Decoration Day 2008

Does it Matter?

Does it matter?—losing your legs? . . .

For people will always be kind,

And you need not show that you mind

When the others come in after hunting

To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter?—losing your sight? . . .

There's such splendid work for the blind;

And people will always be kind,

As you sit on the terrace remembering

And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter?—those dreams from the pit? . . .

You can drink and forget and be glad,

And people won't say that you're mad;

For they'll know you've fought for your country

And no one will worry a bit.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967), in Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918).

Hearing That His Friend Was Coming Back from the War

In old days those who went to fight

In three years had one year's leave.

But in this war the soldiers are never changed;

They must go on fighting till they die on the battle-field.

I thought of you, so weak and indolent,

Hopelessly trying to learn to march and drill.

That a young man should ever come home again

Seemed about as likely as that the sky should fall.

Since I got the news that you were coming back,

Twice I have mounted to the high hall of your home.

I found your brother mending your horse's stall;

I found your mother sewing your new clothes.

I am half afraid; perhaps it is not true;

Yet I never weary of watching for you on the road.

Each day I go out at the City Gate

With a flask of wine, lest you should come thirsty.

Oh that I could shrink the surface of the World,

So that suddenly I might find you standing at my side.

Wang Chien, ca. 830 C.E. (Translated into English by Arthur Waley, 1919).

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Stay the Course: The Goebbels Diaries

In straight chronological form, Lutz Hachmeister's Das Goebbels-Experiment / The Goebbels Experiment (2005) follows the rise and fall of Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) via his diary (read effectively by Kenneth Branagh in the English language version), with excellent German and Russian archival film (some in color) as backdrop. Watch him develop the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda using film, radio, newspaper and theatre; see him acknowledge the initial arrival of TV, see him tout Nazism as a religion while still calling on God for strength.

The film works precisely because it lets its subject speak for himself. Goebbels in his diary, of course, has no idea how badly things are going to turn out for him, the Nazi Party, Hitler, the Third Reich, or Germany. The film is relevent to modern times in general. Even some of his phrases sound contemporary. "Stay the course," he wrote in the 1930s, about rising Nazi power. "God bless our modern weapons" (1940). Sounds remarkably like certain American fanatics today.

Prior to his final downfall, see Goebbels go on vacation, get married, raise a family (all of them killed by Dr. Goebbels and his wife Magda in 1945 Berlin, with the Soviets closing in on the Führerbunker). More surreally, see Goebbels attend a film festival in Mussolini's Italy during the war -- utterly bizarre.


Lloyd the bartender (Joe Turkel) in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). Goebbels as ghost?


A version of The Goebbels Experiment first ran in 2006 as part of PBS' The American Experience as The Man Behind Hitler.

Today's Rune: Fertility.

A Love Supreme: the Philadelphia-Detroit Summit

I love Philadelphia, Detroit and jazz, so am pleased to plug "A Love Supreme: the Philly/Detroit Summit," aka The 29th Detroit International Jazz Festival over Labor Day Weekend (8/29-9/1/2008).

John Coltrane, orginally from North Carolina, lived for a while in Philadelphia and played in Detroit at places like Baker's Keyboard Lounge and the Blue Bird Inn.


While still going through old papers and shredding most of them, I came across my first (1992) address in Philadelphia: 1225 Spruce Street, Apt. 6, right across the street from the Café Diva at 12th and Spruce, where I worked part time for a gracious and elegant soul, Nga Mai (born in Vietnam during the US-Vietnam War).


Big sports evening in Motown, so I'm soon off to raise hell for Detroit. Hats off to my pal Joe McGeary in Philadelphia, and to my other Philly pals from back in the day.

Today's Rune: Partnership.

Alternative Living, Powelton Village

Going through old papers, I found a CoreStates bank receipt with an address: 3311 Powelton Avenue, Apartment 3F, Philadelphia, PA 19104. My address! I lived there in 1993, 1994, while in the doctoral history program at Temple University.

This little piece of paper reminded me to write about urban alternative lifestyles, John Africa (b. Vincent Leaphart), and MOVE, and also about Detroit's urban gardens and farms. Consider this a reminder of posts to come -- at some point.

MOVE was a community group that set up house in Powelton Village (about a block from where I lived) in the 1970s. They took the name "Africa," much like Malcolm Little had assumed the name "X," and for similar reasons. MOVE was considered provocative enough that in 1978 their house/compound was assaulted by police (one guy I knew who'd witnessed some of the action remembered National Guard-like troops there, too), the Africas were forced out, and some were tried for the killing of a policeman. An even worse sequel ended in 1985 at Osage Avenue, when the local government bombed their new digs and burned down the entire block. Eleven MOVE members died in the onslaught. Nightmare.

Yesterday the oil thing happened in Detroit. In the morning, all but one of the gas stations I drove by were selling unleaded regular gas for under four dollars per gallon. By sundown, nineteen out of the twenty I counted had blown by the four buck mark -- some already as high as $4.19/gallon. May be time to consider riding a horse, expanding an urban garden, or trying alternative living in Detroit . . . . .

Today's Rune: Disruption.

Eating Cuban

My choice is to relax travel restrictions for visiting Cuba. At this point, given the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall and everything else that's happened since Cuba's revolution, what kind of sour grapes must US rulers pointlessly perpetuate to keep this ego-driven farce going? Of the three remaining candidates, Barack Black Eagle (as the Crow Nation has donned him) is the wisest -- he favors relaxing restrictions and moving on to the next level. He is most definitely not naive (as Republican ass-clowns like to claim) -- just smart and pragmatic.

Meanwhile, in Detroit, try Vicente's Cuban Cuisine at 1250 Library Street, Detroit, MI 48226. It's worth it -- and fun.

Today's Rune: Fertility.