Lanterns in the Night

November 17th, 2025

Asher was excited about going on the lantern walk with the other children from the Waldorf school. He had decorated a glass jar in his kindergarten class to serve as a lamp for the walk at night. He had also learned a song in class that he used to entertain us at home during the days prior to the event. He would spontaneously sing,

“Lanterns in the moonlight, by my side. Soon we will return back home!”

Actually, the lyrics are a bit different, but that’s what he sang, and he sounded really good.

The walk was scheduled for yesterday evening. All day, Asher kept asking us,

“When are we going?”

We answered, “Later, when it gets dark.”

He smiled and said, “This is the best day ever!”

Sunset was at 4:26 yesterday, and my wife, Karin, and I hustled Asher into the car at 4:15 to make the half hour drive to the Tamarack Waldorf School. We got there and saw that other young children were gathering in the parking lot with their caregivers. Faculty members handed out lanterns to the kids (each lantern had the child’s name on it). People mingled and waited for the festivities to start. As the sunset faded, we all moved into the basement of the school to gather for a story and some songs.

The basement was dimly lit with a plethora of lamps and tiny electric candles. The lanterns had these little battery-powered lights in them too. Many years ago, when our own children went on the walk, the lanterns had real candles burning inside of them. That gave the journey a much more old-school feel to it, but the flickering flames on the actual candles tended to go out when it was windy, and darkness once again held sway.

The little kids together in front of the adults on a mat. The 4th grade teacher gave a brief explanation of why the school hosted an annual lantern walk. He told the crowd that the lantern walk tradition went back to the celebration of Martinmas, also known as the Feast of St. Martin of Tours (a holy day on the calendar of the Catholic Church that is celebrated on November 11th). He explained that St. Martin was a wealthy man who shared his cloak with a poor beggar. Martinmas was (and is) about caring for those who are in need. It is also about spreading our inner light in a world that is gradually getting darker, physically and spiritually. The teacher did not go into the religious aspects of the story of St. Martin, which is too bad because those parts are both beautiful and meaningful. However, we live in a diverse secular society and many of the children and parents gathered for the lantern walk do not share Christian beliefs. The teacher was still able to make the purpose of the walk clear: we were going outside with our lanterns to bring light to a world that has grown cold and dark.

Another teacher told a story about “The Lantern King”. It was different tale of a rich man who helped the poor. It reminded me a lot of the story of the Buddha. After that the music teacher led us in song. I liked “Rise up o Flame” It goes:

“Rise up o flame! By thy light glowing, bring to us beauty.

Vision and joy, out of eternity, into this day is born.

Into eternity, it will return.”

Once the singing was done, we filed out of the basement and started walking toward Pulaski Park, a tiny green space a couple blocks from the school. To get to the park we had to walk past Wolski’s Tavern, a landmark on Milwaukee’s lower eastside. The place was doing a brisk business on that evening. It would have been tempting to stop in there for a beer.

Each child’s lantern had handle made of wool fiber. The handles looked great, but they lacked tensile strength. The handles tore loose on several of the lanterns. Asher’s lantern was one of those.

Asher was extremely upset that the strap was broken on his lantern. Karin tried to repair it, but that just infuriated Asher because we were falling behind the rest of the group. He shouted,

“I want to catch up! I don’t want to be the last ones!”

He darted across the dark street, and I yelled at him for doing it,

“DON’T DO THAT! If you do it again, I’ll be really pissed off!”

Karin fixed the handle, but Asher didn’t want it anymore.

He cried, “Give it to somebody else!”

She did.

We caught up with the crowd of lantern bearers. They had formed a large circle in the green space. Then they all began singing. Being as we were in the city, our small lanterns did not produce much extra light, but they made a difference, and that’s all anyone can do.

After the songs, we all slowly left the park to return to the school. The woman who led the people back to Tamarack sang about “Lanterns in the Moonlight”. Asher softly sang along. He was tired and frustrated. He thought there would have been games or other fun things to do. He told me,

“I don’t want to go to the lantern walk again. All I could do was sing!”

True.

We came home and Asher ate some snacks. A popsicle made his mood a bit better. I read for a while and went to bed.

Asher came into the bed later. He didn’t doze off immediately. He wanted to chat. He looked up at the stars that shown through the skylight and asked me about them.

He said, “Are they little circles in the sky?”

I answered, “The stars are like the sun, but really far away.”

He replied, “So, they are circles.”

“Yeah.”

Then he laid his head on my shoulder. He grew quiet and sang the school’s morning verse to himself,

“Morning has come, night is away. We rise with the sun and welcome the day.”

He paused. Then he sang the verse again. I sang it with him.

He has a lovely voice.

There is Always a First Time

November 11th, 2025

I got a haircut today. In a way, getting a trim is kind of pointless for me. There isn’t much hair left to cut. However, the little bit of hair that is still on my head was looking scruffy, so I decided to a “hair salon”, which is basically a fancy name for a barber shop that pays its stylists low wages.

I wound up waiting quite a while to get a cut. I couldn’t understand why the place was so busy. Then I saw a seemingly endless parade of old guys staggering into the salon to get vouchers from free haircuts. It didn’t click in my mind why the shop was giving out vouchers until I noticed that a lot of old men were wearing caps with military insignia. Suddenly, I remembered that today was Veterans Day. A long line of elderly vets stood in line, many of them leaning heavily on their canes, and waited to get a freebie.

I got out of the Army in August of 1986. I became a veteran at that point, but to the best of my recollection, I have never taken advantage of any of the Veterans Day benefits. I am not sure why I always avoided the handouts. Maybe I was too proud, and or maybe I just didn’t want to flaunt the fact that I had served. It always seemed kind of tacky. It seems like on one day each year, people momentarily recognize that others sacrificed something to serve our country. A few of those people who are aware of the service that veterans gave to them try to give something back. What is given to vets is usually not very much: a haircut, a free breakfast, something that can qualify as a tax write off. I just didn’t want any of that.

I finally got called up for my haircut. The lady that cut my hair knows my head, if not my history. She knows that my needs are simple. All I want is for her to use a clipper with a Number 2 guard all the way around my noggin. I sat down and she put the chair cloth around me. I told her,

“For what it’s worth, I am vet.”

She shrugged and replied, “Thanks for your service.”

I said, “I flew helicopters. That was a long time ago.”

She smiled and told me, “It doesn’t matter how long ago it was. The important thing is that you served.”

She mentioned that a cousin of hers had been a military pilot and now flew for Flight for Life as a civilian. We talked about flying for a while. Then I spoke to her about my son who was deployed in Iraq. She told me about her nephew who had also been in Iraq. Her nephew wanted to get into the Rangers, but he got in a serious motorcycle accident and had a brain injury. He had memory loss, but somehow still remembered enough bad stuff from Iraq to have PTSD.

Our conversation was brief. It doesn’t take long for a stylist to give me a buzz cut and trim my eyebrows. She had me check out her work with a mirror and then pulled the cloth off me. I got up and walked to the counter. She did something on her computer and said,

“The haircut was on us. You don’t have to pay anything.”

This was my first time getting anything for free on Veterans Day. I pulled out my wallet anyway. She still deserved a big tip.

At the Dentist

November 10th, 2025

I took Asher to see the dentist on Saturday afternoon. I had been dreading the visit. Asher is not quite five years old, and he still has his baby teeth. At his last check up, his regular dentist found a tiny cavity in between his two upper front teeth. She recommended that Asher see a pediatric specialist to deal with the cavity. This was the first cavity that Asher ever had, and I was worried about how he would behave if the pediatric dentist needed to drill. The possible challenges were daunting. Asher had already been upset and unhelpful during a simple cleaning, so I was a bit on edge.

We got to the office of the pediatric dentist on time, but we had to wait for almost an hour. I asked the receptionist about the delay, and she told me that they had a couple difficult patients that day. Asher ran around the office area. He was bored and restless. That did not bode well. Asher really did not want to be there, and I didn’t either.

When we finally were taken into a back room by a dental hygienist. She got Asher into the chair. Then she went about getting x-rays for his teeth. I was relieved to that Asher did what the hygienist needed him to do without complaint. She had given him a toy (a little plastic digger truck) at the very outset of the visit and had promised him another one if he behaved. That tactic seemed to work well.

She took her pictures and then left to help the dentist in the adjoining examination room. He was working with another young patient. Asher sat in the dentist chair and stared straight ahead.

Another dental assistant came in to do some computer work while we waited for Dr. Mohamed to finish the job next door. As Asher and I waited, we listened to some ungodly wailing coming from the adjoining room. The kid was not having a good time. We could hear the dentist plead, nay beg, the child to relax and settle down. I heard the dentist, who is apparently a man of nearly infinite patience, tell the kid,

“Please bite down on this! Let me do my job!”

The child’s response was a long, intense, high pitched screech. I thought to myself,

“Sweet Jesus, what the fuck are they doing in there?”

I looked at Asher. He was sitting in the chair absolutely stone faced.

I asked him, “Are you okay?”

He replied, “Yes.”

“Uh, you’re looking kind of serious.”

“I’m okay. I just don’t want to move my head.”

I tried to ask Asher something else, but the crying from the other room was overwhelming. I couldn’t hear him answer me.

I told Asher, “I can’t hear you with all the screaming.”

The dental assistant snickered, and said, “Sorry about the noise. The patient isn’t being very cooperative.”

“Is that a professional hazard?”

“Oh yeah.”

Finally, Dr. Mohamed came into our room. He was a tall man with dark curly hair. He smiled at Asher. Asher smiled back. The dentist examined the x-rays and then he had Asher open his mouth so he could look at his teeth.

Asher was very cooperative.

The dentist told me that the cavities (there were actually three small ones) did not penetrate the enamel. This being the case, he could apply a sodium fluoride gel that protect the teeth and avoid any drilling and filling. He advised me that the gel would stain the teeth black. Fine. Whatever. They’re baby teeth and they will come out in a couple years, so I told him to do it. He went on to tell me that Asher should brush, floss, and avoid sweets. We can do that. We set up an appointment for his next cleaning.

At the end, the hygienist gave Asher another little toy as the last part of the bribe to keep him calm during the exam. The dentist seemed happy and relieved that Asher was good during the visit. The man appeared to be emotionally exhausted.

Asher spent the ride back home arguing with me about how often he could eat gummy worms.

Involuntarily Offline

November 9th, 2025

Ten days ago, my laptop took a shit. I was kind of expecting this to happen at some point. The laptop was already six years old, which meant that it was well into obsolescence. In addition to that, I had dropped it a couple years ago creating an ugly crack at the corner near the on/off button. The crack had increased in size over time. Finally, the computer refused to allow me to type on the keyboard. I was required to do something if I wanted to go online.

I took the ancient laptop to Best Buy. I have total coverage with Geek Squad, and I planned on using it. It should be noted that it is nearly impossible to go into a Best Buy and physically talk to a Geek Squad agent without an appointment. Just getting an appointment is no easy task either. A person either has to do it online (which is not possible if the device, like mine, doesn’t work) or do it on the phone, which requires a number of long and unpleasant steps. In any case, I had an appointment, and I did in fact speak with a human being.

I turned in the computer for repair, and I was informed via text that the work was completed a day later. I went to the store to pick up my resurrected laptop. I should have had an appointment for this, but somebody handled my issue anyway. The man explained that they had not been able to replicate the problem with the keyboard. He told me this as he played around with the computer. Then he realized that, yes indeed, the keyboard did not work. The tech sighed and said,

“This always happens during check out.”

He gave the crack in the corner a hard stare and told me,

“That may be the death sentence right there. There is lot going on underneath that crack, and the mother board might be damaged.”

I asked him, “So, you are telling me to buy a new one?”

“Well, you could…”

I interrupted him, “Never mind. Where do I go to buy a laptop?”

He pointed across the room. “The salesperson will help you.”

The sales guy did help, and then he took me right back to Geek Squad, so that they could transfer the data from the old computer to the new one. The bottom line was that it would take at least two days to transfer the data from the memory. I bowed to the inevitable and left both computers in their hands.

After two days, I once again went to the store. I got my brand-new Hewlett-Packard Omni Book and proudly took it home. I plugged it in and got online. It worked splendidly for five minutes and then it didn’t. It froze up completely every five minutes.

Fuck.

I restarted it and rebooted it and I finally went to the Best Buy site to chat with a Geek Squad agent with a multi-syllable first name. He did a complete tuneup on it. I tried it again. No change. I contacted Best Buy again, and this time the agent threw up his hands in despair and gave me an appointment to visit another store.

Nice.

I had to wait two days to go to the store. In the meantime, I tried to write on my blog using the partially incapacitated laptop. That was a bitch. I had to restart the computer several times and find the page where it locked up. I finally finished the essay (my previous post on this blog), but it cured my desire to go online.

As this saga continued, I came to understand that I really only need to go online for maybe a few minutes a day. The rest of my time was wasted reading articles on the Internet that either depressed or infuriated me. I had been trying to ween myself off the computer before it quit on me. I never take the laptop with me anywhere. It stays at home. I don’t have a tablet or a smart phone. I am attempting to avoid being a prisoner of the Matrix. I actually want to be part of the physical world in all of its beauty and horror. This takes a certain amount of effort.

I took the new but broken laptop to Geek Squad. A pleasant young woman asked whether I had gone online for help. I assured her that I had already jumped through all of the required hoops before coming to her. She determined that I was right. The piece of shit was broken. Fortunately, my coverage allowed me to swap out the new/old laptop for a new/new laptop. Of course, I had to let Geek Squad transfer the data again. That took another two days and required yet another appointment.

This afternoon, at long last, I went to the store, and the young lady presented me with a fresh, data-infused laptop. I took it home. Miracle of miracle, it works just fine.

That’s why I am writing to you now.

An Abundance of Holidays

November 5th, 2025

I recently finished reading “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” by James MacBride. It’s a fascinating novel set in a small Pennsylvania town in 1936. The major theme seems to be about the difficulties that minorities have with becoming integral parts of American society. The book focuses on the struggles of Jews and Blacks. This is a story that resonates in our present age. We have always been a country that tries to balance unity and diversity, often with unsatisfactory results.

The book makes me think about the city in which I have lived since 1988. I reside in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, a community that is semirural, but getting less rural every day. When my family first moved here, the population was overwhelmingly white, mostly people of German or Polish descent. Now it’s very different. The demographics have radically changed.

I take my grandson, Asher, to the Oak Creek Library quite often. We go to the children’s section. He plays with the toys there and sometimes I read a book to him. The library has a prominent display of holiday books for kids. There are several shelves filled with stories about different holidays that come up during the course of the year. In total, there are probably over one hundred available for children or their parents to read.

The library has had a display like this for as long as I can remember, but as the years have gone by, the types of books have changed. Years ago, the holiday books only referred to traditional festivals, like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and Halloween. Now, there are books about Passover and Hannukah, Ramadan and Eid, the Lunar New Year, Diwali, and Juneteenth /day. The number of holidays that are included on the shelves has exploded.

It would be tempting to think that perhaps some cabal of woke librarians decided to include all of these more exotic holidays among the books displayed. I suspect that is not the case. The reason for that is that as each one of these holidays approaches on the calendar, the section of the shelves that houses the books for that event empties out. This implies that people are checking out the books on that particular holiday and reading them. There is a market for these stories among the local population. This further implies that the city is a place of diversity.

I can see that reality whenever I take Asher to the library or to a local playground. He plays with children from all sorts of ethnic and racial backgrounds. A city and a country that is culturally diverse is Asher’s present situation and it is his future.

The United States government is currently fighting against diversity in its myriad forms. That is like swimming against the tide. Diversity is here to stay. We need to accept that fact, and work toward a new form of unity.

Jack O’Lantern Nights

October 28th, 2025

It was just after sunset when we got to the Racine Zoo on Friday. There was a Halloween light display that Asher wanted to see. It was getting cold. Asher wore a coat and pants under his Captain America costume. People admired his outfit, especially the shield that he carried with him. Asher definitely looked the part of a kindergarten superhero. He didn’t have fancy Marvel hero boots to wear with the costume, so he wore his dinosaur motif rain boots. Nobody noticed. It was getting dark.

The Racine Zoo is right next to Lake Michigan. It’s not a very big zoo. However, the light show was impressive. The place was packed with pumpkins, real or otherwise. Not long after we entered the zoo, I could hear music playing in the darkness. I was expected spooky classical compositions, like Bach’s organ masterpiece, “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”, or maybe “Night on Bald Mountain” by Mussorgsky. Not so. The hidden loudspeakers were cranking out “Werewolves of London”:

“He’s the hairy-handed gent
Who ran amok in Kent
Lately he’s been overheard in Mayfair
You better stay away from him
He’ll rip your lungs out, Jim
Hunh, I’d like to meet his tailor

Ah-hooo, werewolves of London
Ah-hooo
Ah-hooo, werewolves of London
Ah-hooo!”

People were gathered a Jack O’Lantern display that had three singing pumpkins. They weren’t real pumpkins, and they were used as sort of a screen for a projector. The pumpkins sang background vocals along with the late, great Warren Zevon.

“Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen
Doin’ the werewolves of London
I saw Lon Chaney Jr. walking with the Queen
Doin’ the werewolves of London
I saw a werewolf drinkin’ a piña colada at Trader Vic’s
His hair was perfect“

We walked along through the zoo. There were no animals about. However, there were plenty of pumpkins and eerie lamps. There was a bubble machine that spewed forth baseball-sized bubbles under a burnt orange light. Asher popped a bubble, and it was filled with smoke or maybe vapors from dry ice. I don’t know. It was fascinating.

There were Jack O’Lanterns that looked Beetle Juice or Wednesday or Edward Scissorhands. There were skeletons riding farm tractors. There were huge 3D-like images of zoo animals in red, orange, and black. There was a glowing sea serpent along with luminous sharks. There trees were illuminated with bats and spiders.

It was a good show.

Yesterday, I bought a used CD with songs from Warren Zevon. It’s called “The Wind”. He recorded it shortly before he died of cancer in 2003. It is the music of an artist who knows he is dying. Zevon was no stranger to composing music that was macabre. Try out “Excitable Boy” if you doubt me. Some of the songs on the album are slow and sad, but others rock hard. He decided to do a cover of Dylan’s ballad, “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”:

“Mama put my guns in the ground
I can’t shoot them anymore
That long black cloud is comin’ down
I feel I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door

Knock-knock-knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock-knock-knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock-knock-knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock-knock-knockin’ on heaven’s door”

As the song ends, Zevon keeps saying, “Open up! Open up!”

Nice touch.

They should have played song that while we were at the zoo. Or maybe not. We want frightening monsters, but not the scary things that are real. Vampires and mummies are okay. Cancer is not. Prison time is not. War is not. We don’t go looking for the terrors that wake us up at night with pounding hearts and sweat-soaked sheets. No, we don’t want to be visited by broken relationships or chronic diseases. We don’t want images of masked men from the government kicking in doors and dragging fathers away from their children. No, no, none of that.

We’ll stick with the werewolves of London.

” Ah-hooo
Werewolves of London
Heh, draw blood!”

Carrie

October 19th, 2025

Carrie Zettel is dead.

On October 12th, Carrie was killed by her daughter. The young woman bludgeoned her mother to death with a rock in the backyard of their home. The killing was all over the news, probably because of its particularly gruesome nature. My wife, Karin, and I didn’t know about Carrie’s murder until a couple days later. The funeral was yesterday, Saturday the 18th. Karin attended the service. She went there because, years ago, we knew that family quite well.

Two of our children attended Tamarack Waldorf School with Carrie’s two kids. She had a son and a daughter. Her son was in a class with our youngest boy. Both of our families lived in the southern part of Milwaukee County, which is far away from the Waldorf school, so we carpooled to school nearly every day. We did that until our son and her son graduated from Tamarack in 2008. After that, our paths diverged, and we lost contact with each other.

Every death is a tragedy, but some deaths defy understanding. Apparently, Carrie’s daughter has a long history of mental illness, so perhaps the killing was not completely unexpected. But still, how does a person wrap their head around this kind of violence? How does Carrie’s son deal with this? Is it even possible to come to terms with trauma like this?

I don’t know. I have never dealt with a death of this sort. The closest I’ve come is when our oldest son went to war in Iraq. He killed people there, and I have had difficulty accepting that reality. However, my experience is like nothing compared to what Carrie’s son has to process.

My wife told me that the funeral service was well done. The son gave an eloquent eulogy about Carrie. Another person mentioned to me that the son “stood tall and spoke well of the new commandment” (“Love one another” from John 13:34). I thought that maybe I should’ve gone there with Karin.

I had another place to be when the funeral was in progress. My friend from the synagogue, Ken, had invited me a couple days before the funeral to come to his home for kiddush, seeing as it was Shabbat, and his wife was out of town. I had already told Ken that I would come to share the meal he had prepared for us before I knew anything about the time and date of the funeral. It was impossible for me to tell Ken that I had a funeral to attend. Since he is an observant Jew, he does not communicate electronically at all on the sabbath: no phone calls, no texts, no emails, nothing. I couldn’t just not show up. So, I went to Ken’s home and kept him company for two hours. I needed to do that. We ate, we talked and enjoyed each other’s company. Shabbat is a gift from God, a day for rest, prayer, and friendship. Nobody should be alone on Shabbat.

I told Ken about Carrie, and we talked about her at length. I am sure that Ken prayed for her. Even if I wasn’t at the funeral, I remembered her.

She was good woman. I grieve for her. I grieve for her children.

What am I?

October 19th, 2025

“Identity dispersion refers to the extent to which an individual’s self-concept is fragmented, inconsistent, or lacks coherence across different roles and contexts. In psychological and sociological terms, it describes a state where the meanings a person attaches to “who I am” vary widely depending on the situation — for example, feeling like one person at work, another at home, and someone entirely different among friends. While it’s natural for people to adapt aspects of themselves to fit different environments, identity dispersion becomes problematic when these variations feel disconnected or contradictory, leaving the person without a stable, integrated sense of self.”

The paragraph above describes the psychological concept of “identity dispersion”. My therapist has spoken to me about this topic. He in fact sent me this definition of the term. I tend to feel that the condition applies to me to some degree. Since I talked with the clinician about the subject, I have been thinking quite a bit about “who I am” and “who I was”. Identity is a difficult thing to understand. It’s like grasping at smoke.

I will start with Zen Buddhism. I started Zen meditation back in 2005, and although I almost never meditate with the sangha anymore, the teachings I received while I was actively engaged with Zen still resonate with me. One thing that I remember distinctly is the mantra that was suggested for sitting mediation. As a newbie, I learned that I could focus during meditation by softly asking, “What am I?” on my inbreath, and then saying, “Don’t know” on my outbreath. The mantra is deceptively simple. First, it asks a question for which there is no clear answer. Secondly, the response to the question is not “I don’t know”. It’s just “Don’t know”, because there is really no I that doesn’t know.

Zen assumes that there is no real identity. Who or what I am is just a constantly churning mix of the five skandhas, different aspects of a personality that fluctuate and morph constantly. I am not the person I was twenty years ago. I’m not even the person I was twenty seconds ago. My identity is a moving target, something I can’t maintain.

After thinking about it, I see that often my identity has been a function of my relationship with other people. There is a song by Paul Simon called “My Little Town.” It’s about a boy growing up in a dying industrial community. One verse goes like this:

“I never meant nothin’, I was just my father’s son
Savin’ my money
Dreamin’ of glory
Twitchin’ like a finger on the trigger of a gun”

That was my youth. That was me. I was just an extension of my dad’s life. My job was to work hard, be successful, and make him look good. Especially after I was accepted to West Point (United States Military Academy), I was somebody he could brag about at work or at the tavern. I can recall him often telling me, “Make me proud! You got my name, you know!” He was a “Frank”, so that’s what I became. I was always “Frank’s oldest boy”. Nothing more, nothing less.

Now, many years later, I am generally known as “Asher’s grandpa”. At the playground or at the Waldorf school, people often don’t know my name. However, they know I am Asher’s grandfather and caregiver. I’m okay with that. At this point in time, Asher needs me. He’s not quite five years old, and I provide him with love and stability. My life revolves around this little boy, so my identity is deeply connected with his.

I was a soldier. During that period of my life, my identity was often determined by my rank and my profession. I was “Captain Pauc”, an officer and a helicopter pilot. That was a time when I really did feel disconnection and contradiction in terms of what I was. A military officer by definition is an expert in the management of violence. I was never comfortable with that role. I couldn’t make that jive with my moral values. Alcohol abuse made the contradictions blur somewhat, but I that particular identity was a bad fit and I eventually was encouraged to find a different career path. I’m glad that I did.

Over the years, I have been many things: soldier, peace activist, father of a combat vet, husband, pilot, dock supervisor, advocate for migrants, representative in a parish council, non-Jewish member of a synagogue, Zen practitioner, marginally competent bass player, etc. The list goes on and on and on. I am different things to different people. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. I can relate to a diverse population.

The input about my identity that I get from others with whom I interact is often confusing. I have had some people tell me that I am a good person. I have also had others enthusiastically declare that I should burn in hell. So, who’s right? Who’s wrong? Are maybe both parties right to some degree?

So, what am I?

Don’t know.

Grieving Alone

October 10th, 2025

I visited a guy from Dryhootch yesterday. The man’s name is Levi and he works at Dryhootch, which is a veteran’s organization headquartered in southeastern Wisconsin. The group runs a number of coffee houses catering to vets in the Milwaukee area and in Madison, Wisconsin. They also operate a peer support network for veterans. Running peer support is Levi’s main responsibility, and it is a huge one. I offered to write an article about Dryhootch, and Levi convinced me to wait a bit. He wants me to go through their peer support training before I write about Dryhootch’s mission. That makes sense. The truth is that I don’t yet know enough about what the organization does to write a competent essay. So, this piece that I am scribbling now is not about Dryhootch. It is about a long and thought-provoking conversation I had with Levi in his office.

Levi plans to eventually massage our chaotic discussion into a coherent podcast. I wish him luck with that. We covered a wide range of topics that may or may not have a common theme. During the course of our chat, we talked about the struggle that veterans have transitioning from the military to civilian life. Levi remarked that there was a sense of loss for the veterans. He went on to say,

“A vet grieves, and he grieves alone.”

That hit me hard. I had never really thought of leaving the service as being cause for intense grief, but now I see it that way. There truly is a loss involved when a person departs from the military. The veteran may grieve for a number of things. It may be the loss of their youth and innocence. It might the loss of their health. It may be the loss of good friends. Relationships built up over many years may be sundered. Yes, I can see how a veteran may need to grieve, and now in retrospect, I see that I spent years grieving without even realizing it.

In conjunction with our discussion of grief, Levi and I also talked about the idea of a “tribe”. What is a tribe? It’s hard to say. Indigenous peoples often live as tribes. Street gangs can be considered to be tribes. I had a good Jewish friend who often referred to his religious community as “the tribe”. The best source of information about the subject is a book written by Sebastian Junger that is appropriately called Tribe. It’s a short book and a quick read. However, Junger makes some excellent points in it.

From my reading of Junger’s book, a tribe is a group of people who totally depend on each other for survival. The tribe is more important than any individual. There are no loners in a tribe, because they generally don’t live very long. A member of a tribe is responsible for the wellbeing of every other member. There is absolute trust between individuals in the community. There has to be. In addition, a tribe has rules and values that only apply to tribal members. These mores have no bearing on the lives people outside of the group. In fact, these regulations and customs are often unintelligible to anyone on the outside. This particular way of life within the tribe only makes sense to the person inside of the magic circle.

The military qualifies as a tribe. That seems obvious to me. I never fought in a war, but if a soldier did, like my oldest son, Hans, then he was definitely part of a tribe. His life and the lives of his comrades depended on the success of the tribe. They had to have each other’s backs all the time. That sort of experience builds an unbreakable bond of trust. It is something sacred.

I was an Army aviator during peace time. My work was by definition dangerous, although not as hazardous as being in combat. Even for me, my experience was that of a tribal member. When flying, I depended on the competence of my copilot and the crew chief, not to mention being dependent on the mechanics who maintained the helicopter and the troops in the III/V platoon who fueled the aircraft. Likewise, any troops that we transported in the helicopter put their lives in our hands. In order to perform a mission successfully and safely, we all had to rely on each other. We were a tribe.

Going back to grief, so why does a veteran grieve? He or she grieves because they have lost their tribe, and that means they have lost their community. For whatever reason, they have left the service and have entered the civilian world, which is a world with alien values and customs. In the civilian world there often little trust and it is seldom that anybody has your back. How can that transition be anything but traumatic? Suddenly a person is no longer part of a cohesive team. Instead, they are in a cutthroat culture that worships individualism. A veteran may be glad to be rid of the military madness, but they still have reason to feel a profound loss.

So, why does a veteran grieve alone? It’s because there are so few of us. Who can we talk to about our loss? Who can we find who gets it? Often, there is no one. We wander alone in a strange world, and we shut down. That’s the tragedy of it all. The drugs and violence and suicide all stem from that isolation. I’m convinced of it.

I will talk to Levi more often. At some point, I will write about Dryhootch, but only when I understand it.

Old Men Talking about a Boy

October 13th, 2025

The old man sat across from me in his apartment. His wife had gone for a long walk when I arrived. Maybe she needed some air, or maybe she just didn’t want to be part of our conversation. I can understand her wanting to be elsewhere. It wasn’t a terribly pleasant discussion, but perhaps it was a necessary one for us to have.

The elder and I were talking mostly about my grandson, Asher. The old guy, who is my father’s age, couldn’t understand Asher’s strange behavior in their home when we came to visit a couple weeks ago. The old man is a Ukrainian Jew. I know him from the synagogue, and we have been close friends for several years. He has had a hard life by any objective standard. He and his grandfather fled to Kazakhstan just after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. Both of his parents were officers in the Soviet Army during the war. The old man knows all about hunger and poverty. He knows about fear, having grown up during Stalin’s regime. He’s experienced raw antisemitism. He immigrated to the United States with his wife after the Soviet Union collapsed and attempted to start a new life here at the age of sixty-five. The man has been through hell.

Asher had behaved badly while we were visiting the old guy and his wife. The man and his wife love Asher dearly. They really do. The man had found a small model school bus to give to Asher as a gift. At first Asher wanted it, but then he got annoyed and frustrated. He refused the present. I told Asher that we would take it home with us. The little boy got angry and argued with me. He became more and more upset, to the point where I couldn’t control him. The man’s wife had prepared a lunch for us, and Asher saw nothing that he liked. Eventually, he ate a single slice of bread and then we left. I did not take the toy with us. I think at the end Asher gave the old guy a hug, but overall, the visit was painful for the elderly couple.

The old man talked about that visit with me. I would have preferred to forget the entire episode, but he didn’t want to do that. He asked me,

“Don’t you think you should teach Asher to be grateful and thank people for gifts?”

I apologized for the fact that Asher had been rude to the man. He went on,

“No, I don’t mean just to me. That is nothing. I mean in general; shouldn’t he learn to be polite?”

I told him, “Asher is a wonderful boy. He is a good kid.”

“Yes, yes, of course he is. But he must learn how thank a person.”

I thought to myself, “Yes, he should learn that.” Then I said, “We try to teach him that, but he has been through some terrible things already. He has been through a lot of changes, especially with the new school. He struggles to control his feelings.”

The old man asked me, “What feelings?”

I replied, “He’s scared.”

“But scared of what?”

“He’s lost people in his life already. It’s hard for him to be with strangers.”

The old man said, “But I am like his uncle. I am no stranger.”

The truth is that almost everyone is a stranger to Asher. He has me, my wife, and his mama. That’s it.

The old man softened his voice. He told me,

“My wife and I, we often talk about you and your family. We know it is hard for you.”

I nodded.

He said, “I think of you as a beacon to your family. I think I am using the right English word. You have to show the way.”

Do I show anybody the way? If I am a beacon, I often have a dim and flickering light. I try to figure things out, but I am in the dark.

The old man continued, “You have to keep things together for your family. You have to do this for Asher, for your wife, for his mama.”

I don’t want to be the one to keep it all together. I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I am strong enough. But if I don’t, then who will?

There was no more to say about Asher. We both stood up. He shook my hand and put his other hand on my shoulder. He said,

“We think of your family every day. You are always in our hearts. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Tell the boy that his uncle will have another toy car for him the next time he comes.”

“Okay. I will.”

I haven’t told Asher yet. He needs time. So, do I.