I suspect that Alabama Governor Bob Bentley should discuss his religion in the way the Savior advised his followers to pray: in secret. He has told his fellow Christians what they already believed and thrown secular America into a panic, convinced that new Salem Witch Trials are just around the corner.
At a black church in Birmingham, the not-so-subtle Bob announced that those who did not profess faith in Christ were not his brothers and sisters and, from the reaction I'm seeing online, skeptics everywhere are ready to begin impeachment proceedings.
Everyone take a deep breath.
I'm a lot more alarmed, frankly, by reports that have come out of the Air Force Academy in the last few years about cadets being pressured to be "soldiers of Christ."
The governor's remarks took place, not in the legislative chamber, but in a church. Does he somehow forfeit the right to speak of his faith for no reason than that he holds public office?
The remarks seems to have been made in the course of a clumsy attempt to portray himself as more tolerant (racially). He wanted to make the point that color made no difference to him as to Christian brotherhood, but faith in Jesus did.
In the context of Christian theology, what he said was precisely correct. The sort of Christian who believes in the necessity of being "born again" reserves the terms "brother" and "sister" for those who also profess that experience; they are not meant as expressions of general approbation, as they are for much of society at large.
A poster on one message board speculated on what would have happened had a non-Christian said this, and I agree it's worth examining. If an Orthodox Jewish Mayor had stood in an Orthodox synagogue and said "Anyone who doesn't keep Kosher is not truly my fellow Jew," narrow-minded as that might have been, would anyone conclude from that, that the Mayor was about to impose Kosher dietary laws on the entire city or appoint only fellow Orthodox Jews to important posts?
If a Sunni Muslim city councilman stood in a mosque and said "Only my fellow Sunnis are true servants of the prophet; Shia is a perversion of the faith," would anyone believe he was proclaiming jihad in America?
This was a Christian, speaking in a church, using a term to which his kind of Christian attaches a very precise meaning. He specifically said that those who did not have faith in Jesus were not his brother and sister, meaning that in the theology of what he believes, the matter of their salvation is not settled as he believes his is. And are those of us who wouldn't care to join his club in the first place going to gripe because, though we have no interest in being born again, he doesn't speak of us as if we were?
Why?
© Michael Huggins, 2011. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?
Sherwin Nuland's 1994 book, How We Die, records the horrifying story of a young girl butchered on a street in Connecticut in front of her mother by a powerfully built psychotic who had somehow slipped through the cracks of the state's mental health system. Instances like this, the Virginia Tech murders, and, now, the tragedy in Tucson make everyone wonder, "But why doesn't someone do something about those people?"
This needn't imply a judgmental attitude toward those who commit violent acts. Mental illness is just that; several attempts were made on the life of Queen Victoria, but it was obvious that the shooters were insane and, though convicted of treason for attempts on the life of the monarch, they were not executed, even in that harsh age. Sarah Jane Moore, who missed the head of President Gerald Ford by just six inches when she fired at him in 1975, was similarly disturbed and apparently still is; as late as 2009, she said she was glad both that she had failed to kill the President and that she had tried. (Never mind the irony of her having been an FBI informant at the time of the attempt!)
It doesn't matter to the victims that, as an article in The New Republic points out, one's chances of being killed by the mentally ill in a given year are one in 14 million; if you are within range of Seung-Hui Cho in West Ambler Johnston Hall in Blacksburg, Virginia, on the morning of April 16, 2007, the rarity of your predicament is cold comfort. If you are the bereaved survivor of a victim, you are enraged.
My cousin lost his 13-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter to the rage and irrationality of a man who shot them and their mother to death one night 2 years ago; an enterprising reporter tracked down the man's former wife, who said that she had often urged him to seek counseling for the violent thoughts and fantasies that were a continuing part of his mental experience, but he had refused. State government was not aware of his problem and employed him as a park ranger; although it was not required for his work, he legally carried the gun with which he slaughtered his wife and stepchildren.
What should be done? States should look very seriously at adequate funding for mental health programs. As the article in The New Republic points out, some states, such as New York, are setting up structures of outpatient services, combined with assertive efforts to contact those who seem to be in need and encourage them to use the services.
Background checks for gun ownership should be more thorough. In the aftermath of the Tucson tragedy, background checks were sharply on the rise, and that's as it should be.
Public figures should be aware of the need for security in an age of increased risk and plan accordingly. It need not be oppressive or even very obvious; according to one article I read this week, no public figure has been killed in the United States since 1978, while pacifistic Sweden, ironically, has tragically lost two politicians to violence. We don't have to risk another absurd "Don't tase me, Bro!" episode simply to take reasonable steps to protect public servants.
What should not be done? Panic-based broadening of the criteria for commitment. It took 15 years of involuntary and unnecessary confinement of a man locked up in Florida with hardened criminals, subject to daily abuse, though he was no danger to anyone, to get the courts to erect a safe standard to preserve individual integrity in this matter. Not every oddball is a threat. A woman walked around Midtown Memphis for years, approaching strangers for bus fare and loudly cursing those who did not comply, but she was not dangerous. I encountered a man named George wandering the campus of the University of Memphis, wearing a turban, approaching guest lecturers and holding up a crystal to their faces that he claimed enabled him to read their thoughts, until the University forbade him to attend lectures any more. George fantasized that he was the confidant of the world's intelligence agencies and that every woman who smiled at him at a coffee counter was interested. Eventually, he blew his brains out for sheer loneliness. He needed help but was not a danger to anyone else.
If we had geniune psychics walking around like the ones that predicted murders about to happen in the film Minority Report of a few years ago, we could spot the potential Jared Lee Loughners and Seung-Hui Chos and take preventive action. Absent that capability, we can't, and we are at risk for targeting the merely eccentric and constructing a paranoid society so intrusive, so punitive, that it makes airport security groping seem inconsequential by comparison and forces everyone who is strikingly different in some way to hide behind a bland mask. It would have clapped Stonewall Jackson in a confinement ward after enough people noticed Jackson's eccentric tendency to march the streets of Lexington, Virginia with one arm continually raised high in the air to "align his organs." It would isolate the decidedly individualistic and anyone who didn't happen to fit a conventional frame of reference.
My late friend Charles was interviewed by a social worker in a child custody dispute. She spotted his Wild Turkey on the sideboard and his Sons of Confederate Veterans plaque; he voluntarily showed her the licensed pistol he kept in an upstairs closet, unloaded and with the safety on. She wrote up a report portraying him as a whiskey-guzzling, gun waving, yahoo who was a potential danger to his own son. That is one of the outcomes I fear.
I volunteered at a street mission once (to write operations manuals for them in their use of computers); the young man who showed me around later confided that "the Lord" had shown him that I had "put a curse on his head" and that he had to repel the demons. I don't want him locked up, and I don't care to be confined either, at the behest of his fervent fellow believers. I don't want to see mental warrants sworn out by spiteful family members or score-settling neighbors or co-workers. The system we have now is quite imperfect--Sarah Jane Moore had been vetted by the Secret Service before that fateful day in 1975 and labeled not dangerous--but so is the thinking that would have everyone peering into everyone else's hearts and minds in an inclination to see danger, not realizing the extent to which they were seeing the vagaries of their own minds.
© Michael Huggins, 2011. All rights reserved.
This needn't imply a judgmental attitude toward those who commit violent acts. Mental illness is just that; several attempts were made on the life of Queen Victoria, but it was obvious that the shooters were insane and, though convicted of treason for attempts on the life of the monarch, they were not executed, even in that harsh age. Sarah Jane Moore, who missed the head of President Gerald Ford by just six inches when she fired at him in 1975, was similarly disturbed and apparently still is; as late as 2009, she said she was glad both that she had failed to kill the President and that she had tried. (Never mind the irony of her having been an FBI informant at the time of the attempt!)
It doesn't matter to the victims that, as an article in The New Republic points out, one's chances of being killed by the mentally ill in a given year are one in 14 million; if you are within range of Seung-Hui Cho in West Ambler Johnston Hall in Blacksburg, Virginia, on the morning of April 16, 2007, the rarity of your predicament is cold comfort. If you are the bereaved survivor of a victim, you are enraged.
My cousin lost his 13-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter to the rage and irrationality of a man who shot them and their mother to death one night 2 years ago; an enterprising reporter tracked down the man's former wife, who said that she had often urged him to seek counseling for the violent thoughts and fantasies that were a continuing part of his mental experience, but he had refused. State government was not aware of his problem and employed him as a park ranger; although it was not required for his work, he legally carried the gun with which he slaughtered his wife and stepchildren.
What should be done? States should look very seriously at adequate funding for mental health programs. As the article in The New Republic points out, some states, such as New York, are setting up structures of outpatient services, combined with assertive efforts to contact those who seem to be in need and encourage them to use the services.
Background checks for gun ownership should be more thorough. In the aftermath of the Tucson tragedy, background checks were sharply on the rise, and that's as it should be.
Public figures should be aware of the need for security in an age of increased risk and plan accordingly. It need not be oppressive or even very obvious; according to one article I read this week, no public figure has been killed in the United States since 1978, while pacifistic Sweden, ironically, has tragically lost two politicians to violence. We don't have to risk another absurd "Don't tase me, Bro!" episode simply to take reasonable steps to protect public servants.
What should not be done? Panic-based broadening of the criteria for commitment. It took 15 years of involuntary and unnecessary confinement of a man locked up in Florida with hardened criminals, subject to daily abuse, though he was no danger to anyone, to get the courts to erect a safe standard to preserve individual integrity in this matter. Not every oddball is a threat. A woman walked around Midtown Memphis for years, approaching strangers for bus fare and loudly cursing those who did not comply, but she was not dangerous. I encountered a man named George wandering the campus of the University of Memphis, wearing a turban, approaching guest lecturers and holding up a crystal to their faces that he claimed enabled him to read their thoughts, until the University forbade him to attend lectures any more. George fantasized that he was the confidant of the world's intelligence agencies and that every woman who smiled at him at a coffee counter was interested. Eventually, he blew his brains out for sheer loneliness. He needed help but was not a danger to anyone else.
If we had geniune psychics walking around like the ones that predicted murders about to happen in the film Minority Report of a few years ago, we could spot the potential Jared Lee Loughners and Seung-Hui Chos and take preventive action. Absent that capability, we can't, and we are at risk for targeting the merely eccentric and constructing a paranoid society so intrusive, so punitive, that it makes airport security groping seem inconsequential by comparison and forces everyone who is strikingly different in some way to hide behind a bland mask. It would have clapped Stonewall Jackson in a confinement ward after enough people noticed Jackson's eccentric tendency to march the streets of Lexington, Virginia with one arm continually raised high in the air to "align his organs." It would isolate the decidedly individualistic and anyone who didn't happen to fit a conventional frame of reference.
My late friend Charles was interviewed by a social worker in a child custody dispute. She spotted his Wild Turkey on the sideboard and his Sons of Confederate Veterans plaque; he voluntarily showed her the licensed pistol he kept in an upstairs closet, unloaded and with the safety on. She wrote up a report portraying him as a whiskey-guzzling, gun waving, yahoo who was a potential danger to his own son. That is one of the outcomes I fear.
I volunteered at a street mission once (to write operations manuals for them in their use of computers); the young man who showed me around later confided that "the Lord" had shown him that I had "put a curse on his head" and that he had to repel the demons. I don't want him locked up, and I don't care to be confined either, at the behest of his fervent fellow believers. I don't want to see mental warrants sworn out by spiteful family members or score-settling neighbors or co-workers. The system we have now is quite imperfect--Sarah Jane Moore had been vetted by the Secret Service before that fateful day in 1975 and labeled not dangerous--but so is the thinking that would have everyone peering into everyone else's hearts and minds in an inclination to see danger, not realizing the extent to which they were seeing the vagaries of their own minds.
© Michael Huggins, 2011. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
A moment’s reflection
I agree with what Emerson wrote in his essay "Social Aims":
That custom seems in danger of going the way of dinner table conversation and handwritten thank-you notes.
The skeptic may plead that he is aware of no definite Being to whom he could address anything like a prayer. I think something like the following should be suitable:
© Michael Huggins, 2011. All rights reserved.
“It is an excellent custom of the Quakers, if only for a school of manners—the silent prayer before meals. It has the effect to stop mirth, and introduce a moment of reflection.”
That custom seems in danger of going the way of dinner table conversation and handwritten thank-you notes.
The skeptic may plead that he is aware of no definite Being to whom he could address anything like a prayer. I think something like the following should be suitable:
May we be grateful
For blessings that enrich us through no efforts of our own.
May we be mindful
Of those who spend each day in want through no fault of their own.
May we determine
To seek the good of all and not our private gain alone.
May we discover
Grace, wisdom, strength to aid us facing challenges unknown.
© Michael Huggins, 2011. All rights reserved.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Death on a cold day
Chesterton once wrote that while everyone was seeking to accommodate themselves to the spirit of the age, most progress in history had occurred at the hands of men who refused to accommodate themselves to anything.
William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, died on this day in 1645, on Tower Hill by the headsman's axe, on orders of Parliament. He was 71 and so loathed that only his advanced age had spared him the gruesome evisceration that many wished to inflict on him.
Laud, with Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, had formed the chief support of the detested political and religious policies of Charles I, a painfully well-meaning man and one of the most egregiously unfit ever to occupy the English throne. Laud resisted the Puritans, the Tea Party of their day, suppressing unauthorized pamphlets and having their authors confined to the pillory with their ears sheared off. He walled off the east wall of churches to contain the altar and enforced bowing at the name of Jesus in the Anglican liturgy, as well as the wearing of the surplice. He and Strafford developed a policy they called “Thorough” for upholding the King's edicts that provoked howls of outrage in England and Ireland alike. Execrated by his opponents and laughed at behind his back by his royalist confrères—Queen Henrietta Maria saw him, accurately, as a fussy, pompous little man—he was unyielding in his determination to see things done as his judgment told him was best and wept while attempting to bestow a final benediction on his friend Strafford as the latter was being led to the block in 1641.
Laud was not a lovable man. Peevish, temperamental, self-important, impatient, suspicious—after a dinner party, he counted his silver spoons to make sure the guests had not stolen any—he was mocked even by the King's fool, Archie Moore, who quipped “All glory to God and little Laud to the devil.” His intolerance of opposition and his relentless insistence on a beautiful and orderly liturgy made him so hated that the first and only attempt to introduce his edition of the Book of Common Prayer into Scottish worship at St. Giles' Cathedral in 1637 provoked a riot. Macaulay, the paradigmatic Whig, objected to Laud's fate only because, as he put it, ignoring the deposed prelate would have been the best punishment that his Parliamentary foes could have inflicted on the “ridiculous old bigot.”
Typical of his imperious nature, Laud was a man of contradictions. He was Chancellor of Oxford, where he endowed a professorship of Arabic, but he expelled undergraduates and disciplined faculty who objected to his religious views. Detested as a crypto-Roman Catholic by thousands, he refused the offer of a cardinal's post from the Vatican if he would only convert.
Why remember him? Against all expectations, Laud, who had lived and died by the principle that a church that had “one Lord and one faith should speak with one heart and one mouth” influenced the course of his mother church more than he might have hoped or his enemies feared. Because of him, Anglicanism swerved neither to the right nor the left: it did not turn into a species of Presbyterianism with bare liturgical overtones or, on the other hand, a mere curiosity, a pale echo of the religion of Rome, a forlorn orphan pining for its parent. Anglicanism remained whole and complete, and echoes of Laud's standards and beliefs can be discerned in Anglican worship today; it descended even to the Episcopal Church of the new American nation when, following the Revolutionary War, the first bishop of the American Church, Samuel Seabury, had to be consecrated by Scottish bishops using Laud's prayerbook of 1637. English bishops could not consecrate an American, because their form of worship would have required a swearing of allegiance to the English King.
How ironic that a man so consumed with his own importance, so full of anger and peevishness, so capable of harshness and cruelty, should have been the means through which the spirit of his church was preserved! The Deity does, indeed, work in mysterious ways. Those contemporaries of Laud considered in his day to be among the lights of Christian piety—Lancelot Andrewes, George Herbert, William Juxon—are known today mostly to specialists of that period. Herbert's poems, beautiful as they are, are an assignment for graduate students in English. The figures of speech in Andrewes's sermons are sometimes ridiculously overdone, and his book of private devotions, valuable as it is, is seldom consulted. No one remembers any longer that it was Juxon who accompanied Charles I to his own appointment with the headsman on another January morning, 4 years after Laud's death, so cold that Charles wore two shirts so that onlookers would not think he was trembling from fear.
No, it was neither Herbert, nor Andrewes, nor Jeremy Taylor, nor even later luminaries like Thomas Ken who preserved Anglican worship as something worthy and distinct, but this cranky little man, nearly eaten alive with impatience that the world could not see things his way and that he could no longer whip it into conformity, forced to witness the gleeful dismantling of everything he had fought for, and finally crying out, in a sort of despairing faith, “Lord, I am coming to you as fast as I can,” as his contemptuous jailers came to lead him to the chopping block. In a final moment of uncharacteristic humility, he said this prayer, which is found today in the Book of Common Prayer. It is his best epitaph:
© Michael Huggins, 2011. All rights reserved.
William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, died on this day in 1645, on Tower Hill by the headsman's axe, on orders of Parliament. He was 71 and so loathed that only his advanced age had spared him the gruesome evisceration that many wished to inflict on him.
Laud, with Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, had formed the chief support of the detested political and religious policies of Charles I, a painfully well-meaning man and one of the most egregiously unfit ever to occupy the English throne. Laud resisted the Puritans, the Tea Party of their day, suppressing unauthorized pamphlets and having their authors confined to the pillory with their ears sheared off. He walled off the east wall of churches to contain the altar and enforced bowing at the name of Jesus in the Anglican liturgy, as well as the wearing of the surplice. He and Strafford developed a policy they called “Thorough” for upholding the King's edicts that provoked howls of outrage in England and Ireland alike. Execrated by his opponents and laughed at behind his back by his royalist confrères—Queen Henrietta Maria saw him, accurately, as a fussy, pompous little man—he was unyielding in his determination to see things done as his judgment told him was best and wept while attempting to bestow a final benediction on his friend Strafford as the latter was being led to the block in 1641.
Laud was not a lovable man. Peevish, temperamental, self-important, impatient, suspicious—after a dinner party, he counted his silver spoons to make sure the guests had not stolen any—he was mocked even by the King's fool, Archie Moore, who quipped “All glory to God and little Laud to the devil.” His intolerance of opposition and his relentless insistence on a beautiful and orderly liturgy made him so hated that the first and only attempt to introduce his edition of the Book of Common Prayer into Scottish worship at St. Giles' Cathedral in 1637 provoked a riot. Macaulay, the paradigmatic Whig, objected to Laud's fate only because, as he put it, ignoring the deposed prelate would have been the best punishment that his Parliamentary foes could have inflicted on the “ridiculous old bigot.”Typical of his imperious nature, Laud was a man of contradictions. He was Chancellor of Oxford, where he endowed a professorship of Arabic, but he expelled undergraduates and disciplined faculty who objected to his religious views. Detested as a crypto-Roman Catholic by thousands, he refused the offer of a cardinal's post from the Vatican if he would only convert.
Why remember him? Against all expectations, Laud, who had lived and died by the principle that a church that had “one Lord and one faith should speak with one heart and one mouth” influenced the course of his mother church more than he might have hoped or his enemies feared. Because of him, Anglicanism swerved neither to the right nor the left: it did not turn into a species of Presbyterianism with bare liturgical overtones or, on the other hand, a mere curiosity, a pale echo of the religion of Rome, a forlorn orphan pining for its parent. Anglicanism remained whole and complete, and echoes of Laud's standards and beliefs can be discerned in Anglican worship today; it descended even to the Episcopal Church of the new American nation when, following the Revolutionary War, the first bishop of the American Church, Samuel Seabury, had to be consecrated by Scottish bishops using Laud's prayerbook of 1637. English bishops could not consecrate an American, because their form of worship would have required a swearing of allegiance to the English King.
How ironic that a man so consumed with his own importance, so full of anger and peevishness, so capable of harshness and cruelty, should have been the means through which the spirit of his church was preserved! The Deity does, indeed, work in mysterious ways. Those contemporaries of Laud considered in his day to be among the lights of Christian piety—Lancelot Andrewes, George Herbert, William Juxon—are known today mostly to specialists of that period. Herbert's poems, beautiful as they are, are an assignment for graduate students in English. The figures of speech in Andrewes's sermons are sometimes ridiculously overdone, and his book of private devotions, valuable as it is, is seldom consulted. No one remembers any longer that it was Juxon who accompanied Charles I to his own appointment with the headsman on another January morning, 4 years after Laud's death, so cold that Charles wore two shirts so that onlookers would not think he was trembling from fear.
No, it was neither Herbert, nor Andrewes, nor Jeremy Taylor, nor even later luminaries like Thomas Ken who preserved Anglican worship as something worthy and distinct, but this cranky little man, nearly eaten alive with impatience that the world could not see things his way and that he could no longer whip it into conformity, forced to witness the gleeful dismantling of everything he had fought for, and finally crying out, in a sort of despairing faith, “Lord, I am coming to you as fast as I can,” as his contemptuous jailers came to lead him to the chopping block. In a final moment of uncharacteristic humility, he said this prayer, which is found today in the Book of Common Prayer. It is his best epitaph:
Gracious Father, we pray for thy holy Catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Savior. Amen.
© Michael Huggins, 2011. All rights reserved.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Judge righteously between a man and his fellow countryman
I like Livy's approach to history. Provided with materials about early Rome that he knows are shot through with myth and borrowings from the history of Greece, he admits that no one can know these things for certain and simply presents them leavened with his best judgment. I like also that, without denigrating religion in general, he doesn't mind telling us that Romulus was said to have been taken up to heaven in a cloud (but may in fact have been torn apart by jealous senators) or that a prominent Roman pretended to have a vision of the dead Romulus to reassure the people.
For Livy, history is the study of events driven by human character, and his portraits are striking. Numa Pompilius, an early Roman king, is noted for his piety and his emphasis on building Rome's moral fibre through attention to religious rites (though Livy notes that Numa constantly pretended to commune in private with the goddess Egeria to support his program). Tullus Hostilius, his successor, respects religion but lives for the glory of conquest in war. Discovering the treachery of Mettius, a confederate king, Tullus has him tied to two chariots that are driven in opposite directions, tearing the traitor apart before the eyes of the horrified crowd. Tullus later comes to grief over religion: attempting a complicated rite in a temple of Jupiter, Tullus gets the formula wrong, whereupon the angry god destroys the building with fire, consuming Tullus in the conflagration.
His successor, Ancus Marcius, is called by Livy one of the greatest Roman kings who ever lived, equally respectful of religion and alert to the need for a powerful stance toward Rome's dissatisfied and sometimes marauding neighbors. Refusing to hold the entire warmaking power in his own hands, he inaugurates a principle that war is to be formally declared by envoys acting on behalf of the entire Roman city state—a lesson that American Presidents of the last 50 years would have done well to heed.
I was reminded of character when reading of George Monck, first Duke of Albemarle, who variously served both the Royalists and later the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War and finally, alarmed and exasperated by Britain's near-anarchy, contrived the Restoration of the Monarchy in the person of Charles II. So balanced in his perceptions of the merits of each side and calm in his temper that he was regularly suspected of disaffection by extremists in whichever side he fought for, Monck was above the rancor of party wrangling, firm in his convictions, prudent in command, blessed with the confidence of the men who served under him, and firm to the point of severity when required. His own brother, a clergyman, was sent by the Royalists to sound Monck out on his plans to restore the Monarchy, and as Hume relates:
As Franklin observed, "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead."
© Michael Huggins, 2010. All rights reserved.
For Livy, history is the study of events driven by human character, and his portraits are striking. Numa Pompilius, an early Roman king, is noted for his piety and his emphasis on building Rome's moral fibre through attention to religious rites (though Livy notes that Numa constantly pretended to commune in private with the goddess Egeria to support his program). Tullus Hostilius, his successor, respects religion but lives for the glory of conquest in war. Discovering the treachery of Mettius, a confederate king, Tullus has him tied to two chariots that are driven in opposite directions, tearing the traitor apart before the eyes of the horrified crowd. Tullus later comes to grief over religion: attempting a complicated rite in a temple of Jupiter, Tullus gets the formula wrong, whereupon the angry god destroys the building with fire, consuming Tullus in the conflagration.
His successor, Ancus Marcius, is called by Livy one of the greatest Roman kings who ever lived, equally respectful of religion and alert to the need for a powerful stance toward Rome's dissatisfied and sometimes marauding neighbors. Refusing to hold the entire warmaking power in his own hands, he inaugurates a principle that war is to be formally declared by envoys acting on behalf of the entire Roman city state—a lesson that American Presidents of the last 50 years would have done well to heed.
I was reminded of character when reading of George Monck, first Duke of Albemarle, who variously served both the Royalists and later the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War and finally, alarmed and exasperated by Britain's near-anarchy, contrived the Restoration of the Monarchy in the person of Charles II. So balanced in his perceptions of the merits of each side and calm in his temper that he was regularly suspected of disaffection by extremists in whichever side he fought for, Monck was above the rancor of party wrangling, firm in his convictions, prudent in command, blessed with the confidence of the men who served under him, and firm to the point of severity when required. His own brother, a clergyman, was sent by the Royalists to sound Monck out on his plans to restore the Monarchy, and as Hume relates:
"When [Monck's brother] arrived, he found that [General Monck] was then holding a council of officers, and was not to be seen for some hours. In the mean time, he was received and entertained by Price, the general's chaplain, a man of probity, as well as a partisan of the king's. The [brother], having an entire confidence in the chaplain, talked very freely to him about the object of his journey, and engaged him, if there should be occasion, to second his applications. At last, the general arrives; the brothers embrace; and after some preliminary conversation, the doctor opens his business. Monck interrupted him, to know whether he had ever before to any body mentioned the subject. 'To nobody,' replied his brother, 'but to Price, whom I know to be entirely in your confidence.' The general, altering his countenance, turned the discourse; and would enter into no further confidence with him, but sent him away with the first opportunity. He would not trust his own brother the moment he knew that he had disclosed the secret, though to a man whom he himself could have trusted.
"His conduct in all other particulars was full of the same reserve and prudence; and no less was requisite for effecting the difficult work which he had undertaken."
As Franklin observed, "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead."
© Michael Huggins, 2010. All rights reserved.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
"Damn'd be him that first cries 'Hold! Enough!'"
Lev Grossman's cover story on Mark Zuckerberg as Time's person of the year for 2010 pays due regard to Zuckerberg's intelligence and drive, both of which are considerable (though I wouldn't be too thrilled, if I were he, to have to admit that I had never heard of E.M. Forster) and even extends the wunderkind the benefit of a doubt: he's not opposed to privacy, you see; he simply doesn't get it, similarly, one supposes, to his reported colorblindness to red and green. Well perhaps, but if that be true, no matter how big his achievement and his personal fortune, it's a flaw in his makeup.
Grossman is sharp and perceptive. I think this paragraph nailed it:
"Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius," as Gibbon wrote. I'll never claim to have achieved the latter state but greatly enjoy the solitude of a lengthy walk along the Shelby Farms Greenline, something I have done for some weeks now, to the benefit of both my health and peace of mind. In fact, I do occasionally meet people I know, including, at various times, fellow trivia buffs Jennifer Larkin and Saravan Chaturvedi, and if I happened to have company and good conversation on a walk, I would welcome it, but I also like the way the setting erects a corridor so apart from the rest of life that it seems almost strange when you happen to cross a street traveled by cars. The interstate, with its frequent whooshing noise of cars, is literally only yards away for much of the route and sometimes visible, but often, the trees mask the sight and to some extent, the sound.
It would hardly have satisfied C.S. Lewis, who wrote, describing his ideal day:
I thought today that whereas I welcome the very proximity to the interstate because the foliage defiantly filters it, as the foliage and the rushing fountain do in the lovely Meditation Garden on the grounds of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the whole experience would have been destroyed for poor Lewis, who would have found the constant noise of traffic, even filtered, pretty well intolerable. How much our experiences and expectations change in just a few generations.
Once you've made yourself feel virtuous with a 10-mile walk on a winter day, you don't mind treating yourself to the perfect winter evening: a bowl of hot soup with a glass of wine, then a fire in the fireplace, a good book, and cognac. I'm finishing Peter Biskind's Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America (and no, it's not only about one thing!) and starting Livy's Early History of Rome, and I suppose two more different books could hardly be imagined, except that Beatty, like the legendary Romulus, is relentless in his purposes.
© Michael Huggins, 2010. All rights reserved.
Grossman is sharp and perceptive. I think this paragraph nailed it:
"[Facebook] herds everybody — friends, co-workers, romantic partners, that guy who lived on your block but moved away after fifth grade — into the same big room. It smooshes together your work self and your home self, your past self and your present self, into a single generic extruded product. It suspends the natural process by which old friends fall away over time, allowing them to build up endlessly, producing the social equivalent of liver failure."
"Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius," as Gibbon wrote. I'll never claim to have achieved the latter state but greatly enjoy the solitude of a lengthy walk along the Shelby Farms Greenline, something I have done for some weeks now, to the benefit of both my health and peace of mind. In fact, I do occasionally meet people I know, including, at various times, fellow trivia buffs Jennifer Larkin and Saravan Chaturvedi, and if I happened to have company and good conversation on a walk, I would welcome it, but I also like the way the setting erects a corridor so apart from the rest of life that it seems almost strange when you happen to cross a street traveled by cars. The interstate, with its frequent whooshing noise of cars, is literally only yards away for much of the route and sometimes visible, but often, the trees mask the sight and to some extent, the sound.
It would hardly have satisfied C.S. Lewis, who wrote, describing his ideal day:
"...by two at the latest I would be on the road. Not, except at rare intervals, with a friend. Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outdoor world; and talking leads almost inevitably to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one of our senses is concerned. The only friend to walk with is one (such as I found, during the holidays, in Arthur) who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared."
I thought today that whereas I welcome the very proximity to the interstate because the foliage defiantly filters it, as the foliage and the rushing fountain do in the lovely Meditation Garden on the grounds of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the whole experience would have been destroyed for poor Lewis, who would have found the constant noise of traffic, even filtered, pretty well intolerable. How much our experiences and expectations change in just a few generations.
Once you've made yourself feel virtuous with a 10-mile walk on a winter day, you don't mind treating yourself to the perfect winter evening: a bowl of hot soup with a glass of wine, then a fire in the fireplace, a good book, and cognac. I'm finishing Peter Biskind's Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America (and no, it's not only about one thing!) and starting Livy's Early History of Rome, and I suppose two more different books could hardly be imagined, except that Beatty, like the legendary Romulus, is relentless in his purposes.
© Michael Huggins, 2010. All rights reserved.
Monday, August 16, 2010
No one believed. They listened at his heart...
My stepfather has been dead 8 hours now. This was not supposed to happen. He was vigorous, a daily walker, still carrying on a busy consulting schedule at age 78. His Outlook inbox was full of e-mails that said "See you in Washington on the 16th." He flew there and was met by a colleague, who began to drive him to a conference he never made; his remains will be flown back the day after tomorrow.
He had quit smoking decades ago to relieve the strain on his heart, from the nicotine, overwork, and general stress. About 7 years ago, his heart raced for hours one night at sickening speeds that would have killed many; the doctor said there was permanent damage, but we couldn't feel the reality of it. In our eyes, he was supposed to live to 85, 90, or beyond.
For Karst to die was like Warren Buffet suddenly finding that his credit card would not cover lunch at Bennigan's. Karst was competent, organized, and effective, all contingencies covered. Where is the restore disk, the reset button, the error message that says this was an invalid transaction? They're not working.
His oldest brother is still living, at 88. His mother was ambulatory and lucid until two months before her death at age 100. His father died at 89, an age that seemed a little premature to everyone. Some people work themselves to death; Karst's clan tended to make careers that lasted as long as other people's entire life spans.
Few things took him by surprise, as this did. He was once dragged into testifying on behalf of his federal agency to a hostile Congressional committee on a few minutes' notice when his boss chickened out; he handled it with aplomb, which surprised no one. Had he suspected that the terminal event was upon him, he would have taken steps to plan things better. Is there a protocol for calling a total stranger, a woman of 77 a thousand miles away and informing her that as of five minutes ago, she is a widow? I have no doubt that the ER doctor in Maryland was as polite as he could be when he called Mom this afternoon. How does one prepare to make or receive such a call?
Last night, Karst was opening a bottle of Bordeaux to enjoy with Mom. This morning, she kissed him goodbye and perhaps stroked his head, which he shaved completely bald, while sporting a sea captain's bushy beard.
This evening, the Transplant Council of Washington called Mom asking to harvest skin from Karst's remains for transplants for burn victims. The three Memphis brothers, Mom's kids, agreed; everyone's cell phone or Blackberry then came out to track down our stepsister in Connecticut and her brother in Maryland to get their OK. My stepbrother, not one to mince words, said "Vampires" but agreed. Karst would have thought it worthwhile.
As Frost's poem says, "And they, since they were not the one dead, went about their affairs."
Business will not wait. Donor tissue must be harvested within 24 hours. Karst would have understood. His own father, Jacob Besteman, whose parents had emigrated here at the turn of the last century from Friesland, saw his first business fail on a Friday and started another the following Monday morning. He had to; he was supporting his elderly parents in the days before Social Security and helping keep ruined neighbors afloat in the depths of the Depression. There was no time to mope.
Jacob was of stern Dutch Calvinist stock. His own father had stopped attending one Dutch church when they changed from singing metrical Psalms to hymns composed by men; he found it "worldly." When my mother, in her late 40s, visited the Besteman clan in Grand Rapids for the first time and casually got up from the table after supper, Karst's hand quietly but firmly pulled her back down to her seat. You did not leave the table until Jacob had read aloud a chapter from the Bible and said a prayer. His children, by now in their 50s, sat quietly for this daily ritual.
For his youngest child, Karst, born March 26, 1932, Jacob envisioned a ministerial calling and sent him to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, for pre-seminary studies. Earlier, with his older brothers, Karst had worked in the family produce business and helped with their other business of raising and showing quarter horses. At age 15, he drove trailers of horses over 200 miles to Indianapolis to show in the Indiana State Fair. In an elevator in Indianapolis's grand hotel, he met actor Charles Laughton who was there to show the trotting horses he and his wife, Elsa Lanchester, raised for a hobby.
Karst, whose name is the Dutch word for "Christian," went to Calvin College and paid close attention to his religious studies, as to an interesting problem requiring serious attention. He had a strong and abiding faith, but his heart was not in pastoral work. Eventually, he went home and confessed as much to his father, who said "Then you might as well put on work boots and dig ditches."
Karst knew he was better than that. He earned a Master's in social work and entered the Public Health Service. In his 30s, he traveled to the backwoods and interviewed characters out of Deliverance to find the whereabouts of their friends who had been treated for addiction in a government program years before; the government wanted to do a followup study. The backwoodsmen were suspicious and hostile; they did not want to tell him where their friends were, but they hadn't reckoned on Karst's tenacity. He persisted and learned from them what he needed to know.
He was always absorbed in his work. Leaving his office at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky one evening when he had achieved the rank of Admiral, his mind was so much on his work that he drove right past the lowering of the flag, breaking a cardinal rule of military etiquette. An indignant MP chased him down and sputtered, "Sir, I'll have you know that at Ft. Campbell, we respect the colors!" Karst thanked him and apologized. For the rank and recognition he achieved, he had less ego than anyone I've ever known.
He had married a childhood friend, Esther, and they raised two kids, Karst David and Elizabeth. Esther often had to be both parents because of the demands of Karst's own work. His growing expertise in drug treatment and his efficiency at work earned him recognition and brought him to the attention of powerful and influential people. The names he knew were the people you read about in Newsweek. Karst himself was never on the cover of Time and didn't care. He cared that the Reagan Administration, in his view, was pursuing a shortsighted policy with regard to the spread of cocaine in our society and told them so, in the Oval Office itself. It was a long time before he was invited back.
But he was too valuable for his services to be dispensed with, and he had the confidence of people like C. Everett Koop and the ear of people who could make a difference. His opinions were sought and valued. One of his brothers, camping with his family in the Canadian wilderness to "get away from it all," turned on a battery-operated TV in his tent one night. The first thing he saw was Karst being interviewed on TV about drug policy!
Esther was stricken with cancer in her early 40s and was cruelly taken from her family, leaving a husband who wished he could have spent more time at home and two teenaged kids. Karst tried to mend fences at home and also threw himself even more vigorously into his work.
Around 1981, he was named the Director of the New York Regional Office of Health and Human Services. Getting to his desk very early each morning as his work ethic demanded, he was intrigued at the 48-year-old woman who was invariably at her own desk at 6 a.m. He learned that she too had been widowed, two years before. My mother did not care for Karst at first but then saw the worth of his character. She bought two tickets to a Broadway show and asked him out. He said, "I am breaking two of my own rules--first, never to date someone from the office, and second, never to date a woman who asks me out." Against his earlier instincts, he continued to see her and always found her fascinating. They were married March 17, 1984, at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland, in their early 50s, still only just young enough that both sets of elderly parents were present at the wedding. Karst stood up to make a speech: "It's not often that people in our circumstances find anotber chance at love. We've left our youth behind..."
Mom interjected, "Speak for yourself!"
That kind of humorous badinage was typical of them. Mom would get agitated about something, and Karst would interrupt with something witty or just a hearty laugh. His laugh, his friendly smile, and a firm handshake were always among his trademarks.
To blend in with our family, one had to accept the sometimes rather pointed humor. Waiting outside a Broadway theatre showing Annie to meet Karst for the first time and not knowing what he looked like, my brothers and their wives said to each other, "Well, how bad can he be? At least he won't be fat and bald." Minutes later, when Karst, at a portly period in his life and with a head bald as a cueball, walked up with Mom, all of them were almost falling down laughing.
We kidded him but always respected him. His reading and knowledge were formidable. Some people have everything; Karst seemed to know everything. There were very few topics you could bring up to which he could not add an intelligent comment.
At 50, he decided that government service had grown stale and looked for new challenges. He worked for non-profit foundations that promoted drug abuse education and maintained his contacts with National Institutes of Health and National Institute on Drug Abuse. He applied for the directorship of one foundation and they wouldn't give it to him because he had no M.D. next to his name. They then hired an M.D. with little organizational sense and then had to hire Karst to actually run the place! Still later, Karst ran two drug rehab clinics in downtown Washington, D.C., the only ones of their type I have ever heard of, in which the addicts were expected to pay a small fee for each treatment session. It sounded crazy and I'm sure didn't even cover costs, but that wasn't the point; by asking something of the addicts themselves, it helped give them back their self respect.
He left that position a few years ago, when he and Mom moved to Memphis from Washington, D.C. but still continued to telecommute via computer, while making occasional trips back to Washington for conferences. He also read avidly, went on daily walks with Mom, became active in their neighborhood association, swam in their pool, and even discovered one quieter, more contemplative hobby: standing in their livingroom overlooking the Mississippi River, he would look out through his field glasses at the barges and tugboats; he had bought a registry that listed every tugboat and marked them as they passed. Whether spending a quiet evening at home with Mom, listening to music or watching the sunset, or entertaining family in their livingroom that is the size of an office building lobby, he was content.
His roots were in Grand Rapids, but he will be buried in Memphis's historic Elmwood Cemetery, founded in 1852, the resting place of governors and generals, the sort of people who valued Karst and whose exercise of power he understood, though he was never overawed by it. Unyielding as the granite monuments at Elmwood, he had a quiet strength that could not be daunted or broken. His final appointment came much earlier than we wanted or expected and like the slow and powerful barges that he liked to watch, left us gazing after the trailing wake.
© Michael Huggins, 2010. All rights reserved.
He had quit smoking decades ago to relieve the strain on his heart, from the nicotine, overwork, and general stress. About 7 years ago, his heart raced for hours one night at sickening speeds that would have killed many; the doctor said there was permanent damage, but we couldn't feel the reality of it. In our eyes, he was supposed to live to 85, 90, or beyond.
For Karst to die was like Warren Buffet suddenly finding that his credit card would not cover lunch at Bennigan's. Karst was competent, organized, and effective, all contingencies covered. Where is the restore disk, the reset button, the error message that says this was an invalid transaction? They're not working.
His oldest brother is still living, at 88. His mother was ambulatory and lucid until two months before her death at age 100. His father died at 89, an age that seemed a little premature to everyone. Some people work themselves to death; Karst's clan tended to make careers that lasted as long as other people's entire life spans.
Few things took him by surprise, as this did. He was once dragged into testifying on behalf of his federal agency to a hostile Congressional committee on a few minutes' notice when his boss chickened out; he handled it with aplomb, which surprised no one. Had he suspected that the terminal event was upon him, he would have taken steps to plan things better. Is there a protocol for calling a total stranger, a woman of 77 a thousand miles away and informing her that as of five minutes ago, she is a widow? I have no doubt that the ER doctor in Maryland was as polite as he could be when he called Mom this afternoon. How does one prepare to make or receive such a call?
Last night, Karst was opening a bottle of Bordeaux to enjoy with Mom. This morning, she kissed him goodbye and perhaps stroked his head, which he shaved completely bald, while sporting a sea captain's bushy beard.
This evening, the Transplant Council of Washington called Mom asking to harvest skin from Karst's remains for transplants for burn victims. The three Memphis brothers, Mom's kids, agreed; everyone's cell phone or Blackberry then came out to track down our stepsister in Connecticut and her brother in Maryland to get their OK. My stepbrother, not one to mince words, said "Vampires" but agreed. Karst would have thought it worthwhile.
As Frost's poem says, "And they, since they were not the one dead, went about their affairs."
Business will not wait. Donor tissue must be harvested within 24 hours. Karst would have understood. His own father, Jacob Besteman, whose parents had emigrated here at the turn of the last century from Friesland, saw his first business fail on a Friday and started another the following Monday morning. He had to; he was supporting his elderly parents in the days before Social Security and helping keep ruined neighbors afloat in the depths of the Depression. There was no time to mope.
Jacob was of stern Dutch Calvinist stock. His own father had stopped attending one Dutch church when they changed from singing metrical Psalms to hymns composed by men; he found it "worldly." When my mother, in her late 40s, visited the Besteman clan in Grand Rapids for the first time and casually got up from the table after supper, Karst's hand quietly but firmly pulled her back down to her seat. You did not leave the table until Jacob had read aloud a chapter from the Bible and said a prayer. His children, by now in their 50s, sat quietly for this daily ritual.
For his youngest child, Karst, born March 26, 1932, Jacob envisioned a ministerial calling and sent him to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, for pre-seminary studies. Earlier, with his older brothers, Karst had worked in the family produce business and helped with their other business of raising and showing quarter horses. At age 15, he drove trailers of horses over 200 miles to Indianapolis to show in the Indiana State Fair. In an elevator in Indianapolis's grand hotel, he met actor Charles Laughton who was there to show the trotting horses he and his wife, Elsa Lanchester, raised for a hobby.
Karst, whose name is the Dutch word for "Christian," went to Calvin College and paid close attention to his religious studies, as to an interesting problem requiring serious attention. He had a strong and abiding faith, but his heart was not in pastoral work. Eventually, he went home and confessed as much to his father, who said "Then you might as well put on work boots and dig ditches."
Karst knew he was better than that. He earned a Master's in social work and entered the Public Health Service. In his 30s, he traveled to the backwoods and interviewed characters out of Deliverance to find the whereabouts of their friends who had been treated for addiction in a government program years before; the government wanted to do a followup study. The backwoodsmen were suspicious and hostile; they did not want to tell him where their friends were, but they hadn't reckoned on Karst's tenacity. He persisted and learned from them what he needed to know.
He was always absorbed in his work. Leaving his office at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky one evening when he had achieved the rank of Admiral, his mind was so much on his work that he drove right past the lowering of the flag, breaking a cardinal rule of military etiquette. An indignant MP chased him down and sputtered, "Sir, I'll have you know that at Ft. Campbell, we respect the colors!" Karst thanked him and apologized. For the rank and recognition he achieved, he had less ego than anyone I've ever known.
He had married a childhood friend, Esther, and they raised two kids, Karst David and Elizabeth. Esther often had to be both parents because of the demands of Karst's own work. His growing expertise in drug treatment and his efficiency at work earned him recognition and brought him to the attention of powerful and influential people. The names he knew were the people you read about in Newsweek. Karst himself was never on the cover of Time and didn't care. He cared that the Reagan Administration, in his view, was pursuing a shortsighted policy with regard to the spread of cocaine in our society and told them so, in the Oval Office itself. It was a long time before he was invited back.
But he was too valuable for his services to be dispensed with, and he had the confidence of people like C. Everett Koop and the ear of people who could make a difference. His opinions were sought and valued. One of his brothers, camping with his family in the Canadian wilderness to "get away from it all," turned on a battery-operated TV in his tent one night. The first thing he saw was Karst being interviewed on TV about drug policy!
Esther was stricken with cancer in her early 40s and was cruelly taken from her family, leaving a husband who wished he could have spent more time at home and two teenaged kids. Karst tried to mend fences at home and also threw himself even more vigorously into his work.
Around 1981, he was named the Director of the New York Regional Office of Health and Human Services. Getting to his desk very early each morning as his work ethic demanded, he was intrigued at the 48-year-old woman who was invariably at her own desk at 6 a.m. He learned that she too had been widowed, two years before. My mother did not care for Karst at first but then saw the worth of his character. She bought two tickets to a Broadway show and asked him out. He said, "I am breaking two of my own rules--first, never to date someone from the office, and second, never to date a woman who asks me out." Against his earlier instincts, he continued to see her and always found her fascinating. They were married March 17, 1984, at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland, in their early 50s, still only just young enough that both sets of elderly parents were present at the wedding. Karst stood up to make a speech: "It's not often that people in our circumstances find anotber chance at love. We've left our youth behind..."
Mom interjected, "Speak for yourself!"
That kind of humorous badinage was typical of them. Mom would get agitated about something, and Karst would interrupt with something witty or just a hearty laugh. His laugh, his friendly smile, and a firm handshake were always among his trademarks.
To blend in with our family, one had to accept the sometimes rather pointed humor. Waiting outside a Broadway theatre showing Annie to meet Karst for the first time and not knowing what he looked like, my brothers and their wives said to each other, "Well, how bad can he be? At least he won't be fat and bald." Minutes later, when Karst, at a portly period in his life and with a head bald as a cueball, walked up with Mom, all of them were almost falling down laughing.
We kidded him but always respected him. His reading and knowledge were formidable. Some people have everything; Karst seemed to know everything. There were very few topics you could bring up to which he could not add an intelligent comment.
At 50, he decided that government service had grown stale and looked for new challenges. He worked for non-profit foundations that promoted drug abuse education and maintained his contacts with National Institutes of Health and National Institute on Drug Abuse. He applied for the directorship of one foundation and they wouldn't give it to him because he had no M.D. next to his name. They then hired an M.D. with little organizational sense and then had to hire Karst to actually run the place! Still later, Karst ran two drug rehab clinics in downtown Washington, D.C., the only ones of their type I have ever heard of, in which the addicts were expected to pay a small fee for each treatment session. It sounded crazy and I'm sure didn't even cover costs, but that wasn't the point; by asking something of the addicts themselves, it helped give them back their self respect.
He left that position a few years ago, when he and Mom moved to Memphis from Washington, D.C. but still continued to telecommute via computer, while making occasional trips back to Washington for conferences. He also read avidly, went on daily walks with Mom, became active in their neighborhood association, swam in their pool, and even discovered one quieter, more contemplative hobby: standing in their livingroom overlooking the Mississippi River, he would look out through his field glasses at the barges and tugboats; he had bought a registry that listed every tugboat and marked them as they passed. Whether spending a quiet evening at home with Mom, listening to music or watching the sunset, or entertaining family in their livingroom that is the size of an office building lobby, he was content.
His roots were in Grand Rapids, but he will be buried in Memphis's historic Elmwood Cemetery, founded in 1852, the resting place of governors and generals, the sort of people who valued Karst and whose exercise of power he understood, though he was never overawed by it. Unyielding as the granite monuments at Elmwood, he had a quiet strength that could not be daunted or broken. His final appointment came much earlier than we wanted or expected and like the slow and powerful barges that he liked to watch, left us gazing after the trailing wake.
© Michael Huggins, 2010. All rights reserved.
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