Meditation for America

I wonder if it is comforting, to drive to the grocery store along a road named for a great uncle or grandfather? How must it feel to see a country lane, which led to a farm where your greats lived and tanned leather, and made shoes, ... or raised the cattle whose hides would do that work, and see the road sign that points to that place, and bears their name, ... Your name?

Do the names fade from...your mind as they might on a sign, disappearing in a scotoma that hides them from your awareness? Or is it a greater blessing to leave that place, and then come home again after generations, so that the signs are fresh and contain the magic that once was alive, that told a story of the people who made that place, those people, and me?

Perhaps it is both. My thanks to Vicky and Brian Sickler, Owners of Edward Sickler Monuments in Franklin, NY. Brian also serves as the Secretary for the Ouleout Valley Cemetery. How strange it must have seemed yesterday to have a Pennsylvanian in a "Kansas" tee shirt come to their shop, asking about family members, an uncle and aunt who both died in 1917, the very year their son was killed in the war. And how kind that they called me this morning to say they had found my folks after I had not. And those two, Abel and Jennie Stilson, rest not far from several Sicklers I had seen buried there in my walk at Ouleout Valley yesterday.

I wondered whether Vicky noticed those stones as well, or if she had gone to the cemetery so intent upon being kind to that stranger, to me, that she did not see her husband's family members at all. I did, and those folks become part of a bigger story in that lovely little town among other little towns in a green and kind county in New York.

I never knew Franklin, New York, when my grandfather was alive. I could not tell him how familiar it feels, and how the voices there sing with his accent, ... my mother's accent. I couldn't share that I was curious in which of those Georgian framed houses he had been born. I am still.

How typical my family is to every other here in America. 10% of Americans descend from those few on the Mayflower who survived, and the rest of what we are is derived from others who joined us other ways, ... and discovering the ports and rivers, and borders they crossed to join us, ... or to remain in place as the rest of us swarmed across a land they had forever lived upon and did not even understand, could be "owned" at all.

I love America best of all because of its folk ways. I like the parts that let you drive for fifteen minutes between towns. And I like the bustle of the Cities that were built by immigrants making trunks and suitcases, given loans by fellow countrymen, strangers, who had arrived before them. Survival is success. Sharing with strangers made us into America. They made us, ... just as we will all make what comes next.

I love this America. It shines by its diversity and its durability. It will last, I have no doubt. No single person can corrupt it forever, nor any of us, no matter what we believe She should become, can veer her sharply one way or the other, though we claim that to be our fear, and our hope.

I visit these family places and links to reassure myself that there is incredible continuity to who we are and to what we do. Time restores what TV steals from us at times like these. A drive along county roads brings sanity to me, that the overwhelming conventions and campaigns steal away.

That is great comfort, and an even greater strength we all can share, as we come to that moment when we should think not of the folks who demand our money and our vote, ... but who share the cities, factories, towns and villages with us.

I will be voting for them, and for Us.

REALLY? AMERICA AT WAR FOREVER?

WAR is the most complicated act this nation designed for itself to do. That we are so easily and so often drawn into them, ... should be a deep and genuine concern for Constitutional Scholars, and those of us who fight them and pay for them. It should be an even deeper concern for our Presidents and Congressional Leaders. It is the deepest concern for every mother and father in these times when WAR has become the...great American Pasttime.


I have never been drafted, nor even received a reply when I had asked to serve in the reserves of the armed services of our nation in a Medi-Vac Unit. Many in my family have. I've read accounts of their services and awards, commissions and pensions. They date from before the Revolution through the Civil War, and right up through World War II. So many.

There was not always a declared war, or the need for one to be declared. We were not in a constant state of war as we are now, ... Presidents requested the action, ... Congress declared a War, ... and we were in it, together. Men went off, ... women kept the homefront. (We've seen that Women are great fighters as well, ... great pilots, and can fill every comabt role). Costs were assessed in everyone's life, not just the few who had a soldier deployed. Every war differed, but some had repayments for clothes, a rifle and a horse. A plot of ground in a far off state. Others demanded rationing of essentials. Some asked a 2 cent stamp attached to a photo taken and then sent with a Yankee to war.

War was a declaration of national purpose. We were all in, by definition. Teachers, Like John Carey, signed up. Farmers like Henry Dillman, were drafted. Brothers like Charles Fox, and William Carey, ... died and were buried in some far off battlefield or nearby, often in a plot never marked. Stories were fashioned and written, and spoken before veteran groups to explain the cisrcumstances, but they have often been found to be fiction, to describe the circumstances of the death in a way that might comfort the family and the townfolk. While I did not serve, I worked in hospitals. Death, is death. It is not easy, but it is gentle. Our Maker provides for what medicine and the military can not.

To our Congress, and Our President, the ones we have now, and the ones we will have next, I suggest they address the constant war(s) we seem to find for ourselves. War is not sport. The effects of Hundreds of Thousands of injured, disfigured, disabled and diseased veterans is something this nation has known for 150 years and more.

There seem only three ways to solve the issues that affect and afflict our veterans, ...

FIRST, ... We commit to care for our veterans, from every war and from every service, in a way that will make them whole, and that will address the health effects of their service, no matter how arcane or obscure the DOD might believe their claim to be. What we do not see in civilian care, but see rotuinely in our veterans, ... is from their service! The VA needs to cut the crap and start the care.

SECOND, ... If our national leaders want to avoid the cost of caring for veterans, it must desist from declaring WAR every time the suggestion is raised. And it must desist from pretending an action declared by any president, and not sanctioned by Congress as a declaration of WAR, is a state of WAR at all. And if that does not cease the action, then the Congress must deny such activities the funding necessary to continue the war.

THIRD, and this is critical, ... Our NATIONAL GUARD was always intended to be a state-based means of repelling national and regional assaults, from within our nation, or from nature. It was not intended to be some sort of auxiliary resource for Presidents and Congress to fight undeclared wars, for constant re-deployment to theaters of action in wars that were never formally declared. The use of the NATIONAL GUARD for actions other than declared states of War should be, and very likely is, ... Unconstitutional.

WAR is something America must do , always, as an exception. Our founders knew that from the inception of this Republic. It is the responsibility of the President and the Congress to ASSURE the Constitution is adhered to in this regard.

When Our Armed Services are sent under arms for any reasons, and to any place, we owe them the full measure of care, support and recovery for their commitment and their experince under the command of the Commander in Chief during the confliuct in which HE/SHE ordered them to serve. And if it is an UNDECLARED War, then it must be called out. Pretty simple, really.