty pages.  He married after a while, a sturdy, mid-western girl – a help-mate - and shuffled around his shop for 30 years, occasionally attending an out-of-town bookseller’s convention, dull blue eyes taking endless inventory and always on the lookout for a rare first-edition.

                She rebounded more quickly; two years of despair boiled her heart to a soft, throbbing jelly, tender toward the first man to ask for her hand. Determined to put the mystery and heartache behind, she wed a merchant from the metropolis of Columbia and went to work in his bookstore.  Under her business acumen, charming personality and literary knowledge the store did well, although both her husband and loyal customers sensed a haunting beneath her lively banter.  She threw herself into the store’s success, gluing her fractured heart with hard-bound classics and the ring of the cash register.  She chattered and sold for 40 years, attending the occasional out-of-town bookseller’s convention, dodging quickly through the crowds, silently scanning for a valuable first-edition.

                The convention in Charlotte held the largest display of books on the eastern seaboard that year – vendors had combed attics and estate sales across the country to bring the rarest and best to market; the air was redolent with old cellulose and lignin.  Thousands of buyers thronged the tables, some for love, most for money, two for glue.  She grew tired of the jostling crowd, saw a side hall with few vendors and fewer buyers and slipped toward its sanctuary; he wearied of the noise and fought his way toward a temporary oasis – a nearly empty hall off to one side.  Back-to-back they scanned the selection, enjoying the respite. Moving at the same unhurried pace, they arrived at the last table together.  With nearly a century of experience in their field between them, it took exactly the same breath to recognize a first-edition Robinson Crusoe and exactly the same heartbeat to reach for it.  Their hands met and they instinctively looked at each other, apologies on their lips but buying on their minds.  “I’m sorry, I…” he began; “No, that’s OK… I…” she started - then stopped, mouth agape.  He looked at her, quizzically at first; his head jerked back, eyes wide with shock.  She put a timid hand on his chest; he put a tentative hand to her cheek.  Her eyes filled with tears and she began to smile; his smile bloomed in return and his dull blue eyes lit with cobalt fire.   

                They never bought Robinson Crusoe - they never even left Charlotte – they’d found the only first-edition they ever really wanted.  Distant attorneys handled the sale of his bookstore and both their divorces while they held each other, forgave the past, and glued their hearts back together.  Twenty blissful, inseparable years later he suffered a stroke while gathering flowers.  She never left his side, sleeping in the hospital chair next to his bed, holding his quiet, papery hand through the bedrail.  I was his nurse in the intensive care unit; she told me their story while I kept him alive.  He only woke up once when I was with him and when he was awake all he did was gaze at her, brilliant eyes alight with love.  With her story echoing in my head I could see their bond stretching over 70 years, still as fresh as that morning in South Carolina: a young girl on the bus, door sliding open, her heart fluttering out to land on a tall, handsome drink of water, with the bluest eyes she ever saw. 

Junzi - The Gentlemen of the Dao.

500 years before Jesus, Confucius was writing about the Golden Rule.  He was dismayed by the splintering of the Zhou dynasty's grip on its kingdom and he wrestled with the root cause.  He concluded that ritual had vanished, or been perverted, along with the proper naming of things; while there should have been just one king, every petty ruler in the fragmented dynasty was pronouncing himself king and swanning around in kingly robes at kingly banquets, corrupting the natural way of things - the Dao.  What was lacking was men - more specifically, loyal, obedient, knowledgeable, disciplined gentlemen - the Junzi.  Junzi could live in poverty, were benevolent, humane, did more and spoke less, all while striving for Ren - the good feeling that comes with altruism.  Junzi also recognized that as they followed the Dao their good deeds would most likely come with unintended consequences - Yang must accompany Yin - but, like Zeno and his Stoics would formalize 200 years later, that was the way the Universe flowed, what could you do?  Despite this, said Confucius, a Junzi must treat others as he wished to be treated, cosmic paternalistic blow-back be damned; Jesus agreed. Based on the evidence presented on the news of men in orange jump-suits having their heads sliced off, the passing of a millennium brought Muhammad to conclude the exact opposite. Perhaps the enigmatic Mr. Spock will have coined this generation's fundamental truism, to be touted by banks too big to fail after a hostile take-over, their cold hearts warmed because "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few".  Ah well, that's the Dao - what can a gentleman do?