View current page
...more recent posts
Final Four In Lebanon?
This is the greatest damn country in the whole world, and anyone who feels counter to that is simply jealous of American college basketball in March. We are a family here, and like any family we don't all get along all the time. Sometimes our family has a patriarch who is not ideally suited to the job. The great thing is, if we don't like our patriarch, a bunch of us get together, go behind a curtain, punch a few buttons, and presto, we get rid of our patriarch, cleanly, with none of that icky patricidal mess.
When I was a boy my mother would suggest that if I didn't like her I could just go on down to the 7-11 and get myself a new mom. She would always suggest a red head, I don't know why, except I guess she herself was auburn-haired once. She had me, the youngest of her six, in her pre-matured graying forties, so that's all I've ever known of her hair color. I always liked that though, that idea of freedom she presented to me--if you don't like it sonny-boy, try something else. I ran away when I was about 18 months old. Again, when I was ten-years old, and finally for good when I made my 18 years. Her and my father were pretty tolerant of my behavior and always seemed genuinely pleased to see me after I was away for awhile. That didn't hurt me none.
Both of my father's parents were Lebanese Christian immigrants escaping Turkish oppression during the end of the 19th century. They came to America for the promise of freedom. They did ok for themselves. My grandmother Elizabeth (Aziza) had the opportunity to be a dressmaker in NY but continued across country to Austin, TX to be with her childhood sweetheart. They married. Had thirteen kids. Grandpa ran a grocery store on Sixth St. I never knew him but my grandmother lived until my 14th year. She was a beautiful woman with translucent wrinkled skin and long long white hair that she kept in a braided ponytail. She mostly spoke Arabic. She baked the best (unleavened) bread any man has ever eaten. She once talked on the phone, in broken English, to Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was then vice-president of the United States.
I don't know what it is about war that makes me think about family. It is war though that I have to get around before any other thought will come out. There is much atrocity in the world, of that there is no doubt. If it were my goal to do so I could make you cry describing simple truths that exist minutes, seconds, away from this computer screen. There is much to be improved in America. To the extent that each of us will do something positive to bring about improvement, we will see improvement. As for America's current foreign policy, I don't know. There is a place you can stand and see that we may mean well. That something good may come of all this. I try to stand there occasionally so that I don't lose hope. I have this not completely formed hypothesis that it is possible to bring good to people who don't, on the surface, act like they want it. I am pretty much certain though, that beneficence cannot be delivered with arrogance. As a country, we might work on that some. In 2004 I will vote to oust the current administration. Until then (and after I suppose) I will be expecting the worst, hoping for the best. Now I am off to my television, where I hope to watch the Wisconsin Badgers beat the crap out of the Kentucky Wildcats.