When we think about the Boomer's youth we think of Hula Hoops and Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol, maybe black and white television and Studebakers that looked the same coming and going. We think about the hot days of the Cold War but we don't really think about the impacts on 10 and 11-year-old kids. I know it scared the living bejesus outta me.
We were literally bombarded with images of impending doom on the nightly news. We were told nuclear war was inevitable but we still had to do our homework. Our parents had been scared to death by real-world events unfolding around them thru out their lives. They had to do their homework. They were born into a time where homelessness and starvation was a real and present threat. Most forms of serious illness were a death sentence. Even the President had had polio. Smallpox outbreaks were relatively common into the 1940's. Kids died of whooping cough, chicken pox, measles all the time. If that wasn't enough; Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito were real guys killin folks left and right. Eventually, our parents got drafted to go fight them guys and nearly a half million got killed for their trouble. It's no wonder they built a country so strong it dare not be opposed and also no wonder they built a society where privation was basically outlawed. Vaccinations, for smallpox and polio were the LAW of the land. It would be hard to describe the relief a young parent must have felt when Doctors Salk and Sabin rode to the rescue. I could swim in a lake or a stream but never in a public pool. We all knew kids who had had polio. Some died, some were in iron lungs, many wore braces on withered limbs. Loud, boisterous, strong, rough and ready they certainly were but even our parents were obviously apprehensive and we, their children noticed.
Another thing no one mentions about the revolution in public health in those days. The abject fear of venereal disease surely did encourage public morality. You don't hear about it much anymore but people we called spastics actually were victims of spinal ataxia. That came from mothers with untreated syphilis. It was just one of a myriad of ailments associated with promiscuity. Men are pigs but most of the women got the message. Adultery led to the bedroom farce but the lurking threat of venereal disease subconsciously refined it, kinda gave us Tennessee Williams. I have digressed. They were tough but the Cold War sacred them. We noticed. Everybody got that?
So, we did these air raid drills in grade school. Duck and cover or my favorite: We would file out into the hall and kneel against the wall and freely imagine all that concrete block raining down on our very young heads. The really bad part about that was we knew even if we managed to crawl out of the rubble with our frail bodies semi-intact we would die from radiation poisoning. How did we know that? They told us so pretty much every day on the TV. And not just any "they". Walter Cronkite for Chrissake! It's not like it was Fox News.
We did that for five or six years and then it was autumn of 1962. The greatest of all fears was played out for the better part of two weeks for all to see. The tension was palatable. As real as it gets. It came to a head that would be resolved one way or another, we all knew, the following day. We did our homework, ate our vegetables and slept fitfully at best, contemplating our predicted doom. That sounds like an exaggeration but that is literally true. That happened. I was there.
In all honesty, the rest of the Cold War was anti-climax. Reason and humanity won. The rest was like filling in a by-the-numbers painting.
Here's a question that has never been adequately asked: What if Nixon had won the razor thin, 1960 election? Seeing his later disastrous performance as President what could have been the outcome? What would his pronounced paranoia have wrought? He was a man remarkably lacking in the finesse of Kennedy.
What would that war have looked like? Between the superpowers, there were less than 300 nuclear weapons that may or may not have functioned properly. The carnage may have been terrible but it would not have been anywhere near the end of the world. It would have been the end of the Soviet Union but it would have been only a severe challenge to us. Argue that conclusion from any angle you chose. It's inescapable.
What about now? Does anyone really believe we have the command and control in place to survive a crisis like the Cuban Crisis of 1962, in 2017? Do we really believe the military has enough respect for current civilian authority to avoid immensely fatal mistakes? Do we believe the Pentagon has calmer heads in place to avoid fatal mistakes?
These certainly seem like legitimate questions. I don't know those questions are much different from the questions our kids have now, in active shooter drills. Are those drills any more or any less traumatic? Probably not and it's a damn shame we can't seem to do better.
Sleep well.
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Saturday, September 16, 2017
Let Us Pray
Let's all bow our heads. Until 1963 we were pretty much all given that instruction every morning. Our public school day began with a by-rote recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, The Lord's Prayer, and a stumbling reading of several verses of the King James Version of the Bible. In our school we recited the long-form Lord's Prayer preferred by Presbyterians everywhere. None of that short, Catholic version for us. They had their own schools for that sorta off-brand stuff. If they were too lazy to say the whole thing...well, that was on them.
The Bible reading was done by a different student every day. It was normally concluded quickly because watching a third grader trying to read the KJV Bible was nearly painful. Those of us who could read aloud fairly well always had to read longer. I resented that. I remember not one word. Maybe we should have read the "Song of Solomon".
That's the problem with forced obeisance, no one pays any attention. It's all pro-forma and no imparted substance. I wonder why people don't know that. I also wonder why they would bother to worship a god that doesn't know that. Their god seems to me to have a less than complimentary contempt for the mental or spiritual abilities of his adherents. I think a legitimate God knows the difference between indoctrination and the adult acceptance and embrace of faith. What's so hard about that?
Here's one practical side to my particular belief. My wife and I agreed about the difference between indoctrination and an embrace of faith. To that end we raised our daughter with a minimum of childhood, spiritual instruction. She was certainly raised with the Golden Rule and a healthy degree of moral certitude. Maybe too much of that certitude, I sometimes think but we were young and carried that certainty, inflexibility of youth. It wasn't until she became old enough to discuss secular philosophical ideas and ideals that I realized she was functionally ignorant of about a third of the culture. Literary allusions to things most people learned in Sunday School were lost on her. She had an extra burden of learning at a time when learning was burden enough. Not that either of us ever thought learning was an unwelcome burden but there's only so much you can cram into your head at any given time.
So, what's the point? As near as I can tell there was no point. We seem to have trivialized what some would honor. I'm a relatively observant guy but I had to look up the Lord's Prayer to get the words straight. That's after repeating it by rote probably 800 times. Bush senior made a big deal of the Pledge of Allegiance during the '88 campaign. At a photo op at a flag factory in Massachusetts, he fumbled the words. Demonstrating that something that has been trivialized by mindless repetition apparently knows no politics but political expediency knows no shame.
Anyone who can imagine the thoughts of students around finals time or the prom knows there is a lot of sincere prayer in public schools. It's hard to imagine an omnipotent God who wants or needs something as puny as a government or a school administration to force faith into a student's mind or heart. It's also hard to imagine such a God that doesn't know the effort isn't just useless but ultimately insulting to the whole idea. I'm not sure why that seems like such an obscure concept. Maybe because my mind tended to wander in grade school.
Sixty-five percent of Americans who apparently aren't currently in school think there should be mandatory prayer in schools. It's interesting to note the vast majority of those people could never have experienced organized school prayer. I wonder what they could think it would mean or accomplish.
Amen.
The Bible reading was done by a different student every day. It was normally concluded quickly because watching a third grader trying to read the KJV Bible was nearly painful. Those of us who could read aloud fairly well always had to read longer. I resented that. I remember not one word. Maybe we should have read the "Song of Solomon".
That's the problem with forced obeisance, no one pays any attention. It's all pro-forma and no imparted substance. I wonder why people don't know that. I also wonder why they would bother to worship a god that doesn't know that. Their god seems to me to have a less than complimentary contempt for the mental or spiritual abilities of his adherents. I think a legitimate God knows the difference between indoctrination and the adult acceptance and embrace of faith. What's so hard about that?
Here's one practical side to my particular belief. My wife and I agreed about the difference between indoctrination and an embrace of faith. To that end we raised our daughter with a minimum of childhood, spiritual instruction. She was certainly raised with the Golden Rule and a healthy degree of moral certitude. Maybe too much of that certitude, I sometimes think but we were young and carried that certainty, inflexibility of youth. It wasn't until she became old enough to discuss secular philosophical ideas and ideals that I realized she was functionally ignorant of about a third of the culture. Literary allusions to things most people learned in Sunday School were lost on her. She had an extra burden of learning at a time when learning was burden enough. Not that either of us ever thought learning was an unwelcome burden but there's only so much you can cram into your head at any given time.
So, what's the point? As near as I can tell there was no point. We seem to have trivialized what some would honor. I'm a relatively observant guy but I had to look up the Lord's Prayer to get the words straight. That's after repeating it by rote probably 800 times. Bush senior made a big deal of the Pledge of Allegiance during the '88 campaign. At a photo op at a flag factory in Massachusetts, he fumbled the words. Demonstrating that something that has been trivialized by mindless repetition apparently knows no politics but political expediency knows no shame.
Anyone who can imagine the thoughts of students around finals time or the prom knows there is a lot of sincere prayer in public schools. It's hard to imagine an omnipotent God who wants or needs something as puny as a government or a school administration to force faith into a student's mind or heart. It's also hard to imagine such a God that doesn't know the effort isn't just useless but ultimately insulting to the whole idea. I'm not sure why that seems like such an obscure concept. Maybe because my mind tended to wander in grade school.
Sixty-five percent of Americans who apparently aren't currently in school think there should be mandatory prayer in schools. It's interesting to note the vast majority of those people could never have experienced organized school prayer. I wonder what they could think it would mean or accomplish.
Amen.
Saturday, September 9, 2017
Gonna Rock Down To 2nd Avenue
I grew up about 30-35 miles north of Pittsburgh. At night you could always tell which way was south because the southern sky glowed red from the mills. In the winters you could also tell you were near Pittsburgh because within 3 days of any snowfall there was a coating of soot on the snow at even that distance. Sometimes, even in the daytime, there was a black wreak in the southern sky. We really didn't think much of it. A lot of us ended up making a living for young families by working for fabricators and other suppliers of those mills that produced that glow. My generation was the last. That's a different issue.
As a boy, sixty years ago, we used to go to Pittsburgh to visit my Step-Dad's family and neighborhood. It was a cool trip most of which you can still make though the mills are gone along with their pyrotechnics. The route is a little different now but you still go on Crosstown Blvd to Second Ave. That brings you under the bluffs Duquesne University occupies. There was and is this huge, concrete retaining wall. They just refurbished it last year. It's got to be well over 100,000 yards of concrete. I was amazed by the thing then and I still am today. I'd be surprised if the refurbishment didn't take longer than building the thing originally. I can find no date for it's construction. It's gotta be shortly after WWII. I will say the reading trying to find a date is interesting. Or, I get bored so you don't have to. I enjoyed it.
Second Avenue brought you to the old J and L Steel works. I know this section of Second Av was redone in 1954 because the B&O railroad overpass still bares that date. That graphic is done in blue tinted concrete. I wonder how they did that? It hasn't faded or changed in 60 years I can think of.
The Jones and Laughlin Steel works sprawled across the Monongahela River. The Southside Works stretched for over two miles. The two sections were connected by the Hot Metal Bridge. It was spectacular at night. It carried crucibles filled with molten iron from the blast furnaces along 2nd Avenue to the Southside Works. It was flat cars drawn by steam locomotives. The crucibles would glow red from the heat of the iron. The bridge carried up to 180 tons an hour. It's safe to say it will be there for quite some time. To a young boy it was fascinating and I often wondered if it wasn't what hell must look like. Later in life I worked in a bronze foundry. I didn't like that much and it certainly seemed like parts of that employment were paying the wages of sin. My joke was, the time cards weighed 40 pounds. The pay check wasn't bad really but the foundry itself was pyrotechnicly spectacular as well.
Then you came to the blast furnaces themselves. Just amazing! From the outside you saw these four 60-80 foot stacks. At the top they flared off stack gases in 25-35 foot plumes. Enough in one hour to heat every home in the Pittsburgh area for a year or longer and they burned 24 hours a day every day for nearly 80 years. There's a carbon footprint for ya. I do have to think they should have created a wasteland extending to Three Mile Island but they didn't. Think about that.
Then you made a left and got Dahn the Run. Saline Street. It was a little world unto itself. The language was a patois of Slav and English as were the customs. It was a neighborhood made up, in those days, of post WW I immigrants from eastern Europe. They came to work in the adjacent steel works and they brought their culture with them. The center of that culture was and is St John Chrysostom Byzantine Rite Catholic Church. It's an impressive place. Outside it's more than ordinary but inside the illuminations, iconography and frescoes are just eye-popping. The pageantry of the services for the various holidays is something to behold. When you come in the door you see banks of votive candles and on the wall behind and above is a life size, realistic Crucifix. It's inspiring and absolutely brutal in it's depiction of the suffering of Christ. The guy looks dead. I read somewhere that second and third world religious art was so often brutal in it's depictions because day to day life was so brutal the art had to be almost gruesome to make a dent. Think about that.
In those days that church operated on the Julian Calendar. That made us the luckiest of children. Our parents who had moved away and become assimilated celebrated Christmas with the rest of the country on the Gregorian Calendar and then two weeks later we went to their childhood homes and did it all over again. Two Christmases a year! And Dahn the Run, in those days, it was full on Christmas . Carolers, Midnight Mass and best of all, a second crop of aunts and uncles placing a second crop of gifts under the tree. Avarice doesn't occur to someone confronted with copious plenty. That might be a lesson worthy of wider teaching.
There was another feature. After barely staying awake thru Midnight Mass you returned for Holy Night Dinner. Because Christmas Eve was a Black Fast, very often the adults had not eaten all day. The dinner consisted of a ritual procession of delicacies. It was summed up with a taste of honey to keep you sweet, a piece of garlic to keep you healthy and a dram, even for the children, of whiskey to keep you happy in the coming year. It wasn't until 30 years later I learned the whiskey of choice in that household was rye. I was always a bourbon drinker until I tasted rye again. I drank rye for 10 years after I re-tasted it. There's a mystic cord of memory for ya.
So massive architecture, heavy industry, religious illumination, ritual, family tradition and just a wee taste. I recommend the journey.
As a boy, sixty years ago, we used to go to Pittsburgh to visit my Step-Dad's family and neighborhood. It was a cool trip most of which you can still make though the mills are gone along with their pyrotechnics. The route is a little different now but you still go on Crosstown Blvd to Second Ave. That brings you under the bluffs Duquesne University occupies. There was and is this huge, concrete retaining wall. They just refurbished it last year. It's got to be well over 100,000 yards of concrete. I was amazed by the thing then and I still am today. I'd be surprised if the refurbishment didn't take longer than building the thing originally. I can find no date for it's construction. It's gotta be shortly after WWII. I will say the reading trying to find a date is interesting. Or, I get bored so you don't have to. I enjoyed it.
Second Avenue brought you to the old J and L Steel works. I know this section of Second Av was redone in 1954 because the B&O railroad overpass still bares that date. That graphic is done in blue tinted concrete. I wonder how they did that? It hasn't faded or changed in 60 years I can think of.
The Jones and Laughlin Steel works sprawled across the Monongahela River. The Southside Works stretched for over two miles. The two sections were connected by the Hot Metal Bridge. It was spectacular at night. It carried crucibles filled with molten iron from the blast furnaces along 2nd Avenue to the Southside Works. It was flat cars drawn by steam locomotives. The crucibles would glow red from the heat of the iron. The bridge carried up to 180 tons an hour. It's safe to say it will be there for quite some time. To a young boy it was fascinating and I often wondered if it wasn't what hell must look like. Later in life I worked in a bronze foundry. I didn't like that much and it certainly seemed like parts of that employment were paying the wages of sin. My joke was, the time cards weighed 40 pounds. The pay check wasn't bad really but the foundry itself was pyrotechnicly spectacular as well.
Then you came to the blast furnaces themselves. Just amazing! From the outside you saw these four 60-80 foot stacks. At the top they flared off stack gases in 25-35 foot plumes. Enough in one hour to heat every home in the Pittsburgh area for a year or longer and they burned 24 hours a day every day for nearly 80 years. There's a carbon footprint for ya. I do have to think they should have created a wasteland extending to Three Mile Island but they didn't. Think about that.
Then you made a left and got Dahn the Run. Saline Street. It was a little world unto itself. The language was a patois of Slav and English as were the customs. It was a neighborhood made up, in those days, of post WW I immigrants from eastern Europe. They came to work in the adjacent steel works and they brought their culture with them. The center of that culture was and is St John Chrysostom Byzantine Rite Catholic Church. It's an impressive place. Outside it's more than ordinary but inside the illuminations, iconography and frescoes are just eye-popping. The pageantry of the services for the various holidays is something to behold. When you come in the door you see banks of votive candles and on the wall behind and above is a life size, realistic Crucifix. It's inspiring and absolutely brutal in it's depiction of the suffering of Christ. The guy looks dead. I read somewhere that second and third world religious art was so often brutal in it's depictions because day to day life was so brutal the art had to be almost gruesome to make a dent. Think about that.
In those days that church operated on the Julian Calendar. That made us the luckiest of children. Our parents who had moved away and become assimilated celebrated Christmas with the rest of the country on the Gregorian Calendar and then two weeks later we went to their childhood homes and did it all over again. Two Christmases a year! And Dahn the Run, in those days, it was full on Christmas . Carolers, Midnight Mass and best of all, a second crop of aunts and uncles placing a second crop of gifts under the tree. Avarice doesn't occur to someone confronted with copious plenty. That might be a lesson worthy of wider teaching.
There was another feature. After barely staying awake thru Midnight Mass you returned for Holy Night Dinner. Because Christmas Eve was a Black Fast, very often the adults had not eaten all day. The dinner consisted of a ritual procession of delicacies. It was summed up with a taste of honey to keep you sweet, a piece of garlic to keep you healthy and a dram, even for the children, of whiskey to keep you happy in the coming year. It wasn't until 30 years later I learned the whiskey of choice in that household was rye. I was always a bourbon drinker until I tasted rye again. I drank rye for 10 years after I re-tasted it. There's a mystic cord of memory for ya.
So massive architecture, heavy industry, religious illumination, ritual, family tradition and just a wee taste. I recommend the journey.
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