The following also appear in TILLER TALES, at the very end. Perhaps it should begin the book. Please feel free to comment and add to this discourse or any other thing that strikes your fancy.

Thanks, JB

WAR’S FOLLY

“The following short pieces have absolutely nothing to do with the seafaring life but since this is my football I’m including them and the message therein overshadows anything I’ve related above. Something has to be done for those who inherit the Earth. It could be you! Ok?”

A TIMELY MESSAGE FROM THE PAST REMEMBER?

Toward the end of Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, one of the characters who is trying to preserve the knowledge of his book burning world by remembering entire volumes of great literature, as possession of books is unlawful, often with a penalty of death, and while reeling from the total destruction of his city after a three second war says,

“We’re going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we’re doing, you can say, we’re remembering. That’s where we’ll win out in the long run. And someday we’ll remember so much that we’ll build the biggest damn steam shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up.”1

This novel of the “future”, a book about remembering things, first published in the United States in 1953, is even more apt today, a time where political leaders boast about wars won in days, which of course isn’t accurate because they never end. Afterward there’s only a meaningless cessation where folks regroup, rearm and then refight. Bradbury prophetically predicted shortening wars to seconds, where if you think of it in our instant gratification world is where we’re headed. How long does it take for nuclear weapons to kill everything within their sphere? How long from detonation to death? Those who don’t remember the lessons of the past are destined to repeat them, over and over and over. But we don’t remember, over and over and over.

Unfortunately Bradbury’s character had little conception of the tenacity of greed, which has nothing to do with remembering. Greed is selfishly now, no past, no future, only now. I’m afraid we’re not destined to win out in the long run, or the short run, or any run. Perhaps it’s best just to run.

I remember wandering about Greenwich Village, just adjacent to New York University, when I was a student on the GI Bill in the 1960s, another decade of war. Has there ever been one without? It was the day of the folksingers and from the coffee bars I often heard the following lyrics, which I just remembered as I write this. It had something to do with,

“Don’t study war no more, no more, no more” and ended with, “When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?”2

I confess I don’t know. I’d like it to be right now damn it, but past performances denies that plea.

Another character in Fahrenheit 451, which incidentally is the temperature at which paper burns, thought of the following passage from a book he remembered, a book I’m afraid is not in the minds of our leaders, despite their reference to it in public orations. They talk the talk but forget the lessons therein. They don’t remember or perhaps they’re just incapable of learning.

“And on either side of the river was a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”3

Let’s find those leaves and make some tea with lemon and sugar, bitter and sweet. Maybe it will help us remember, or not. Who knows?

“This last piece is a plea to all thinking people in a similar vein to the above. I’m sorry I put these ideas on your plate at the end of my little sailing adventures, but it’s probably important to all of us now living and their children and theirs. Don’t study war no more, no more, no more. Thanks.”

 

ONE HUNDRED     WORDS

      ONE SIMPLE IDEA

 TO CHANGE THE WORLD

 

An open letter to munitions developers, manufactures, armies, insurgents, governments, all those involved in sowing land mines or other personal death traps. Your intent might be valid but its term of military usefulness is limited. You want to kill during your campaign but afterward deactivate them.

Buried weapons can have a limited life span. Then six weeks, six months, six years later innocents won’t be delegged, dearmed, deceased.

Manufacture with planned obsolescence; date the effectiveness of your bombs, let some future kid survive. She might be yours.

Really, really last words: Did I mention I muse a lot? Yes I did.

1  Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, Delrey second printing, April 1991

2  I’d mention title and author here but I don’t remember.

3  Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, Delrey, second printing, April 1991


Thats that for this.




                                   TAKE CARE,


                                          JB