In Hell on Earth, a love story, Hank spends a little time in a transient barracks when first arriving in Vietnam. There is also a strong suggestion that Erebus, home to his caseworker and others managing the sentences being served on Earth, might be some type of Purgatory
I don’t think anyone has ever had a real good idea of just what Purgatory is, where it is, or why it is. It is a place we can easily accept in general terms—a kind of halfway house on the way to heaven. However when we get down to specifics—tolerable pain and suffering to pay for minor sins—pain and suffering that can be reduced to some extent by deeds and prayers we do or someone does on our behalf, well the whole idea gets a little bit complicated.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Friday, September 30, 2011
"Trees" by Joyce Kilmer and me
I wasn’t always a writer of prose. There was a short time a very long time ago when I wrote poetry—damn good poetry.
I was reading a book about the Appalachians, which had a chapter about the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest—the only never-logged woodland in all of Appalachia. The naming of this choice natural treasure was obviously inspired by Kilmer’s famous poem, “Trees.”
Reading the story of the forest, Kilmer and the poem reminded me of an incident that happened more than 50 years ago when I was in the third grade at Abraham Lincoln School in Irondequoit, New York.
Monday, September 26, 2011
The Thrill of It All
Hell in Earth, a love story was just an idea in my head or it was an idea put in my head by Foo Ling or was it an idea put in Hank Johnson’s head by Foo Ling. But what if I got it wrong or Foo Ling was just pumping Hank or me with misinformation?
What if God and his management team on Erebus aren’t dissecting every single little thing we do and breaking it down into good or evil and then devising elaborate schemes to punish the evildoers? Might there be more to life than committing sins and being held accountable for sins?
Recently I was listening to Frank Ifield’s 1962 hit, “I Remember You.” The high point of the song, the line that I haven’t been able to get out of my head, goes like this.
“When my days are through and the angels ask me to recall—the thrill of it all, I will tell them I remember you.”
Although presumably not divinely inspired (and I realize there is no way of knowing for sure), this line does present a different perspective of God and his relationship to mankind than the divinely inspired Bible. The Bible essentially describes a judgmental God—the tough-love old Geezer in the Old Testament and the more gentle spirit in the New Testament—but always someone who is keeping tabs.
The God of the Bible is absolutely obsessed with how mankind handles the concept of right and wrong. It’s all pretty basic; don’t sin and you go to Heaven, do sin and you go to Hell and like Santa Clause, God is keeping a list.
It’s true that God gave us free will, and in essence, said we have a choice but warned us to make the right choice.
But He also gave us human nature. Even though there is this constant right versus wrong struggle going on within each of us, on the whole, my bet is that God is not that surprised by what we as a race do. Furthermore, I don’t think He even cares.
Except for exceedingly bad and almost universally agreed upon evil persons (Hitler, Attila the Hun, Stalin, Hannibal Lecter), I don’t think God is all that disappointed by the “sins” we commit down here and given the situation that He, Himself, created, I think He expects them. Frankly, I think God has too much going on to even be keeping score.
Consider this: If you were a supremely powerful, all-knowing being capable of building a universe out of nothing but a whim and a prayer, patient enough to let it develop over billions and billions of years*—most of which can only be described as very down time—and yet at the same time creative enough to let a race of humans evolve from virtually nothing into beings actually capable of understanding, to a degree, almost everything in that universe, up to a point, wouldn’t it be mighty petty to just sit up there in heaven and keep track of all the things these humans do wrong?
Maybe God isn’t a judge so much as he is an artist. And if He is an artist wouldn’t He be far less interested in what we did wrong and much more interested in how did we like it. In other words, wouldn’t He want to know what did we like best? What was “The thrill of it all?”
*Note: To get a better concept of just how long a billion years is, consider that if years were money, a billion years would be the equivalent of the cost of a cruise missile, which if dollars were miles, would be the equivalent of 2,000 round trips to the moon.
What if God and his management team on Erebus aren’t dissecting every single little thing we do and breaking it down into good or evil and then devising elaborate schemes to punish the evildoers? Might there be more to life than committing sins and being held accountable for sins?
Recently I was listening to Frank Ifield’s 1962 hit, “I Remember You.” The high point of the song, the line that I haven’t been able to get out of my head, goes like this.
“When my days are through and the angels ask me to recall—the thrill of it all, I will tell them I remember you.”
Although presumably not divinely inspired (and I realize there is no way of knowing for sure), this line does present a different perspective of God and his relationship to mankind than the divinely inspired Bible. The Bible essentially describes a judgmental God—the tough-love old Geezer in the Old Testament and the more gentle spirit in the New Testament—but always someone who is keeping tabs.
The God of the Bible is absolutely obsessed with how mankind handles the concept of right and wrong. It’s all pretty basic; don’t sin and you go to Heaven, do sin and you go to Hell and like Santa Clause, God is keeping a list.
It’s true that God gave us free will, and in essence, said we have a choice but warned us to make the right choice.
But He also gave us human nature. Even though there is this constant right versus wrong struggle going on within each of us, on the whole, my bet is that God is not that surprised by what we as a race do. Furthermore, I don’t think He even cares.
Except for exceedingly bad and almost universally agreed upon evil persons (Hitler, Attila the Hun, Stalin, Hannibal Lecter), I don’t think God is all that disappointed by the “sins” we commit down here and given the situation that He, Himself, created, I think He expects them. Frankly, I think God has too much going on to even be keeping score.
Consider this: If you were a supremely powerful, all-knowing being capable of building a universe out of nothing but a whim and a prayer, patient enough to let it develop over billions and billions of years*—most of which can only be described as very down time—and yet at the same time creative enough to let a race of humans evolve from virtually nothing into beings actually capable of understanding, to a degree, almost everything in that universe, up to a point, wouldn’t it be mighty petty to just sit up there in heaven and keep track of all the things these humans do wrong?
Maybe God isn’t a judge so much as he is an artist. And if He is an artist wouldn’t He be far less interested in what we did wrong and much more interested in how did we like it. In other words, wouldn’t He want to know what did we like best? What was “The thrill of it all?”
*Note: To get a better concept of just how long a billion years is, consider that if years were money, a billion years would be the equivalent of the cost of a cruise missile, which if dollars were miles, would be the equivalent of 2,000 round trips to the moon.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
The Stories of Rufus and Jessie
In Hell on Earth, a love story, I wrote about a story I didn't get published in the newspaper. The paper had run a story on the front page about placing a cardboard picture of a rhino in the zoo to make one of the rhinos (Jessie) jealous and induce her to mate with the other rhino (Rufus). They never did a follow-up, which I thought was kind of strange since it was such a strange story to begin with. I sent them this story but apparently in the newspaper business, when it come to stories about rhinos, the policy is one and done.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
There, Their and They're
Millikan High School of the Long Beach School District was on the news yesterday. CBS was there to do a feature story about teachers losing their jobs and what they’re doing to find new ones.
Nothing new there. We see that story almost every day in the news. Been there, done that.
Right. Except that I really was there and sort of did that. It was 1976 and I was a student teacher at Millikan attempting, among other things, to teach a third-year English class the correct usage of there, their, and they’re.
Readers of Hell on Earth, a love story will recognize that school, although unnamed in the book, as the one that Hank Johnson left in order to seek out the wisdom of Foo Ling in solving the problem of what to do with his life.
The teacher in the CBS story is coaching basketball on the side and trying to get subbing jobs. That is probably the best way to attack the problem.
And what was Foo Ling’s advice to Hank?
Well. Foo Ling thought that the best thing that Hank could do was get into door-to-door vacuum cleaner sales. Hank didn’t stay in the vacuum cleaner business much longer than he stayed in the student teaching business and that was probably good for everyone. Nevertheless, Hank would just like all teachers and all door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen to know that they’re there doing their jobs a lot better than he could have done.
Nothing new there. We see that story almost every day in the news. Been there, done that.
Right. Except that I really was there and sort of did that. It was 1976 and I was a student teacher at Millikan attempting, among other things, to teach a third-year English class the correct usage of there, their, and they’re.
Readers of Hell on Earth, a love story will recognize that school, although unnamed in the book, as the one that Hank Johnson left in order to seek out the wisdom of Foo Ling in solving the problem of what to do with his life.
The teacher in the CBS story is coaching basketball on the side and trying to get subbing jobs. That is probably the best way to attack the problem.
And what was Foo Ling’s advice to Hank?
Well. Foo Ling thought that the best thing that Hank could do was get into door-to-door vacuum cleaner sales. Hank didn’t stay in the vacuum cleaner business much longer than he stayed in the student teaching business and that was probably good for everyone. Nevertheless, Hank would just like all teachers and all door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen to know that they’re there doing their jobs a lot better than he could have done.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Small talk in Baton Rouge
On my recent road trip to California I found myself just west of Baton Rouge on Highway 10 and in a strange conversation with a sheriff. He stopped me, told me immediately that I was speeding, but that he wasn’t going to give me a ticket. But he did want to talk and ordered me to step out of the car. What he knew about me was my name, I lived in Virginia Beach, VA and had no tickets or outstanding warrants.
In Hell on Earth, a love story, Hank had some pretty strange conversations with Foo Ling where they both appeared to be talking in circles. When my conversation with the sheriff was over I felt like I had just stepped off of the same merry-go-round that Hank and Foo Ling rode on.
“Where are you coming from?” he asked.
“Opelika,” I said.
“Do you live in Opelika?”
“No, I was visiting a friend. I live in Virginia Beach.”
“Where are you going to?”
“San Antonio.”
“Why are you going to San Antonio?”
“Well, I’m not really going to San Antonio. Well, I am but I actually going to Fullerton, California to visit my daughter.”
“Why are you going to San Antonio then?”
“I’m meeting my wife there and we’re going to visit the Alamo. She’s flying down and I’ll pick her up at the airport.”
“She didn’t want to drive with you?”
“Well, I wanted to drive and she didn’t want to drive so I guess you could say she didn’t want to drive with me but the main reason was she didn’t want to drive.”
“So she’s just going to San Antonio and then flying back? And you’re driving to California to see your daughter?”
“That’s correct.”
“Doesn’t your wife want to see her daughter in California?”
“Yes, she does and she’ll be flying out there in September.”
“And will you be driving out to meet her?” he said sarcastically and I was sure that he wasn’t expecting an answer.
I watch Law and Order on TV so I know a little bit about what the police can and cannot get away with and I was just about ready to ask him if he was going to charge me with anything and if he wasn’t than I was going to leave when he told me to get back in the car and drive safely. None of his questions pertained to speeding and the sense that I got from this conversation was law enforcement always has the terrorist thing going on the back burner.
And if the terrorist thing is going on the back burner and you’re a traveler (X), you definitely want to be going from Point A to Point B and back again. You don’t want to be (X) going from Point A to Point B with a stop in Point C and another stop in Point D where you meet up with (Y), who flies in, stays a few days and then flies back to Point A to await your return in two weeks, while you continue on to Point B. I’m only glad I didn’t mention that between Point C and Point D I went to Point E to visit cousin (Z).
Friday, August 5, 2011
Letters to the Editor
As readers of Hell on Earth know, writing letters to the editor was often the only newspaper writing Hank did. The only drawback to letters to the editor is that there are not enough of them. The number of papers is decreasing as is the space given to letter writers. This is too bad because what we need most in this country right now is responsible public discourse.
Letters to the editor are being replaced by a little thing called “comments” on the Internet. There are hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of articles appearing on the Internet daily about every subject imaginable and at the end of each article for the small price of becoming a member someone can record a comment to the article they just read. The most important thing to know about these “comments” is that they do not represent responsible discourse.
Let’s look at how a Letter to the Editor(LETTER) differs from a Comment on a Website(Cow).
In the first place, a LETTER requires a real name whereas a COW can get by with something like Snookyburger or Catinmouse or Waggler.
A LETTER also requires a real address while a COW can be sitting in a bar in Tijuana with a laptop and a margarita or at a prison for the criminally insane—not that they don’t have a right to an opinion but wouldn’t you like to know this piece of information.
Just as it has to be written by a person with a real name and a real address, a LETTER has to have a real idea. Oh, it can be misguided or extreme or even very, very confusing but, bottom line, it has to be something that can be expressed in real words, which is the way responsible people communicate with each other. A COW writer only has to know where to find the #, @, $, &, !, and % keys on the keyboard.
There is always a real possibility of a LETTER turning into a real discussion with different people with different ideas joining the dialogue. This is not the case with COW’s where a reply of “##$@%” to “!!###$#@” followed by the rebuttal, “Oh yeah, #&$**##!#!!!” is really more like a time bomb waiting to go off.
The web, it turns out, isn’t really the place to go to find responsible discourse, which is too bad because a future where the top row of a keyboard becomes the main means of communication is going to be a real %##!$%#&&(*)^^%$# and I ain’t &%%$#!@@!#$ whistling Dixie.
Letters to the editor are being replaced by a little thing called “comments” on the Internet. There are hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of articles appearing on the Internet daily about every subject imaginable and at the end of each article for the small price of becoming a member someone can record a comment to the article they just read. The most important thing to know about these “comments” is that they do not represent responsible discourse.
Let’s look at how a Letter to the Editor(LETTER) differs from a Comment on a Website(Cow).
In the first place, a LETTER requires a real name whereas a COW can get by with something like Snookyburger or Catinmouse or Waggler.
A LETTER also requires a real address while a COW can be sitting in a bar in Tijuana with a laptop and a margarita or at a prison for the criminally insane—not that they don’t have a right to an opinion but wouldn’t you like to know this piece of information.
Just as it has to be written by a person with a real name and a real address, a LETTER has to have a real idea. Oh, it can be misguided or extreme or even very, very confusing but, bottom line, it has to be something that can be expressed in real words, which is the way responsible people communicate with each other. A COW writer only has to know where to find the #, @, $, &, !, and % keys on the keyboard.
There is always a real possibility of a LETTER turning into a real discussion with different people with different ideas joining the dialogue. This is not the case with COW’s where a reply of “##$@%” to “!!###$#@” followed by the rebuttal, “Oh yeah, #&$**##!#!!!” is really more like a time bomb waiting to go off.
The web, it turns out, isn’t really the place to go to find responsible discourse, which is too bad because a future where the top row of a keyboard becomes the main means of communication is going to be a real %##!$%#&&(*)^^%$# and I ain’t &%%$#!@@!#$ whistling Dixie.
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