"War Is War"

“[W]ar is war, and not popularity-seeking. If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war.”
__ General William Tecumseh Sherman

Controversial in his day, equally so in our own time, General William Tecumseh Sherman put quill pen to paper in the aftermath of the US Civil War to write an autobiography and chronicle his side of the story, in voluminous detail.

Thanks to the marvels of e-book technology his 1875 one thousand-page multi-volume memoirs can be carried effortlessly in a modern reader’s coat pocket. The technology may allow us to delete the file from an e-reader’s storage, but the stories Sherman relates are not so easily dismissed from the human reader’s memory.

Sherman can teach modern-day readers much about the people and the period in which their story took place, and through them, make us see something about our own time. His was a life of constant upheaval, of drama always lurking over the horizon. His recounting of the early days of the 1849 Gold Rush, which erupted during his California mission, were especially stimulating; hundreds of sailing ships would arrive with cargo and prospectors, but never leave, because all their crews would desert for the gold fields. Bank presidents and other wealthy managers of wealth found themselves starving and ill-clothed, as servant after imported servant would desert their households so routinely that their families had a hard time eating regular meals. The lure of gold proved so seductive that few people kept their word; trustworthyness became such a valuable commodity that those possessing the rare virtue sought each other out, formed business partnerships together (as well as doing each other's laundry..!), and made far more lasting fortunes than those dredged up by the get-rich-quick gold-seekers in their muddy rivers and fields.

Death is always close at hand in this book, even before the advent of the War Between The States. The deadly perils of mid-19th Century transportation, for example, are brought to light early on: while Sherman is west-bound to serve at his early post in California, he is shipwrecked twice in one day! No wonder everyone seemed to always do anything they did with such gusto.

The vengeful Union General, the scourge of the South, offered such generous terms of peace to the forces of General Johnston, the Confederate opponent who finally surrendered to him in April 1865, that many in the North charged that he who had marched so resolutely to the sea was now guilty of treason. Yet that same Union General had written a blunt letter in 1862, following the capture of Memphis, leaving no doubt the price he felt was necessary for peace:

“I will write plainly and slowly, because I know you have no time to listen to trifles. This is no trifle; when one nation is at war with another, all of the people of the one are enemies of the other: then the rules are plain and easy of understanding. Most unfortunately, the war in which we are now engaged has been complicated with the belief on the one hand that all on the other are not enemies. It would have been better if, at the outset, this mistake had not been made; and it is wrong longer to be misled by it. The Government of the United Statesmay now safely proceed on the proper rule that all in the south are enemies of all in the North; and not only are they unfriendly, but all who can procure arms now bear them as organized regiments, or as guerillas.”
__Sherman’s letter to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P Chase

There were many stories that at once set my mind to wandering, and wondering; but none more so than Sherman’s casual meetings with his wartime opponents after the war, in social settings. "It's a small world", then as today. By chance he once found himself sharing a long train ride with former Confederate General Joe Johnston, the erstwhile defender of Atlanta, the forlorn protector of the Carolinas, the thorn in Sherman’s side for month after month of a year’s worth of gruesome fighting. What a meeting that must have been… how much suffering and misery had each conversationalist brought upon the other, just a few short years before; yet there they were, able to put such painful conflicts behind them, to find common ground for civil talk, despite their previous civil war.

It says a lot about the greatness of the United States of America, that such men were capable of such reconciliation, despite all that they had seen, and done. And lost. Today the drumbeat is sounded to never forgive, else victims lose their idealized status as heroes. Once upon a time, the heroes were those who could forgive, who allowed for atonement. Despite even losses as grievous as that of their own son.

Sherman has been accused of many vile deeds (his solution to how to clear a mine-filled road: have Confederate prisoners of war march ahead of his own troops, to set off the waiting mines), and he catalogs many of them in his memoirs, defending or deflecting where he feels necessary. There is one civilian casualty, however, whose death he never denied responsibility: the death of his favorite son, 'Willie' Sherman. A letter to a captain C.C. Smith is included in his memoirs, "as exhibiting our intense feeling" about the tragedy:

"Consistent with a sense of duty to my profession and office, I could not leave my post, and sent for the family to come to me in that fatal climate, and in that sickly period of the year, and behold the result! The child that bore my name, and in whose future I reposed with more confidence than I did in my own plan of life, now floats a mere corpse, seeking a grave in a distant land, with a weeping mother, brother and sisters, clustered about him. For myself, I ask no sympathy. On, on I must go, to meet a soldier's fate, or live to see our country rise superior to all factions, till its flag is adored and respected by ourselves and by all the powers of the earth.

But Willie was, or thought he was, a sergeant in the Thirteenth. I have seen his eye brighten, his heart beat, as he beheld the battalion under arms, and asked me if they were not real soldiers. Child as he was, he had the enthusiasm, the pure love of truth, honor and love of country, which should animate all soldiers.

God only knows why he should die this young. He is dead, but will not be forgotten till those who knew him in life have followed him to that same mysterious end.

Please convey to the battalion my heart-felt thanks, and assure each and
all that if in after-years they call on me or mine, and mention that they were of the Thirteenth Regulars when Willie was a sergeant, they will have a key to the affections of my family that will open all it has; that we will share with them our last blanket, our last crust! Your friend,
W.T. Sherman, Major-General

To see Sherman in today's cultural memory is to see a scowling face plotting some calculated cruelty, a furrowed brow framing a pair of merciless eyes. Reading his memoirs, reading about the loss of his son, I see these wartime portraits, much to my surprise, with new eyes.

William Tecumseh Sherman is no longer the brute I thought him to be; now I see a saddened father looking to shorten, not increase, the suffering of others, a man seeing others as fellow men, a soldier seeking to wage war as the necessary shortcut to winning a lasting peace.

Back From Ottawa

Inspiring and perspiring; my entwined memories of hanging out in our hot nation's capital during the first real summer vacation I've gotten in the last ten years.

The real purpose behind the visit was to see my ailing father one more time, to give thanks for him having been the dad he's been to us, while I could still deliver such appreciation in person.

Long before his eventual retirement, we used to visit Ottawa on rare father-and-son Saturday trips by train from nearby Quebec. An unplanned ritual emerged: starting with his repeating the workings of the Rideau Canal for the slow-to-learn child who walked at his side, followed by coaching on the function of the majestic buildings greeting us on Parliament Hill, inevitably ending up with being treated to a book at the War Museum gift shop before taking the train back home.

A patient teacher, a thoughtful guide, a proud immigrant, he made each visit a stirring occasion for his oldest son.

These are now my memories more than his, it seems, our private talks revealing that such details have largely faded in the sunset of age and illness. Now it's become my turn to be patient, to be thoughtful...

And to be proud.

Radio Memories: Memorial Day

"Pa, I got somethin’ to say. Don’t know how to say it… Lotta things happened to me, since I been away. Can’t explain what they are exactly, but they happened."

So says the son struggling to put his thoughts into words, trying to understand who the war has made him become... life has the capacity to change us in ways that make us frequent strangers even to ourselves; thank God for the blessing of family, for how they help us renew and reconnect with that part of ourselves that never changes. As he becomes a man, after all, he remains a son.

While Memorial Day isn't a Canadian holiday, we pause nevertheless to remember the sacrifices made on our behalf, keeping those who made the ultimate sacrifice, and the families they left at home, in our prayers.

During the Second World War, in those close-but-still-so-far days before television, the families left behind would find comfort, information, and entertainment through their radios, primarily through the forgotten art form of radio drama: the theater for the mind.

There was not much effort made by the broadcast networks to preserve radio programming from the 1930s through to the 1950s, so we are quite lucky to have what little audio artifacts we do have, from that era. Some shows were fluff in their day, many haven't aged well beyond their time; yet, a treasured few survive as remarkable mirrors of fading memories, precious testaments to the shared experiences clinging to the periphery of our collective mind's eye. It's in the hope of clarifying, and preserving, the echoes of those cultural experiences that we resume our Sunday series of Radio Memories.

This week we listen to the echo of an episode first broadcast on February 2nd, 1946, entitled "Homecoming". It marked the post-war return to the air of an innovative anthology series, CBS' Columbia Workshop. The program came and went three times during its long unusual existence, before bowing out for good in the late 1950s. Throughout its run it served CBS as an audio laboratory, allowing them to try out story ideas, writing styles and production techniques considered too experimental for regular commercial radio. (We played an episode from the series' third and final 1957 incarnation last Easter)

This particular episode follows a small town family and the whirlwind of emotions that accompanes them as they welcome a son finally home from the war. Modest in scope, but rich in content, "Homecoming" is a wonderful portrait of what radio drama could accomplish, by holding up a mirror to memory.

Our Radio Memories offering from last year's Memorial Day can be heard here.

This year's previous Radio Memories:

You Are There: The Impeachment Trial Of President Andrew Johnson
Great Gildersleeve: 1947 Easter show
Lux Radio Theater: Hitler's Children
Biography In Sound: The Story Of Science Fiction
Mr President: Romance In The White House
Frontier Fighters: George Pickett
Destination Freedom: Citizen Toussaint [Toussaint L'Ouverture]
Ports Of Call: Haiti

For a list of our 2009 Radio Memories listings, go here.

Breathing New Life Into The American Trinity

There is much truth to be found in fantasy, which helps explain, I suppose, our ongoing fascination with dreams. And cartoons.

No matter how old I get I hope I never grow too old to enjoy cartoons. Watching some childhood favorites again through Youtube, I see them today with new eyes, as exhibits of something I absorbed but never understood, when first observing them at a younger age.


The Hollywood theatrical cartoon of the forties and fifties is so delightfully, unapologetically, indelibly American. The best of them reflect the best of American civilization: its capacity for keeping faith, its belief in re-invention... both cultural tenets joining as one, in the form of the Happy Ending. (In the above example, a pragmatic Happy Ending, making it all the more quintessentially American: where else is it so ingrained to take lemons and turn them into lemonade..?)

A further American trait I see on display in many of the old cartoons, going hand in hand with the ideal of re-invention, are their many examples of forgiveness. Old enemies putting aside deeply-held grievances in order to rally and address a new and greater problem, exhibiting the rare self-discipline of not holding a grudge.


Growing out from the ability to keep faith in oneself, benefiting from the belief in the Second Chance formula of “try, try again”, comes the true arena for success: a forum that preserves the freedom to fail, so that by trial and error you may learn what you are best suited to become. We are not born to follow in our parents' footsteps unless that ends up being the choice we select for ourselves.


Put them all together and what do you get?

In God We Trust (the most self-renewing source of self-confidence), e pluribus unum [“from the many, one”] (the recipe for moving on from old grudges arising out of old relationships, looking to see what may be shared in common as well as where there may be differences), and Liberty (the freedom to fail while searching for the best version of ourselves to become): the three stages of the American Trinity, as described on American coinage... and older American cartoons.

For how much longer will this Trinity prevail, with anti-theism on the march, with old grudges increasingly unforgiven, with ever increasing suffocation of Liberty, the fragile laboratory so necessary for innovation and self-discovery?

These besieged older values desperately need to be re-animated with a fresh breath of new life, a new will to forestall a final fade-to-black on the last best hope on Earth.

I imagine we will find a way to win, in the end; it's a dream I picked up from watching a lot of old cartoons...

[With thanks to Dennis Prager]

Christmas Radio Memories: Christmas Wonder

Merry Christmas! I hope all our readers have a joyful day today with their family and friends. May we all recognize the rich treasures we already possess, before we open a single package.

We conclude our Christmas countdown of old radio Christmas broadcasts with an adaptation of a story that has come to be associated with this time of the year as much as Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol: the classic It's A Wonderful Life.

We're accustomed, in our day and age, for movies to make their way to television, as the final resting place after their initial arrival at our neighborhood theater. There was precedent for this on radio, where it was common to "play" the film through that medium as well!

Today's selection is from the radio series The Lux Radio Theater, which was the most popular showcase for film adaptations on radio. A listener today might wonder, "what's the point to listening if I've already seen the movie??" Well, I admit that used to be my reaction, when I first began discovering the world of radio drama. It took me a while to realize the great time machine that these adaptations represent; we may have seen the film before (and in the case of It's A Wonderful Life, maybe enough times to know most of it by heart) but we've never seen it with a live audience from the time it was made. It is like eavesdropping on the past, lifting back a curtain, to compare their reaction to our own.

I had read about the 1946 film's poor performance at the box office upon its original release, and no wonder: it wasn't able to reach most theaters until January of 1947! Bad timing. The film doesn't get much more of a break in this radio adaptation, as it was broadcast in March. (March 10 1947, for those keeping score at home)

But if you have an hour to spare, waiting for company to arrive, or wrapping gifts in anticipation of a family visit, I hope you find it a helpful way to pass the time today. Maybe the tough year has meant fewer gifts to wrap, less family able to visit. Just remember, as the story teaches us:

No one is truly poor if they have friends.

Merry Christmas.

Big Lessons From Small Voices

Small gestures can make a big difference.

Brooke and Keith Desserich have written a book about their daughter, Elena. At the age of six, Elena was diagnosed with pediatric brain cancer, and the family was told that she had only 135 days left to live.

While they struggled to find a way to cope with the news, and to help their other daughter, Gracie, learn about her big sister, Elena did some teaching of her own, for her family's sake.

During her final days, the girl began writing letters to her family and hid them all over their home.

“She would tuck them into bookcases, tuck them into dishes, china you don't touch every year and you'd lift it up and there'd be a note in it,” Keith Desserich, Elena’s father, said.

The cancer soon took away her voice, but did not deny the perceptive young soul the ability to still express her gratitude for the great treasure that filled her life: a loving family.

"We started to collect them and they would all say 'I love you Mom, Dad and Grace.' We kept finding them, and still to this day, we keep finding them," Keith Desserich said. "Literally, there are hundreds of notes that we found."

Elena’s parents each hold onto a sealed note they've never opened.
"We always want to know that there’s one more note that we haven't read yet," Keith Desserich said.

The Desserich family initially didn’t want the story published, but in the end, they decided they would if all the money went to their cancer foundation, The Cure Starts Now, dedicated to finding "home run" cures for all cancers.

Notes Left Behind went on sale yesterday, serving as an inspiring example of the renewal of love that springs from Gratitude, and the great things that can come from the humble act of giving thanks for all the good, big and small, that may come our way.

The Third Family

“I think of you as if you were my own brother”, we say as the highest compliment we can offer a friend. There’s no greater accolade than to compare a close friendship to that of the stronger bonds of family: “You’re like a son to me…”

We get to choose our friends, and not our family, yet… I wonder if we tolerate the offensive faults and sins of friends with the same forbearance we often extend towards our family. Sibling accepts the bad with the good when they embrace sibling, to a degree that probably escapes them when it comes to the same sinful fallibility we may find in our friends. A parent’s forgiveness of their children’s faults is often only outmatched by a child’s acceptance of the imperfection of their parents, and the consequences of that fallibility on their lives… again, a mutual respect often eluding the mutual attraction of friendship.

Friendships are wonderful, but ultimately it’s a different, separate kind of strengthening bond than the one offered by family. A second, chosen, family, to raise us in ways that birth families do not.

This weekend I had occasion to experience the blessings, yet again, of a third family, the one that takes the best of each and adds something new of its own: one’s church family.

A “church family” consists of those who worship alongside us, at church. Different than the friendships developed at work, or at school, where colleagues become “chums”, attracted as they may be by mutual interest. The collegiality of the support at church touches a part of us far deeper than that, because the shared sense of mission surely goes much, much deeper than at any job.

It touched me deeply this weekend, that’s for sure, as I tried in vain to find the right words to say to someone I know through church, an older gentleman whose ailing wife passed away recently, after a lengthy and painful illness. We got to know each other in the casual way one meets people through church: the same faces in the same places at the same times every week, familiarity leading to a feeling of family. A church family.

Each week’s quick greetings after church might have been short in duration but they nevertheless cast long shadows from their repetition, especially towards the end as the news would grow worse each time.

This week there was only one to greet, the worst having finally happened. Not for the first time, the worst being the best that could happen, given the grim circumstances.

I didn’t know quite what to say as we each approached for our usual greetings. I had often prayed for them both, keeping the example of his quiet strength in memory throughout the tough times I myself repeatedly went through during this past summer from hell. I owed him a lot, and I held these thoughts in mind as I took his hand in mine, placed my other hand on his shoulder, and smiled.

It was as if he heard what I was thinking, and from behind his eyes I saw a sign of someone being genuinely helped from hand after gentle hand touching him that day, as each caring gesture gave him that much more renewed courage to smile in his turn. In his voice I heard someone seemingly able to hear prayer after silent prayer said on his behalf every week for a year. “Thank you”, he said to me through the kindest of smiles, the only words that ended up being needed in our brief time together this week.

Even though a lifelong love had come to an end, his loss was less than it could have been, thanks to the shared presence of his children, his family of friends, and his third family:

his church family.

Beautiful But Deadly... Again

Since my plans were to spend the first half of yesterday's Victoria Day holiday hiking through the mountain trails around Lynn Valley, I had to skip my daily morning habit of browsing through online newspapers over breakfast and coffee. If I had followed my usual routine, I would have learned of the park's tragic news from the day before:

A six-year-old boy has died after falling into North Vancouver's Lynn Creek, near the popular Lynn Valley Suspension Bridge. Corporal Marlene Morton of the North Vancouver RCMP said the boy fell in around 2 p.m. yesterday.
Cpl. Morton said it's not yet known exactly how the boy ended up in the water. By the time rescuers pulled him out, the boy had been in the creek for about an hour.
Cpl. Morton said the child was airlifted to BC Children's Hospital with his stepmother by his side. He was in cardiac arrest when taken to hospital.
He was only wearing beige pants when he was swept downstream toward the suspension bridge. North Shore Search and Rescue scoured the area by helicopter.

And so that rugged park claims another life; it seems like only yesterday, but it was last year that we blogged about another death at that river, further north from where this weekend's fatal accident occured. Every such death is a tragedy, but given the young age of this latest victim, and his being just a few weeks short of his next birthday... this news is grim indeed. I can't imagine the mother's pain right now, seeing her young son off for an awe-inspiring holiday adventure that morning, only to get a phone call later in the afternoon, explaining why the son would not be coming home.

There are a few memorials already at the park, tucked here and there, small tributes to many other young lives taken throughout the years by the unforgiving waters of Lynn Creek. They all break your heart to read, with their eloquent mixture of grief, regret and gratitude; gratitude for having had the blessing of their dearly missed loved ones in their family's lives, even if for so shortened a time. Their messages leave you in awe of the power of the terrain around you, and even more respectful of the power of the human heart; its capacity to grow strong enough in time to dare to continue its loving connection with those around it... despite the risk.

Godspeed to this young man's family, may they one day again come to know peace.

Sunday Directions

Sleep-deprived and saddle-sore from an active Saturday, we nevertheless stumble through some stories sticking out from the headlines on a sunny Sunday morning.

Community: A small town comes together to help the five children of a murdered single mother in Wolfeboro New Hampshire:

Hundreds turned out Friday to mourn Burns, described as the kind of person who would have been organizing this event if another family found itself in this situation. Now, the community wants to make sure her children are provided for in her absence...
...
Townspeople handed over donations small and large for a spaghetti meal. Proceeds will go toward the Burns children. Tim Proulx is a carpenter by trade who spent the day making 1,600 meatballs.
"It's for a great cause, so there's really no effort into it," Proulx said.
Proulx said he wants to make sure Burns' kids have what they need as they mourn their mother.
"Anything that I or any of us can do to help, that's what we're here for," Proulx said.
...
Burns' friends said they are eager for resolution and justice, but right now, their top priority is to help the children.
"It's for her children. It's all for her children," said Irene Bailey, of Wolfeboro. "We'll do whatever we can for those kids."

Smile: An anti-climactic botanical discovery sucks some fun out of history, as scientists find that a plant on the island of Sardinia, rather than a death-defying machismo, may be the real source of the famous "sardonic grin:"

Sardinian scientists believe they've traced the roots of the 'death-defying' sardonic grin to a plant commonly found on the Italian island.
Greek poet Homer first used the word, an adaptation of the ancient word for Sardininan, to describe a defiant smile or laugh in the face of death.
He was believed to have coined it because of the belief that the Punic people who settled Sardinia gave condemned men a potion that made them smile before dying.
...
''Our discovery supports what many cultural anthropologists have said about death rituals among the ancient Sardinians,'' said Cagliari University Botany Department chief Mauro Ballero.
"The Punics were convinced that death was the start of new life, to be greeted with a smile,'' he said.

Wednesday Wondering

Three stories about denial, how we can't live with it, yet can't live without it, on a grey Wednesday morning.

Heater: Some damaging indictments of the global warming religion, as a new study exposes how compromised much of the warming data has been, and how little blind faith we should put on the extrapolations made from that data:

The official record of temperatures in the continental United States comes from a network of 1,221 climate-monitoring stations overseen by the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Until now, no one had ever conducted a comprehensive review of the quality of the measurement environment of those stations.
During the past few years I recruited a team of more than 650 volunteers to visually inspect and photographically document more than 860 of these temperature stations. We were shocked by what we found.
We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.
In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source.
In other words, 9 of every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.
It gets worse...

Our pollution must be having some negative effect upon our environment. But let's not let our good intentions fall like an acid rain upon reasoned responses to the problem, let's have the humility to accept that we really don't know as much as we think we did about what in the world is going on. [Hat Tip to Vox Day]

Pill-pusher: The doctor who prescribed painkillers by the shovel-full to patients such as homicidal wrestler Chris Benoit, has been sentenced to ten years in prison.

Dr. Phil Astin, 54, had pleaded guilty Jan. 29 to a 175-count federal indictment that accused him of writing illegal prescriptions to known drug abusers, some of them for years.
...
"I take full responsibility," Astin told U.S. District Judge Jack Camp... "I am sorry I hurt so many lives. I was thinking that I was looking after my patients."

Two of Dr. Astin's patients died from drug overdoses, and the prosecution made it clear that it wasn't referring to the high-profile Benoit murder/suicide case. Given that it was that tragic event that triggered the investigation in the first place, it feels like the indictment followed the kind of logic more common to pro wrestling angles by how it avoided the whole issue of steroids altogether, despite a search warrant revealing that Dr. Astin had prescribed Benoit a ten-month supply of steroids every three to four weeks.

Media sensationalism in the aftermath of the Benoit incident notwithstanding, the connection between massive use of steroids and a mind so corrupted as to kill one's wife and 7-year old child is not a slam-dunk case. There's another, stronger link besides 'roid-rage', however, that needs to be pursued, and that's the heavyweight-class degree of denial going on within, and without, the wrestling industry.

The suspension of disbelief that we use to enjoy movies and plays gets tapped into to also appreciate a pro wrestling match, but unlike film and theater, when it comes to wrestling it seems that once engaged that denial of reality can't seem to shut itself off. The result is a deadly dance between diehard wrestling fans and the wrestlers who die hard in order to please them.

In his autobiography, veteran wrestler 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper called this desire to please the fans and be liked by them, "The Sickness", as it led wrestlers to continually act against their own best self-interest, both physically and spiritually.

Where the in-ring pain leaves off, the outside-the-ring lifestyle picks up: "It takes over your life 24/7 and, especially before cellphones and email, no matter how hard I tried, it was impossible not to become distant from my family, my kids. Most, maybe all, the boys suffered the same isolation, and soon strangers became family and family became strangers. Almost all who escaped came back, having no clue how to make it on the outside."

The bandmasters for this waltz of doom are promoters like Vince McMahon, who insist on pushing the stars with the biggest bodies, and try to condition fans to only accept bigger as better. If you don't have the large size, what do you do to make up for it in the eyes of the fans and the promoters? The answer isn't pretty. It's certainly not wrestling, and surely it's not "entertainment"..?

Unfortunately, since no one takes the shows in the ring seriously, few people take the pain outside the ring seriously either. A shroud of denial has fallen upon the wrestling business; even with the publicity in the last few years, the appalling death rate for the young performers in that field is still ignored as a messy, unwelcome needle that could pop the whole illusion. Ignored, especially, by the fans.


Swister: An anonymous tip (from a guilty conscience..?) leads two 56-year old women to the shocking discoverery that they were switched at birth.

Qualls, Bobby Reed and one of their sisters met Shafer at a Kennewick, Wash., clinic last month for DNA testing. A week later, Qualls got the results, learning her likely probability of being related to her brother and sister was zero.
"I cried," she said. "I wanted to be a Reed _ my life wasn't my life." Shafer's DNA report said she had 99.9 percent of being related to Bobby and Dorothy Reed. Now living in Richland, Wash., Shafer said the report only confirmed what she knew after meeting Qualls.
"After seeing Kay Rene, I went home and told my husband, I don't know why she's doing the DNA testing," she said. "I was shocked _ she looked just like my sister's twin."
...

Mid-way through reading this article I paused to discuss the story with my wife, curious to get her take on what it must be like to be faced with a revelation like this. "It must make your life feel almost illegitimate", I suggested; "you would look back and feel like you had lived the 'wrong life'..." My wife had a more positive reaction: "It would be like getting a whole new set of brothers and sisters, an extra family on top of your own!" Oriented toward the past as I am, I hadn't thought of things from that angle... and not for the first time, learned from her forward-thinking attitude, another reminder of the complex nature of faith. It's not about ignoring the doubts, denying the bad; it's about having sufficient imagination, and courage, to be able to see the potential good as well as the obvious bad. I was, therefore, not surprised in the least when I soon reached the concluding paragraph...:

The two have become friends and celebrated their May 3 birthday together. Recently, Qualls introduced Shafer to her work colleagues, calling her "my swister."
"I'm trying to move forward at look at the positive," Shafer said.
"You can't look back. It just drives you crazy."

Radio Memories: Family Footsteps

We sometimes take a round-about route getting there, but it seems that many times we sons eventually end up following in the footsteps our parents hoped we would.

For this week’s Radio Memories post, our weekly remembrance of the days of radio drama, we pay tribute to mothers on Mother’s Day with one of radio’s most famous moms, Alice Aldrich, in one of radio’s first situation comedies: The Aldrich Family.

From 1939 to 1952, audiences heard Mrs. Aldrich lean out her kitchen window to give her classic opening cry, “Hen-ree, Henry Alll-drich!”, followed by her son's high-pitched reply, “Coming, mother..!”, a tagline so well-recognized in its time that it would still echo for decades to come, serving as a punchline in many contemporary Warner Brothers cartoons.

The actor portraying 16-year old Henry, “the typical American teenager”, for most of the series' run was Ezra Stone, the same actor who originally played the character on stage in the hit play that formed the basis for the hit radio series. He was a good fit for radio, since in reality he was a cigar-smoking heavy-set short guy who looked nothing like what the mind’s eye would imagine the scratchy-voiced teenager should look like.

When radio drama was eventually eclipsed by television's rising star, Ezra Stone went on to a long career as a director, working on various TV series until the early 1980s, when he assumed his father’s position in a non-profit educational foundation. His father had emigrated to the US from Lithuania in 1902, and became such an avid US history buff that he amassed a huge collection of items connected with early Americana. He started the David Library of the American Revolution, in Pennsylvania, in order to be able to share his passion for early American history with his fellow countrymen, and Ezra Stone took his late father’s place as president of this philanthropic Library, until his own untimely death in a car accident in 1994.

This week's particular episode has survived without an original airdate, but I suspect it is from the first summer season in 1939. We can hear actor Norman Toklar playing Willie Marshall, lover of fudge and peanuts (“that’s all I ever eat!”), a character that proved to be short-lived due to WWII. When star Ezra Stone went into the army, Tokar, who had been Stone’s understudy for the original play, took his place behind the mike as Henry Aldrich.

After the war Tokar followed Stone in career choice as well, becoming a director in his own right. After years of working on shows like Leave It To Beaver, his ability to direct children brought him to the attention of Walt Disney. Tokar’s final two decades were spent at the Disney studio, directing gentle comedies like The Happiest Millionaire, Candleshoe, and The Apple Dumpling Gang.

One fascinating bit of dialog occurs in the first minute of the program; Henry's exasperated father is lecturing him on responsibility:

"I used to get up at six o’clock every morning, and after helping my father milk the cows I walked three miles to school, sometimes through four feet of snow…”

This is the same lecture I used to get from my own dad, almost verbatim..! It leads us to ask, how many generations now have been complaining that the latest spoiled one doesn't know the meaning of hard times...?

And how many generations of mothers have responded by standing up for their sons, resolutely seeing in them the potential for good, no matter how off-track their present paths may be leading them...

Previous Radio Memories posts:
Tom Mix, Terry and the Pirates VE Day broadcasts from May 8 1945
You Are There: The Capture Of John Wilkes Booth
Fort Laramie: War Correspondent
CBS Radio Workshop: Son Of Man
Great Gildersleeve: Easter Rabbits
Dimension X: Time And Time Again
An American In England: Women Of Britain
Cavalcade Of America: Bob Hope Reports
The March Of Time: Feb 10 1938 broadcast
Hear It Now: Coming Home From The Korean War
Escape: Vanishing Lady
Rogers Of The Gazette: Rewinding The Town Clock

Rescuer's Desperate Vow Saves Child From Flames: "I'm Not Going To Leave This Kid"

An amazing example of courage and self-sacrifice, as a clear-thinking New Zealand policeman witnesses a horrible car crash and springs into action :

[Inspector Mike O'Leary, operations manager for the Eastern Police District] said he heard screaming and jumped a fence, running around to the other side of the upturned wagon to see two children hanging out of the vehicle.
The wagon was engulfed in toxic smoke and flames, he said.
He grabbed a child in red clothing and ran about 10 metres from the burning vehicle. His daughter Sinead, 13, took over, comforting the hysterical boy.
He heard the other child, still trapped in the vehicle, talking to him. A man in the wagon called out "save the kids".
"I couldn't see into the van. I was pulling as hard as I could to free the child."
The wagon began making more exploding noises and he pushed [his 15-year son] Conor and the bystander Peter back.
"I had to make a decision - do I risk myself?
"I did step away but I thought, 'I'm not going to leave this kid'."
He called out for a knife to try to free the boy from his seatbelt or whatever was holding him inside and was given one by Peter. With the help of Conor and Peter, they eventually dragged him free.
The boy was badly burned and they stripped the clothes from his lower body, soaking him with water.

As it always seems with true heroes, their bravery is matched by their self-effacing humility:

Nursing a bandaged hand from burns received during his rescue of the children, he was modest about his efforts.
"It's not about me. Anyone would have done the same," he said, adding that he was proud of the way his family had acted during the incident.

... Debbie O'Leary said she was proud of her husband and his brave actions, despite his regret that the flames prevented him from getting anyone else out of the van.
"I'll never forget the look on his face when he said: 'I can't help these people'," she said.

The story has more layers of drama still; the inspector's family came upon the fiery accident while driving home from the funeral of a friend's son who had died from cancer:

As they drove, they were having a discussion about how life could sometimes be unfair and he told his family that some people get up in the morning "but never get home".

Godspeed to all involved, especially the two children now without at least one of their parents, and the hero forevermore struggling to reconcile the guilt haunting him for the five other lives he could not rescue, with the pride he should feel over the young souls his initiative allowed him to save.

May they all find peace.

Keeping Faith In Music

With many schools eliminating the funding for all their art programs, especially music, this latest study linking reading skills to musical literacy may strike just the right note for keeping faith in the value of music to the life of a child:

Children tutored in music involving progressively complex rhythmic, tonal and practical skills display superior reading skills than their peers, according to a new study.
...
[Joseph M. Piro and Camilo Ortiz from Long Island University] investigated the hypothesis that children (in two elementary schools) who have received keyboard instruction as part of a music curriculum that becomes progressively difficult over the years, would demonstrate significantly better performance on vocabulary and verbal sequencing than students who did not receive keyboard instruction.
Several studies have reported positive associations between music education and increased abilities in non-musical (linguistic, mathematical, and spatial) domains in children.
The authors said there are similarities in the way individuals interpret music and language and “because neural response to music is a widely distributed system within the brain…. It would not be unreasonable to expect that some processing networks for music and language behaviours, namely reading, located in both hemispheres of the brain would overlap.”
Using a quasi-experimental design, the investigators selected second-grade children from two school sites located in the same geographic vicinity and with similar demographic characteristics, to ensure the two groups of children were as similar as possible apart from their music experience.
Children in the intervention school studied piano formally for a period of three consecutive years as part of a comprehensive instructional intervention program.
Children attending control school received no formal musical training on any musical instrument and had never taken music lessons as part of their general school curriculum or in private study.
Both schools followed comprehensive balanced literacy programmes that integrate skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening.
All participants were individually tested to assess their reading skills at the start and close of a standard 10-month school year using the Structure of Intellect (SOI) measure, said a Long Island University release.
Results analysed at the end of the year showed that the music-learning group had significantly better vocabulary and verbal sequencing scores than did the non-music-learning control group.

There comes an age when children listen to their childish efforts at music and suddenly hear it all with new ears, causing many of them to declare, "Hey, I'm not really a good musician"; this fresh insight leads them to abandon their flutes and pianos for other things, as it might with their singing, with their painting, with their writing... with most of their acts of creation.

It seems a rite of passage into adulthood, to assess one's abilities as "amateurish", and therefore so second-rate that their very existence is a threat against our adult pose as "professional" experts at living. Who will take us seriously, if they hear our amateurish attempts at music, if they see our amateurish approach to creativity itself?

Once upon a time, the word "amateur" was not the sour note it tends to be thought of today. In its original, literal definition, to be an "amateur" means simply to be "a lover of something"... in French, it still retains this old-fashioned sense of the term, as we would say that I'm an "amateur de baseball", a lover of baseball. My skill has no relation to my passion.

I think one of the reasons that adolescents tend to be so cynical, so nihilistic in their point of view, is that there is not enough effort placed on convincing them to stay in love with life. They've left so much behind, all they can see is the hole that such abandonment brings; no wonder they wear black, I'd be in mourning too if I felt I had left so much of my previous life behind me.

The amateur's passion they once may have felt when devoting themselves for hours to their various acts of creation, especially playing music, is a romance worth remembering, and renewing. The courage needed to create new things comes partially from the childlike faith that our personal accomplishments can actually make a genuine difference in the world around us. As adults, our supposedly heightened powers of observation often end up obscuring that which is most important to perceive: it pays to have faith, to stretch our perspective so that it sees the single note of the present in the context of an overall melody of moments, especially those to come. That which we are today, is not necessarily all that we ever will be: we are creations forever in the process of becoming.

It's a lesson renewed by the experience of parenthood, probably the ultimate example of amateurism. That first time where a parent cradles their new-born baby, and takes inventory of their creation: what is there to see, except the fog of a far-off future? The little, tiny hands, inexpert at the simplest of tasks. The closed eyes, not yet able to register much of anything in their orbit. The probing mind, not yet aware of even what questions there are to ask about the world it's entered into. And yet from parental love springs the faith to perceive the hoped-for symphony, that the hand, the eyes and the mind that orchestrates this harmonious duet will someday truly make a difference.

It takes a lifetime to practice this art, so why not start as early and as often as possible, especially by keeping faith in the blessing that making music may bring to the life of a child.

Good Sportsmanship Alive And Well In Wisconsin

A timely lesson about sacrificial love through good sportsmanship, taught during a Wisconsin basketball game, delivered by high school seniors, inspired by the good examples set by their coaches. Coach Aaron Womack Jr. writes a grateful letter to his rival team's home town newspaper, to thank them for the inspiring evening.

The whole story seems to affirm the old saying, "when the student is ready, the teacher appears"... just not always where you'd expect him to be:

On Saturday, Feb. 7, the boys’ basketball team of DeKalb High School and Madison High School were scheduled to play a basketball game in Milwaukee, Wis. I thought that’s what we were going to play, a basketball game, but it turned out to be much more than that.

My name is Aaron Womack, Jr., and I am the head boy’s basketball coach at Madison High School. I am writing this letter to inform you about the wonderful gesture and sportsmanship that the coaching staff of DeKalb displayed this past Saturday.

One player’s mother passed away earlier in the day prior to our scheduled game. Upon finding out, I left the gym for the hospital during the Junior Varsity basketball game I knew that there was a chance I might be late getting back to the gym for the Varsity game, but felt I had to leave. Upon my arrival back to the gym the J.V. game had ended and the DeKalb’s Boys’ Varsity team was warming up.

My team was not on the court and the clock was not running to indicate when the game was going to start. I rushed to get to the locker room and stopped to talk to the coaching staff from DeKalb who were waiting patiently. I tried to inform them that we were going to play the game and their head coach, Dave Rohlman told me to just take my time. I thought this was a wonderful gesture seeing as how they had traveled over two hours and any delay would keep them from returning home at a decent time.

After talking to my team we entered the floor, minus the player whose mother had passed, and two other players who went to the hospital as well. We were warming up with 6 players, when Coach Chris Davenport mentioned that he understood if we didn’t want to play considering what had just happened and that it looked like some of the players might be too emotional to play. I thanked him and said no, we’ll play, that you came too far not to play. He said don’t worry about my players and was sincerely more concerned about us than playing the game. This type of display of sportsmanship is almost unheard of nowadays.

I was already impressed with how well the DeKalb team and coaches conducted themselves and was moved by their kindness. but that was nothing compared to what the Coaching staff displayed later during the contest.

Toward the end of a closely guarded contest I noticed that the player whose mother had passed entered the gym. Not only had he come to the game, but I was instructed that he wanted to play as well.

I didn’t enter the player in the book because after talking to him earlier at the hospital I knew he wasn’t going to play. I asked if he was sure that he wanted to play and then took a time out to let my team greet the player and inform the referees that I will be receiving a technical for entering a player that was not in the official book.

The referee then told the coaching staff of DeKalb of the situation and I could hear them arguing about how they didn’t want the technical and the refs telling them that they had to take it. The game resumed and was still a close game. With about 5 minutes left in the 2nd quarter DeKalb had taken a time out and at this time I entered the player into the game and was prepared to receive a technical. When the refs came over to the DeKalb bench to ask who would shoot the technical, they again argued that they didn’t want it. Finally they sent a player to the line, a number 11, Darius McNeal.

I assumed that he was their best free throw shooter and knew he was a pretty good player and a starter. While waiting for him to make the first free throw I caught a glimpse of the ball going out of bounds. I thought that maybe they sent the wrong shooter to the line, but when the 2nd free throw rolled out of bounds as well, I knew he was instructed to miss on purpose. I was overwhelmed with this display of almost unheard of sportsmanship and class. As I mentioned the game was close, and any opportunity for a score would be very beneficial. As a principal, school, school district staff, and community you should all feel immense pride for the remarkable job that the coaching staff is doing in not only coaching these young men, but teaching them how to be leaders.

Also, I’d like to recognize Darius who stepped up to miss the shot on purpose. He could have been selfish and cared only for his own stats (I hope Coach Rohlman doesn’t make him run for missing the free throws).

If I am unable to coach my own son when he becomes of age, I’m moving to DeKalb and enrolling him as a Barb.

Coach Aaron Womack Jr.
Fritsche Middle School
Milwaukee

As DeKalb coach Dave Rohlman and point guard Darius McNeal later explained to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

"I gathered my kids and said, 'Who wants to take these free throws?'" [coach]Rohlman said... "Darius McNeal put up his hand. I said, 'You realize you're going to miss, right?' He nodded his head."

McNeal, a senior point guard, went to the line. The Milwaukee Madison players stayed by their bench, waiting for the free throws. Instead of seeing the ball go through the net, they saw the ball on the court, rolling over the end line.
...
"I did it for the guy who lost his mom," McNeal told the newspaper. "It was the right thing to do."

After the second shot, everyone in the gym - including all the Madison players - stood and applauded the gesture of sportsmanship.

"No One Told Me Having Fun Is Not As Fun As I Thought"

So many of the important lessons about life seem only to be learned after we experience the path we shouldn't be taking. Two steps forward into the mist and one step back; a leap of faith followed by an honest measurement of where we've landed. All too often it's not so much a step as it is a pratfall that lands us in a mud puddle of dis-illusionment and humiliation. I know I've had my share lately...

Covered in the mud of our mistakes, caked in regrets; that's when the real learning begins, doesn't it. We wipe away our false beliefs and see things as they should have been, occasionally marveling at how backwards our old vision has been revealed to be.

As I clear up my latest personal glob of mud, I deeply sympathize with Zoe Lewis' confession of her own humbling revelations about the path she's been traveling. It's not easy to admit we've made a mistake, but that's the best way for good to come from self-inflicted tragedy:

A playwright who embraced the feminism espoused by her mother and flaunted by Madonna now feels betrayed

I never thought I would be saying this, but being a free woman isn't all it's cracked up to be. ...My mother was a hippy who kept a pile of (dusty) books by Germaine Greer and Erica Jong by her bed (like every good feminist, she didn't see why she should do all the cleaning). She imbued me with the great values of choice, equality and sexual liberation. ...

Now, nearly 37, those same values leave me feeling cold. I want love and children but they are nowhere to be seen. ...I was led to believe that women could “have it all” and, more to the point, that we wanted it all. To that end I have spent 20 years ruthlessly pursuing my dreams - to be a successful playwright. I have sacrificed all my womanly duties and laid it all at the altar of a career. And was it worth it? The answer has to be a resounding no.
...
I argue that women's libbers of the Sixties and Seventies put careerism at the forefront, trampling the traditional role of women underneath their Doc Martens. I wish a more balanced view of womanhood had been available to me. I wish that being a housewife or a mother wasn't such a toxic idea to middle-class liberals of yesteryear.

Increasing numbers of my feminist friends are giving up their careers for love and children and baking. I wish I'd had kids ten years ago, when time was on my side, but the problem is not so much time as mentality. I made a conscious decision not to have serious relationships because I thought I had all the time in the world. Many of my friends did the same. It's about understanding what is important in life, and from what I see and feel, loving relationships and children bring more happiness than work ever can.
...
Had I this understanding of my psyche ten years ago I would have demoted my writing (and hedonism) and pursued a relationship with vigour. There were plenty of men and even a marriage offer, but I wouldn't give up my dreams.

I talked to the girls who were the subject of my play Paradise Syndrome in 1999... Nicki P, 35 and single, works in the music industry and adds: “It was all a game back then. Now I am panicking. No one told me that having fun is not as fun as I thought.”

... Not all women want children but I challenge any woman to say she doesn't want loving relationships. I wish I'd had the advice that I am giving to my 21-year-old sister: if you find a great guy, don't be afraid to settle down and have kids because there isn't anything to miss out on that you can't do later (apart from having kids).

Zuzu's Petals As Rorschach Test

I never thought of the classic Christmas film It's A Wonderful Life as a possible Rorschach Test until I read this article from Wendell Jamieson in the New York Times.

When Jimmy Stewart's character, George Bailey, slides into such despair over his life in Bedford Falls that he wishes he had never been born, his guardian angel grants him that wish; we are introduced to the world-that-would-have-been, starting with a renamed hometown now called "Pottersville".

To me, the seedy taverns, "dancing girls" and casinos of Pottersville are meant to conjure up a vision of life empty of meaning, the kind of whirlwind distraction we are driven to when things are going wrong, rather than the stable foundation we seek when we decide we are ready to start living for the future... Unlike Pottersville, Bedford Falls is lined with not just houses, but homes.

For the columnist in the NY Times, however, his view is drastically different:

...
Not only is Pottersville cooler and more fun than Bedford Falls, it also would have had a much, much stronger future. Think about it: In one scene George helps bring manufacturing to Bedford Falls. But since the era of “It’s a Wonderful Life” manufacturing in upstate New York has suffered terribly.
On the other hand, Pottersville, with its nightclubs and gambling halls, would almost certainly be in much better financial shape today. It might well be thriving.

He also references an ealier column in Slate, which "rightly pointed out how much fun Pottersville appears to be, and how awful and dull Bedford Falls is."

He even noticed that the only entertainment in the real town, glimpsed on the marquee of the movie theater after George emerges from the alternate universe, is “The Bells of St. Mary’s.”
Now that’s scary.

There are many contrasts that one could make between the world of Pottersville and that of Bedford Falls. I notice that the NY Times writer skips the big one that I always see: there are no children in Pottersville. No wonder he finds a town so full of families as Bedford Falls to be so unnerving; for a guy who would prefer to spend his time drinking, while trying to get lucky with the dames as well as the dice, children would be a resented intrusion indeed upon this “thriving” paradise.

When George Bailey comes home to a sick child fretting over her dying flower, he improvises some parental medicine by pocketing his daughter Zuzu’s flower petals without her noticing. His life is a mess, but he still makes the time, and summons the ingenuity, to try and help his beloved daughter in her time of need. It’s likely that she never would have found about such a small gesture of kindness, just as it’s likely that while we’re alive we’ll never learn about all the small kindnesses, all the sacrifices that have been made on our behalf, by those who love us. Once we start sacrificing for others, however, the gestures made earlier for us become far more possible to imagine.

Isn’t it interesting that the “benefactor” who helped attract the nightclubs and “dance halls” in the alternative town of Pottersville has his name smack in the forefront of it all, so that everyone can know the “good” that he’s done for them... another contrast left unmentioned in the article.

Maybe someone who sees a better life to be had in a Pottersville instead of a Bedford Falls is someone who has yet to see how they are loved, and the many forms in which that love has been demonstrated. If I thought that nobody loved me I don’t think I would have a problem spending all my money on drinking binges with one-night stands, either.

Not everyone is ready at the same time for the humility required to give of ourselves selflessly; some are blessed with having been raised upon so much bedrock stability in their own Bedford Falls that they can easily see the value in, and the sense behind, sacrificial love. Others, like George Bailey (and me), needed a far longer perspective, even a great shock, in order to learn the same lesson:

Good doesn’t just happen, it’s made. And when you make a lot of it in your life, then it’s a wonderful life.

Simple Shadows

Funny how so many individual conversations can serve as perfect set-ups for the next one, sometimes… almost as if it was planned that way. Different people around us, different ideas discussed among the different people, yet for we who continue in the center of it all, it’s the same story thread continuing… as if, ultimately, it’s simply the same long conversation.

I spent a memorable part of my Sunday in stimulating company with a group of septuagenarian and octogenarian acquaintances. (I’m starting to get to “a certain age” where I appreciate being constantly referred to as “the young guy” of the group..!)

The beginning of the conversation consisted of each giving an update on their current health problems, and the ongoing treatments required for them. Pretty grim talk; seeing my sympathy, one of my older friends leaned over at one point and whispered, with a twinkle in his eye, some rather insightful advice:

“Charles", he said, "don’t get old.”

It was invigorating, however, to hear so many personal stories of fighting the clock, determined assertions that they were doing something, whatever they could do, despite their individual ailments, and increasing restrictions.

Notwithstanding the differences in their stories, there was always one thing in common, one thread linking all the stories into one story: a strong connection to their families.

Their children and grand-children were mentioned frequently, playing an important role in their lives, through the simple expedient of giving each of them a role to play in the lives of others. The simplest medicine, yet one making an overwhelming difference; a difference made obvious just by looking at them brighten up when they would talk about their families. Their backs would get straighter, the voices would rise, a light would come on from behind their eyes. On a deeper level than any visit to the doctor, the simple bond of family did more to strengthen their resolve to continue their combat against their bodies’ limitations, to tough things out for as long as they could… they would continue, for the long haul, for the sake of their families.

Today, another conversation, as by sudden chance I got to have lunch with another septuagenarian, a remarkably energetic man back in Canada after many years abroad, still active and productive now in what has turned out to be a third major career springing from his initial one. He brought along his younger (by a couple of generations) wife and their teenage son. And again I saw the positive influence of family; knowing what I knew about his business in the 1990s, I think the setbacks undergone by the company he so painstakingly built would have shattered him were it not for his wife’s support. I know those problems would have shattered me, that’s for darn sure, back when I was a supposedly “strong”, workaholic bachelor.

I may or may not see my lunch companion again after today, but his parting words couldn’t have been more effective had they been scripted for him to deliver; his main apprenticeship had been at the side of septuagenarians in his turn, back when he was a younger man learning his trade. He said that now that he’s reached the age that they were when they were teaching him, only now does he feel that he is beginning to understand, to really “get”, his trade.

The key is simplicity, he told me; it takes a lifetime to learn how to make, and keep, things simple.

Looking back over the lessons of these two separate yet connected conversations, I conclude: What’s simpler than a family’s love?

Healing The Scars Of An Iraqi Child

Children have a lot to learn about life, but they can also offer a lot to teach. I posted recently about the 7-year old who tried to take a bullet for her mother, and an 11-year old who did much to save his neighbors from burning to death, as two examples.

With great thanks to Vicki, we can learn from another remarkable young person, 6-year old Youssif. Despite living through a nightmare few of us dare to try to imagine, Youssif's faith in a hopeful future has much to teach us older folks prone to despair... providing we have the humility to admit we can learn from a child.

You may already have been following the story; I hadn't, therefore Vicki's thorough coverage (over 20 updates!) made for some intense, emotional reading. Here are the highlights to an incredible story of the healing process underway for a small boy, his family and our own capacity to renew our faith in humanity's ability to choose to do Good.

The story began in January 2007, but the world didn't hear about it until August of that year:

Five-year-old Youssif is scarred for life, his once beautiful smile turned into a grotesquely disfigured face -- the face of a horrifying act by masked men. They grabbed him on a January day outside his central Baghdad home, doused him with gas and set him ablaze.

It's an act incomprehensibly savage, even by Iraq's standards today.
…
"They dumped gasoline, burned me, and ran," Youssif told CNN, pointing down the street with his scarred hands where his attackers fled.
…
Even things like eating have become a chore. His face contorts when he tries to shovel rice into his mouth, carefully angling the spoon and then using his fingers to push the little grains through lips he can no longer fully open.

After the story aired on US television, Americans by the thousands asked, as they do so often: "What can we do to help?"

Shortly after Youssif's story aired Wednesday, the Children's Burn Foundation -- a nonprofit organization based in Sherman Oaks, California, that provides support for burn victims locally, nationally and internationally -- agreed to pay for the transportation for Youssif and his family to come to the United States and to set up a fund for donations.
…

Surgeries will be performed by Dr. Peter Grossman, a plastic surgeon with the affiliated Grossman Burn Center who is donating his services for Youssif's cause.

Donations amounting to over three hundred thousand dollars were quickly collected, enough to allow the family to travel to the US in order to undergo the corrective surgery... arriving on September 11, 2007.

They had traveled more than 7,500 miles to get help for their son, from war-torn central Baghdad to coastal Los Angeles. It marked the first time the family had ever left their homeland, let alone flown on a plane.
"Oh my God, it's so green. Am I in heaven?" Youssif's mother, Zainab, said after arriving in Chicago before the family flew on to Los Angeles where Youssif will be treated.

The healing process seemed to begin just by checking in to their two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in the city of angels..:

There was a television, toys everywhere, and a balcony. A crib sat in the kids' bedroom and the kitchen even had a high-chair so that Youssif's sister would be able to eat with them at the table. For the first time in a long time, the family laughed out of pure joy.
…
Standing on the apartment's balcony, Youssif's father turned to Barbara Friedman, executive director of the Children's Burn Foundation.
"You see America on television, but you never imagine or dream that you will ever be here." He paused, tears in his eyes.
"It's more than paradise."

The family soon got to meet the doctor supervising the series of necessary surgeries, Dr. Peter Grossman:

Perhaps haunted by the pain he suffered in Baghdad's hospitals, Youssif hiccupped back sobs as his father lifted him onto the examination table.
…
"We're going to do everything we can to move forward and to do a good job," he said.

The boy's mother nodded solemnly. "I just want my son's smile back," she told the doctor.

Who knows how many chapters like the following day at the beach remain unreported every day throughout North America. If only more individuals around the world (and within America, for that matter) could see this side to the American people:

Frightened and excited, the 5-year-old Iraqi boy shrieked and laughed as his father lifted him to safety as each wave crashed around their legs. It was the first time either of them had seen the ocean. [They are approached by someone who recognized the family from seeing their story on television.] The "voice" belonged to a member of the Valley Peak church group from nearby Chatsworth -- having a father and child day at the beach.

"We'd like to pray for Youssif and his family. Can you ask if they will accept this?"

The reply: "Of course," said Youssif's mother, Zainab.

The group of Christian fathers and children surrounded the boy and his dad, falling to their knees and locking arms. Youssif and his father stood at the center of the circle holding hands. "They are going to need strength and patience, and God, just put your hand on little Youssif and his family," one of them said, head bowed in prayer. ...

Other beachgoers witnessed the scene, joined in and dropped to their knees -- more than 30 people in all. …

Watching the scene, the outpouring of warmth from total strangers, Zainab wept, tears running down her face."I was overcome with emotion," she said later. "Here in America, people were moved by him. Why not in Iraq?"

The stories on the various surgical operations (12 operations in the past year, with more to come) have some harrowing moments, such as the time complications from one operation led to young Youssif's sheets becoming soaked in blood. But still there was progress.

By Saturday he was bouncing around his room. "I ate," he announced proudly. Although his little head was tightly wrapped in bandages, he was able to open his mouth much farther than before.
"Look, Daddy, my mouth is open! I can fit the whole fork into it and I can take big bites!" he said. ...
Youssif -- who was grabbed outside his home by masked men, doused in gas and set on fire January 15 -- remained ecstatic over little things, like being able to stick his tongue out again.
"I can see all my teeth! I can stick my tongue out all the way!" he said to his dad while waiting to leave the hospital.

As the year went on, we can start to see the amazing capacity for renewal of faith that the family dynamic can provide, as parent teaches child, who then teaches parent, how to survive with grace:

[A]lthough Youssif's parents are exceedingly grateful to be in America and receive the best medical care, one realization that doctors warned about is truly beginning to set in -- Youssif's face will never be the same as it once was.
"Sometimes when he sleeps I just look at him and cry. He used to be so beautiful when he slept," his mother, Zaineb, says. ...
Youssif's parents are coping with what every parent of a child burn survivor struggles with. "They want their son to return to the way he was, and it's hard to know and accept that he won't," says Keely Quinn, the program director with the Children's Burn Foundation who has been helping the family adjust.

…
Youssif's parents are emotionally and mentally spent. They even admit their son has shown more strength throughout this ordeal than they have. To them, it seems their son is winning the battle to overcome his mental and emotional injuries, and he astonishingly seems to take the discomfort of recovery and multiple surgeries in stride.
…
"Youssif is an amazing survivor and tough little guy," Quinn says. "Compared to his parents, at 5 years old, he doesn't have the ability to see down the road how this will affect him. He just knows he will be 'fixed.' His parents have to deal with much more complex issues -- watching their son suffer, their guilt over the attack, and wondering what the next day will bring."

Which brings us to the latest update, from last week, on Youssif starting school:

Youssif began attending an American school [in january], one year to the day after he was so savagely attacked in Baghdad. In a recent letter to those who have helped his son, Youssif's father described the anniversary as a "very hard day" to endure but one that also brought joy.
"But this year, it was the day for another miracle, Youssif's first day of kindergarten. It was a very happy day," Youssif's father said.
…
Youssif is adjusting well to school, able to write out the alphabet and count to 12 without hesitation. He always finishes with an accomplished sigh, wide eyes and a smile so big, it's as if he is making up for the 10 months he was not able to smile.
…
"The kids love Youssif. They get more excited than he does when he learns a new word in English, and they brag about it for hours," the mother of a classmate says.
…
"Now, Youssif eats anything he wants, because he can open and close his mouth," his father said in the letter. "I have begun to see my son's lively spirit return. The surgeries have removed more than just external scars, they are also beginning to remove his internal scars."

A few weeks ago we went to the park and Youssif rode on the merry-go-round. Every time he passed by, he shrieked and laughed and waved wildly to me.

I thought my heart would burst with happiness."

We rarely appreciate how much we have to be grateful for, but we can at least have our eyes opened to the length of the checklist, courtesy of a small boy whose ability to laugh after such tears should do much to teach us how to do the same, as we learn how to live with faith in a positive future. As we read of young Youssif take pleasure in the simple act of eating, and hear of the comfort his parents derive from the simple sight of him smiling, we can re-learn what it means to taste life, and to be grateful for the bounty of blessings we have too long taken for granted.

To make a donation to the fund established for Youssif by the Children’s burn foundation, go here.

[Thanks again to Vicki for her vigilant updating of this story, for otherwise I might never have heard about it.]

Sudden Suicides Continue In Bridgend

"We just don't understand what is going on in Bridgen", says a relative of a young lady who was found hanging in her bathroom.

20-year old Kelly Stephenson was one of three more young people that have killed themselves in the small Welsh town of Bridgend, a nightmare story continuing from our earlier post in January of this year.

Two cousins hung themselves last week. A 16-year old girl hung herself Tuesday.

The London Times talks to "A senior social worker who knows the area well", but no answers seem forthcoming:

"These deaths come out of the blue, without any explanation. It could be a sort of copycat thing, and the net is a likely target. From the cases I’ve been involved with it seems that young people are killing themselves as an extreme reaction to everyday things. They’re not being bullied, they’re not in high-achieving families where they feel they’ve failed. It’s as though they do it without expecting any consequences, and that’s hard to understand."

The UK paper The Mirror talked to many residents of the area who personally knew the kids who hung themselves:

A friend of Kelly's named Rosie said: "It's going crazy in Bridgend and it's not going to stop. No one can understand what is going on."I know seven of the people who killed themselves. People are saying it's got something to do with the internet but I don't believe that. But then I can't explain it either.
"Everyone is talking about Kelly's death. It's awful. I saw her a month ago and she was fine, smiling and laughing."

Yahoo news has some details on this week’s horrible hanging:

Police identified Jenna Parry, 16, as the latest victim. Her body was found hanging from a tree in the woods by a passer-by walking his dog in the village of Cefn Cribwr, five miles from Bridgend.

The papers have quotes from many friends and relatives, many acquaintances and co-workers of the youth that committed suicide. The kids who hung themselves were often even
friends with each other. So it seems safe to presume they did not kill themselves from loneliness.

I read the unnamed social worker's insights with great, overwhelming sadness. Is a generation being raised to view the precious gift of life as such a trivial blessing that they could toss it away with such impunity..? Do they find no treasure in having a family that loves them? Don't they realize how few people can boast of having wealth of that value? What do they understand of "friendship" that having so many friends fuels no sense of obligation, no sense of service, and so little sense of gratitude, towards those friends? Don't they know how many teens are scraping by without any friends at all, and how delighted they would probably be to have half as many as these kids reaching for their hangman's noose?

If someone grows up without family, without friends, they can still live a meaningful life, so long as they live with faith, the belief that life itself is worth living. From that affirming, positive belief you can attract and find friends, you can create and enlarge a family, you can build everything that is truly of lasting value. When cynicism and nihilism exhale their poisons, belching worse pollution than anything that ever came out of a Welsh mining town, you get the bitter fruit from that tree of "knowledge": the conviction that the nullity of death should be the "life" most worth "living".

Godspeed to those left behind, may this be the last of these terrible stories to come out of Bridgend.