The Yankee Dog • Kaleidoscope

The constitution is a secular equivalent to the holy books of the Abrahamic faiths.

The constitution is a socio-political contract that needs to be ratified every generation.

The constitution is an element of government any individual can interpret as they see fit.

The constitution is a template for a new society dedicated to redressing the injustices inflicted on all its members.

 The constitution is a template for a new society, created by wealthy male landowners who in their conduct paid small attention to the needs and wishes of the poor and enslaved.

The constitution is a tool for maintaining the traditional values of society.

The constitution is a weapon for suppressing radical reinterpretations of its content.

The constitution is an illusion to those disagree on its importance to society.

The constitution is an inspiration to those living in nations without one.

The constitution is a threat to those living in nations without one.

The Yankee Dog

Returning after a bit more than a year. Family somewhat battered by illness and disability. The elders - of whom I am one - nauseated by the malicious destruction of the tentpoles of this society and the hysterical degrading of the legacy we have fought to maintain and advance. Constant triggering of paranoia and fear of everyone not exactly like us, of nature, of facing up to the tasks needing to be done if our descendants are to survive. A gigantic collective temper tantrum thrown by citizens who felt aggrieved and put their trust in a drummer selling nostrums of verbal flatulence. Cruelty rules as predators parade.                                                                                                              

The term Yankee Dog is an old one. During my childhood it was said to be used by our enemies: the Japanese and the Nazis and, a bit later, the North Koreans and Chinese and Russians. In the comics I read it was usually hissed by a soldier clutching a weapon and eagerly dispatching a brave American or one of our allies. More       disturbingly, as I grew older I read newspaper stories about various political speakers squawking the term like furious parrots, damning not only their enemies, but the innocent as well. I equated this with the cruel and pointless practice of my teachers in public school of punishing an entire class for the actions of a few troublemakers.

But by the time I was in my mid-teens, though, I was a kind of troublemaker, a renegade possessed by and with social and political beliefs that garnered me a surprising number of foes denigrating my ancestors as well as my family. According to whatever passed for knowledge rattling around in their tiny brainpans, my forbearers had, among numerous other offenses, been abolitionists and fought for the Union. Gloriously true. I took pride in those facts, so it no great step to choose to be what others used as a slur. I was a Yankee Dog: a young stomp down never surrender rock-ribbed radical sworn enemy of totalitarians left and right and defender of the downtrodden.

This idealized self-portrait shone brightly for awhile before fading from age and the encroaching shadow of cynicism. It became a kind of badge pinned to clothing on certain occasions.

Now I take up the portrait again, embracing the fact that at my age (in my 70th year and now the oldest family member) you can do worse than be flamboyant when facing down tyranny. Thus, the Yankee Dog; much older, gray, a bit stooped and tired, but still here.

Mish Mash: The Last Imperial Funeral

I will always remember this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87Xkr8z3lEo

My father kept me home from school that day. Knowing my passion for history, he thought it far more important to witness the passing of the leader who, at one of the most critical moments in modern history, led the defiance of the psychopathic shit heel who wanted to create a world where I would have ended up wearing jackboots, speaking some Anglo-Germanic dialect, and living a short life filled with ignorance and fear of the Others.
   Note the unique tribute paid by the London stevedores and longshoremen. It was conceived and carried out by them on their own initiative.

Mish Mash: The Wave and the Rider

The extraordinary and terrifying ride by Laird Hamilton at Teahupoo. If you turn the sound up, the power of this wave becomes even more apparent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcaZarxilJQ

Source: Riding Giants, a documentary by Stacey Peralta.

Speechless

What does one say when confronted by this image, this fact, of a shattered boy?

Found in rubble in a Syrian city, family missing, mute, what can you say to him that will give him hope and take away his pain and fear?

God sees him, and all like him, and weeps. 

Sound Familiar?

I was reading a history of the First World War by the late John Keegan the other day, and among the many acute observations made by him in the book was this remark concerning its horrifying consequences where the affected societies were concerned:

…

"Totalitarianism was the political continuation of war by other means. It uniformed and militarised its mass electoral following, while depriving voters generally of their electoral rights, exciting their lowest political instincts and marginalising and menacing all internal opposition."

…

Sounds all too familiar these days, doesn't it?

Hearts Aloft • The Aubrey-Maturin Narrative

(First published in the 30th Anniversary issue of the Bookshop Santa Cruz Newsletter, December, 1996.)

When I was a boy and wanted to read a book that I suspected would become one of my favorites (joining The Bounty Trilogy, Wind In the Willows, Treasure Island, and Call of the Wild, among many others), I would lift a hatch cover in a planked deck near a big steering wheel, and drop into a small compartment called the lazaret. For I lived aboard a two-masted schooner, a true windjammer, built in the shipyards of south 'Frisco in 1893, and now, at this time in both our lives, being readied to make a long voyage toward the South Seas.
   The lazaret held bundles of spare sailcloth and balls of rope yarn and thread and beeswax, linseed oil and tarred hemp twine, sheets of oilskin, coils of the best Manila rope, and much else: all critically necessary to the life of a ship and her crew. It was also my special hideout: a kind of harbor within, where I went to disappear into worlds not yet known, or not known well enough. Surrounded by the hull, water faintly lapping below (the sound still closer to my heart than any music yet heard), my imagination cast free and made passages unfettered by routine.
   And I have wondered at times if my reading since (the schooner gone long ago, wrecked on a coral atoll some thirty-five years past; the boy's gait now mostly that of a landsman, no longer rolling in unconscious time to the dance of a deck under sail) has been a kind of attempt to find those writers, those stories, that will help me return to that life and the lazaret.

*

Patrick O'Brian, a reclusive eighty-one year-old Anglo-Irish gentle- man living in the mountains of southern France, has spent a quarter-century composing a novel that, with the publication of its latest segment, The Yellow Admiral, will consist of eighteen volumes and some 6,000 pages. Begun in 1969, following the publication of a handsome number of novels and short-story collections, a biography of Picasso, and translations of Lacouture and de Beauvoir, the work in its entirety - often referred to as the Aubrey-Maturin Narrative - is set in the very early nineteenth century. Jack Aubrey, a brave and bluff man of great presence and far-flung reputation, serves in England's navy during its long and relentless war against the fleets of Napoleon Bonaparte and his allies. Through a rather charming turn of events, Aubrey's life becomes intertwined with that of Stephen Maturin, a small saturnine Irish physician, whose medical skills are matched only by his hidden abilities as a freelance intelligence agent, and it is the remarkable range of events large and small, and the most intense emotions, that holds the Narrative together. Battle - long deepwater voyages - marriage and family - spying - drug addiction - wealth and poverty: all appear, vanish, and reappear over the course of two decades.

   O'Brian's precise observation and use of historical detail is unex- celled by any other novelist I've encountered; his characters are fully-realized individuals, and his reflections on life are acute and humane (and, often, wickedly funny). The cumulative effect immerses the reader in a world both familiar and mysterious, a world so compelling that they will return to it again and again.

   The first open and unqualified expression of friendship between Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin occurs in the first volume of the Narrative, Master and Commander, when Stephen learns that Jack has received a promotion, one of a number critically needed that the young officer might make the long and perilous ascent (as dangerous, in its way, as going aloft in a full gale) through the levels of command in his chosen profession. "I wish you joy of it with all my heart, sure," Stephen says.

   For those fortunate readers about to begin their acquaintance with Patrick O'Brian,, and with the wonderful story he has given us: I wish you joy of the extraordinary passage ahead.