LOS ANGELES EARLY 1940S LOOKING EAST 

                  TOWARD A NEW KIND OF SUNRISE              

This blog is the result of an exchange of e-mails between Tami Gilliam, my Web Master and I which I will include below but first............. 

I remember that afternoon as if it were yesterday.  My Dad took my brother, mother and I for a ride in our old Dodge that day sixty-something years ago.  The above picture shows a man standing in Los Angeles at the same moment of our ride looking toward the first atomic bomb blast at the Nevada testing site.  The only light that of the blast itself.

Dad wanted all of us together doing something we all enjoyed at the time of the blast because newspaper articles and radio broadcasts warned that one of the results of the blast might  be ignition of all oxygen in the atmosphere and subsequently the end of the earth, at least for air breathers.  We all held our breath as the radio announcer counted out the final seconds to blast time.  The earth didn't end for us then but did some months later for many in Hiroshima.  Who knows what will happen next time. 

Don't study war no more, no more, no more.  The first entries I made in this blog series were about war, the idiocy of war.  If you're interested you might want to look back to The Folly of War.


     


                         THE LIGHT OF THE FUTURE


We're living in a time of war today, December 18, 2007.  It's a different kind of war and seemingly far distant.  There is little to remind us of its existence except constant political quarreling and pictures of the occasional service person.

Tami sent me the following message.

Tami Gilliam <tami@saltysailors.com> wrote:

This one really touched me.  And it is so true.  I'm 100% for this campaign.

 

How poignant!  If you know someone in the military, or have served, you'll love this…

Do watch this short movie. It's a nice idea. ~

 

 

http://www.gratitudecampaign.org/fullmovie.php

 

John R. White

I clicked on the above link and after watching the movie wrote the following reply.


Tam I have a military story in response to your movie.   

I was in the Air Force during the Korean Conflict, not war, they called it a conflict.  Don't know why.  On my first leave from basic training, by the way over fifty years ago, my, my where does the time go, I was in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, New York in uniform and had a blister on my right heel which made it difficult to walk, and was inching along with a pronounced limp.  I remember people looking and one man opened and held a door for me, I could see sympathy in his eyes but we didn't speak.  I felt somewhat of a charlatan playing the battle victim but did not tell these people I just had a blister.  Ironic I know.

 

Some months later in Montgomery, Alabama, when I was in what they called medical school, training to be a medic, also in uniform I was downtown crossing a street and a man walking the other way spat on my shoulder calling me an Air Force shit.........  Two stories, two mindsets, two memories. 

 

Too bad the old men who send young men to fight their battles don't have the guts to physically lead those teenagers into battle.   And often their battles derive from personal agendas, not related to anything but selfish greed or notions on how they'll appear in future  historical memories. 

 

And while I think about all this.  When I applied for social security benefits and noted my four years of  military service I was informed that because of a fire in some government warehouse all my records were gone and they had no remembrance of my existence.  Luckily I had my discharge papers and all of my four years of orders to prove I did indeed participate in some old man's scheme, thereby gaining a few extra dollars a month.  Government really cares, don't it.  Can't remember, looses records and refuses to come through with promises until slapped in the face with proof with their own ream of paperwork saved for fifty-some years.

 

And in my opinion much of the conflict going on in the Middle East today derives from the desire to control oil, without which this country and our very way of life could not exist.  Think about it.  This is the other side and I guess there are multiple sides to all complex issues.  There is no simple-single reason and no truth, no one reality only each individuals personal perceptions of these things.

 

Wars are testosterone in action.  An unfortunate side effect of that hormone, which our beloved mother, Mother Nature that is, only gave us so we could procreate more efficiently.  Now that's ironic.   War and sex bedfellows as they roll around in ecstasy. 

 

Sorry.  Doesn't take much to get me going.  Drat.

 

                                               Take care,

 

                                                     JB


Tami replied with this.

Tami Gilliam <tami@saltysailors.com> wrote:

While I have much more to say on this subject, my husband is home and I can not pontificate at the moment.  I hope like hell you will consider writing your life story while you have the time.  By the way, my dad was in the Air Force during the Korean war.  Ended up getting tuberculosis while stationed in Taiwan.  He was 100% disabled after leaving the Air Force.  Some of the worst & best medical care.  He died in 1987 from emphysema.  Never could quit smoking.  Anyway, my reason for the email is .... you've told me so many little snippets of your life and they are so interesting and sometimes amusing that I hope you will write your life story down for your daughters & for me.

T

This is my reply to the above.

What a great compliment.  Thank you.  I'm not sure my life would be interesting to many, its been rather ordinary, at least that's how I see it.  Interestingly when I first learned I was eventually going to lose my sight I made a point of taking sunset lancha cruises alone on the Rio Dulce in Guatemala, slowly putting along just gazing at God's creation and trying to memorize vistas for later use when I could no longer see them.  A concomitant result of this has been an ability to remember just about everything that's ever happened to me, good and bad, some of it really bad, going back to as early as age two.  Really, I wouldn't lie about something like that.

The one thing or maybe one of the things that's kept me relatively sane is writing and the quest to write well or at least the best way I can.  I continue to learn and am developing a voice which is unique, I think, and continue to search for better ways to illustrate what's in the buzzing hive of my mind.  It's not necessarily the story but the way its presented.  I suspect I express myself much better via the keyboard than orally, relative recluse that I've become.


                                Thanks, you've made my month,


                                                     JB



I'm going to the archives and bring up those early articles which relate to this subject so you don't have to search.


            
                              WAR'S FOLLY


My mentor on all things internet and good friend Tami Gilliam, the designer of this magnificent website (visit www.saltysailors.com for more things Tami) has told me I can include anything on this blog. Got to tell you, never did this before. So I guess I get to make up my own rules. Tam suggested I begin with some erudite, she didn't’t say erudite but I think implied it, discourse on my pontifications regarding the upcoming hurricane season. That of course would be appropriate as the focus of this site is these glorious storms. However, since this is my playground I’m going to begin with something else on my mind and perhaps on yours. I promise I will give you all sorts of prognostications on weather, or at least as I understand it later, but please bear with me on this.

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

                                                                                    

                        
                         ALWAYS WATCHING