Memorial

Flags of celebration and respect to past glories are the dominant theme

• Traditional Memorial Day is martial in nature, with marching bands and veterans parading down flag-festooned streets as crowds cheer.  Media incessantly reminds us to remember sacrifices of all the brave people who have defended our way of life.  Slogans such as “freedom is not free” resound through the air. 
• I respect the military in our important wars.  Those who fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II did not do so for pensions and fast track into police forces later.  They were not planning a career.  They volunteered _ or were forcibly inducted _ to risk their lives and health into enemy fire and constant tension and disease.  What they did actually changed the way we live now.  Some of our other wars _ Mexican, Spanish-American, Korean, Vietnamese, Gulf _ have been of significantly less consequence.  And our current volunteer army is not much like our troops who fought the Nazi’s and Japanese.

Gold Star Battalion Beach is dedicated to men from Huntington who fought in WWII.

• This year is different.  Parades are banned.  Tiny gatherings are allowed at cemeteries which hold the remains of heroes gone.  Perhaps a few of us rethink who our current heroes are or should be _ what occupations and sacrifices are now most important to our way of life.  I wonder moreover if this particular holiday might be remembered as the end of a bygone era from a not too distant, totally changed, future.  Economic and social traditions and bonds are being stretched to and possibly beyond the breaking point.
• Eras sneak up on you, with assumptions and an inertia that claims “this is how it is.”  And yet, history proves that eras can end, sometimes slowly, sometimes in a blink.  The American, French, Russian, Chinese revolutions took only a few years.  The Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial, and Computer took longer.  Today, of course, everything runs at warp speed, and possibly the next huge paradigm shifts in culture and civilization will do so as well.  Much can happen in just one year. 

Fog clouds our hopes and fears most densely in the best and worst of times.

• Our current era, however many decades or centuries it has lasted, has been one of scientific discovery,  globalization of nature and culture, and massive population growth, some of it accompanied by more goods available.  There has also been severe consolidation of wealth, fragmentation of cultural goals into various fierce ideologies, and massive degradation of the environment.  Reporting of such changes has been practically instantaneous.  Above all, it has been an era dominated by the myth of American exceptionalism and Western capitalistic ideology.  Perhaps this is the moment when the world suddenly realizes, once more, that the emperor has no clothes.

 Goods and services have overwhelmed what were once productively silent wetlands.

• No matter what historians claim about historic inevitability, nobody in the middle of a revolution can predict its outcome and effects.  That has not stopped modern prognosticators who claim work as we have known it will mutate and vanish, for example.  Visionaries conjure vast economic and social upheavals, some apocalyptic.  I (optimistically) think the only “safe” option here is to plan on the familiar world never quite returning, and possibly being shockingly unrecognizable, in less than five years.

As traditional as it gets, I hope life remains stable for a while longer.

• After that, those who have time and energy to remember will no doubt gather at the future equivalent of a Memorial Day.  Toasts will be raised, the world as it once was nostalgically recalled, and (with luck) some kind of celebration held to cheer what came after.

Nesting

 I wanted a bird nest, but those around here are too hidden for my feeble attempts

• People in the New York Metro area have been asked to remain mostly at home, a directive made easier by the abnormally cold and wet spring we have been enduring.  Watching flowers, birds, leaves, strong wind, constant showers, and other seasonal signs has been better accomplished from warm rooms or heated cars.  A brief dash, well bundled, is what most of us manage, even to view the tulips in the park where the show goes on even through the festival has been cancelled.
• I am used to seeing goslings hatch around now, although they are often associated with me wearing shorts and tee shirt rather than heavy coat and ski mask.  But I noticed three broods following their parent along seaweed shoreline in howling winds at thirty two degrees.  A harsh way to be introduced to the world.  Meanwhile, I am observing nests being built in several bushes around the house, mostly protected from the elements, definitely hidden from the hawks.

Azaleas in gorgeous apparel, covered in blossoms and bees

• Nature continues, regardless of what humans and weather may do.  Squirrels are chasing about, chipmunks are out of hibernation, bees and gnats and flies fill the air.  Birdsong is far more noticeable now that aircraft are absent. 
• In spite of the drumroll of death, which is terrible, and “dire” predictions of the economy to come, and great angst about how society may change, this can be seen in some ways as a happy spring.  The air is clear for the first time in years.  The environment seems to be making a comeback.  Scenery far and near is incredibly beautiful.  We are reminded once more of the majesty and awe of existence.  Perhaps even my neighbors are bored enough to enjoy nature when they get tired of listening to grim media news.

 Lilacs heavily perfume our yard as birdsong fills the air.

• I have lived in a deceptively secure and predictable world.  There is always food.  A child’s death is unexpected.  Old people think themselves young as they pass eighty years.  But not long ago, it was not so, and we were more like those geese.  Most children, like goslings, died before they were five.  People wore out fast, were old by forty, and incapacitated by sixty, an age which relatively few achieved.  At least a few times in every lifetime there were famines or plagues or wars.  We had hoped to be done with all that; it is jarring to suddenly encounter something like them, even here, even now.
• An eternal human hubris is to perceive the world as unchanging, followed by the even more incredible belief that we control our lives.  We can certainly control our inner thoughts and mental existence, but as any survivor of any tragedy knows, much still lies beyond our power.  When change comes, especially awful change, it is hard or impossible to accept.  When good change occured, for the last fifty years or so, I have taken it for granted. 

I try not to forget the subtle, like these almost hidden lilies of the valley

• Full spring now, cool perhaps, maybe too much rain, but glorious.  The annual visual spectacular repeats, and cycles of the seasons still comfort me.  I enjoy sky, wind, trees, flowers, cardinals, jays, robins, squirrels, and our dashing little chipmunk and (as long as I stay away from the TV) am incredibly grateful just to be aware. 

Competence

Once a garage, reclaimed by elements, final destination of all our efforts.

• Our stucco house has brick decorations below the windows.  In this long semi-incarceration they came to my attention as I sat in the warming sun with little else to do.  And I thought how little real competence I have in my world. Any Sumerian laborer could probably make bricks and lay them better than I could.  In fact, of all my vast environment, I am capable in very few activities. 
• This world of marvels is constructed of fragile relationships.  Experts and specialists mine and grow and plan and build.  Sometimes I impose a certain order, but mostly I simply accept the end result.  I can buy food, I can sit on a purchased chair, I can look at my house.  But I could no more grow my food, make my chair, nor build my house than I could regulate my internal temperature or mindfully digest my meals.  Magic surrounds and permeates my existence.

With effort, I can appreciate the beauty of flowers as much as “primitive” people

• What competence have I attained in over seventy years?  Some fleeting and now irrelevant electronic coding.  Some upon-a-time ability to work collaboratively with others.  Mostly, even now, an ability to plan a little and react a lot as unexpected situations arise.  A bit of ability here, a bit there, none extraordinary.
• Schoolday myths proclaimed the Jeffersonian joys of yeoman farmers.  Full independence on a self-sufficient homestead where everything was crafted by the owner _ an American metaphorical ideal.  Yet, like all childhood stories, that whole concept was flawed from the beginning.  No farmer mined iron and forged his own tools, built not only his gun but also the machines to construct the parts, ate only the produce planted and harvested by his own hands.  From the beginning, people specialized, gaining surplus from what they did best to pay for what they could not do at all.

 I certainly do not know the medicinal and magical properties of nature as well as my ancestors.

• 
  Capitalism loves fluid roles which shun competence_ ideally, any worker can be replaced, nobody is indispensable.  That’s ok, because the associated lie is that with luck and hard work, anyone can succeed and prosper in anything.  A competent person rises to become wealthy, famous, and remembered forever.  Artisanal crafts are worn down to machine-capable rote tasks, with an interface anyone can perform.  Driving a car when first invented took a skilled chauffeur.
• Retraining is a vicious pretense which proclaims that competence can be easily transferred.  Throw someone out of a job at which they have become competent for years and make them do (badly) something they have never encountered.   Also, sever all their current implicit connections _ lateral ties to fellow employees or clients for example.  Then let them go naked into the marketplace to start over.  Sixty year olds are treated as if they were fifteen.  This massive and intractable flaw in modern consumer capitalism is what will eventually lead to its overthrow.

Weed in a perfect lawn?  Or a symbol of what I do not understand?

• Competence is not purpose.  One learns competence in reference to doing something, even if that something is as mundane as laying bricks.  It often takes years to become good at a task, when actions are all but unconscious and errors are intuitively avoided.  Competence most clearly shows when things go badly _ especially as tasks become more complicated.
• Finally, competence does provide an element of pride and self-worth.  Who we are is inevitably tangled with what we do.  But the only competence any of us can keep with certainty is that of our approach to life.  It must be secure, flexible, and reliable.  Good luck with that … 

Noiseless

Sometimes it is easier appreciate the visual when not assaulted by other senses.

• Silent Spring is not my reference.  Yes, the English language makes a clear difference between “noiseless” and “less noise,” but how should we define the noun?  I do not regard birdcalls, wind in trees, nor even the shouts of children as noise.  Leaf blowers, chain saws, automobiles, heavy construction, and low jet airplanes, on the other hand, are obnoxious intruders on the symphony of natural sounds.  This pandemic April has been a time mercifully free of human engine roars.
• The sound of silence around here has until recently been missing.  All hours, every season, mechanical clamor is relentless from near and far, above and below, around and about.  But this month, enforced shutdowns have eliminated a lot of trucks and cars and planes and local projects.  I could sit outside and hear trees in the breeze, the taps of woodpeckers, the warning calls of bluejays.  Even occasionally the rustle of leaves as squirrels race through the underbrush and up branches.  Sometimes the buzz of fat early bumblebees drifted by.

Tulips have passed full glory and are passing individually or en masse.

• Like Boccaccio’s Florence, much of affluent Huntington has fled to less infested places.  Traffic is abnormally sparse.  Many neighbors have gone South or West to visit friends or linger in vacation homes.  The less affluent remain behind, but they have temporarily been prevented from their normal loud activities (because the rich are not around to make them do so.)  There is often a surprising lack of pedestrians on our local streets, because the gloomy cold weather has also damped excursions.
• In the last few days, however, demon-spawned yard crews have begun to erupt once more, with their insanely oversized infernal gas engines spewing smoke and commotion.  So far those episodes remain sparse and nearly tolerable, but it is a worrisome reminder of what must soon return.  All the more reason for me to savor quiet while it remains available.

Add We are forbidden to attend “cherry blossom festivals,” but this one neighbor’s tree is a festival all to itself

• Maybe, eventually, people will rethink the demands of civilization.  Up until this plague, there were only two ways to deal with noise pollution.  One was to huddle hermetically behind triple-pane never-opened glass and hide inside in peace and comfort.  The other was to outcompete the cacophony by blasting nearby noise of one’s own choice _ through earbuds or boomboxes or outside speakers.  I wonder if after this interlude, some folks may not come to enjoy natural silence.  But I suppose probably not.  Noise, like most pollution, spills into common space; one lout spoils the environment for everyone within miles.
• For nearly the first time, crews are forbidden on Sunday.  Many people sleep in.  I had a wonderful walk through the nearby park, admiring the cherry blossoms, young leaves, and green lawn.  Red winged blackbirds have returned to the pond, to begin nesting amongst the reeds, not yet attacking anything that comes too near.  A blissful natural calm, reminding me of my youth in less crowded and far less raucous places.
• Like everyone else, I ponder what comes next, what changes may occur.  Maybe the whole world will return to what it used to be, increasing noise and all.  If that be the case, I must treasure these noiseless moments never to return, as if I were on vacation from modern civilization.  I must open my door and visit the paradise that has so briefly interrupted everyone’s frenetic brass bands.