ThingsPondered

(Warning: Not for the weak-stomached or faint of heart.)

In late winter 2003, the United States of America had a President named George W. Bush.  He was, at that time, exploiting the 9/11 attack on our country in order to promote war on Iraq.  This war-making would be very beneficial to his and his friends’ financial interests and, he hoped, to his political career.  A rather weak-willed citizenry followed him like the proverbial drove of dumb sheep.

It was my blessing (or curse) to see then that this would be another Vietnam-like fiasco and waste of lives.  Thus, I participated in a march for peace (also known as anti-war) in the nation’s capitol.  This was on the Ides of March, 2003.  A month later, the USA entered the protested war. 

For the sake of historians who relish primary sources, I would like to publicly report the text on signs of my fellow marchers.  A thorough knowledge of the players, allies, scapegoats, and the nation’s mood and contemporary pop culture will be needed to understand some of the messages. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

How did our oil get under their sand?

Read my apoca-lips.

Dad, I need money for gas.  Can I start a war?

Chiracq for American president.

Merci, France!  Danke, Deurschland!

Empty warheads in White House.

W stands for wrong.

The Pope, France, Germany, and Daddy can’t all be wrong.

Make love on a rock.

Drunken draft dodger drives country into ditch.

Bush: war-whore.  Whose missile is bigger?  (This accompanied by racy cartoon drawing with a missile replacing a male anatomical feature.)

(A sign carried by a young woman:  ) 

The only BUSH I trust is my own.

We know Saddam has the weapons because we have the receipts.

Support our troops:  Bring them home!

Tea for peace delegates                                    $325

Conference room                                            $1,80

Hotel rooms                                                     $3,445

           PEACE                                                   PRICELESS!         

I miss sex in the White House.

Who would Jesus bomb?

I’m in shock but not in awe.

Frodo has lost.  Bush has the ring.

No child left behind really means send them to Iraq.

(On an 8-year-old boy’s T-shirt:  ) 

Am I collateral damage?

A sandwich-board sign on a jack Russell terrier…

(One side) Little Dog for Peace.

(Other side) He’s not my President!

Now, in 2009, many more people agree with the marchers.  A bit late, I say.  Hopefully, we will finally remember history so as to avoid being condemned to repeat it.

With much irony:  Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. *

Maren E. Morgan-Thomson

·         *It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.

I live in a strange place: Berks County in southeastern Pennsylvania.  Why strange?  Strange because it has changed so rapidly over the last 25 years.  When I first regularly spent time here starting in the 1970’s, it consisted of a city (county seat) at its center and then a few villages sprinkled throughout the rest of its diamond-shaped boundary ( yes – this is the county of John Updike’s Rabbit series.)  Everything else was farmland.  Active farmland.

This agrarian county was so peaceful and wholesome that it was pretty BORING to the high school youth, who frequently moved away the first chance they got.  But then they somehow wandered back to raise their families.  It was very common to drive past miles and miles of cornfields to get to anywhere.  But things started changing, slowly, and initially on a small scale.

Who should I blame, if blame there must be?  Commercial lenders?  Definitely yes.  Those &*^$% money-grubbers kept supporting new strip malls or shopping centers when good commercial properties stood vacant.  The Chamber of Commerce?  Probably.  I served on a committee in the Chamber and could see that its vision of “good” or “progress” was and is to transform Berks County into a clone of King of Prussia, an upscale expensive highway-riddled fast-paced, did I say expensive?, sophisticated area in suburban Philadelphia.  The Chamber could not see the goodness that Berks County had, and so committed itself to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  The then-and-future residents?  Yes.  They lusted after the lifestyle of the afore-mentioned Philadelphia suburbs.

Twenty-five years ago, one did not use the word “suburbs” for Berks County.  There was big-city Reading, and then there were Leesport and Kutztown and Mohnton and Shillington and Mt. Penn and Bernville and Birdsboro and Hamburg and Morgantown.  Each was separated from the other by fields and farms.  Manure was a springtime fragrance along our 2-lane roads.  However since that time, real estate developers (I forgot to also apportion blame to them) have persuaded families to transform their farms into housing tracts.  We now have the vinyl siding suburban houses and the *%^#^& townhouse/condo horror zones.  We now use the word “suburbs.”

We now have barely any farmland.  Instead, there are more malls, and parking lots.  There are national chain stores instead of the independent locally-owned bookstore, hardware store and fabric shops.  There are franchises of every fast- and medium-fast food chains.  And the highways – bleccch!  Lots of macadam covers former vegetation.  Fields and woods are becoming scarce.

Curiously, there is a new trendy activity that Berks County communities are racing to create.  Guess what?  They want Famers’ Markets!  We have always had a few small indoor halls which open one to three days per week for farmers and vendors to sell.  But to be truly au courant, a community must have an open air market with local, and even organic, produce.  Sort of like the roadside stands we used to have?  Strange, this Berks County.

I had trouble understanding how a Berks Jazz Fest 2009 event belonged at a national historic site of an iron-making community which operated from 1771 to 1883.     I mean, there wasn’t even ragtime as these early citizens of the republic went about their daily lives.  They were the contra dance people, not the swing dancers.

However, all was explained after the Exeter Community Band (an under-rated gem of a group) wowed the crowd with its first few numbers.  Park Superintendent Edie Shean-Hammond informed the band and the audience that the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site property was purchased by the federal government to become a “Recreation Demonstration Area” through the Work Projects Administration (WPA).  Restoration work was performed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), so those men definitely would have been living at the time that jazz selections similar to those being performed by the Exeter Community Band were popular.  In addition, Ms. Shean-Hammond stated, World War II servicemen (more jazz listeners) worked on the site.  Therefore, she felt very confident that the spirits of those men were present and appreciative of the music.

Therefore, jazz does belong at Hopewell Furnace.  Perhaps it is not germane to the iron plantation days, but it is a part of the total story of this historic American site.

I had the privilege to earn a graduate degree from Lehigh University in 1995.  The experience was so concurrently difficult and satisfying that it holds a place on my list of the top five events in my life.  As far as I am concerned, every dollar I gave Lehigh returned more than that in value.  To reiterate, it was an incredible learning experience.

When I attended Lehigh, the university seal was a football shape with a Latin motto.  As the following official webpage (http://www3.lehigh.edu/about/past/luseal.asp ) describes, it included “a sun over a book on which a heart is superimposed. These fit nicely with the university motto, taken from Francis Bacon, which surround them: ‘Homo minister et interpres naturae.’ Loosely translated, the motto means, ’Man, the servant and interpreter of nature.’ “  Also within the seal were the words “Lehigh University” and “Founded by Asa Packer 1865.”  The sun emitted copious rays of light and the football was surrounded by detailed edging.  Everything “Lehigh” had this seal: sweatshirts, lampshades, notebook covers, and the entire gamut of college bookstore products.  I own a short-sleeved T-shirt with this seal.  It is the emblem of my Lehigh.

However, in 1997 the University adopted a logo to serve as an additional visual emblem of the school.  Purportedly, it reproduces more easily in electronic media, thus meets a need.  However, I fear something more serious is afoot.  Just as fast food restaurants must continually research the pulse of consumers and adjust products and the presentations of those products, institutions of higher education are vendors which must adapt to the potential student market.  In its quest to recruit students, I fear that Lehigh University is abandoning appropriate tradition by employing a simplified graphic: a Happy Meal version of the elegant and historic seal.

Look through the university website.  Is the seal anywhere?  It is only on the above-mentioned link about history.  No longer are clothing, mugs, and memorabilia festooned with the pre-1997 seal, the only visual emblem at the time.  It has vanished.  As in the novel Fahrenheit 451, in which a fireman becomes someone who burns books rather than someone who extinguishes fires, history is being re-written.  Supposedly, the original seal will continue to be used on diplomas and important documents.  However, I ask why would a student who has known only the logo throughout his Lehigh career want the seal on his diploma? 

I am not a marketing expert.  If the pundits feel that they can reach today’s eligible prospects only through use of a trendy logo, then so be it.  However, when an august research university agrees to reduce ALL of its visual symbols to something akin to a Nike ™ swoosh (which I imagine will need to changed frequently to follow the market), then someone has gotten it very wrong.

I say use the simple logo on the web pages and a few recruiting pamphlets, but also include the Lehigh University seal.  Continue to proudly employ the seal on banners, stationery, university publications and documents.  In the bookstore, offer garments and products with choices in both designs.  Coca-Cola admitted its error when it tried to replace traditional Coke with a new version.  Likewise, Lehigh University must offer the new and classic versions of the seal-logo in documents, clothing and merchandise.  It is bad enough to lose the team name of Engineers to the Mountain Hawk, but to lose the “football and Latin” seal is too much to bear.

If you would like to make your thoughts known to the university, the appropriate contact is:  Fred McGrail, Vice President for Communications, fjm208@Lehigh.edu.

I really don’t care whether and when the U.S. government announces that the country is in a recession or a depression (although I doubt we will have a declaration of depression – what a downer.  Can you imagine what the emotion-driven stock market’s reaction would be?)  Folk signs of our recession have been clear for over a year.  All the while that Dubya’s toadies were denying it, we common folk in service and retail businesses knew it was here.

I remember reading a Wall Street Journal article about broom sales.  It proposed that declines in broom sales indicated tough economic times.  As the households of the rank and file feel the pinch, one of the money-saving decisions is to “make do” with the old broom instead of splurging on a new one.  Other industries show this making do with what we have: carpet cleaning and plastic surgery.  Both of these have experienced less activity over the last two years.  Many of us knew in which direction the country  was heading.

Saving versus spending.  I am not an economist.  Therefore, it baffles me that we citizens are urged to spend money that we do not have.  A less drastic, yet equally mystifying, notion is that we are encouraged to spend what money we DO have.  Why isn’t saving for retirement, for long-term care, for a rainy day, a good thing?  It sounds good to me.  Actually, it sounds downright mature and responsible.  I guess I will never understand.  Nonetheless, a depression will be a very personal challenge.

My grandparents and parents survived the one in the 1930’s.  I know intellectually that I can, too. But the practical aspects are utterly scary. 

The television news programs state that the number of personnel serving as security for this inauguration is four times larger than the number for the previous one.  Those of us who have little use for “W” find this totally reasonable.  However, the increase in the technology of terrorism also makes it appropriate.  Lastly, there are unfortunately a few nut cases left walking around free and unrestrained who still embrace racial prejudice.  On this most momentous and historic inauguration of a black man, the United states cannot allow a hater to harm the President.

Besides the uniformed and plainclothes security people handling the movement of VIPs and the crowd, consider what other people must be involved.  This is, in some ways, a performance.  It is a huge performance requiring a “crew.”  There must be people to handle “costumes;” equipment such as stands, telecommunications, and vehicle maintenance; first aid, and food service .  All of these people must be at the highest level of security clearance, trustworthiness, and competence.

I am thrilled enough just to be alive and watching this historic event on television.  What a story the crewpeople will be able to tell: perhaps something such as “I did an emergency hem repair for Michelle Obama.”

As Uncle Jay, of Uncle Jay Explains the News , says: this Inauguration is going to be “momentous.”  It is our country’s first dark-skinned President and first dark-skinned First Lady.  Just as my parents never thought they would live to see people land on the moon, I did not think I would live to see an African-American president of the United States.  We are extremely pleased that we are witnessing these events in the progress of humankind.

I offer this prayer in honor of the occasion:

Dear Kind and Loving God of Goodness:

Please keep the Obama family, both the nuclear family and the extended relatives, safe in eye of your care.  Please have all the guardian angels and spirits on duty and all the apprentice angels in on the act.  Thank you for this momentous moment in the history of our country, a country that tries hard to do the right thing but sometimes stumbles.  Let the Inauguration Day be a joyful celebration of a fitting and proud step for our citizens and for all your purposes.

The first African-American First Lady will start her reign in a few days and the country is wishing her and her family much success.  Happily, a few trail-blazers, notably Hilary Clinton, have encouraged the American public to regard the First Lady as more than a woman whose clothing and hairstyle must be inspected and dissected at every turn.  Therefore, let’s have the media boycott mention of Michelle’s clothing.  Please.

Michelle Obama is an attorney, an activist, and a mother of young children.  She has many options for how she will direct her energy and we can support her in whatever roles she chooses.   Also, we can support her decision about how much limelight she attracts.  From what I can tell, getting the family settled in the new house and schools is her first priority.  Although the public may be clamoring for news about Mrs. Obama, our closest token to royalty, I am betting that she keeps level-headed control over her life, as always.

Mazel tov, Mrs. Obama!

After Barack Obama was elected in early November, I decided to learn more about him.  Since he is a prolific writer, what better way than to read one of his books?  The one fate led me to is The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream  (2006).  I was impressed by both his comfortable writing style and his sensible philosophy.

You must understand that I am so completely disinterested in politics that I would probably choose enduring a root canal over watching a show such as “Meet the Press.”  I am just not wired to examine politics and politicians.  So, I am relieved that the book was somewhat readable.  It is a breath of fresh air to realize Obama is self-deprecating and can laugh at himself.

Over and over he showed an understanding and sensitivity to seeing all the sides of an issue.  This totally supports his assertion that “we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart (p.2).”  I feel that we are a lucky nation to welcome such a man to the Presidency.

If you can immediately answer that question (as can I), then I know how old you are.  Or, at least I know your minimum age.  In fact, it was a great age-estimator question for me when I was dating “the second time around.”

Now for the rest of you, the particular Kennedy (because there certainly are a gaggle of them) is JFK, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.  He was the 35^th President of the United States, serving from 1961 to 1963.  Although I was a mere child with absolutely NO interest in the world beyond my immediate neighborhood, I was touched by his vitality and youth via osmosis from the mind-set  of the adult world.  Not only Americans, but much of the “free world” was enamored of him.   To say he was charismatic grossly under-describes his appeal.

Therefore, when he was gunned down in Dallas right before Thanksgiving, anyone who was age five or older had the tragedy’s events imprinted on his consciousness forever.  Everyone aware of it knows exactly where he or she was when she heard, exactly what part of the day she heard, and exactly how she learned it. 

For younger Americans, the day of the disintegration of the space shuttle Challenger in January 1986 may be equivalent.  For all who were aware, the attack of 9/11 2001 is the same.