Words Have Meanings And Consequences

I am remembering Nixon's aide, Gordon Liddy telling Chuck Colson, White House Counsel that he was off to kill columnist Jack Anderson. Why? Because HR Halderman, POTUS’ Chief of Staff had in frustration said, referring to the columnist, "we have to get rid of this guy". No saint himself, Colson at least had the common sense to stop Liddy.

That was then; this is now. So, when do we begin realizing that words have consequences; that what some might see as over-reaching campaign rhetoric is seen by others as a "call to exercise second amendment rights". In a Florida congressional race this fall, we heard: "If ballots don't work we will use bullets!" In New York, a candidate for governor threatened a reporter that he would "take him out". These utterances are from candidates for high public office not some backyard argument and in the age of replicating news cycles, they are seen and re-seen on the cable outlets.

Even Pat Buchanan’s eloquent call to “Mount up and ride to the sound of the guns” is only meaningful when taken with the historic understanding that it is a historical reference to the Battle of Waterloo and not, as some might think, a call to arms. Thinking about that, maybe Buchanan was with Wellington and Blucher that day.

Thankfully, the vast majority of us ignore histrionic declarations like that and maybe even laugh them off but it only takes one who does not, one who takes the utterance seriously, or is deranged, or maybe, like my fellow Fordham alumnus, Liddy, is a true Machiavellian.

Our parents taught us: "Sticks and stones etc" but that lovely allegory is no longer applicable in this age of instant action and equally instant reaction. YouTube and FaceBook et al have changed the scene forever and words do cause harm as seen by recent cyber-bullying cases.

Putting the picture of a congresswoman’s district on a leaflet with gun sights around it is without a doubt First Amendment protected speech. But just because we have a constitutional right to do something does not mean we must or sometimes even should.

Civility must not be seen as archaic. The vitriol that we heard at Tea Party meetings this year was scary but the reality that very few of our political leaders spoke out against it was equally disheartening.Recent events in Arizona should press everyone: politicians and supporters, pundits and handlers, TV commentators and talk-radio personalities, even blog writers, all of us to tone back the rhetoric but I sadly doubt it will.

For that, shame on all of us.

John-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett and Duck

It is Sunday morning here in Dar-es-Salaam and I'm feeling a little like Garcin in No Exit. I remember Sartre’s quote: "l'enfer, c'est les autres" – Hell is other people. There are days that sentiment matches my mood in Tanzania. Thankfully those thoughts are an extreme – and they pass. Extremes must be momentary or they will consume us.

There are more days that equate Samuel Beckett’s plot-line in Waiting for Godot: Estragon wants to leave but he can’t; he has to wait for Godot. Godot never arrives. It is the absolute of never that chills me or maybe it is a slight case of malaria.

If metaphorically the two plays are joined into the reality of my time in Tanzania, Sartre trumps Beckett hands-down: There must be hope; even Garcin got out; how many months did he endure in that room? How many months will I? Good question but no answer. It is still better than the tomorrow that Godot promised and the promise he never kept. C'est l'enfer.

Waiting is such a part of life here in this dusty and lately rainy East African city. Waiting for people, predictable, as after all this is Tanzania, but also waiting for endorsements and agreements and even expected criticisms. Censure I can and have endured; it arrived quickly and was actually humorous – something about Troy New York and math majors. That aside, I must strive, as Beckett so aptly says, “to hold the terrible silence at bay”, more so since my sole colleague set out for home.

So, what is all this about? Well, pictures tell stories, yes? Here stories must make pictures.

It is breakfast, this very Sunday morning, breakfast with Duck. He eats very little; truth be told he eats nothing. What he does and does so well is connect me to home. You see, over the last ten years, Duck and I have travelled more miles than most people let alone ducks and always together.

We “met” at our parish fair in St Pete where I used a drop curve to knock ersatz milk bottles off a platform. Marge says it was luck but I am sticking to the cross seam curve story. Whatever, he entered our life that evening and spent the next few months on a book shelf in our office.

Suddenly his world changed as I was called by WHO to the Kosovo Conflict and Duck found himself, courtesy of Marge and unknowing to me, in my duffel. He became my mascot in that cold and damp place; a piece of home where there was no other. Duck and I survived and returned home. We had become a team.

Every time I have been assigned since then, Duck has joined me: in the Egypt I love so; in beautiful Jordan and in not so beautiful Indonesia (memory-wise) where together we heard and felt the horrors of 9/11. Through it all he travelled well - most often in my back pack - a fact that necessitated at times an explanation to airport security. Try that in Singapore.

Another war, Iraq, summer of 2003 and again he came with me and lived through a summer of heat and tragedy. There were some good times; he met some furry friends courtesy of our security chief. Here we were, a humanitarian Team Leader and an ex SAS officer both holding on to what my daughter Hilary discourteously calls a stuffed animal. Alan’s were two small dogs. All of us endured the heat and the bullets and bombs and the RPG’s and what was called food and most of all thanked God for the good graces of the regiment safeguarding us. We came through when so many others did not. Duck came home again. I think I left something behind.

I promised Marge and Duck no more wars and to date have kept my pledge. After all, what conflict wants a gray haired sixty (plus) year old public health guy that travels with a slightly shop-worn duck?

Duck has had good trips: cruises to Alaska and Central America replete with black-tie dinners. He dresses accordingly.He has dined on the Queen Mary crossing to and from England and been to Casablanca and Rome and Monaco. He joined Marge and me in London and Paris and Bruges. He even went to the game parks in Tanzania and travelled the mountains of Swaziland.

He has met special companions like himself. On a flight to Zurich, the attendant looked at Duck sitting on my arm rest and brought back her bag to show me a stuffed dog. He had belonged to a soldier in the 101st Airborne, a soldier wounded and being flown back to Walter Reed. The soldier has asked her to keep it for him. She has. We both cried a little.

So here we are having breakfast. Must have been a good omen as the hotel uncovered a stash of Earl Grey tea just as my last remaining bag was lowered into the requisite daily pot.

Duck and I will do what we have to do here because that is what we do. We cope and strive and push and cajole but we, he and I, will succeed. If I did not believe that I would not be here.

He has to keep reminding me that it will end and we will go home and that is certain. So, do we conclude Sartre was right about other people? I do seem to do better with Duck.

I wonder what ever happened to Garcin and Estragon.

Maybe if they had a duck?

Written originally at the Movenpick Hotel; Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania; 3 May 2008 and modified (slightly) recently.

Speaking of Immigration - Swaziland Style

I think this could be a screen play. Could you please arrange for Robert Redford to play me? Anyone but Tom Cruise.

This is the saga of one Abdul Hakeem, a good man, no terrorist motives, a religious man, a family man; and a member of our team in Swaziland.

I had almost given up on ever seeing our Civil Engineer, not having heard anything positive for days and then hearing from him on Friday that he was “ready to come” but needed a ticket and etc. You know the rest.

Diplomatic friends came to the rescue somehow on a weekend with EU politicians and PM’s and heaven knows what else involved and I am advised he will be here today on a plane landing in Manzini at 10:50, coincidentally the same flight I was on what seemed to be eons ago but in fact was one solitary week. Good on who figured all this out.

By the way, the airport has one gate and one runway. The plane holds 30 people.

So, foolish man that I am, I assume that in due course, maybe an hour or so, we will be graced by the presence of this long sought after gentleman from Nigeria. The timing seemed propitious as we were leaving shortly on a two week very rural sojourn.

That hour came and went.

Then a phone call from a Mr. Makosi, chief of immigration at the Manzini Airport (an impressive title for a locale with one gate). He grilled me on how a person with no visa would dare to enter Swaziland (to be accurate - try to enter but I chose not to be that specific). I of course had little or no answer to his enquiries. Public Health I am good at; Swaziland immigration procedures are above my pay grade.

When asked about my visa I demurred and said I was an American working on behalf of the European Union (I thought that might either impress or confuse him). I also, in a firm voice, pointed out that neither I nor my Australian, Italian, Kenyan colleagues needed such a document. All that was true (I think).

I told him that we worked with the Ministry of Health and he asked me for a name from that organization and I gave him that of our liaison. He said he would could call her. No answer but should not be a surprise: it is Sunday but still he was persistent and said he would call her on Monday. That is until he heard her name and said: "that is not a Swazi name". This of course was true as the young lady was in fact a resident intern on loan from the British government.

Perhaps out of desperation or perhaps his shift was ending, all of that aside my now frustrated bureaucrat friend got serious and asked me if I trusted Abdul Hakeem and being a good soldier I said yes and mirabile dictu, he said our Nigerian colleague could precede to Mbabane to meet us.

I thought this was the end of a bad dream but whatever the antonym to the above Latin phrase, no. As Abdul Hakeem exited the one room airport, he was taken into custody by the local gendarmerie. A call came explaing that as he apparently had no visa he could not enter Swaziland.

I calmly, well as calm as I am known to get) explained the past several hours of negotiations. The answer was simple: Mr. Makosi had “exceeded his authority”. I decided that this was not the time to argue.

In desperation I turned to a local contact with whom we had become friendly, a Mr. Mandla Masuku. On this day he was dressed to the nines in local garb including a not too modest outer garment, a spear and some sort of a club. Never mind, I figured, how worse could it get?
He spoke to the police and then told me he had to go to Manzini to act as our agent. In for a penny; in for a pound I figured so off he went with about 50 Euros of the money I had for travel costs.

To the shock of everyone, one hour later he was back with Abdul Hakeem but was keeping his passport. He had given his word to the police and also promised them (and us) he would secure a visa for him by Tuesday. He says he can and that it will cost 50 more Euros. Sounds OK – but what do I know.

So, off we went: north to Piggs Peak and checked ourselves and Abdul Hakeem into a hotel sans passport (not an easy task but we pulled it off) and here we are: one Nigerian Civil Engineer without a passport and one dread-locked Swazi holding his future (as well as our Euros) in his hands.

Sometimes I try to be serious; this time……well, I tried and failed.

Please understand that I must use humor in cases like this; either that or go crazy – though some may well argue it is too late for that. Their point is well taken.

I might just tell everyone that all is well. Why upset them. Right now our colleague is with us and we are somewhere – and I say somewhere and I really have no idea – travelling what are euphemistically called roads though the mountains of Swaziland.

Somehow with the knowledge that Abdul Hakeem is safe and with us and that we will solve the visa problem. But first I have a Project to run and miles to go before…..no, wait, these are Kilometers. Never mind, you get the metaphor.

Ther Names Live Forever More

Preface: Amara, Iraq; that terribly hot summer of 2003; a place of war and suffering for countless and for those of us who chose to perform humanitarian missions, a glint, an opportunity for hope.

We are a relatively few miles from the un-guarded border with Iran, a border that existed even in 1916 when Amara or Kut as it was called was one of many provincial cities in Mesopotamia, a far-flung component of the Ottoman Empire. There was no Iraq.

Mesopotamia, a Greek word interpreted as the land between two rivers is exactly that; the rivers in question being the Tigris and Euphrates. This is ancient Sumeria, where the bronze age was born; where language and alphabets developed; where the first cities arose. In a way, where history began to be recorded.

Ur, birthplace of Abraham and thus of the three great monotheistic religions lies to the west; to the north, Babylon and biblical Nineveh; to the East the natural border between Arabs and Persians, the Zagros Mountains; and to the south, a few scant miles, the sacred meeting of the great rivers, forming the southern boundary of the fittingly termed “cradle of civilization.”

Armies have fought here throughout the millennia, history only remembering some. Now America and its allies had come to this primordial land. In the “Great War” it had been British troops from her homeland and her empire. In the 1916 siege of Kut, the British lost more men, 23,000, than in any other battle except on the European mainland.

Like most, I had never heard of that battle and yet here I was, in Amara, to coordinate UN efforts to repatriate refugees from Iran back to Iraq. One afternoon I was asked by Iraqi staff to come see “some graves.” Thinking I was about to see additional mass graves from Saadam Hussein, I accompanied them. What I was shown staggered me: the memorialized remnants of that battle from almost a century ago, names and regiments carved in stone.

I wrote the missive that night literally by candle light because, as always, there was no power. I gave it to the British Garrison Commander in Amara and he asked if I would permit him sending it on to London.

There is an epilogue or afterword at its completion.

Ther Names Live Forever More

The white crosses that once marked their resting place have long since been carried away for “storage”. Possibly their Christian symbolism offended Muslim sensibility; perhaps it was a political decision. The reasons matter not.

It has been such a long time.

For the thousands of men who forever rest in the sandy sun-baked ground of Amara, Iraq it has been almost ninety years. Their names, still clearly readable are inscribed on a stonewall, listed as they always are by regiment and by rank. Their proud regimental crests precede the tally of their names; in the din of battle they did not but in this their final rest Colonels pave the way for Corporals and Privates. The Brigade remains formed: all present or accounted for. Certainly the Almighty does not abide by these protocols but nevertheless here it seems fitting.

The came from the empire: Aussies and Kiwis; Sikhs and Punjabis; West Indians and Africans; but mostly they were and are forever British. The tally of regiments includes many long gone: the quaintness of the East Kent Cycling Corps: they lost men. Did they bring their bicycles all the way from the green pastures of Southern England to the hell-like temperatures of Iraq? The Royal Flying Corps is here, names testimony to the flimsy planes of the day but so is the Chaplain Corps; how did they die?

Is it important?

The Black Watch lost so many men as they have in so many battles. Did the pipes play one final dirge for them? Did they beat the drums slowly?

And what of the lads from Wales and Ireland; from the heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire and oh so many counties and towns in Blake’s green and verdant land? Who said farewells to them, those young men who died for King and Country in a place not long remembered except by those left behind. Does anyone think of John or Nigel or James or Patrick on Remembrance Sunday or are they all part of the honored dead on the empty tomb on Whitehall we call the Cenotaph.

It has been such a long time.

Come you back you British Soldier! cries Kipling, and in truth the British Army has come back, back to Amara. For the King’s Own Scottish Borderers now occupy the Governor’s House; their armored tanks and cars traversing the streets and fields where once their olden comrades fought; fought and died; died by the thousand; died and were buried; their granite carved names forever to remain their testimony.

But these are not Flanders’s Fields; no poppies grow here. There is a grounds keeper but this is the Iraq of today and he like so many others is poor. He tries to grow something where crosses once stood but fails. Perhaps there is meaning in that but it would be lost on a hungry man.

He shows the maps of the graves and the books with their names and he reveals a gesture from today’s British forces: new roses, resting beneath each of the panels that hold the impressed names. The broken stone tablets that once proudly graced the archway now rest on the dirt, the honoured dirt that holds these heroes. The British have returned to Amara. Their dead comrades welcome them.

It has been such a long time.

Listen…..Listen to the dirt speaking….Remember them…..Lest we forget.

Let their names live forever more here where they fought and died. Let their memories live in the hearts of their countrymen and of free men everywhere.

Dr Thomas I Hayes Jr
Amara, Iraq
August 2003

Epilogue:

I left Amara and Iraq in the autumn of 2003 and after a short respite home in St Petersburg was posted to Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, East Africa. In November, and shortly before Remembrance Sunday, I received an e-mail from the then Officer-in-Charge in Amara. He asked if I would let my missive be read to the troops during their remembrance ceremonies. I agreed immediately.

For myself, I attended services at the British and Commonwealth Cemetery in Dar. I don’t remember much of what was said that sunny day though I was pleased the German Ambassador stood next to his British counterpart. I felt that was fitting.

I can be forgiven I hope for my thoughts that day were thousands of miles north, north and east to Amara, to where young men in battle dress and formed ranks were remembering other young men who stood, where they stood, so long ago.

I was and remain so very honoured that my words were heard that day and later published in London.

It has been such a long time.

TIH

SHAKING HANDS

Preface: Baseball, our self-defined but probably accurately national pastime came back to us last night albeit in a single game: the New York Yankees vs. the Boston Red Sox. Fittingly though it hurts to admit it, the Sox came back from what appeared to be a sure loss to win, 9-7, due in some part, perhaps, to it being opening day in venerable Fenway Park.

No other team played yesterday, a startling difference from the historic opening days that I remember as a young man: Cincinnati and Washington, DC. The Queen City fixture commemorating the birthplace of the major leagues and the capital city of the Republic, replete for the last hundred years (excepting when there was no team) with the President throwing out the first pitch. What would we have done without William Howard Taft?

Returning to the present-day, well almost present, I recalled an occasion somewhere between the Sox winning the American League Pennant in 2004 and their trying to win their first World Series in more or less four-score and something years. They would be playing the Cardinals and strangely I found myself rooting for Boston, ghosts of The Babe aside.

In 2004, I commemorated a personal historic happening with a missive, a writing based on something I do not believe I had ever done before, at least not knowingly. I shook hands and offered congratulations and good fortune against the St Louis team to a Red Sox fan. I was not struck down by bolts of lightning nor visited by specters more normally to be found in Iowa.

Boston did prevail and to show it was not a fluke did so again 3 years later.

It must also be admitted that my conversion could in large part be attributed to my living in St Petersburg where our local team, The Rays, compete each and every year in the same division as do the Yankees and Sox.

It seems fitting that I should post that missive here as once again the cycle of we call spring has, as happens every year, brought out cries of “Play Ball” throughout this wonderful land of ours.

SHAKING HANDS

I did something the other day that I have not knowingly done in my sixty-two years or at least since gaining what was then euphemistically referred to as the “age or reason”.

I shook hands with a Boston Red Sox fan and said congratulations!

The Red Sox fan in question, somewhat half my age, accepted my gesture graciously then looked me in the eye and questioned: “It hurts doesn’t it?” I acceded it did adding that it was comparable to the 1955 experience of losing to Brooklyn when Sandy Amoros made a catch off the bat of Yogi that even now seems impossible. My new found companion had no idea of the incident in question so we parted, he to watch and wait for the Series to begin and me to wonder how this had happened.

You see, I come from New York and the operative phrase is “come-from”. Like so many others coming from that landing place for immigrants, I have not lived there for forty years, distinctively since graduating from Fordham, a fine University and perhaps as important, situated only a few miles from the “Big Ballpark in the Bronx”, Yankee Stadium. My father first took me there from our home in Queens when I was six. The occasion was the lying in state of Babe Ruth. Babe was the raison d'être for the Stadium; the dynasty started with him; he is also according to many the reason the Red Sox have not won a World Series in what Lincoln would have calculated as four score and six years.

Recollections are clear. I remember the late 40’s and early 50’s and the improbability of Jerry Coleman’s triple and Phil Rizzuto’s suicide squeeze bunt; I remember we somehow always won. Reynolds and Raschi, Lopat and Ford; Henrich, Keller and DiMaggio I remember being in Nashville in the 70’s and taking the afternoon off for the playoff game, again to see the unpredictable, a homerun by Bucky Dent and another Boston defeat. New heroes: Reggie and Nettles, Catfish and Sparky.

Though it all the voice of Bob Sheppard resonating across the years:

“Welcome to Yankee Stadium!”

Even in the wilderness years when my Yankees were in second division wilderness, we always had the fallback of being a fan of not only the Yankees but of “any team playing Boston”. I knew that Jim Lomborg would not be able to defeat Bob Gibson; he didn’t. I remember living in London and seeing the CNN transmission of Bill Buckner’s boot and the Mets next day victory. I watched Carlton Fisk’s magnificent home run, knowing in my heart that surely the next day Cincinnati would rebound; they did. I remembered last year, getting the scores on the internet while living in Tanzania. Yankees Win!

So what happened this year? How could a Yankee team drop four straight games including the last two in the Bronx to a Boston team they had just embarrassed in Fenway? Looking back, perhaps I had a premonition on that final seventh game evening. I remembered that Brooklyn’s Archbishop Molloy had once asked for prayers for Gil Hodges, the Dodger icon who was batting poorly; He went 4 for 5 that day.

Surely God loves the Yankees as much or probably more since that cur O'Malley took the beloved Dodgers west of Philadelphia.

I implored the deity in our dinner prayers to wake up the Babe and Joe and Lou and Mickey (on his birthday) and give us another victory.

They always had; but this year they didn’t.

The Red Sox fan was right: it did hurt.

Yet I am incredulous that a part of me wants Boston to beat the Cardinals. Maybe it evolves from Grover Cleveland Alexander striking out “Push Um Up” Tony Lazzeri in the 20’s or the four straight against the Yankees in the 60’s. Maybe it is for Pesky and Doer; for Dominick and Teddy Ballgame and Yaz. Then again, maybe it is acceptance that even Babe feels enough punishment has been administered. I don't know maybe it is just time, time for their fans to experience what we have so many times.

When Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown, the British band played “The World Turned Upside Down.” Perhaps the Yankee Stadium organist could learn the tune for next year’s opening day.

October 2004

From Gallatin to Ghent to Gag Rules

Prologue: Funny how things happen.

Last week I was in Montana to see my daughter married. The site of the wedding was close to the Gallatin River, one of the headwaters of the Missouri and a place where my daughter and her now-husband “white-water raft.”

Even as a student of history, I only knew of the name Gallatin from a town named after him in Tennessee. So, I looked and researched and thus starts another missive.

Albert Gallatin, Swiss born, Harvard Professor; Senator (till deceitfully removed for not having lived in US for ten years); Congressman; Majority Leader; nemesis to Alexander Hamilton; appointed as Treasury Secretary by Jefferson; reappointed by Madison; began Ways and Means Committee; Ambassador to France and later Great Britain; Founder of New York University. Not too bad a resume for someone about whom I would voice the average American knows little or nothing, until recently myself included.

Important to this discussion, however, is that he, along with Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams formed the American team sent to negotiate the end of the correspondingly little known War of 1812, a conflict ending by signature shortly before Christmas 1814 with the treaty of Ghent and as well before the much more notable battle of New Orleans.

Besides this unfortunate lack of punctuality, two elements are important from the treaty. First: though America had now defeated Britain twice in armed conflict, the trio of Adams, Clay and Gallatin were unable to negotiate solutions to the principal causes of the war in question: neutrality and impressments of sailors.

Of greater potential consequence was the inclusion in the treaty, annotated as Article X, of a specific call for the end of slavery. No historian would say that slavery was even a remote cause of this conflict and never before had such language been included in any official American document. Nevertheless, it was and the treaty was unanimously approved by the Senate and signed by the President with these remarkable words enduring:

“Whereas the traffic in slaves is irreconcilable with the principles of humanity and justice, and whereas both His Majesty and the United States are desirous of continuing their efforts to promote its entire abolition, it is hereby agreed that both the contracting parties shall use their best endeavours to accomplish so desirable an object”

This was a mere twenty five years after the Constitution had for most purposes excluded even recognizing slaves as anything more than property and yet here, in a treaty to end a war having nothing to do with slavery, we, the American we, agreed to use our “best endeavours” to “promote its entire abolition”. Pretty strong language and pre-dating the 13th Amendment by some fifty years.

So: what happened to stop the implementation of Article X of the Treaty of Ghent?

Well, for twenty odd years very little except constant fighting over states rights, free and slave states and Henry Clay’s Missouri Compromise. Finally, it appears Congress, both houses had enough and from that came a unique piece of congressional gamesmanship called the Gag Rule.

Since the Constitution came into effect, pro-slavery forces had barred any discussion of slavery in Congress. Using their First Amendment rights, anti slavery groups, believing that since there was a clear right to petition the government, de-jure such petitions and consequently slavery itself, would have to be discussed. Numerous petitions for the abolition of slavery were submitted year after year. Congressional leaders had no interest in bringing these matters to the floor so devised Gag Rules.

Utterly ignoring the First Amendment right to petition the government, the initial Gag Resolution was enacted in 1835. The United States House of Representatives and Senate ruled that all petitions to Congress about slavery would not be read or discussed but would be tabled without consideration. In so many words they were filed in the trash bin or whatever the equivalent was then. The gagging of anti-slavery petitions by Congress continued until 1844.

In effect, Gag Resolutions / Rules permitted Congress to abridge its own First Amendment right to petition the Government. Furthermore, by doing this, Congress countermanded the specifications contained within Article X of the Treaty of Ghent requiring that both nations attempt to end slavery. All this was ignored.

Two House resolutions passed in the spring of 1836. The first stated that Congress had no constitutional authority to interfere with slavery in the states and the second that it "ought not do so” in the District of Columbia. Amendments to the contrary were tabled.

Former President John Quincy Adams, himself a signer of the Treaty of Ghent and after his presidency a congressman from Massachusetts, fought these Gag Resolutions every year as they were being re-introduced. To stop his use of parliamentary procedures to virtually hold up Congress from its scheduled efforts, the House passed the Twenty-first Rule (1840), which banned even the acceptance of anti-slavery petitions. As a House Rule it took precedence over any petition or resolution and thus stopped Quincy Adams.

Today we question signing statements and the sixty vote rule in the Senate or the right of a single senator from Kentucky or Alabama or Florida to literally stop critical government functions but that is what our Constitution allows. Article I, Section 4 says:

“Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.”

We look today at the inability of Congress to enact meaningful legislation whether it be on healthcare or jobs or financial reform. In each generation our forebears have expressed their equivalent frustrations with Congress. Where are we now on Social Security Reforms? This is the “third rail” today; in the 1840’s it was slavery. In time the matters are solved and they are solved by patience and not by “going to the mattresses”. These ae not new issues; the pandering by members of both houses to TV cameras is in fact a vast improvement to the 1800’s unabridged use of the print media. At least today members are aware that cameras are on.

Oh, and if you think that Gag Rules are old history consider this: The Mexico City Policy, comes close to a reincarnation of a Gag Rule, though this time from the Executive branch. It is a discontinuous executive policy enacted in 1984 by President Reagan that required all non-governmental organizations in other countries receiving US funding to cease performing or promoting abortion services as a method of family planning. This non- law policy was continued by President GHW Bush in 1989; ended by President Clinton(1993); reinstituted by President GW Bush (2001) and retracted (2009) by President Barack Obama. I expect that Quincy Adams would rile against this use of executive power as well.

More to the point: how would we react today knowing that a momentous clause in a treaty approved by not only the required two-thirds of the Senate but unanimously was completely ignored for 50 years? Hopefully as we always have with editorials and speeches and finally with our ballots and not our bullets. Sadly of course it was left to bullets to end slavery.

Someone said “History is the same garden entered into from different gates”; I suppose that is correct and as evidence: that is how while driving to a wedding, seeing a river in Montana, named after a politician I did not know and reading a treaty ending a fairly inconsequential war, this missive was written.

By the way, the wedding was wonderful.

A Ride In The Desert

Prologue: I experienced the terrible happenings of 9/11 in Palembang, Indonesia. To that extent I was probably among the least informed due to the shortcomings in South Sumatra of electronic communication as well as the bias of local print media. Leaving Indonesia towards the end of October that year, I arrived in Egypt to complete a project begun the previous spring. As I had lived in Cairo for several years in the middle 90’s, I had the opportunity of once again seeing old friends. This is a commentary I wrote on October 26, 2001.


I had a date this morning with a beautiful lady named Nour. I had not seen her for a long while and it was a very special time. Some of you have seen a picture of the two of us and that picture has become my screen saver. You see, Nour is the lovely white mare that I have been riding for many years whenever my labors bring me to Egypt. Maybe it is that in this misguided world, a world getting more fanatical each day, the simple act of riding a wonderful horse into the desert is reassuring.

I rode with Osama, my Bedouin friend of many years. He is one of the people I am closest to in this ancient land and it was indeed good to be back in the desert with him, just the two of us, riding and laughing and remembering. Over the years we have seen friends come and go, shared experiences, sought advice, told many stories, but always trusting in each other's honesty. In a way that is a one way street because Bedouins cannot lie; it is not a part of their character.

I had not seen Osama since the terrible events of 11 September. Life is important to Bedouins and the specter of thousands of people dying in moments is as unthinkable to them as perhaps it was to us before we watched that horror unfolding.

We slowed our horses to a comfortable walk and crossed a sand-dune. There in front of us stood the Pyramids. In many ways the WTC Towers were the Pyramids of our age. Now they are gone. We shared our mutual horror and disgust. He asked me who committed this act and I responded with an unequivocal: Bin Laden. There, in the shadows of millennia, in this meeting of two cultures, I immediately realized we held different views. There was not anger in our discussion; there never is. What there was is reciprocal tolerance. The conflict is not between he and I as persons but between what we are. I can lament with Osama but I cannot feel the frustrations of the Muslim people nor can they feel ours.

Perhaps we don't want to admit it but realistically our respective cultures are presently in conflict and pragmatically they have been for centuries. Was not and is not our response to 11 Sept that of outrage? Can we not feel in our wrath some of what they have felt for so much longer? Or is it that we do not care to feel? Maybe what we are seeing in Pakistan and Indonesia is but the beginning of a ground swell of their outrage, a fury built up for so long and, yes, exacerbated by happenings in Palestine, but having roots in our different views of history.

Have we looked at the alternatives to what we are told is history? We sometimes do when it is to our benefit; we reviled apartheid though we were guilty of it ourselves. Is there some measure of truth in history seen through the eyes of others? If there is, then we must study this and search inside ourselves for answers and find them before those answers become moot.

This is what I learned today, on a wonderful horse, in the desert, with a friend I cherish and who I know is searching as I am for answers to the same vexing questions.

Please God grant Osama and I wisdom, the wisdom that all of us need to live together so that as he and I did today, all people can ride into their deserts and ride together.

Cairo, Egypt
Friday 26 October 2001

The Dance Card

Nineteen Hundred and Three: an insignificant year compared to others. Even the important headlines seemed, with a few exceptions, to be not awesomely significant: the Wright Brothers flew 120 feet; the Panama Canal was constructed; the Red Sox won the first World Series beating the Pirates; Henry Ford sent his first Model T down the assembly line; and telegraph messages were sent between San Francisco and Manila.

Far beyond our seemingly protective oceans, France and England signed the “Entente Cordiale”; the King and Queen of Serbia were assassinated by their own people; and in news sadly long forgotten, the Russian town of Kishinev was the scene of a massive pogrom against the Jews while at the same time thousands of Bulgarian men, women and children were killed by Turkish troops.

Terrorism was not conceived in our times.

Historians would later note the births of George Orwell and Bob Hope.

Unchanging into the late Spring, 1903 was by all accounts a pretty ordinary year at Fordham, a relatively small University in The Bronx, New York, then sixty-two years old, having adopted its name from a 17th century Dutch Plantation.

George A. Pettit, SJ, Rector of Fordham’s tree- lined Rose Hill Campus was preparing to dispatch a contingent of young men into society. Unquestionably they attended Mass at the University Chapel, beckoned daily to worship by the unchanged clarion that inspired Edgar Alan Poe to pen ‘The Bells” during his short tenure on campus.

Perhaps they thought of the football team coached by Harry Ely that had beaten Rutgers but was crushed by Lafayette. The following year they would go undefeated.

Perhaps some of the men let their thoughts return to April fifteenth, a Wednesday Evening spent at their Prom at the Waldorf Astoria. We know the names of the Chairman and Treasurer and the Members of the Executive, Reception and Floor Committees for that event and we know that there were 20 scheduled dances: eleven Two-Step’s; seven Waltzes’; and two Lancers’ and an evening-ending romantic waltz, Macy’s Good Night Little Girl, an 1898 hit.

We are denied the names of the young men who nattily attired in the Edwardian fashion of the day reveled that night in April. Those details are lost, important then, yes but now, a hundred years later, even knowing their names would probably be no more than that, names, like the lines from Gray’s Elegy Written In A Country Church-yard: “Full many a Flower is born to blush unseen”.

Obligingly the mists of history do allow us a brief glimpse of that evening: we know that for one man, a Miss Farrell was his partner for two dances and Misses Reilly and Butler for one each and that a certain Miss Hamilton was his partner for six, including the first and the afore-mentioned last waltz.

We know these things from his Dance Card, that anachronistic element of Victorian times, a survivor, perhaps the only one, of that night a century-ago. The gold embossed logo on the leather cover states Collegium Fordhamensis. Opening reveals a charming packet with an attached ivory colored – maroon tasseled—pencil. The pages are not as bright as that night one hundred years ago but the pictures they connote are of vibrancy and happiness, the exhilaration of a young man leaving the shelter of university, entering adulthood and, for that evening, dancing at the Waldorf.

The questions beg:
Who was he?
Was it simply an enjoyable evening?
Was she a sister of a classmate?
Did they meet again?

Perpetual questions.

Fittingly we are denied answers, for the shadows of a century ago stretch far and the riposte will not be found nor perhaps should it be.

What we appreciate is that he preserved the Dance Card and with it the memories it held for him. Perhaps it was that last waltz and then the carriage ride back to Rose Hill.

He has departed this life, though we know not when, and so did all his Fordham Class of ‘03 classmates and, at some time, Miss Hamilton.

Men of Fordham and their ladies - Rest in Peace

Postscript: I acquired the actual dance card some ten years ago and wrote and published this story originally for the hundredth anniversary of the prom, 2003.

Since then I have uncovered the name of the gentleman; he was a member of a prominent New Jersey political family. I know he married and fathered a number of children. I also know his first wife passed away at a young age. Was she one of the young ladies listed in the card?

Try as I might I have not answered that question.

Perhaps it is best not to.

Thomas I Hayes
2010

This is my published letter as it appears in the St Pete Times today. The original editorial by Daniel Ruth follows. Hope you agree with my sentiments.
Tom

Unneeded admissions

Both as a former Scout and as the father of an Eagle Scout with three Palms, I was incensed at Daniel Ruth's use of editorial space in the St. Petersburg Times to share his seedy experiences in an organization that for 100 years has helped millions of young men worldwide.

I fail to see what purpose his revelations might advance except to cast negative aspersions on his fellow Scouts and their parents from those many years ago as well as the leaders of the troop he actually had the temerity to identify.

He admits to stealing, though he uses the word "pilfering," specific brands of cigarettes, in addition to scotch, gin, vodka and bourbon in a bragging way. He appears proud of the fact that he and his fellow adolescents broke numerous laws, something most adults would be ashamed to admit except as an example to help young people. Rather, he is self-satisfied in his actions and fully places blame on the organization of Scouting.

If Ruth feels the need to make known his shortcomings there are better places to do so — including the confessional at the church he has maligned — but not the editorial pages of the Times.

Thomas I. Hayes, St. Petersburg


My merit badge in martini mixology
By Daniel Ruth, Times correspondent In Print: Friday, February 12, 2010

It is probably safe to say that all my years as a Boy Scout in Troop 96, camping in the rain, the snow, the muck, the mire, served me well for a lifetime appreciating the charms — of room service.

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America, a proud and noble institution in our national life. And while Scouting honors some of the more famous in its ranks — Hank Aaron, John F. Kennedy, Neil Armstrong, Steven Spielberg, Bill Gates and Barack Obama — alas, there are some of us of whom it can probably be said we never were quite prepared.

Or to put it more succinctly — I was sort of the Beetle Bailey of Scouting. Certain questions haunt my life, never to be understood, or answered.

I'm not sure why I ever joined my Boy Scout troop in Akron. This was a bit like Paris Hilton deciding to move into an Amish community. At first, things seemed to go along just fine. The uniform for an 11-year-old was sort of spiffy, and the meetings in the school cafeteria at St. Sebastians were nice.

Who knew we had to go camping, too? Why? I was just getting comfortable. I have never figured out the camping thing. Why should people leave the warmth of their homes and conveniences to schlep into the woods to sleep in dirt and run the risk of being eaten by some annoyed beast? Please? Anybody? Any help with this at all?

It wasn't as if I was unaccustomed to the outdoors. I had spent many summers at a Catholic Youth Organization camp. But at least we had a roof over our heads and a bed and a bathroom to use and the only thing one had to worry about was fending off the odd randy seminarian camp counselor.

The Boy Scouts insisted on a more traditional Lewis and Clark form of camping. On weekends I'd find myself being carted off to the woods to commune with nature and eat Dinty Moore beef stew out of a can. I was informed this was supposed to be fun.

Many former Scouts can point to their merit badges for canoeing, or astronomy, or bugling, or bird study, or climbing. I learned to drink and smoke. And I was good at it, too! Unfortunately there was no merit badge for hangovers. Otherwise, I would have been an Eagle Scout for cocktails.

I was hardly alone. Before each camping trip many of my fellow Scouts would pilfer a few cigarettes from their parents. One kid, whose father apparently had drinking issues, would abscond with some of his parent's hooch. Then we would all assemble in a tent and pass a canteen around with our own unique concoctions.

Here's what I learned. Filtered Marlboros were preferable to nonfiltered Chesterfields. And it is a really bad idea to mix scotch, gin, vodka and bourbon together. Life lessons, life lessons.
You are probably wondering right about now — where were the Scout leaders while all this was going on?

We wondered that, too.

During my two or three years as a Boy Scout I do not remember going on a single weekend camping trip where it did not rain, or snow, or both. This was Akron, Ohio, after all; Mother Nature's idea of practical joke.

I've often thought my years roughing it out in the middle of the wilds would have prepared me for a life as a Navy SEAL, just as long as the commando raids involved Paris, London or New York's Upper East Side.

Finally — FINALLY — Sunday morning would arrive and my worn and weary Scouting brethren — smelling like Sasquatch meets the boat people — would be delivered back to our families. I had to re-enter the house through the basement to deposit all my musty clothes into the washing machine to be properly deloused.

I still carry with me a souvenir of my last Scout outing. As a bumbling, stumbling, accident-prone child, I probably spent more time in the emergency room getting stitches for one mishap after another than I ever did taking in the wonders of the woods.

It was called a "Leadership" camping weekend. About the only thing I was capable of leading was the proper ratio of vermouth to gin in a martini. Okay, I have arcane skills. But there I was.
Walking through the campsite as dusk descended, I tripped over a rope and landed on a tent stake, ripping open a gash on my knee. Not exactly a Walden Pond moment.

Instead of spending the weekend once again turning myself into Jeremiah Johnson, it was back to the ER. Darn.

I left Scouting shortly afterward. But I still have the scar on my right knee — my own personal and well-earned merit badge for klutziness.

This Is the Africa I Know and Love

It is somewhere between African Queen and National Geographic;
This is the Africa where I have lived and worked.

It is an abundant yet tired land teeming with struggling and tired people; it is a place of plenty for the few and poverty for the many. It is a people who sold their own into slavery and by doing so perhaps lost the ability to resist empire building by the powers of Europe. It is a land rich in minerals, from the copper and tin of the Congo Basin to the gold and diamonds of southern Africa to the flawlessly purplish-blue gems we call Tanzanite from the savannahs of the Sub Saharran. All these and countless others, scratched-out by Africans from mines and rocks and for but a fraction of their market value.

So often, the wealth leaves Africa as it always has, be it from the slave trade of the past or the minerals of today.

The plantations of Mississippi have not metaphorically vanished with the wind as in Margaret Mitchell’s annals; indeed they have been re-born in lands whose names we barely know: Botswana and Swaziland, Zambia and Malawi; Namibia and Mozambique.

Names may have changed from colonial days: found only in history books are the Rhodesias; the Gold, Ivory and Grain Coasts; Dahomey and Nyassaland; Togoland and Upper Volta, but name changing does not transform reality; sadly it too often replaces foreign colonialism with domestic corruption.

The coast of East Africa where I called home has witnessed the flags of many nations from Arab to German to British and finally Uhuru – Freedom! Tanganyika’s freedom arose from its dusty roads and savannahs and from its jungles and rivers; it swam ashore from lakes named Victoria and Albert and Nyassa; it descended from the snow-capped rim of the volcano we call Kilimanjaro. It fused its future with the Arabic dominated spice island of Zanzibar and the land called Tanzania took its place in the family of nations. It did so freely and without violence.

Problems were myriad and so they remain. Draft animals that turned the European and North American plains and the vast steppes of Asia into arable farm land are not to be found here: they fall to the tsetse fly. Malaria killed millions; it still does. Cholera and typhoid and yellow fever and so many other maladies that we eradicated elsewhere live-on here, testimony on the one hand to human perseverance but yet on the other to the shame of those whose chose not to do here what they did so easily elsewhere.

Whatever you do for the least of my brothers……

Slavery – Utumwah – that chronicler of squalor and havoc; it speaks in the language of Kiswahili, the East African dialect whose sentences are interspaced with Arabic words, a reminder of those who purchased the millions of slaves, dragged from the rain-forested interior by their brothers to be transported to the hellish world of Arabia to toil there till death brought them their only freedom.

I don't know but perhaps there is a blurred but sadly logical bond between Utumwah and Uhuru: cause and effect; quid pro quo? Or perhaps the ying and yang of the latest trespasser.

My Africa is found in the grass hut villages of Mtwara and Massasi; found in the toil of women whose one and only purpose is to bring water back to the village, water carried on their heads from miles away. It is found in the young girls fetching firewood, training for the day that they will replace their mothers as an African Gungha Din. It is found where there is no electricity; where the rainfalls are welcomed with the fervor of religion. It is found in the simple happiness of children and in the utter bleakness that only hopelessness begets.

Because of why I was there, I am in the present tense compelled to see the people of Africa in other ways: the people of leprosy and tuberculosis; of schistosomiasis and river blindness; of dysentery and parasites; of pneumonia and measles; of women dying giving birth and the despondency of skin-and-bone children.

And then there is HIV………but that story must wait for another day………

For now it is sunset in Dar; soon the moon will rise; seemingly born from the very nadir of the Indian Ocean. Africa will bid adieu to another day and welcome again the hours of its darkness, the darkness of Conrad shrouding the mystery of its heart.

Remember this land; pray for its people. Remember as I do.