Frank is Emptiness

July 18th, 2020

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” – Helen Keller

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” – John 15;13

Elliot asked me to go skydiving with him.

Elliot is one of my neighbors. He goes skydiving every year in August, on his birthday. Elliot’s dad started skydiving after his wife died. Elliot’s father passed away several years ago (not due to a skydiving accident), and Elliott has chosen to honor his dad’s memory by continuing to jump out of perfectly good airplanes.

Why not?

Elliot asked me if I would like to go with him sometime. I told him that I would have to think about it. I am intrigued by the idea, and I have some experience with doing dangerous things (e.g. I was a helicopter pilot, I drove a BMW on the German Autobahn at 130 mph, I walked on top of glaciers, I rappelled off of cliffs, etc.). So, the prospect of leaping out of a plane has a certain perverse attraction.

In order to go with Elliot on this adventure, I would need to consult with my wife, Karin. I have not done so. I don’t ask questions when I already know the answer. Karin might agree to my desire to skydive, but she would do so with great reluctance. The whole notion would frighten her, and rightly so. I am not going to talk to Karin about it because it would be unfair to scare her just so I could have a momentary thrill. Why put her under a lot of stress to satisfy a whim?

Everything involves risk. There is no safe course. As somebody once told me, “Nobody gets off this planet alive.” The question is not whether you can avoid danger. You can’t. The question is: What risks do you take, and why?

Two days ago I walked down Oakwood Road, and I saw a number of squad cars near the railroad crossing. The cops had their lights flashing, and they were directing traffic in other directions. I kept walking until I was close to the train tracks. I saw a number of policemen taking pictures and measurements. That is never a good sign. I also saw a twisted bicycle laying on the pavement. That’s not good at all.

Somebody on a bike got nailed by a car while going over the narrow part of the railroad crossing. I am sure that the biker thought that he was being safe. Maybe the driver of the car thought the same thing. However, it wasn’t safe, and somebody got hurt really bad.

Last week I went for coffee with a friend from the Zen Center. Kevin was riding his bicycle on Lake Drive a couple months ago. He got t-boned by a car. Kevin had several broken ribs and a screwed up shoulder. He was feeling pretty good when we sat outside Colectivo Coffee House and sipped our drinks. As we sat, he made the comment,

“We’re sitting pretty close together here. This is kind of risky.”

Yeah, I guess so.

In this time of pandemic, the emphasis is on being safe. Everybody I meet tells me to be safe. So, what does that really mean?

I am not so much worried about myself getting sick from the COVID virus. I am worried about making other people sick, if I do get the disease. Any action that I take will involve other people. I have to keep thinking about what effect I may have on the health of others.

For instance, I want to do volunteer work. I go into poor areas of Milwaukee to distribute meals to families. Do I endanger them by going to their homes? Would they be worse off if I did not go to them? Am I actually helping these people?

Whatever I do has an impact on somebody somehow. I have to be aware that my life is not my own. I do not have absolute sovereignty over my body. Other people need me, and I need them.

I have to tell Elliot and that I am not going with him.

 

 

 

 

 

July 15th, 2020

I was sitting at my computer (as I am now) and I heard somebody go into the bathroom. The bathroom door closed, and I heard the sound of a person puking loudly. I gave it no further thought.

I got up and went into the kitchen to get something. While I there, I heard the toilet flush, the sound of water running in the sink, and then the young woman came into view. She was looking a bit pale. She opened the door of the pantry and stared into it, hoping that something tasty would jump into her hand. No such luck.

She walked a couple feet over to the refrigerator and did the exact same thing. She had the door of the fridge wide open, searching for something to eat, but not knowing what it could be. Maybe, back in the Pleistocene, our hunter-gatherer ancestors did something similar. Maybe they gazed into the distance looking for anything that qualified as food.

I asked her, “So, how do you feel?”

Stupid question.

She stopped focusing on the leftovers in the fridge, frowned, and said, “Nauseous.”

She found some fruit hidden way in the back of the crisper.

Then she said, “And hungry.”

I asked her, “Did you find anything that the baby likes?”

She replied, “I hope so. I know that she doesn’t like quiche.”

“Sorry. I don’t have to cook that any more.”

She continued, “I looked on line and they said that pregnant women shouldn’t eat a lot fatty foods. That’s about all we have in this refrigerator.”

“I guess we will have to buy other food.”

“Yeah.”

The young woman took out a glass and filled with lemonade and fizzy water.

She looked at me and said, “I know that the baby at least likes this stuff.”

She walked away, holding her drink and bowl of green grapes.

Another time, we were both in my car. I was driving the young woman to an appointment.

I asked her, “Have you and your guy talked about about a name?”

“I want ‘Elvira’ for her.”

“You mean ‘Elvira’ like in ‘virus’?”

She nodded.

“Well, what about ‘Corona’ for a name? That means ‘crown’.”

She frowned and raised an eyebrow. “That sounds stupid.”

“Okay.”

“What if it’s not a girl?”

She replied, “Well, there is no point in putting a mermaid poster in the bedroom if it’s a boy.”

Hard to argue with that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 11th, 2020

“I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest flows naturally.”

Saint Oscar Romero, bishop and martyr

“Let us begin. We have done little or nothing.” – St Francis of Assisi

There are Black Catholics. There aren’t that many, but they exist. Blacks make up a mere 3% of the population of the Catholic Church in the United States. Using a stubby pencil to do the math, that means that there are maybe 1.8 million of them in the entire country. I was privileged to meet a few of them yesterday.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee sponsored the Black Catholic March for Racial Justice. It was partly a demonstration, and partly a history lesson. The Catholic Church in Milwaukee has long history with the Black community. Some of it is admirable. Some of it, not so much. In the United States the Roman Catholic Church has been a primarily a conservative white institution. It has often done more to preserve the status quo than it has to promote social justice. But not always…

The march started at St. Francis of Assisi Church on the corner of Brown Street and Vel R. Phillips Avenue (formerly 4th Street) in Milwaukee, just north of downtown. The church goes back to 1869, when the Capuchin friars started building a monastery on the site.

(Capuchins are a variety of the Franciscan order of the Catholic Church. The name “Capuchin” derives from the same source as the word “cappuccino”. They both mean “brown”. Capuchins wear brown robes. Just a little Catholic trivia).

The Franciscans at St. Francis Church have a long and close relationship with the Black community in Milwaukee. According to the pastor, Father Mike Bertram, the first Civil Rights march in Milwaukee started at St. Francis Church on July 29th, 1967. There is a strong tradition among the Capuchin friars for helping the poor and the oppressed. That commitment to justice was on display yesterday.

It was warm and humid when I showed up at the rally. I think there were probably a couple hundred people in attendance, more than I had expected. I walked up to a friar wearing a mask (everybody was wearing a mask). He was handing out t-shirts for the march. On the front of the shirt, it said, “RACISM IS A SIN”. On the back was a quote from Saint Pope Paul IV, “If you want peace, work for justice”.

The friar told me, “Go ahead and take one. All we got left are XXX large, but they shrink when you wash them…well, maybe a little.”

“Okay. do you want a donation?”

The friar shook his head, “No. just take it and wear it. You can grab a sign too, if you want.”

The friars had a wide variety of signs available. They were all laying on the grass under the linden trees. I took a small one. It was a print of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Jesus was portrayed as a Black man. I liked the image, and I wanted to give it to Karin when I got home. Now she wants to frame it and hang it in her craft studio.

There was usual milling around that is normal prior to a protest march. I looked around to find somebody I knew. These events attract all the usual suspects, so I figured I’d meet a friend. It was hard to pick out anyone, because we were all masked. Most people were keeping a respectful social distance.

I stood near a young man and struck up a conversation. It was a bit awkward because I couldn’t read many of his facial cues. I had only his eyes to work with. The man’s name was John, and he is in charge of the education center across the street from the church. We talked a bit about the struggle to do volunteer work during the pandemic. His center has done a lot of work helping people get their GED’s. All their tutoring used to be face to face. No more. The pandemic has made it nearly impossible to help people in a personal and physical way. It has alienated us from each other.

During the conversation, I lifted my mask for a moment, and then put it back.

I told John, “I just wanted you to see my face, to see who I am.”

John briefly raised his own mask from his mouth, and smiled.

At 9:15 the show started. These things have a certain ritual to them. Mary Words, the chair of the Black Catholic Ministry Commission, spoke. There was a rendition of a gospel song. Father Mike said a prayer for us and, as we began the march, he quoted from his order’s patron, St. Francis of Assisi:

“Let us begin. We have done little or nothing.”

That cut to the heart. Because it’s true. When it comes right down to it, I ain’t done shit.

We began.

We walked several blocks to 7th and Galena. There is public housing on that corner. Many years ago, it was the site of Blessed Martin de Porres. Now there is no trace of the building. Martin de Porres served the Black community of Milwaukee from 1940 until 1962. Then the church was closed and destroyed in order to build the Hillside housing project.

I will digress for a bit.

The Black community has not been treated gently in Milwaukee. Milwaukee is still one of the most segregated cities in the country. At one time, there was thriving Black business district just to the north and west of downtown. That was all demolished in order to build the Interstate through Milwaukee. It was a classic case of systematic racism. The Black community in Milwaukee suffers inordinately from poverty and crime.

The Catholic Church in Milwaukee has not always been a champion for racial justice. It is not just that white Catholics can and have been racist. The local Church has always been tribal. There have been many hyphenated parishes in the city (Polish-Catholic, German-Catholic, Irish-Catholic, etc.). Until recent times, the Church in archdiocese has been rent with cultural divisions. It was not unusual in my childhood to hear somebody say something like: “I don’t go to such and such church. They’re all Polacks there!” In some ways, racism in the local church was and is an extension of other antagonisms.

There have been clear exceptions to the prevailing attitude among Catholics in Milwaukee. Casa Maria Catholic Worker House has always been a beacon of hope for better race relations. St. Francis and St Benedict the Moor parishes have promoted racial justice. Father James Groppi was a leader in Milwaukee for the Civil Rights movement of the ’60s. There were and there are good people. Good things can happen.

I believe that the institutional Church has not been often at the forefront of social justice work because of the Church’s laser-like focus on the abortion issue. For many Catholics abortion is the only social justice issue. This has caused some Catholics to support politicians whose only moral claim is that they oppose abortion. Being pro-life is more than just being anti-abortion. As Cardinal Bernadin and Eileen Egan said, there is a seamless garment of life. To be pro-life is to be attentive to all aspects of life. Ending racism is part of that seamless garment, and it has often been a forgotten part of it.

Back to the march…

We walked to St. Benedict the Moor Church on 9th and State. I walked along with an older black lady. Her name was Pamela. We spoke mostly about our children. Pam is a great-grandmother. She doesn’t look like it. I asked her if she was retired. Pam told me,

“No, not yet. I still have work to do.”

I asked her what she did. She’s been a busy woman. She spent years working with students who had been thrown out of the Milwaukee Public School system, so that they could continue to learn. She worked for a long time with Child Protective Services. Pam has probably helped hundreds, or maybe thousands, of troubled kids.

I listened to her and thought, “I have done little or nothing.”

Well, maybe I’ve done something, but not like this lady.

As we approached St. Benedict, Pam told about her relationship with this particular church. She talked about weddings and baptisms. It was clear from the sound of her voice that St. Benedict the Moor is her spiritual home. She loves that place.

It was hot when we arrived at St Ben’s. I have been there before. Years ago, I helped out with their meal program. St. Benedict’s was established as the first Catholic Church for Black people in the state of Wisconsin. The building has stood since 1923. It has served the poor and the marginalized ever since that time.

It is ironic that St. Benedict’s stands almost directly across from the Milwaukee Police Headquarters and the Milwaukee County Safety Building. On which side of the street do we find justice?

As I stood near the church, Greg came up to me. He’s the deacon at my church. I didn’t recognize him at first. He was wearing his mask and sunglasses. He said,

“Hey man! Good to see you! If I had known you were coming, we could have carpooled.”

“I didn’t know until yesterday that I would march.”

Greg smiled. “Look at all these people. This is great! At last!”

Indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 9th, 2020

Tandem is a restaurant on Milwaukee’s north side, near the corner of 18th and Fond du Lac. It’s located in a low income neighborhood. Most of the residents of the area are African-American. I’ve never actually eaten anything at Tandem, although I have been to the restaurant several times. Every time I have stopped at Tandem, it has been to pick up free meals to deliver to poor, undocumented immigrant families.

It’s a half hour drive from my house in the suburbs to Tandem. My wife, Karin, comes with me to pick up the meals and deliver them. She is enthusiastic about doing this work. It gives her a sense of purpose. It gives me one too.

Last week there was some mix up about our orders. Nobody knew that we were coming to pick up. Not knowing what else to do, Karin and I got in the back of a long line of people to wait for somebody to help us out. The line was exclusively made up of Blacks, except for my wife and me. Most of those waiting in line wore masks and practiced social distancing. One man served as a DJ to entertain the folks who were standing in the heat to get some food. An elderly Black woman wearing a mask came up to us and asked if we wanted to see a menu. We told her that we were trying get twenty-one meals to deliver to families on the south side of town.

She asked us, “You all pre-arranged for these meals?”

We told her that a friend of ours had called the orders in, but nobody seemed to know anything about the meals.

The lady took us out of the line and we followed her to the front door of the restaurant. She told us to wait, and she said that she was going inside to handle things.

She did.

In a little while, a young man brought us a big cardboard box full of meals. Karin and I thanked him. Then we started our rounds.

The south side of Milwaukee is full of old, dilapidated homes built on microscopic lots. The neighborhoods there have always been inhabited by immigrants. My grandma grew up in that part of town over one hundred years ago. At that time it was full of poor Slavic families. Now it is full of poor Latinos. In some ways it’s all different. In some ways, nothing has changed in over a century.

We had five drops. Each of the five families had been made aware that we were coming with food. A couple people greeted us at their front doors when we showed up. We left the meals on the porch at other homes. We had minimal interaction with the recipients of the food. Part of that was due to our lack of fluency in Spanish. Some of it was due to the fear created by the COVID-19 pandemic. The fact that all these people were leery of strangers played into it. Karin and I tried to make the process as personal and human as possible, but it’s hard to do that nowadays.

Was it worth doing? Yes. These people are hurting, and we did a little bit to ease their troubles. The deliveries seemed insignificant, considering the huge need that is in our community. However, we did something that needed to be done. We made a tiny difference in the a few lives. We plan to continue doing that.

We touched people without touching them.

July 7th, 2020

Hussein greeted me at the front door. His hair was longer than I remembered, and he hadn’t shaved for a while. I hadn’t seen him or his younger siblings since the start of the pandemic. Hussein is college age. He should be a freshman this fall, if in fact the schools are open in the fall.

I asked him about his college classes, as he invited me into the family’s home. He told me that he was currently taking a couple online courses from Marquette University. I asked him what he was studying.

Hussein smiled, and said, “Theology.”

“Theology?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of theology?”

Hussein replied, “Christian and Catholic theology.”

Knowing that the members of Hussein’s family are devout Muslims, I asked him,

“How do you like it?”

He smiled again and said, “It’s okay. I have to go back now to my class. I talk to you again a little later.” Then he yelled upstairs for his brothers and sisters to come down and meet with me.

Not all the kids came downstairs. Nizar, being Nizar, refused to stop whatever he was doing to greet me. However, Nisrin, Yasmin, Haneen, Ibrahim, Yusif, and Nadaa came to the living room to hang out with me. I am not sure where the stragglers were hiding. The family has a total of eleven children. It’s a bit difficult to get them all in the same place at the same time.

Nadaa smiled and said, “Frank! We have missed you!”

I nodded, “I missed you too.” I really did.

They wanted to know about my family. I told them that my wife and I were expecting to become grandparents again. My son’s wife in Texas is pregnant again. I also mentioned to the kids that a young woman, who is important to me, is expecting a baby.

I asked the kids about school. Ibrahim is supposed to start eighth grade. Nadaa is ready for tenth grade. They are all studying something online. They miss being in class, hard as that may be to believe. I couldn’t find out from them if they are physically going back to their classrooms. They probably don’t know yet. I bet that their teachers don’t know yet either.

I was going to leave when Nadaa got up and said, “Wait! You have to drink tea! Don’t you miss having tea with us?”

I smiled and said, “Yes.” The Syrian family always offered me hot, sweet tea whenever I came to visit. Nadaa had already started boiling the water for the tea as soon as I walked into the house. So, I stayed to talk some more. Nadaa poured me a glass of tea.

Hussein came over to us. He was trying to listen to his Bluetooth while he was talking to me. His class was still going on.

I asked him,

“Are the mosques open?”

Hussein replied, “The mosque is open, but only for prayer on Friday. You have to register before you go.”

I told him, “My wife and I are going to church again, but we don’t need to register.”

Hussein said, “In the mosque they take your temperature and you have to wear a mask. If you register to come to Friday prayer, and you don’t come, they don’t let come back again.”

“Really?”

Hussein looked at me sheepishly. “If somebody registers, but doesn’t go to pray, then there is an empty space in the mosque that somebody else could have used. That is no good.”

He paused and said, “Yeah, I registered, but I didn’t go.” He shrugged. “Now they say I can’t come any more.” He gave me an embarrassed grin.

Then he said, “I have to go back to my computer.” He hurried away.

Ibrahim asked me, “This young woman you know, the pregnant one, is she married?”

“Not yet.”

Ibrahim looked puzzled. He asked me, “How can you have a baby if you are not married?”

Oh boy.

I said, “Well, uh, yeah, a person can have a baby even if they are not married.”

Ibrahim was still confused. “How?”

“Okay, yeah, well, this young woman should be married before the baby comes. It will be okay.”

Ibrahim silently looked at me. My answer seemed unsatisfactory to him, and it was unsatisfactory to me too.

Nadaa asked, “The girl, she knows that her boyfriend is the father?”

That I could answer clearly. “Yes.”

She smiled, and said, “Then it is good.”

Yeah, it is good. I know that both the young woman and her fiance want the baby. It will be fine.

I finished drinking my glass of tea. I yelled up the steps and told Nizar that I was leaving. He yelled back to me. I told Hussein that I would try to come back more often.

He smiled and said, “Good.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 5th, 2020

“Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country will be righteous as well as strong.” – James Bryce

Well, the 4th of July is over for another year. I have trouble with the 4th, just like I have trouble with other patriotic holidays. I guess I just don’t understand the intense emotions that are conjured up by the 4th of July. That seems odd since I am a West Point graduate, and I served as an Army officer for six years. Unlike some of my fellow citizens, I don’t experience that spontaneous welling up of national pride. I don’t rejoice in our country’s economic and military might. I don’t feel different or better than a German or a Russian or a Palestinian or whomever. When people talk about “freedom” and “independence”, I wonder what they mean by those words. I wonder if they even know what the words mean.

I just don’t get it.

I don’t own a flag, so I don’t wave one. Most of the people on our street display an American flag (or flags). I don’t mind that. It doesn’t bother me. I generally don’t even notice them any more. They are pretty in a way. They make nice decorations.

Many people have incredibly visceral feelings about the American flag. For some of them it is an object of adoration. It is a symbol of all that is good about the United States. Perhaps, some of these people are veterans and their military experiences are intimately connected with the flag. Some people believe that America is “exceptional”, unique in all the world, and in all of human history. The flag embodies that special status. When one of my friends died a few months ago, two soldiers gave his widow a flag as part of an elaborate ceremony at his funeral. The flag meant something to this woman.

Other people hate the flag. They see racism, violence, and greed in the red, white, and blue. They are willing to burn the flag to express their anger.  I would never burn a U.S. flag. I don’t see any point in that. To do that, I would have to see a symbol in the flag.

All I see is a piece of cloth.

July 4th, 2020

I started walking before the sun was above the horizon. The sky was clear and the air was already warm. I followed my usual path down Oakwood Road. There was no traffic, none at all. I walk due west. I could see a cumulus cloud in the distance slowly beginning to glow pink in the morning light.

I like to walk early in the morning. It is easier for me to appreciate nature then. Sure, there are houses all around me, but there are also some woods and a few farm fields. There is a vast marshy area on both sides of Oakwood. As I walked, tall grass and cattails barely moved in an almost imperceptible breeze. I could hear bird calls near the wetlands. I picked out the sound of a red cardinal that was lost somewhere in the green leaves of a tree. A sandhill crane took off silently in front of me. Then it cried out. Its voice was like the loud creaking of a rusty door hinge. Half a dozen crows perched in bare branches, high atop a dead cottonwood.

Frogs jumped from the grass near the street into the ditch water. They didn’t croak as much as they made a high-pitched squeak as the made the leap. A muskrat slid into the murky marsh as I approached. The animal made no sound at all.

The milkweeds are almost ready to bloom. There are still some black eyed susans and daisies along the road. Soon the chicory will show some blue flowers.

Just past the marsh I saw a doe. She was standing at the side of the road, looking at me. I walked toward the deer and waved. She just kept staring. As I got within ten feet of the doe, she woke from her dream and darted across the street. The last thing I saw of her was her white tail held high as she disappeared into the brush.

The sun was peaking through the tree branches in the east. The yellow light illuminated the scores of dead ash trees. The ashes looked like black skeletal hands reaching up to the sky. The ash trees have already had their pandemic with the emerald ash borer. There are very few living ash trees left. The dead ones stand forlorn, just waiting for a strong storm to topple them. Other types of trees are growing up in their midst. In few years, these maples and walnuts and cottonwoods will be taller than the dead ashes, if any of the ashes are still upright.

I passed two dead raccoons on the way back home. They were on the side of the road. A car must have hit them. There was a reddish black stain on the asphalt. I stopped for a moment. I remembered my friend, Senji. Years ago, we had both seen a dead deer on a road in Indiana. Senji had bowed deeply in front of the deer and placed the palms of his hands together. He made Gassho. He honored the life of the deer and then walked on.

I bowed before the raccoons, made gassho, and then walked home.

 

 

 

 

June 30th, 2020

The Capital Times printed this letter from me yesterday. I’ve written on this topic in my blog already, so it’s not really anything new. There is a grammatical error in the letter. It was my mistake, and the paper did not catch it. You can’t depend on anybody anymore.  Anyway, the essay is short and to the point.

 

“I am appalled by Tuesday night’s attack on Sen. Tim Carpenter in Madison. I spent five days with Senator Carpenter on a trip to the Mexican border in October of last year. He struck me as being a very compassionate and honorable man. He certainly does not deserve to be assaulted by a group of angry protesters. Nobody deserves that.

June 27th, 2020

Stefan took me to Sugar Maple. We had just finished eating lunch at Café India on Kinnickinnic Avenue in Bay View. That is what we had wanted to do for Fathers Day. Now that we were full of naan bread and chicken tikka masala, we walked south on KK to get some exercise. We got as far as the intersection of KK and Lincoln Avenue. That’s when Stefan suggested that we stop at Sugar Maple for a beer.

The sidewalks were full of people that afternoon. It was a warm, sunny day, and most everybody wanted to enjoy it. There was some effort to maintain social distancing, but it was half-hearted. Some of the restaurants had set up some outdoor seating near the street. Stefan and I walked past people sitting in front of Sabor Tropical and Centraal. The crowd was eclectic. We saw a wide variety of individuals.

Stefan commented, “Bay View. You see either the weird or you see the people with money.”

That’s true. Bay View is an up-and-coming neighborhood in Milwaukee, and its inhabitants are a little unusual. The population is generally young, and some of it seems to be wealthy. Stefan and I have no problem with weird people. We’ve both grown accustomed to being with folks who are living right on the edge. However, Stefan has some prejudice against young people with money. Stefan has money. He is actually doing quite well as an Iron Worker, but Stefan does not like young people who are spending Daddy’s money. Those kids are pretty obvious. They have nice clothes and nice cars, and it is clear that they have paid for none of those things on their own. Stefan has money, but he’s earned every nickel of it, and he has no respect for someone who is spending somebody else’s cash.

Sugar Maple is a tavern that serves beers from various microbreweries in the Milwaukee are. There is a plethora of these local breweries, so the pub’s beer selection is vast. Stefan and I sat at the bar. Sugar Maple is serious about the social distancing. The bartender wore a mask, as did several of the patrons.

I ordered a “Hazy Galaxy” IPA from the City Lights Brewery. I can’t remember exactly what Stefan got, but he tends toward the IPA’s. It was hard for me to tell what the barkeep was thinking. He seemed friendly enough, but it’s hard to read a person while they are wearing a mask. I could only see his eyes, and they didn’t tell me much. There is a large painting above the bar that only shows a woman’s eyes. I kept looking at it, trying to figure out what those eyes were telling me. I never got it.

Stefan talked about work. He likes to talk about it. Stefan takes great pride in his work, although he bitches about it constantly. Being an Iron Worker is a difficult occupation. It’s very demanding both physically and mentally. Building a steel structure is by its very nature a dangerous undertaking. On the other hand, Stefan can point to a building or a bridge and say, “I made that.” I was never able to say such a thing, not in all the years that I worked.

Stefan spoke to me about how he liked to look at the old photos of Iron Workers from years ago, like the guys who built the skyscrapers in New York back in the 1930’s.

I said, “Yeah, those guys were nuts, sitting on a steel beam, just relaxing and eating their lunch.”

Stefan replied, “It’s not much different now. Yeah, we’re tied on, sort of. I mean a fall from fifty feet up means death. If I’m strapped on and slip off the beam, I won’t hit the ground. I’ll swing, but I’ll swing into something. That something will probably be hard.”

He went on, “Every morning I go to work, and I don’t know if I’m coming back home or not.”

It got quiet for a moment. We both sipped our beers.

Stefan said, “You know how it is. You flew helicopters back in the day.”

I stared into my glass. “Yeah, flying was cool. It was 90% fun, and 10% sheer terror.”

Stefan replied, “Well, most of my job is fun. It’s cool to be up there making it happen.”

He looked at his phone, and found some pictures of the Mohawks who built the bridges and skyscrapers years ago.

Stefan said, “These guys were doing it. They had balls.”

I told him, “Most other cultures have a rite of passage for young men. I know the Indians do. That might have been their rite of passage.”

Stefan took a swig off his beer. “Oh, fuck yeah. And this job is mine.”

I looked at him. Stefan is twenty-six years old. He’s tall and well-muscled. He has a tattoo of a wrench on his arm; it’s the kind of wrench that Iron Workers use. He’s smart, and honest, and he works hard. He’s absolutely fearless.

I’m proud of him.

June 26th, 2020

The following attack occurred in Madison, Wisconsin, on Tuesday night: