Author: frankisemptiness

September 24th, 2020

“I see a bad moon a-rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin’
I see bad times today

Don’t go ’round tonight
It’s bound to take your life
There’s a bad moon on the rise”

from Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Now that we have six months of the pandemic under our belts, it’s time to take stock of things. Where are we now? Where are we going?

Karin and I went out for coffee on Tuesday with a friend of ours who is a missionary for an Evangelical organization. He used to be very active in a local Bible-based church. Dan is back home for a couple weeks. Then he will return to his work in Germany. The three of us sat in the café and talked about religion. What else would we be talking about? The conversation drifted to the topic of church attendance during the pandemic.

The upshot of the discussion is that attendance at religious services currently varies from poor to non-existent. That seems to be across the board. Karin and I go to Mass at our Catholic parish three mornings per week. The number of people going to the weekday liturgies hasn’t changed much. Attendance at Sunday Mass seems to be much lower. It’s hard to tell, but there are Sunday mornings when the population looks to be half of what it was prior to the arrival of the virus.

Dan commented that the attendance at his old church is significantly less than before the pandemic. His religious community, Elmbrook Church, is a mega-church. It’s enormous. It has a parking lot that is big enough for a pilot to land a Cessna in an emergency. In the past, Elmbrook expected to see thousands of people at the Sunday services. Now, according to Dan, the church draws only several hundred every weekend. This is a bit disturbing to that congregation.

Non-Christian traditions are also struggling to maintain their communities. I belong, in an unofficial sort of way, to Lake Park Synagogue in Milwaukee. There hasn’t been a minyan assembled since early March. Last Sunday the rabbi invited members of the shul to meet outside the synagogue to hear him blow the shofar for Rosh Hashana. Everybody had masks and stayed six feet apart. That was the first time I saw some of my friends in 3D in almost half a year. The synagogue is closed for regular services, and there is no telling when they will resume.

Another example is the Great Lake Zen Center, where I have been going for meditation practice for the last fifteen years. We closed up shop. Last month we took everything out of the Zen Center and put it all into storage. There is no longer a physical location for the sangha to meet and sit together. We meditate using a Zoom format, which is really not much different than meditating alone. Will the Buddhist sangha find a new home and start practicing together again? Maybe. Who knows?

I used to go occasionally to the Sikh Temple. I stopped at the there this morning to meditate. It was my first visit to the temple since early in the spring. The place was practically empty. Back in the day, the temple would be quiet during the week, but there were always some old guys hanging around the office, watching Bollywood movies and hiding from their wives. Today there were just the two priests, and me.

I haven’t been to a mosque in months. My understanding is that they are open, but social distancing has cut back the attendance quite a bit. My Syrian friend, Hussein, told me a while ago that people had to make reservations for Friday services at his mosque. The bottom line is that some folks can’t worship in the mosque with everyone else. Before the pandemic, both the mosques and the Sikh Temple tended to be packed solid with people during their weekly prayer gatherings. That’s done. There are no more crowds in these places.

Will things change once there is a vaccine? Will people go back to their places of worship? I don’t know about that.

A couple weeks ago, I had a phone conversation with my old rabbi. He told me that, since the pandemic has stopped people from going to services at the synagogue, they have filled up that empty space in their schedule with other activities. Are these people going to jettison their new interests in order to return to the synagogue for prayers on Shabbat? Maybe. Maybe not.

I suspect the same thing is true for followers of other faith traditions. Some of the people who filled these houses of worship are not coming back. Ever. They are done with it, for a variety of reasons. Some of them won’t return because they are afraid of contracting the COVID virus, and they don’t care if there is a vaccine. They aren’t willing to take the risk. Some have simply lost interest in their practice. Some people came to religious services more for the sense of belonging that a community offers, than for the actual worship. The pandemic has destroyed much of that feeling of fellowship, and those folks who wanted it now have no compelling reason to stay with their tradition.

It is interesting to watch how different denominations are trying to luring members back into the fold. Our local Catholic prelate, Archbishop Listecki, has basically tried to strong-arm people back into the pews. He said that Catholics who continue to avoid going to Mass are in danger of committing a “grave sin”. Really? He also stated that fear of being infected by the COVID virus is not a good enough reason for missing Sunday Mass. Really? Since the archbishop made these comments, I have seen zero increase in participation at the liturgies.

A non-religious person might think to themselves, “Who cares? That doesn’t affect me.”

That might not be quite true. Religious communities often, but not always, contribute to the well being of the larger community. If these congregations collapse because of a lack of members, that will hurt the secular world in which we all live.

September 23rd, 2020

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” – Confucius

“It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty for giving lovely names to things.” – Oscar Wilde

The girl we love has picked out a name for her unborn son. This is exciting for the young woman, and for Karin and myself. I suspect it doesn’t mean much to her kid, at least not yet.

A while ago, at a Zoom meeting, Zen Master Dae Kwang spoke to the members of our sangha about names. I am not probably not quoting him correctly here, but he said,

“The sky doesn’t call itself “sky”. Things don’t have names. We give them names.”

He’s right. Things, and people, do not automatically come with names. We give each of them a name, or names. A name is not the thing itself. A name is just an idea. However, it can be a profoundly powerful idea.

I think about my name, Frank. Does the name actually mean anything? Is it just five letters put together in a random way? What difference does a name make?

My name means “free”, but that can be ambiguous. I was actually given the legal name of Francis, which derives from Latin, and means “Frenchman”. I’m not French, as far as I know, and being called “Francis” made my childhood more interesting than it needed to be. My father named me Frank/Francis because it was a family tradition. Every first born son in the family, for five generations, has been named Frank. That shows a complete lack of imagination.

The name has baggage beyond just the family tradition. Historically, there have been famous people bearing that name. St. Francis of Assisi is a case in point. My name has echoes from his life. In fact, my family went to Assisi in 1998 to visit the birthplace of St. Francis. Our current pope consciously picked the name Francis, apparently hoping to channel some of the saint’s love and compassion.

In Holy Scripture a lot of ink is used to record the names of people. In fact, the writers of the Bible often take the time and effort to explain why somebody is given a particular name. For example, in Genesis it says that Eve had a third son “and named him Seth, saying, “God has granted me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him.” Later in Genesis, Sarah laughs when she is told that she will have a child in her old age. Hence, her son’s name is Isaac, which means “laughter”. In Jewish history, and probably in most of the ancient world, names meant something. They were important.

Why?

Going back to Zen Master Dae Kwang, he stated that the name is not the person. But maybe it is. Perhaps giving a name to a baby is an intuitive recognition of who that child is, and of who he or she will become. Does the name describe the individual, or does the person eventually become that name? Does a name change our perception of a person? Does a name change a person’s perception of themselves?

There a verses in the Bible that indicate that God knows our true name. For instance:

“But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” – Isaiah 43:1

In a way, a parent acts a bit like God when he or she names their child. The parent is saying, “I know you”. This may not be at all logical, but I think it’s true. The name given by the parent might be more a reflection on the adult than the child. In a sense, the parent may be naming themselves as much as they naming the baby.

The girl we love is naming her son “Asher”. That’s a good Jewish name. It means “Happy” or “Blessed” in Hebrew. A friend of mine from the synagogue mentioned that, depending on the pronunciation, it also sounds like the Hebrew word for “I sing”. Considering all of the trials and struggles this young woman has already endured in her life, the name seems very appropriate. She deserved to be blessed, and so does her little boy.

The Zen Master is right about names, but I feel in my gut that names also have a strong and subtle power. I can’t explain it. I just know that they make a difference.

Asher’s name will make a difference in his life.

September 16th, 2020

Max would have been 100 years old today. He was born in rural Silesia, which in 1920 was part of Germany. Max was born into a world filled with political uncertainty and social chaos. He was born into a world where the old values had been swept away and people feared what the future might bring.

If Max had been born a century later, in our time, he would be in the same situation as he was in 1920. Much has changed in one hundred years, and some things haven’t changed at all.

Timing is everything. Max’s growth marched hand in hand with the growth of Nazism in Germany. The Nazis came to power when Max was only thirteen. Max was sucked into the Hitler youth. At eighteen years of age, Max was drafted into the German military. That was in 1938, when the Germany swallowed up Austria and Czechoslovakia. Max went with his Kameraden in Poland in 1939.

Max served as a radioman in the Luftwaffe. He spent much of the early part of World War II in Italy. Then he was sent, along with thousands of other soldiers to the Russian front. He stayed on that mobile killing ground for years, freezing in the bitter winters. He was on the Russian front until it finally moved far enough west to be in central Germany. That is where Max was shot, almost right at the end of the war.

Max wound up in a Red Cross hospital, a Lazarett. His life was saved by a cigarette.

The story goes like this:

Max was in the field hospital with a chest wound. He asked a nurse for a cigarette. She reprimanded him by saying,

“You have a lung wound! You can’t have a cigarette!”

A doctor took the nurse aside, but he didn’t take her far enough away from Max’s bed. The doctor told her, “Just give him a damn cigarette. He’s going to die anyway.”

Max heard that. Out of sheer stubbornness, he decided to live.

Max never went home. He was a refugee after the war. so was the rest of his family. His parents and his sister fled Silesia in April of 1945, with sound of the Russian guns behind them. Max’s father had an old jacket with him. It had Reichsmarks sewed into the lining. Being absentminded, the old man gave the jacket with the money to another refugee who had no coat at all. Max found his family in the West. They started their new lives with nothing, in a part of Germany that was foreign to them.

Max was sickly after that. He didn’t take care of himself. He drank too much. He smoked too much. He did what traumatized veterans generally do. He eventually married. His first child was a girl. Max and Erika named their daughter Karin.

I was stationed with the U.S. Army in West Germany in 1983. That is when I met Karin. At the time, she was a feminist, environmentalist, pacifist. I was not. I was an Army officer and a helicopter pilot. We made for an interesting couple. We still do.

I met Max shortly after I started dating Karin. Max and Erika lived in Edelfingen, a tiny village in the Taubertal, a wine producing region in Baden-Württemberg. When I first saw Max, he was the same age that I am now. It feels strange to realize that. He was a thin, wiry man, with no fat at all. He combed what was left of his black hair straight back, in the old European style. He had a gruff, smoke-roughened voice and a ready smile.

I knew very little German and Max knew no English at all. However, we hit it off well. I learned German quickly as I dated Karin. When Karin was busy with her mom, I would hang out with Max in their living room. We would sit across from each other at the table. We would talk. Max would chain smoke and I would drink beer. Max rolled his own cigarettes. He used some nasty Turkish blend of tobacco that eventually caused the low-ceilinged room to fill with bluish smoke. He would tell me stories.

Because we both had military background, Max would tell me about the war. Some of it I understood. Some I didn’t. Most of his tales were funny. Veterans usually tell comical stories. An army, regardless of the nationality, is always filled with absurdity. The jokes are universal in their own way. It is easier for a soldier to laugh at his experiences than to take them seriously.

Once, and only once, did Max tell me a something serious. It was a story about his time on the Russian front. From what I understood, Max’s unit was on the front during a harsh winter. The Soviets attacked and pushed the German forces several miles to the west. In doing so, they overran a field hospital. The Germans counterattacked and drove the Russians back. When the Germans returned to the Lazarett, they found that all the wounded soldiers were dead. The Soviets had hosed them all down with water and left them to freeze to death.

I never asked Max any more about it.

Max treated me like his own son. We never had any arguments. We never had any issues.

Max passed away in December of 1994. He died peacefully.

Karin says that our oldest son, Hans, resembles Max in a lot of ways. She tells me that Hans moves like her dad, talks like her dad, smiles like her dad. When Karin looks at Hans, she sees her father.

Hans went to war in Iraq. He was tested in that crucible of violence just like his grandfather was, and he came out of the experience with similar problems. It seems strange that this sort of thing happened again in our family. It’s like seeing karma in action. Max overcame his demons. I hope that Hans will overcome his.

Hans has a little boy now. His son, Weston, is almost two years old.

Weston’s middle name is “Mack”. First Max, and then Mack.

That sounds almost like an echo.

September 9th, 2020

“Hans plays with Lotte, Lotte plays with Jane
Jane plays with Willi, Willi is happy again
Suki plays with Leo, Sacha plays with Britt
Adolf builts a bonfire, Enrico plays with it
Whistling tunes we hide in the dunes by the seaside
Whistling tunes we’re kissing baboons in the jungle
It’s a knockout
If looks could kill, they probably will
In games without frontiers-war without tears
Games without frontiers-war without tears”

from “Games Without Frontiers” by Peter Gabriel

Ayuda Mutua MKE has its act together. It’s a grassroots community group, and I had never heard of it until a few weeks ago. Ayuda runs a food pantry on the south side of Milwaukee. Most of the people involved are young; well, younger than me. A friend of mine, Joanna, told me about the organization. They need volunteers to work in the pantry, and they need people to deliver food to people who, for whatever reason, cannot get to their location.

It is my understanding that Ayuda Mutua MKE came into being as the pandemic started. The COVID virus hit the immigrant communities on the south of Milwaukee very hard, at least in an economic sense. Many of the inhabitants of the south side are Latinx, and some of them may be undocumented. These people not only lost their jobs, but due to their immigration status, they cannot access government resources to alleviate their financial distress.

Ayuda does almost all of its organizing online, mostly through Facebook and a site called “SignUpGenius”. The people at Ayuda have an email address which they check infrequently. They also have a phone number which they seldom, if ever, answer. Their operation is very 21st Century.

I signed up with them to deliver food to families on Tuesday evenings. On Tuesday morning, Ayuda electronically sent me a list of drops. The list consists of addresses and phone numbers. No names. Ever. Typically, a volunteer is given five to ten deliveries. Whoever is assigned the drops routes them for the driver. I am impressed by that. If a driver follows the order of the deliveries as presented by Ayuda, it is pretty efficient.

Ayuda wants a driver to follow COVID-19 protocol: wear a mask when delivering, use gloves if you have them, etc. The idea is to drop the food/diapers on the porch of the recipient. The driver sends a text to the family just prior to arrival, and then sends another text after dropping off the supplies.

For example, since nearly all the recipients are Spanish speakers, I first send a text saying: “Te traigo comida de Ayuda Mutua. Diez minutos.”

I set the bags on the stoop at their front door, and then I text:

“Está en tu porche!”

Some of these areas are a little sketchy. Something left on a porch may not stay there very long. Hence, the texts.

Then off I go. I seldom see or meet anybody. With the virus, the deliveries are planned to work that way. I have occasionally spoken with a recipient, but the conversations have always been brief, partly due to my limited Spanish vocabulary. However, I do get texts back from people:

“¡Gracias!” or “¡Que dios te bendiga!”

This Tuesday I got a list of nine drops. I have a good understanding of Milwaukee’s geography, so I often have at least a vague mental image of where I am going. My grandparents lived for years on the south side, back when the population there was primarily Slavic. Now it is mostly Latinx, but the landmarks are still the same. St. Josephat still proudly stands at the corner of 6th Street and Lincoln. St. Stanislaus towers over the freeway exit on Mitchell Street. The south side is familiar turf, and I have an deep affinity for the area.

The neighborhoods on Milwaukee’s south side are not all the same. I can look at an address and tell what it’s going to be like. The neighborhood on 6th Street near Ayuda is solidly middle class. If I go north to the streets near Lincoln Avenue, they are more struggling working class. If I keep going north toward National Avenue, I am in the midst of poverty.

I like to drive my beater when making deliveries. It’s a car that my son, Stefan, rebuilt. My ride is a 2005 Ford Focus. It’s dark blue with bright orange rims. The front bumper is slightly askew. Stefan installed a turbo and a kick ass sound system. I have never dared to turn the music louder than halfway up the dial. He put in an industrial strength woofer for added bass. The car belongs in these neighborhoods, even if I don’t.

Stefan is a welder. He often works with Latinos. Stefan told me about a conversation he had with one of these guys. The Latino lived on the south side, and he was a bit concerned about white gentrification of his neighborhood. He didn’t want these outsiders taking over his place. The guy told Stefan:

“You know, my neighbor and I, we take turns. Every once in a while, at night, one of us pops a couple rounds in the air. That keeps those people away.”

The man was joking. Maybe.

Anyway, when I looked at the list, I saw that my last stop was near 48th Street and North Avenue. That is not on the south side. That is across the viaduct on the near north side. I immediately had a racist moment.

“Why the fuck am I going there?”

The north side of Milwaukee is predominantly Black. The odd thing is that I know this area. We have friends that live near that address. So, why did I have this twinge of irrational fear?

It goes way back. They say that nobody is born a racist. True, but the training for that starts really early. I heard from early childhood that the north side was bad news. Even after fifty years, that twisted information still sticks with me. It doesn’t matter how rational I try to be. I still get this flutter in my gut when I go there.

Years ago, a Black man at my work place asked me point blank if I was a racist. I told him “no”. Upon reflection, I would have to say that I am. How could I not be? The prejudice is buried so deep in my psyche that I will never uproot it all. That’s just a fact.

On Tuesday evening, I went to Ayuda to pick up the food and diapers for my deliveries. There was a nearly endless line of cars full of people waiting to get the groceries that they could not afford otherwise. I waited in the queue for half an hour. Then I pulled over to the side as the folks at Ayuda got my stuff. There was a car behind me with two older white people in it. The car was a new-ish Subaru. It was a classic white, liberal vehicle. Now that car did not belong in those neighborhoods. It made me laugh.

I did my drops on the south side. Then I drove up to the last location north of the viaduct. It felt a bit like going to a place on the ancient maps where it was written:”Here be dragons”. My logic and my emotions wrestled on the drive.

I got to the house and made the drop. I sent the family a text in English.

As I walked back to my car, I saw a young Black man on the other side of the street. He was eyeballing me, as I was with him. Our eyes locked for a moment. He didn’t smile or wave. Neither did I.

I was a stranger and an alien there. He knew it. I knew it.

Is it all in our minds? How do we learn to see things for what they really are?

As Peter Gabriel wrote, “If looks could kill, they probably will.”

On the way home, I got a text from the last family. It said,

“Thank U.”

September 14th,2020

The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, published the following letter today.

“Much of the current campaign for president revolves around the issue of mayhem and destruction in our cities. Both Trump and Biden tell us that they deplore violence. Do they?

Our country has been at war for nineteen years. We have wreaked havoc in various nations across the globe, in particular Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t hear either of the two major candidates speaking about the suffering and death in those countries.

My oldest son fought in Iraq. He killed people there. He destroyed their property. Our government rewarded my son with medals for his efforts. We, as a nation, have honored what our soldiers have done overseas. We have applauded people like my son.

When we see videos on the news that show burning cars or street shootings, and we find out that these events occurred in Baghdad or Kabul or Aleppo, we collectively shrug, and say, “These things happen in war.” However, if we find out these actions happened in Portland or Kenosha or DC, then we react with shock and horror.

Why is that? It is because we don’t care what happens in a neighborhood ten thousand miles away. We only care what happens in our neighborhood.

How did we ever think that we could export violence around the world for two decades and not have any of it come back home to haunt us?”

September 6th, 2020

Years ago, my parents had a formal dining room in their house. That meant the room was never used. It was more of a shrine than anything else. Besides a large, heavy table in the center of the room, there were numerous black and white photos scattered about. These framed pictures were of various relatives, most of them long dead. Many of the photos were from weddings, or from other significant life events. I could recognize some of the faces in the frames. I did not feel like I knew any of the people well. Some of them I didn’t know at all.

I remember asking my father once about the people in the pictures. I asked him if he had ever written down anything about their lives. He shrugged and said, “No”.

I remember my parents meticulously putting together a family tree on a large sheet of paper. I was quite young then. The family tree did not mean much to me at the time, because it was just a list of names connected by carefully drawn lines. I knew very few of the people, and I still don’t.

Both the photo collection and the family tree were useless to me. I can find the faces and names of my ancestors, but very few histories. These men and women are, and always will be, strangers to me, and that is a shame.

The life stories of these individuals are of interest to me, because I want to understand who they were, so that I can understand who I am. Patterns of behavior persist through the generations. These patterns affect me, they affect my children, and they will affect my grandchildren. But I don’t know enough to see these trends. I can’t see the connections.

Maybe I just haven’t lived long enough. Age is no guarantee of wisdom, but a person can learn a few things if they pay attention.

My father’s mother lived well into her nineties. She had wisdom. Her mind was sharp until the end of her life, and she had seen enough to recognize the patterns. She was able to discern what was important in life and what was not. I could go to her for advice, and know that it was based on her observation and experience. She understood.

I am only in my sixties. I see events unfolding in the family in ways that are similar to what happened years ago, but I don’t know why the cycles are repeating. Is it all hereditary? Is it genetic? Is it environmental?

I would like to understand. Maybe I will, or maybe I won’t . Perhaps it doesn’t even matter.

Maybe it just is.

August 31st, 2020

“In the Blood of Eden
We have done everything we can
In the Blood of Eden
So we end as we began
With the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
It was all for the union
Ohhh The union of
The woman
The woman and the man”

from “Blood of Eden” by Peter Gabriel/Regina Spektor

 

We had trouble finding the clinic. Karin and I had never been there before. We were meeting a few people. Two of them arrived when we did. They were a young couple. The girl was about seventeen months pregnant, and she was going to the clinic with her fiance. The young man’s mother and sister showed up too.

The clinic was hard to find because it was just an office tucked away in a bank building. Seeing that it was a Sunday evening, the bank’s parking lot was almost empty. We only figured out that the clinic was there after we saw a small sign that said, “My First Peekaboo”.

“My First Peekaboo” provides ultrasound images for pregnant women and their families. It is a chance to learn the baby’s gender. Up to eight people, including the mother-to-be, are allowed in the clinic to see the pictures of the baby. We went inside the office and spoke to the ultrasound technician, who was also the secretary. Actually, the tech was the only person there. I paid the entrance fee, and the lady ushered us all into a darkened room nearby.

The room had a number of fake electric candles flickering in the dim light. I felt like I was at a seance. There was a bed on one end of the room. The young woman lied down on it. There were a few chairs and a sofa. The tech sat next to the ultrasound machine. The wall opposite from the bed was basically one enormous projection screen. That is where we would all look to see the baby’s image. The young woman’s fiance sat in a chair next to the bed and directly faced the screen.

The tech had a prepared spiel. She got the machine going and said,

“Heart rate for the baby is 134 beats per minutes. That’s perfect.”

Then the Peekaboo lady asked us, “How many of you think it’s going to be a girl?”

There were a few voices saying, “Yes”, in the shadows.

“Anybody think it’s a boy?”

Silence.

I didn’t know what to think, so I said nothing.

The young couple had decided, long ago, that they were having a daughter. I don’t know how they came to this conclusion, but they were certain that a girl was on the way. In fact, they had already decided on the girl’s name, and they had given little or no thought to what they call a son.

The lady projected the image of the baby on to the screen. It was silver-grey in color. My eyes were drawn to the pulse of the beating heart. It fascinated me.

The tech spoke again. “Okay, there we are. It’s a little boy! If you look closely, you can see his boy…uh, parts, on the screen.”

I couldn’t really tell. I looked away from the screen at the young woman. I couldn’t tell at the time, but she was quietly crying. Her man was staring fixedly at the screen, dumbfounded. He looked like he had been slapped.

I heard the girl say to him sweetly, “It’s all you fault.”

The tech chimed in, “Well, that’s true. The male determines the gender of the child.”

Ouch.

I turned back to the image. The tech had displayed a picture of the baby that was colored  a dull gold. It was difficult to make out the features of the child, but I couldn’t look away from the moving, living figure on the screen. I was amazed by what I saw.

I thought to myself, “For now we see through a glass darkly”. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

Who was this child? What a wonder he was!

The tech printed up some photos for the young woman. The show was over. We all left.

Later, I talked to the young woman.

“You know, your baby is beautiful. He’s a miracle.”

She asked me, “What do you mean? Why?”

“I don’t know. Seeing him was like watching God at work.”

She shrugged.

I told her, “You can start the shopping now.”

The young woman smiled ruefully and rolled her eyes. “They don’t have anything for boys.”

I sighed. “Oh. I guess no unicorns or mermaids?”

“Nope.”

Later, Karin came to me and said that the girl had spoken to her.

I asked Karin, “What did she say?”

“She said that I can start making baby clothes with dinosaurs.”

 

 

 

 

 

August 28th, 2020

“Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.”
― Jim Butcher, “Vignette”

“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.”
― Frank Zappa

“[In the Universe it may be that] Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.”
― Stephen W. Hawking

I have been following the news reports about the shootings in Kenosha with great interest. I don’t live in Kenosha, but I have spent a lot of time there, probably more than I wanted. Kenosha is only a half hour drive from our house so, like it or not, it’s in our neighborhood. Kenosha isn’t necessarily a place to avoid. It has its good points, and its bad, just like anywhere else. It’s just that I am very familiar with some of the areas that have been highlighted on the news recently. The violence that has erupted during the last few days has made me think about a lot of things.

I think mostly about stupidity, and about those people whose actions seem to exemplify it.

I won’t write anything about the Kenosha cop who wounded Jacob Blake. I am not a cop. I have never been a cop. I have no desire to ever be a cop. So, I am not going to judge the guy who pumped seven rounds into the back of Jacob Blake. I will let the the Wisconsin Department of Justice work on that issue. Good luck to them.

However, one person I think about is Kyle Rittenhouse. Good God, where do I even start?

Here is a seventeen-year-old from Illinois with a loaded semi-automatic weapon going across state lines to do something in Wisconsin. He sure as hell did something here. He killed two people and wounded another.

It can be argued (and it will be argued in court) that Mr. Rittenhouse was exercising his 2nd Amendment rights, and shot three people in self-defense. After all, a guy attacked him with a skateboard, and before that, with a plastic bag. At least, that is what I have read in the news. So, these vicious assaults apparently required Mr. Rittenhouse to blow two people away.

Really?

Yeah, really.

Why were there no adults involved with any of this? Where were Kyle’s parents? It appears that the only adult interested in Mr. Rittenhouse was the cop from Kenosha who handed Kyle a bottled water and told him how much the police appreciated his presence.

Christ.

Mr. Rittenhouse should not have been wandering the streets in Kenosha that night. He should have been at home with his mom.

Now, he’s screwed. Totally screwed. Wisconsin is trying him for first degree murder. That’s ugly. Even if he beats that rap, what will he do? Kyle is marked for life, just like Cain in Old Testament. Mr. Rittenhouse, at age seventeen, will always be known as the guy who killed two men during a hot August night in Kenosha. Always.

I have never been a police officer, so I will refrain from commenting about the cops here. However, I have been a 17-year-old white boy from a racist neighborhood. I know from my experience that my parents would have kicked my ass from here to Michigan if I had tried to do the shit that Kyle did. Somebody would have stopped me. Somebody would have cared.

Mr. Rittenhouse had no adult supervision.

What he did was dumb.

He will pay for that.

 

 

 

August 26th, 2020

The two of us were driving this afternoon in my 2005 Ford Focus. I had bought it from Stefan. He had completely rebuilt it from a salvage vehicle. It has a kick ass turbo, but no air conditioning. The car is blue with orange wheel rims. If nothing else, that makes it easy to find in a parking lot. We had the windows wide open as we drove through Grant Park near Lake Michigan. The breeze was blowing the young woman’s hair into her face. She kept pushing it back.

We talked about Kenosha. The young woman has a lot of experience in that town. Because she has experience there, so do I. Both she and I have had extensive interaction with Kenosha law enforcement, which makes recent events cut close to the bone.

I told her, “You know that this shit going on in Kenosha isn’t just showing up in the national news. I read the news online from sources outside the U.S. You know what the lead stories are in the BBC and Al Jazeera? The shooting by the cops in the Kenosha. Kenosha is now known planet-wide.”

She looked at me and replied, “Well, that makes the place’s rep even worse. You know what they say about Kenosha, right?”

“Uh, no.”

“They say: ‘Go there on vacation, leave on probation’. That’s about right.”

We talked some more about the police in Kenosha.

I made the comment, “I guess there really is such a thing as a white privilege.”

She smiled grimly and laughed, “Damn straight.”

Then she asked me, “Do you know how many times I slipped off the handcuffs in Kenosha?”

I paused and said, “I probably don’t need to know.”

She was on a roll, and said, “Twice.”

She looked ahead for a moment and then she asked me,

“What do you think would have happened if I was a black guy and had done that?”

I had no ready answer.

She did. “Probably seven bullets in the back.”

And a city burns.

Kenosha isn’t a bad place. It simply suffers from the same economic problems that other Rustbelt cities do. Kenosha used to be a manufacturing powerhouse. American Motors had a huge plant there. When I was young, AMC built muscle cars in Kenosha, and the company employed throngs of people. Now AMC is gone, and so is a lot of other industry. However, the people remain, and they long for the good jobs that were there.

Kenosha, like other cities on Lake Michigan, is hollowed out. The area right next to the water is beautiful, and it is prosperous. Go a few blocks to the west, go inland, and things change quickly. Poverty becomes apparent. It is only several miles further west, near the freeway (I-94), that business picks up again. The old part of Kenosha struggles. I know this because the young woman riding in my Focus lived there while on probation.

There are places in Kenosha that I really like. My wife and I enjoyed going for breakfast at The Daily Dose Café. It was/is this microscopic coffee shop that served awesome focaccia. Kenosha used to have a heavy Italian influence, and it still shows up at times, especially in the food. The waitresses at the restaurant often wore Daily Dose t-shirts that said on the back: “Yes! I would like a double espresso vodka Valium latte!”

Indeed.

I also loved going to Frank’s Diner. That is a place near the lake that has specialized in soulful breakfasts since the 1920’s. It is built inside of an old railway car. They only take cash there. The employees are friendly and helpful in a slightly obnoxious sort of way. I had one guy come up to our table and say to me, “You need more coffee!” He brooked no contradiction, and filled my cup.

Ah, but my mind wanders. I shouldn’t reminisce while a city burns.

It is hard to read or watch the news, and to recognize buildings that have been damaged or destroyed. It is not that property has more value than human lives. It is just that I know these places.

Hans called me later today. He just finished a 18 hour shift, pumping concrete in eastern Texas. He sounded very tired, and he was just waiting for the hurricane to arrive.

We talked about work. We also talked about Kenosha.

When I spoke with Hans, I mentioned that punk kid from Illinois who decided it was a good idea to to go to Kenosha and fire up a couple guys. I was a bit irate.

Hans took a drag off his cigarette and said, “Well, Dad, if you look at the video of the shooting, those guys attacked him. He fired in self-defense.”

I replied, “That fucker shouldn’t have been there at all.”

Hans paused, “Well, yeah, that probably wasn’t a good idea. But he still fired in self-defense. I mean, he’s still going to get charged, but it wasn’t really murder.”

“Two guys are dead.”

“I know that, Dad.”

Hans thought for a moment and said, “I support police who are not criminals, and I support protesters who don’t loot and burn.”

It got quiet on the phone for a bit.

I told Hans, “I agree.”

Meanwhile, Kenosha burns.

What do you do when you see both sides?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 23, 2020

“Like vanishing dew,
a passing apparition
or the sudden flash
of lightning — already gone —
thus should one regard one’s self.”
― Ikkyu, Japanese Zen Master, 1394-1481

“Nothing endures but change.”
― Heraclitus, Greek philosopher

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

(Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, NIV)”

Every spiritual tradition that is worth its salt has struggled with the notion of impermanence. In a way, the transient nature of the world is obvious to every human being. Things are constantly changing. Something new arrives, and something old passes away. Everything is a state of flux. The universe is dynamic by its very nature. Nothing is static.

However, many of us try to deny this fact.

If some random person asked me, “Do you know that all things must pass away?”, I might agree, but I would probably add, “except for myself and the things that I love.”

Change implies a death of some sort. It also means a new sort of life.

The scary part is that any new sort of life might not include me. 

There is the rub.

 

Yesterday we emptied out the Zen Center. We put everything into storage. It made total sense to do so. Our Zen group (sangha) has not met together in that space for meditation practice since before the pandemic struck. We did Zoom meetings, but that was all. We were paying rent for a place that we never used. So, we gathered up, as best we could, our accumulated belongings. Some people brought pick up trucks and trailers. Some of us just brought our strong arms and backs.

Be advised that the Great Lake Zen Center is not a large organization. Buddhism, especially Zen, is not particularly popular in the local Milwaukee area. It’s a rather esoteric activity/philosophy. I was impressed that so many people actually showed up to move all of our crap. Much of it had already been boxed by willing volunteers, but there was still a lot of stuff to be transported to a storage facility.

Yesterday morning was very warm and humid. That made it a bit difficult to move large, heavy objects. We had a number of large, heavy objects. It is noteworthy that the age of the Zen Center members tends to skew old. I am sixty-two years of age. I was one of the youngest and most physically able of the movers at yesterday’s event. I’m not complaining. I am simply stating that we did not have many young people to do the heavy lifting. I did a lot of the heavy lifting. I’m glad that I was there and able to do so.

After the end of two hours (more or less), I was coated with sweat and I felt exhausted. I had been wearing a mask during this whole process. We had already completed the lion’s share of the work, so I felt okay about leaving. There was another load of stuff to transport, but it was made up of the residual things that people usually have at the end of every move. The folks remaining there told me that they could handle it.

I left.

Did we do wrong by abandoning the site? No. I don’t think so.

The location of our meditation center was in central West Allis. I grew up in West Allis (an old industrial suburb of Milwaukee). It was basically a ghetto fifty years ago, and that hasn’t really changed since then. We were never in a place that might attract a budding Buddhist. I don’t think we ever attracted anybody in that space. Maybe if we had also operated a liquor store and/or a gun shop, we might have introduced a few new people to the dharma, but certainly not in the place as it was.

I was loading some furniture into one of the trailers when a local resident asked me,

“Hey, are you guys finally giving up and moving?”

I answered out of breath, “Yeah.”

The man looked a bit ragged, and he was a smoking a cigar at a rather early hour. He had that “low life hustler” vibe to him. I’d seen that before. Actually, he didn’t really look much different than I did. It was just a matter of degrees.

The man carefully scoped out our belongings on the curb, and asked,

“Do you want those lamps you got there? I could take care of those.”

“Yeah, we want them.”

The man looked a bit hurt. He said,

“Things are rough here. The real estate guy on the corner, he just folded. Lots of places going out of business. It’s bad.”

I nodded. I felt for him all of a sudden. He walked away puffing on his cigar.

He was right: “It’s bad.”

Where will the Zen Center relocate to? Will it relocate at all? Or, are we done?

Things change. It’s all transient.

Nothing is permanent.