frankisemptiness

Santa Claus-of-Color

August 23rd, 2025

On Thursday morning I took Asher to see his therapist. He goes every week to get help for a number of things. The boy is only four and a half years old, but he’s had more than his fair share of trauma. Asher spent an hour with his clinician, and then I came back to the office to collect him at the end of his session. He wasn’t quite done, so I sat around and talked with Eli and Dr. A. Eli is the office manager and Doctor A runs the whole show.

Doctor A smiled at me and said, “Frank, only four more months and you are going to be our Santa Claus.”

I need to explain this. Three weeks ago, I was sitting in the clinic’s office and Doctor A remarked on the luxuriant growth of my beard. I do have a decent beard. I’m bald as an egg, but I can grow a beard. It reaches down to my breastbone, and it is mostly white and curly. Doctor A, out of the blue, asked if I would be Santa Claus at the clinic’s holiday party for the kids. I thought about it for a moment and said, “Yes”. A life changing decision.

I had thought that maybe Doctor A had been kidding me about the Santa gig. She was not. The woman was deadly serious. I’m committed. I have never been a Santa, and as my wife told me, I would be a rather grumpy one. However, it is my time in life to be St. Nick for children that are involved with the clinic.

When I came to pick up Asher on Thursday, Dr. A start talking to me about the Santa thing again. Eli made comments too. They both seemed much more excited about this event than I am.

Doctor A said to me, “We are going to have to feed you. Now, when you are the Santa-of-color, we need to give you soul food. Frank, what do you know about soul food?”

Whoa…back up. It needs to be noted at this point that Eli and Dr A are Black. The clinic has an eclectic ethnic population, both with regards to service providers and clients. Asher and I are very white. So, how the hell am I going to be the “Santa-of-color” for these kids?

I have been thinking about it. I’m white, but I tan well. Right now, considering my facial features, I could probably pass for somebody from the Middle East or North Africa. Many years ago, When I first met my wife in Germany, she was absolutely convinced that I was Turkish. In the German culture, at least at that time, Turks were considered people of color, and not in a positive way. Could I be an Egyptian Santa? Egypt has some Coptic Christians, and I know a smattering of Arabic. By the time Christmas rolls around, I will be pasty white again. I’m sure as hell not going to try a Trump fake tan. This is just bizarre, but I’m still going to be Santa.

Back to Doctor A’s question. I replied to her, “I like BBQ.”

Both Doctor A and Eli shrugged and groaned. Bad answer.

I tried again, “I’ve had collard greens. I like red beans and rice.”

They both smiled. I had some minimal street cred.

Doctor A talked enthusiastically about soul food. She asked me,

“Frank have you ever had the mac and cheese? You know, the kind that Black people make?”

“Uh, no.”

Eli grinned and said, “Oh Man, it’s got that crispy layer of cheese on the top.”

Doctor A told me, “Frank, it’s goooood. You got to try it.”

I was getting hungry. I hadn’t had anything for breakfast, and these people were talking about food to die for. Fortunately, Asher appeared, laughing and jumping around. It was time to go.

I said, “Asher, we got to go. These people are going make me pass out from hunger.”

I bet we talk more about the Santa gig next Thursday. Doctor A had joked about me wearing African colors when I with the little kids. That might actually happen. I have no idea where this is all going.

Ho ho ho.

Illegal Orders

August 19th, 2025

I recently read an article in Military.com titled “4 Out of 5 US Troops Surveyed Understand the Duty to Disobey Illegal Orders”. In the essay, the authors state,

“Our poll, fielded between June 13 and June 30, 2025, shows that service members understand these rules. Of the 818 active-duty troops we surveyed, just 9% stated that they would ‘obey any order.’ Only 9% ‘didn’t know,’ and only 2% had ‘no comment.’ “

I have to mention here that the article and possibly the poll itself have a partisan slant. The authors are not fans of Donald Trump. Even so, the essay and the results of the poll are interesting to me.

I would have preferred to read that 100% of active-duty troops understand how to recognize an illegal order and know when to disobey such an order. However, 80% sounds realistic. Actually, I find that number to be encouraging.

I entered West Point as a new cadet in July of 1976. That was a long time ago. I don’t remember much of my first day at USMA. Most of it is a blur. However, I can distinctly remember when I stood on the Plain to take the oath to defend the U.S. Constitution. Did I really understand at that time what I was promising to do? No, but I figured it out as time went on and I realize how life-changing that oath really was and still is.

I suspect that most veterans can remember when they officially became service members. It’s hard to overstate how important that moment was. The oath that we took stands in stark contrast to the oath that German soldiers took in WWII. Those men (which probably including my father-in-law) swore allegiance to the person of Adolf Hitler. We did not swear allegiance to a president. We did not swear allegiance to a political party. We did not swear to protect a religion or a particular ethnic group. An American service member swears allegiance to the core document of our republic. In effect, we took an oath to defend a noble idea.

What does it mean to defend the Constitution? That’s where it gets hard. We don’t always get into situations where the line between right and wrong is crystal clear. Sometimes, we are forced to choose the lesser evil. Even in peacetime, a soldier may face an order that is illegal and/or immoral. My oldest son fought in Iraq, and he often found himself in extremely violent circumstances where the decisions had to made immediately without time for thoughtful consideration of the consequences. I am pretty sure that at those times he seldom thought about the Constitution. He thought about survival.

Can we expect service members to always fulfill their oaths? Probably not. However, it makes me hopeful knowing that the vast majority of them understand what they promised to do.

Martyrdom

August 17th, 2025

“In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point on shedding blood.” – Hebrews 12:4

The priest gave a homily (sermon) today based on the verse from the letter to the Hebrews that is shown above. Our pastor is originally from India and wanted to talk about Christians in various parts of the world whose lives are in danger because of their faith. He mentioned that there are some parts of India where being identified as a Christian can be life-threatening. He seemed to indicate that he had some personal experience with that kind of persecution. I would suppose that under Modi’s Hindu centric regime threats against any non-Hindu group would be common.

Our pastor emphasized that numerous Christians have in recent years chosen death before renouncing their faith. He summed up his sermon by pointedly asking the members of the congregation what they would do in such a situation. Would they abandon their religion or would they become martyrs. A “martyr” is by definition a “witness”. That is the original meaning of the word. So, a martyr is one who bears witness.

I had to think about the priest’s question. I feel like his choice is simplistic. So, what would I do if somebody was ready to kill me? The answer is, “I don’t know.” I have trouble even imagining that scenario. I doubt that, if I was threatened with death for being a Christian, I would raise my eyes to the heavens and make a noble and inspiring profession of faith. It is more likely that I would tell the persecutor to fuck off and let him or her do their job. Or maybe, I would tell them whatever they wanted to hear. I really don’t know what I would do, and I don’t want to find out.

I thought some more about it and, if somebody was ready and willing to kill me for my beliefs, I would probably first think about Asher, my little grandson. I would be asking myself, “Who will care for the boy if I die?” It’s one thing to surrender my life if I have no responsibilities toward others. It’s whole different matter if my grandson would be an orphan if I chose the martyr’s route.

Taking the thought experiment a step further, “What would I do if the persecutor told me, ‘Abandon your faith in Christ, or I’ll blow this kid’s head off’?” I am pretty sure that I would give up my religion to save Asher.

Jewish tradition deals in depth with the reality of martyrdom. Jews have lots of experience with that. The rule for Jews is that they should forfeit their lives if the alternative means committing idolatry, sexual immorality, or murder. To die instead committing those sins is kiddush hashem, meaning ‘sanctification of God’s name”. In all other cases, a Jew should do whatever is necessary to stay alive. Historically, during forced conversions, many Jews allowed themselves to be killed, others committed suicide, and some renounced Judaism to save themselves and their families. The rabbis and the scholars are divided on what is the best course of action.

The question that comes to my mind is: “What is more important? Dying for your faith or living it? Or are they two sides of the same coin?”

Scenes in religious movies usually show martyrdom in a heroic and dramatic fashion. The images are violent and bloody. People literally go out with a bang. What films don’t show are the people who give up their lives a little bit at a time. I know loving individuals who care for sick or disabled family members, and they do this work for years or decades. These folks are giving away their lives as a trickle of blood, a few drops every day until there is nothing left. They may not get recognized for it, but theirs is a slow-motion martyrdom. They die for God in the service of others. They will never get into a stained-glass window, but they are sacrificing just as much as the person who has “Jesus” on their lips just before they get a bullet in the head.

These people also bear witness.

Little Things that Go Sideways

August 15th, 2025

I came home from visiting a friend on Tuesday afternoon. My wife, Karin, wanted me to be home to care for our grandson, Asher, so she could go to her knitting guild meeting. As I backed into the driveway, I saw my wife standing in front of the garage. The garage was open and the RAV4 was inside of it. Karin looked very upset as I pulled in.

I parked and Asher came over to my car and smiled. He said, “Grandpa!”

Karin did not smile. She said, “The car and the garage door are broken.”

Oh.

To digress for a moment, when I was growing up, the standard reaction to a statement like that in my family was origin was emotional chaos. There was always a lot of hollering. Enormous amounts of energy were immediately expended on finding somebody to blame for whatever bad thing had happened. That was the priority. After an initial burst of rage was directed at somebody, then, maybe, an effort would be made to solve the problem. Sometimes, the issue never really was solved. The important thing was to find a scapegoat.

I used to react like that for a long time when I was younger. I think that my wife still expects me to blow my top when she bears bad tidings. Sometimes, if I am worn out, I do, but I don’t get angry nearly as often. I frankly don’t have the stamina for it. Rage takes a lot out of a person. In any case, I barely reacted at all when she told me that things had gone sideways.

My wife explained that she had been backing into the garage when suddenly the door came down hard on the rear of the car. It shattered the rear window. Neither Asher nor Karin were hurt, thank God. However, the accident terrified them both. It would have freaked me out too.

I examined the damage. Ugly. The rear window in the RAV4 was pratty much gone. The storage area in the back of the car was littered with tiny pieces of glass. The garage door was hanging cockeyed. One of the cables had torn away from the bottom panel of the door. It’s an old door, the original door from when we built the house in 1991. The wood on the bottom panel was rotted out in some places. I don’t know if the cable let go before or after my wife was backed into the garage. It doesn’t matter. The door was now junk.

There was no point in me getting upset. My wife was already stressed out. I went about starting the process to fix things.

It was already late when I stared making calls to our insurance, both auto and home. I called a garage door contractor. They were closed for the day, but I got hold of their 24 hour service guy. He convinced me to wait until the next morning for an inspection (they have a $200 surcharge for after hours service calls). I left the RAV4 in the garage (it rained hard later in the evening). I closed the door as far as it would go. After that, it was completely immobile.

I’m still making calls. For the last couple days, I have been talking to insurance adjuster, contractors, and car rental companies. I will be calling a collision repair shop as soon as they open this morning to find out when I can bring in the RAV. This is all a hassle, but it’s one I can manage. The garage door was replaced yesterday. Eventually, it will all get repaired and life will go on.

The Milwaukee area, where we live, suffered torrential rains and severe flooding six days ago. It was bad. We got lucky, and had no damage to our property. Other people in the metro area got hit hard. A large number of residents had flooded homes or flooded cars. One family’s home in a nearby suburb was hit with so much water that the foundation shifted and the basement wall collapsed. Those people are now homeless. That house is probably a dead loss. Those folks have real problems. Our issues are minor.

We had to wait two days to get rental car that is paid for by our insurance. I initially found the delay to be annoying. We finally picked up the rental car yesterday afternoon. The office manager at the car rental explained to us why he did not have a car for us right away. Apparently, that facility only rents out maybe seven or eight cars per day. Since the great flood, they have been renting out thirty cars per day. They don’t have thirty cars available. Nor do any of their other locations in the area. They ran out of cars, and they still don’t have enough to go around.

I have to admit that I am fortunate. Other people are not.

Oh well, it’s time to make some calls.

How Did We Get So Old?

August 12th, 2025

Karin and I celebrated our wedding anniversary yesterday. Forty-one years. It seems like an impossibly long time. Of course, we know elderly couples that have been married for sixty years or more. We also know people who didn’t even make it through a year of marriage. And we know couples who don’t bother with marriage at all. I don’t understand why some couples stay married and others don’t. I certainly don’t why Karin and I are still together. Is it karma, love, or dumb luck? Or is it a combination of all those factors?

I suspect that a reason that a couple might stay together is because they have an intense, almost irrational level of commitment to each other. The “until death do us part” part of wedding vows is actually taken seriously. In many cases, marriage is seen as a contract between two parties. The relationship is purely transactional. It can be broken one party fails to comply with its obligations. A marriage can also be viewed as a covenant, as an unbreakable agreement where both individuals promise to stick withe the other regardless of what happens. In some situations, like spousal abuse or addiction, even a covenant can be broken, but the commitment is there at the beginning and the two members of the marriage do their best to make it work. That involves struggle and sacrifice, and sometimes love and joy. It is a vocation, a lifelong process. In a sense, two people really can become one.

Karin and I went out to eat yesterday. Our grandson, Asher, visited his mama for two hours, so Karin and I could be a couple while he was with her. Asher is constantly with us, since we are his fulltime caregivers. Maybe two or three times a year, we are Asher-free and we can do adult activities without a four-year-old tagging along. It just happened that one of these events occurred yesterday on our anniversary. We made the most of the opportunity.

We went to Cozumel, a Mexican restaurant that has outdoor seating on a balcony that sits high above the banks of the Milwaukee River. Karin ordered a potato fajita and I got choriqueso, an appetizer thar consists of chorizo and queso with a smattering of onions and peppers. It is basically a bowl of spicy cholesterol, but it tasted good with tortilla chips. Karin had a raspberry margarita and I had a cold mug of Negra Modelo.

We talked while we ate. We reminisced about our wedding in her home village in Germany four decades ago. Some of that is hard to recall. We have memories of memories at this point. Karin wanted to know what we had for dessert at the reception. I had no idea. Germans don’t do massive wedding cakes like Americans do. Actually, they prefer to have a plethora of smaller cakes. I remember her parents’ house being packed with kuchen from friends and neighbors.

Oddly enough, I do remember the wine we had. It was local vintage from Karin’s region of Germany. We toasted with a Marklsheimer Propstberg, a fruity white wine produced in the little town where we had our reception. It’s odd what things I can recall and what things I have completely forgotten.

Karin looked up from her meal and asked me,

“How did we get so old?”

I shrugged and said, “Lots of practice.”

She gave me a smirk. Then she said, “I’m seventy already.”

Yeah, she is. I’m sixty-seven. Most of our lives are in the rear view mirror. We’ve already done many things and made most of our decisions. Now, we are busy raising a little boy. This is our vocation, our calling. It may be the last one for us.

Karin didn’t finish her fajita. We asked the waiter for a box to take home. We were sitting at a tiny table at the edge of the balcony. I was trying to scoop the remains of the fajita into the box. I had a couple plates stacked up to make room. I nudge the plates and utensils as I filled the box.

“Fuck!” I said suddenly.

Karin asked me, “What is it?”

“A fork went over the edge of the balcony.”

She looked down and there, thirty feet below us, was a fork from our table.

We paid the bill and got ready to leave. I glanced at the waiter. I asked Karin,

“Should I tell him about the fork?”

She nodded.

I walked over to the waiter and tried to explain what had happened. He looked puzzled. I took him to the side of the balcony. I said,

“Look straight down.”

He did, and then he laughed.

“He told me, “Don’t worry. This happens all the time. Have a good night.”

I replied, “Gracias.”

He smiled, and said, “De Nada.”

We left to pick up Asher.

When the Flood Comes

August 10th, 2025

“When the flood calls
You have no home, you have no walls
In the thunder crash
You’re a thousand minds, within a flash
Don’t be afraid to cry at what you see
The actors gone, there’s only you and me
And if we break before the dawn, they’ll
use up what we used to be.

Lord, here comes the flood
We’ll say goodbye to flesh and blood
If again the seas are silent
in any still alive”

Lyrics from Here Comes the Flood from Peter Gabriel

I woke up at around 11:00 PM when I fell out of bed. There was a moment of utter confusion before my mind cleared. The bedroom lit up with a flash of lightning. I could see my little grandson, Asher, asleep in the bed. He was lying there crosswise, as he usually does. He was dead to the world, but the crack of thunder that accompanied the lightning made him roll over and moan. The room was filled with the machine gun patter of rain beating on the skylight. I didn’t bother to look out the window. I knew that I wouldn’t see anything with wind and rain.

My wife and I built our house thirty-four years ago. We live in an area close to Lake Michigan that is relatively flat. It’s not a flood plain, but rainwater tends to drain slowly. We don’t have storm sewers here. The water flows from yards and fields into deep ditches that hug the sides of the roads. Sometimes, when massive thunderstorms roll through, the ditches aren’t quite deep enough to handle the flow of rainwater. Last night was one of those times.

During severe weather, I always check to see if we have electricity. That is the first thing I do. This part of Wisconsin often has power failures. Nearly everyone in our neighborhood has a generator at the ready. Mostly, we need the generators to keep the sump pump (or sump pumps running). We’ve had a flooded basement in the past, and that is a distinctly unpleasant experience. We currently have two sumps in the basement, and last night they both ran almost continuously.

I could hear the sounds of the pumps from the bedroom.

“Click. Wirrrrrrrrrr. Flush. Water rushing from the drain tiles into the sump. Repeat.”

Every fifteen seconds, I heard the cycle of water being pumped out of the basement sumps through a PVC pipe out to the ditch. The outlet of the pipe was already submerged by the water in the ditch, but the force of the pump pushed the water from the basement out of the pipe. The pipe has a one-way valve to prevent water from backing up again.

The noise from the pumps is oddly soothing. It’s when I don’t hear the pumps that I worry. It doesn’t take long for water to slip through cracks and crevices in the basement floor and walls. Once that happens, there’s hell to pay.

I’ve never been in a serious, life-threatening flood, and I hope that I never experience that. Back in 2008, I went with my youngest son’s 8th grade class to New Orleans to help with the rebuilding of the city after Katrina. Keep in mind that we went to New Orleans three years after the hurricane hit. The city was still devastated. My son’s classmates were assigned assist a local family finish working on their home. The owners had to strip the house all the way down to the studs and completely remodel it. In that neighborhood, one out of every three houses were abandoned. I don’t know if that part of New Orleans ever really recovered from the flood.

I don’t ever want to be in that situation.

I didn’t sleep much last night.

Are You from Here?

August 8th, 2025

We were at the playground with the big sandbox. Asher likes to go there. He has a plastic bin full of beach toys that he insists on taking to the park. There isn’t a beach, so he plays with his shovels and trucks in the sandbox. Sometimes other kids are there. Asher is a good sport about letting the other children use his things. Most of the time the other kids ask before they use his toys, especially if their caregivers are nearby. Sometimes, they don’t ask. Asher doesn’t seem to mind, and I don’t either.

After a while, Asher got tired of playing in the hot sand. Even though we arrived at the park early in the morning, it was still quite warm in the sunshine. He had a drink from a cold smoothie, and then he decided to go on the swings. A group of children had just come to the playground from the Salvation Army center down the street. The kids were part of some kind of summer youth program that the Salvation Army sponsors. There were a couple chaperons with the group. One of them was a Muslim woman. She wore a hijab and a long abaya that went down to her ankles. She sat down under the shade of an oak tree close to the playground.

A little girl came over to the swings and tried to make friends with Asher. He wasn’t interested. The girl was sturdy looking. She had a very round face and a page boy haircut. She was wearing a dress with lavender unicorns on it. Asher likes unicorns, and he likes lavender, but not so much this time. It should be noted that for reasons that are obscure to me Asher is a babe magnet. He has the uncanny ability to attract girls, usually older than himself. Admittedly, he has a winning smile and a dimple on his right cheek that can melt hearts. However, he wasn’t smiling at the girl. He just stared at her as she spoke to him nonstop.

Eventually, the girl moved away and climbed on to the monkey bars. She hung on them for a bit and then she asked me,

“Are you his grandpa?”

I nodded.

She asked, “Does he talk a different language? Or is he too young to talk?”

Little did the girl know that Asher can be a relentless chatterbox. His verbal skills are very strong. I know from experience that it is sometimes almost impossible to get the boy to shut up when he is on roll.

I told her that Asher didn’t speak to her because he’s a bit shy (that’s kind of a lie, but whatever). She asked,

“How old is he?”

“He’s four-and-a-half.”

She replied, “I’m six-and a half. It’s kind of like being halfway six and half seven. He’s half between four and five. We got that in common, I guess. Is he in school yet? I’m in first grade, almost in second grade. I can only hang on to two of the bars on the monkey bars, even though I’m six-and-a-half.”

Then she told me, “I don’t worry about falling off the monkey bars. I’m tough. I don’t cry if I get hurt.”

She showed me her ankle and said, “I scraped my foot here. It was bleeding a little, but that’s because I scratched at it, but it’s better now and I didn’t cry or anything.”

I forget what all else she said. She rambled on for a while. Then she went back on to the monkey bars and swung unsteadily from one bar to the next. The Muslim woman got up and shouted to the girl,

“Be careful! Don’t go so far! You’ll fall!”

Ah, the voice of a mom calling.

I turned to the woman and said, “You have a very brave girl!”

She looked at me and said, “But she must be more careful. She could get hurt.”

At that point, I said to her, “A salaam alaikum.”

She blinked for a second, then smiled and replied, “Wa alaikum asalaam.”

I told her, “I know a little Arabic.”

She asked me, “Where are you from?”

I looked around for moment and said, “I’m from here.”

I need to mention that I grew up in the local area, but I was far away for twelve years of my life. I almost never ask people where they are from anymore, especially if they have a foreign accent. In today’s political environment, with all of the fear and xenophobia, I am reluctant to pry into somebody’s history. My wife is from another country, and I lived overseas for three years. I know how it feels to be “from somewhere”.

I told her, “I studied Arabic in the Army, but I don’t remember much.” That’s true. I took Arabic for four years at West Point, but that was many years ago. I am not fluent in the language at all, but having studied Arabic makes me relatively comfortable with Arabs and other people who are Muslim. I helped tutor the children of a Syrian refugee family for several years. My extremely limited Arabic was helpful at times

I talked to the mom about Asher. She talked about her tomboy daughter. She told me that it must be hard for me and my wife to care for the boy. I replied,

“Sometimes it is, but Asher is also a blessing.” I fumbled for the Arabic word. I said, “He’s a baraka.”

The woman laughed. “Yes, exactly. He is a baraka.”

It was hot. The kids were wilting. The group from the Salvation Army lined up to go back to their building. The little girl went to her mother.

The mom waved to us and yelled, “It was good to meet you!”

Yes, it was.

Hiroshima

August 7th, 2025

Yesterday was the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. That attack was the first use of an atomic weapon in human history, and it is an event that horrifies people to this very day. We try to ignore it. We ty to forget that it ever happened, but as Kenneth Clarke wrote about the atomic bomb in his book, Civilization,

“Add to this the memory of that shadowy companion who is always with us, like an inverted guardian angel, silent, invisible, almost incredible- and yet unquestionably there and ready to assert itself at the touch of a button: and one must concede that the future of civilization does not look very bright.”

Almost every day I read something online about Putin threatening to use nukes. Trump blusters in a similar way. Despite our best efforts, we can’t disregard our unwanted companion. The movie, Oppenheimer, proves that fact. The angel is close at hand.

That dark angel has been following every one of us for eighty years. I am a bit too young to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, but I can recall signs in the lower level of my elementary school designating it as a fallout shelter. I can remember watching Stanley Kubrick’s film, “Dr. Strangelove” when I was student at West Point n the 1970’s.

The angel was closest to me when I was an Army officer stationed in what was then West Germany. I was deployed there in the early 1980’s, back when Reagan was raving about the “Evil Empire”. The Cold War was intense at the that time, and it seemed like any day it would turn hot. I woke every morning in Germany wondering if “the balloon would go up”. I was a helicopter pilot, maybe ninety miles from the East German border. U.S. policy at the time allowed for NATO to use nuclear weapons first in a war with the Soviet Union. There were plans (or so I heard) of using tactical nukes in the Fulda Gap to keep the Reds from striking deep into West Germany. I remember watching the movie “The Day After” while I was in my unit. I saw the film in the pilots’ break area on the Army airfield. Henry Kissinger spoke on a television program after the show was over. He stated the obvious: we have to prevent a “day after”.

Around the same time, young people in West Germany were protesting against nuclear weapons of any sort in their country. That made total sense. They had skin in the game. One of the most popular songs when I was there was 99 Luftballons (translation: 99 Air Balloons), by Nena. The lyrics of the German pop song were about the beginning of an unintentional nuclear war. The song is still relevant. Almost simultaneously, Pink Floyd released an album called The Final Cut. That too was about nuclear war. The angel was hovering above me during those years.

I have two friends, Senji and Gilberto. They are Buddhist monks. They have a temple on Bainbridge Island near Seattle. They live very close to a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine base. They work with a group called Ground Zero to protest against nuclear weapons. Senji is my age. He is part of Japan’s postwar generation. He is especially passionate about preventing nuclear war. It is personal commitment for him. Gilberto and Senji always commemorate the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is their calling to help others to remember those war crimes.

They are currently in the process of completing the construction of a peace pagoda on land that is right next to the Navy base. That is part of their effort to bear witness. I admire them for it.

Nearly completed peace pagoda

Too Tired to Live, Too Busy to Die

August 5th, 2025

I have a t-shirt with a picture and quotation on it from Hunter S. Thompson, the gonzo journalist who wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I have always been a fan of Thompson, especially since I did a short stint in the Las Vegas jail back in 2017. I won’t describe that episode in this essay. I have written extensively about it elsewhere in my blog. You can find those articles if really look for them. Instead, look at the quote on the t-shirt. (See above).

I was wearing this t-shirt a couple days ago. I was sitting at the dinner table with my wife, Karin. We were both exhausted from a busy day. She stared at the t-shirt for a while, and then she said,

” ‘Too tired to live, too busy to die’. That’s us.”

Indeed it is.

We care fulltime for our grandson, Asher. He’s four-and-a-half years old. He is smart, active, and bursting with energy. Karin and I are not. Karin is seventy years old. I am sixty-seven. There are many days when we feel our age quite clearly, especially if we have been chasing Asher around nonstop. We can keep up with the boy, but just barely. As is fitting for his age, Asher is headstrong, and he tends to oppose our wishes. We grow weary of fighting with him. We were able to deal with willful kids thirty years ago, but now it can be an overwhelming challenge.

I pray each day. I don’t long recite prayers from a book. My petitions are straight and to the point. God literally placed the Asher in our home. As far as I am concerned, God gave us the job of raising him. Karin and I made an open-ended commitment to do just that when Asher was just a little baby. It is our spiritual calling. We have been conscientious about fulfilling our duty as his guardians, but it gets tough at times. I figure if God wants us to do the work, He/She better give us the strength to do so. When I pray for strength, it is often more of a demand than a request. I need the resources to keep going.

I also need the gift of discernment. I am a mere mortal. I can only do so much. I need to know my limits. God is only going to give me the strength that I need, and maybe not even that. If what I think I need exceeds that allotment, then I have a problem. I have to understand what I need to do, as opposed to what I want to do. I have to know how hard I can push myself.

I have a friend, Ken, who I know from the synagogue. He’s an Orthodox Jew. I go to his house almost every week for beer and conversation. We discuss our respective struggles. Ken likes to say that each person has a “peckla” (that’s a Yiddish word that could mean a backpack or a burden. Imagine a “peckla” as a load that a person carries on their back). Each person has a particular peckla that is specific to them. God knows every person’s strength and each individual carries a load that only they can manage. The burden I carry might crush another man, and the load he bears might be beyond my strength. I sometimes think of this load as a cross that I carry. Ken probably would not use that analogy.

The peckla that I carry is like my wife’s. We bear the burden of caring for Asher and bringing him to adulthood. We carry this weight voluntarily. We could set it down and say, “That’s enough. No More.” But we don’t. We won’t get rid of the peckla until we are unable to walk any further with it. We carry it because we love Asher, and he needs us. Love gives us the power to continue the journey with the peckla on our backs.

Love is sacrifice, and it is also strength.

A Hero of War

August 3rd, 2025

He said “Son, have you seen the world?
Well, what would you say if I said that you could?
“Just carry this gun, you’ll even get paid”
I said “That sounds pretty good”

Black leather boots
Spit-shined so bright
They cut off my hair but it looked alright
We marched and we sang
We all became friends
As we learned how to fight

A hero of war
Yeah, that’s what I’ll be
And when I come home
They’ll be damn proud of me
I’ll carry this flag
To the grave if I must
‘Cause it’s a flag that I love
And a flag that I trust

I kicked in the door
I yelled my commands
The children, they cried
But I got my man
We took him away
A bag over his face
From his family and his friends

They took off his clothes
They pissed in his hands
I told them to stop
But then I joined in
We beat him with guns
And batons not just once
But again and again

A hero of war
Yeah that’s what I’ll be
And when I come home
They’ll be damn proud of me
I’ll carry this flag
To the grave if I must
‘Cause it’s a flag that I love
And a flag that I trust

She walked through bullets and haze
I asked her to stop
I begged her to stay
But she pressed on
So I lifted my gun
And I fired away

And the shells jumped through the smoke
And into the sand
That the blood now had soaked
She collapsed with a flag in her hand
A flag white as snow

A hero of war
Is that what they see
Just medals and scars
So damn proud of me
And I brought home that flag
Now it gathers dust
But it’s a flag that I love
It’s the only flag I trust

He said, “Son, have you seen the world?
Well what would you say, if I said that you could?”

Lyrics to Hero of War from the band, “Rise Against”. Released in 2008.

I just played that track again on the stereo after not listening to it for a long time. I don’t particularly like the song, even though it is well done. I guess it’s because it’s just too accurate and it cuts too close to the bone. Hearing it makes my heart hurt. It really does.

I can’t listen to the lyrics without thinking about my oldest son, Hans. Hans enlisted in the Army in 2009. He knew when he enlisted that he was going to be deployed either to Iraq or Afghanistan. That was guaranteed. My wife and I did not want him to go to war, even though I am a veteran myself, or especially because I am a veteran. He joined anyway. Hans went to Iraq in 2011.

Hans did lots of things in Iraq. He went on patrols. He cleared buildings. He kicked in doors. He got wounded. He killed people. He came back different.

Hans texted a few weeks ago about his war. He said, “I’m actually grateful for my army experience.” He told me that it made him grow up in a hurry and it taught him what was important in life. I’m sure that’s true, but at what cost?

I’ve written numerous essays on this blog about Hans and things that happened to him in the Army. A few of his stories are funny, but most of them are not. The accounts of his experiences in Iraq are harrowing, at least they are to me. There are things that a father probably does not need to hear, although I am grateful that Hans trusted me enough to tell me.

If you’re curious, you can look up my essays about his war. It’s all here in the blog.

Hans was a hero of war, whatever that means.