Emily Dickinson and War, in Seven Words

I do some research and writing on the American Civil War, and a couple years ago in my reading I came across a reference to a quote attributed to the poet Emily Dickinson...something about immortality or death "striking sharp and early."
 

Ms. Dickinson lived during and after the time of that war. Turns out the quote in question was, surprisingly, not in a poem, but rather in one of her letters to a literary friend, Thomas Higginson, who was then serving in the Union army.  With the country waking up to the dawning realization that the American Civil War was an event of catastrophic proportions, Ms. Dickinson was concerned for her friend.  In an 1862 letter, she writes:
 

Perhaps death gave me awe for friends, striking sharp and early, for I held them since in a brittle love, of more alarm than peace. I trust you may pass the limit of war; and though not reared to prayer, when service is had in church for our arms, I include yourself.

And then this gem, in the same letter, which in seven words may come closer to the meaning of war than any other words in the English language:

 

War feels to me an oblique place.

 

 

Ms. Dickinson's short sentence seems to imply a number of thoughts: dismay, helplessness, quiet anger, unfamiliarity or indirectness.  I sense she felt a lack of understanding of the forces that could bring otherwise sentient human beings to that dark place.

Fast forward some 150 years.  So now death has struck, sharp and early, in that oblique place, for some 4,423 U.S. personnel in Iraq, and for some 2,285--and counting--U.S. personnel in Afghanistan (DOD official casualty data, here).

And even as the conflict in Afghanistan chugs on, seemingly undirected and self-propelled, winding down yet suspiciously permanent, the saber-rattling continues for military intervention in Iran...from many of the same Very Serious People who were responsible for the wars of the 2000s.  Far from being shamed and discredited, they continue, inexplicably, to hold court and are still looked to as elder statesmen. 

They should heed the uneasy words of Ms. Dickinson.

War feels to me an oblique place.

A place to which we must not venture.

Fire on the Mountain 50K Results

Below is the email that I sent to my long-time running buddies, describing the race on Sunday.

Guys,

 

Ultrarunning update.  Jody and I ran the Fire on the Mountain 50K on Sunday over in western MD.  I struggled through the first half—woefully undertrained and mostly trying to rely on “muscle memory”—and was seriously considering dropping at the midpoint.  I had fallen 3 times, which I almost never do, and I just wasn’t feeling the mojo.

 

However, Jody helped me regain my will to live and continue, and the race actually got easier for me in the second half.  

 

Preliminary results are up here and show us at 88 and 89 of 111 finishers, in a time of 8:10.

In a massive touch of irony, I also note that I would have won the 60+ age group if they had had one.  Pretty funny, for someone who would have quit except for Jody’s encouragement. 

Prior to this race I have always parroted the mantra that in the race you vow to keep running unless doing so would cause injury.  Merely being tired or hitting the wall are not good enough excuses to drop, if you are physically able to continue your forward motion.  At all points in the race, physically I could easily walk and even run whenever I chose to, so I certainly did not meet my criteria for quitting.  My mind was just weak for awhile (unlike Pete, whose mind is weak all the time!) and it took Jody’s steady presence to remind me of that. 

Note that Jody had just run a 50K only 2 weeks prior, so his effort on not-fully-recovered legs was quite stellar.

Anyway, although I am still hobbling around from the real beating my legs took, it was a pretty good day.  A great day, actually, spending a day in the woods doing what I love to do.

Still planning to join you all for a perimeter run soon.

Regards/Gary

 

 

Fire on the Mountain 50K...and War

Well, yesterday was the running of the Fire on the Mountain 50K.

I will post more about it after the results are up (unavailable as of this writing).  It was a tough race for me but provided some very valuable lessons.

Now, while I was happily running my heart out in the wild mountains of western Maryland, former vice-president Dick Cheney was on a Sunday morning show, uttering some chilling words (via Firedoglake, here):

On ABC’s ‘This Week’, host George Stephanopoulous asked Cheney about the effectiveness of diplomatic talks in Iran.
“Is military action against Iran inevitable?” he said.

“I have trouble seeing how we’re going to achieve our objective short of that,” Cheney said.

Maybe the Iranians are playing us about the nuclear ambitions, making nice and sounding reasonable.  But when you are talking about war--as in WAR, you know, where real people die--I'd like to think that the Very Serious People who run this country would be a tad more interested in listening and giving the benefit of the doubt, as opposed to immediately ratcheting up the firepower rhetoric.

In other words, talk first, and if that fails THEN begin to make very cautious noises in conjunction with the UN about the knuckle sandwich school of problem-solving (as well as all other potential non-lethal options by the world community).

Cats in Art: The Living Room (Kirchner)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.

 

Image credit Artflakes, here, The Living Room,  Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1920, oil on canvas, 35" x 59", held by Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany.

 

You just gotta love a painting that contains only a cat as the sole focus.  Yet for me the painting is a bit jarring: the cat's black fur contrasts starkly with the vivid colors of the sofa.  Moreover, the cat is horizontal while the vertical striping of the background dominates the rest of the image, lending another discordant note.

 

Zuffi comments:

 

Even in this context, however, the black cat maintains its age-old indifference, calmly purring on the divan, impassive and reassuring.

 

 

 

 

Posting to Resume

Mister Tristan--the blog, not the 5-year old human being--has been dark this week while the bride and I hosted a dear friend who was visiting from out of town.

Lots of meals out, short local activities, movies, just sitting around...a week from heaven.

Normal posting will resume tomorrow with a Cats in Art post.

Bye Bye Breaking Bad...and Ultrarunning

Somehow I missed this "obituary" a couple weeks ago when the Breaking Bad finale aired.  The bride and I have been fans pretty much since the get-go--it was compelling drama.  Mighty big shoes to fill by somebody.

[credit Boing Boing, here, who got it from somewhere else]

 

And of course, what fan can forget the phenomenal and haunting final musical choice, Baby Blue by Badfinger (the music starts at 53 seconds in):

 

Link is here if the embedded video does not play.

Oh, and the link to Ultrarunning?  This song is in my head.  Really in.  My head.  I can't run a step without the soundtrack beginning to play.

Not that that's all bad--I've had plenty of other thoughts and music unbidden in my brain that, for awhile, I could not escape from--so this one is actually a desireable effect.

Cats in Art: A Pair of Cougars (Audubon)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. Currently I'm turning for a few weeks to John James Audubon.  I thought I was finished with Audubon, then I uncovered a 5th image to post about.

Image credit here, A Pair of Cougars, John James Audubon.

If you recall from the previous posts in the Audubon series, Audubon is much better known for his stunningly beautiful paintings of birds. Per Wikipedia, "His major work, a color-plate book entitled The Birds of America (1827–1839), is considered one of the finest ornithological works ever completed."

What many folks don't know is that Audubon also set out to depict all North American quadrupeds (primarily four-footed mammals). His three-volume The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, published in 1845, contained this illustration.

This pair of loving kitties is a welcome change from some of Audubon's other works--and their sometimes disturbing attributes.  These guys seem to me to almost have a whiff of Oriental art about them--they would seem equally at home in a Japanese panel. 

The cats are relaxed and happy, and as we've seen before, Audubon captures well the notions of power and grace (the usual third component, stealth, is absent in this image).

This is Why the Nation Needs Universal Health Care

Somehow the simple laws of cause and effect get lost in all the rhetoric.

This from Kurt Eichenwald a couple weeks back at Vanity Fair magazine:

The first thing to understand is that when people don’t have insurance, it hurts other people with insurance. In fact, the uninsured affect the finances, quality of care, and availability of medical assistance to every person in a community, regardless of their insurance status.

This is the fundamental issue that too many people do not understand. There seems to be this belief among some that those who are uninsured simply go off and die somewhere, thus having no impact on the medical-care-delivery system in the United States. But the opposite is true—the uninsured have some of the most dramatic effects of any group on our nation’s health-care system.

Here’s why: they seek out care, but usually when their once easily treated conditions have blossomed into a serious illness. Because private doctors do not take them, and because free clinics are not readily available, the uninsured seek their care in emergency rooms.

The rest of the article is full of great analysis and discussion of medical economics and is well worth a read.  But I wanted to highlight this fact specifically.

 

Also ran across another blog post, this one relating a personal experience with cancer, that deals with this issue:

 

Obamacare requires insurance companies for the first time to cover everyone, regardless of any preexisting conditions. There's no more disqualifying condition than cancer; without Obamacare, I would now almost certainly be uninsurable if someday in the future I try to get insurance on the individual market. And we know what happens to people without health insurance in the United States: they die.