Life Back Outside the Comfort Bubble
Gotta Be Me
As normally happens, someone sent me something that made me begin to ponder, ruminate, and of course write another post. And as is also normal, over the course of my writing I digressed returning to the main point several times, often in the same paragraph but even in the same sentence. This is a very unclear way of writing and can make it hard to follow. I know that, yet I continue to do it because that is the way in which I think, I write, and I express myself.
But succinct is better. Clarity is better. Typically it is sagacious to eschew obfuscation happens to be one of my favorite quotes because it so spot on describes what should be done by not doing it. And yet, here I go again.
Years ago there was a Far Side comic of a penguin standing in the middle of a field full of penguins singing, “I gotta be me!” Someone turned it into a poster and colored the chest of the singing penguin blue. To some it was the only way it was funny. Gary Larson believed it completely missed the point. It was funny, just not as funny as the original.
When I began this blog my first post said I would be “. . . yelling into the world wide web [to] look at me, read me.” An overwhelmed voice that continues despite the louder sounds of the winds around it. There truly was (is) a point to it though. It was and is that I have to write, even in my non-sagacious way. It may be easier to get more readers by cleaning up and removing my tangential ramblings or frequent circumlocutions, but it wouldn’t be me. As has been the case in all that I have ever done I would rather be me than just get ahead. It isn’t easy and may not ever work. I may fail to gather a platform of folks that enjoy my writing enough to one day become a commercial success as an author allowing me to quit my day job and simply ramble on writing for a living. But I gotta be me.
What you don’t know about my ramblings is that I often wonder about the people who do read my posts. Am I related to all of them? Where do they come from? Where do they go? How do they find me? And will they ever return?
The analytics on my Squarespace page allows me to see what IP and city the folks that click on my blog are from. That makes me wonder about them sometimes (all the time). It doesn’t say who they are, sometimes only saying that main page of the blog without a post that they clicked on. That really makes me wonder about them. Especially who are they? I’m looking at you Clifton, New Jersey; Menlo Park, California; and Boardman, Oregon. Who is out there reading? I would love a comment to let me know what got you here and what do you think. But I don’t expect them. When they arrive they are lagniappe.
However, you can expect another post in a few days from me. A typical post on an atypical topic. Unless and until I figure out what you want it will be more of the same. Though I suspect that even if I do figure that out it won’t change. I gotta be me, and thank you for your support.
Ask Again
Not long after moving to Germany I began to realize two somewhat odd things. First everything you need can be found on the military installations I work on so you never need to go out to find anything. Groceries, libraries, shopping, fast food, entertainment, fuel for your vehicles, it’s all there. Maybe not every brand choice or selection, but you can get it. Second, there are some people who don’t ever go off post.
Not all of the locations in Germany, or even just in Europe, are like where I live. There are more soldiers where I am than any other location, all four of the places I have offices and regularly go have more soldiers than other places (there may be more sailors, Marines, or airmen at other locations but soldiers are concentrated here).
Ever since I realized there are people that don’t want to go out into Germany and explore I started trying to figure out why. I’ve asked myself, and even others, what they think about it and none of us could come up with a reason. Until I was asked one more time.
At a recent meeting at Netzaberg Middle School I found myself walking around the building with a large group of people that included the principal and a lawyer for the engineering firm that designed the school. The lawyer began asking the principal if they taught language to the students. He replied not really. There is a Host Nation Class in which they talk about things German and some Spanish/English classes but that’s really it. She began to talk about how in German schools they teach English from an early age. Nothing new there, I’ve long joked that someone who speaks two languages is bilingual, three languages is trilingual, and one language is American. And there was a touch of superiority in voice as we spoke.
But then she asked why some of the population never went out and saw the community or the country around them. It was asked with a holier than thou superior tone that I could tell she expected no sufficient answer for. The principal began explaining that the post was built so that literally everything needed was available. Sometimes when the soldier deploys the spouse and family are left here and they need the support that is the familiarity and comfort of a miniature slice of the US surrounded by a fence and Bavaria landscape. And then it hit me.
Not all of the people who are stationed here came here by choice like I did. Deep down you can say that they made a choice to join the Army or to accept orders or even just to go where their spouse was sent. There are people who have lived their entire lives in one town and one state. People who haven’t seen the glory and grandeur of the rest of the US. Folks who live where their grandparents lived, went to school where their parents went, hung out with their cousins for best friends, knew everyone in town, and went to the same school system for the full 12 years. I mean fifth generation in one town kind of folks who have never imagined leaving that town, the greatest town ever founded. But when they joined the military they were taken away to somewhere foreign. Maybe it was a different state, but maybe it was a different continent. Not everyone likes to be removed from their comfort zone. Some very much don’t want to leave their bubbles at all. Those are the souls that never leave post, never see the wonders of a Weinachtmarkt, or a thousand year old city or monuments to battles and wars they have never heard of. Those are the people who can take the opportunity of a lifetime and allow it to completely pass them by. These are the residents of the forest that refuse to see the trees.
I have known people as I describe. I have been one of those people. I no longer fault anyone for choosing to avoid the chance to literally see the world. I also no longer wonder why they don’t leave, I get it. It is not just an arrogant American trait as I once believed. Finally, after having been asked one more time, it all came clear.
Personally I have come a long way from the fifth generation Biloxian who was born a half mile from where I lived the first 14 years of my life. My great-grandparents house, two blocks from my grandparents and six miles from my other grandparents. I went to the same school my parents went and had one teacher my Mom had, part of my elementary school was a school my grandfather attended. I knew everyone in town, graduated with people I’d known for 12 years, and hung out with my cousins so much that it sometimes feel I was related to everyone. I never imagined leaving Biloxi but after I did I never imagined moving back. It is still home, it will always be home. It is clear to me both why someone would take the more travelled road and stay in their Comfort Bubble but also and more importantly I understand that taking the road less travelled truly does make all the difference.
Not Going Away Soon
This picture is from inside the infamous Taliban's Last Stand. Those that have been to it know what it is and probably don't want to go back--unless they've been there an uneven number of times. An even number of visits is best because that means you not only landed but also took off from Kandahar Air Field, Kandahar Afghanistan.
As the name implies, this was the last place in Kandahar the Taliban were before being removed. The walls and ceilings have huge chunks of plaster and rock missing from them from the battle that dislodged them. It is impressive and a testament to the construction that the building is still standing at all. This particular picture is over a door to the exterior.
The door itself used to be a bigger, perhaps even a rollup style door and as the mission began the cables and wiring needed for operations in the building were run inside the PVC conduit which was run around the larger door and its mechanisms. Then upgrades were made. The door was removed and reframed for a smaller, person-sized door (actually a double door). When the need for more data lines became obvious they were run close to, but not in the conduit. The first few were more closely following the conduit alignment but then not so much. The attitude of "we'll fix it later but for now" may have been expressed. Then more expansion, more cables, this time just grouped together with zip ties. Again, run near the original conduit as much as possible. Then just run in the vicinity but still zip tied neatly (?) together. Then some lines just run the shortest distance possible, never mind the old conduit and cable runs, but still grouped and zipped. Finally a few lines were run without even mounting and just thrown over the light before just pulled and supported at the corners without even the fixture for intermediate support.
So what does it mean? What started with good intentions, and an attempt to normalize to regular civilized appearances degraded over time while the likelihood of a return to normal operations decreased. A sort of utilitarian approach which, oddly enough is all that is needed, wanted, or can survive in the area. It isn't that Afghanistan is incapable of governing, guarding, or growing on its own. The attitudes of those around it and in it are more concerned with more important things. Like living. And surviving. Less about having a new coat of paint, or faster internet. They do not want to be Americanized or even Westernized. They are happy with the culture they have and have had. The picture doesn’t prove that, but it doesn’t prove anything. It merely shows a glimpse into what started with the best of intentions that over time has degraded to be just what is needed and not much more.
I left Kandahar during a time of drawdown. In one meeting we discussed the particulars of how that drawdown would be. I don’t recall the numbers now, but there was a set number of people that were the maximum that could leave per day. Doing the math it was a physical impossibility for the number of people on KAF to take the regular flights and have the post emptied by the date it was supposed to. Now today, four years later, KAF is still populated, still going strong, and I imagine that this tangle of wires is still there, with perhaps some new additions.
The Good Shit Sticks
Long ago I learned that you can’t make up the really good stuff. Now, I am a writer, and I tell stories. I have learned that there are techniques and things to do to make a bad story good and a good story better, but you can’t make up the really good stuff. For proof I offer my short but true story The Cake Incident. Today there was a mish-mash of events so interrelated it amazed even me. But it started last week.
Last week I was trying to figure out how to use my 109 hours of Use or Lose Leave. As the name implies you either use it or you don’t. What I discovered, honestly by accident, is that no one you talk to takes sympathy on you when you try to describe how hard it is to schedule two and a half weeks off. The most common “help” that I got was “You can donate some of those hours to (fill in name here)” which came from more than one person. I get it, it’s rough to be me. Never forget though that if we could all put our troubles in a big pile with other people we’d happily pick ours back out of the pile instead of theirs. On to today.
Today I had an in-depth conversation about Poland with a coworker. I talked of the beauty of the country, the excellent exchange rate, an incredibly detailed bit about Polish history to include why it has been wiped off the map so many times, even espoused the stark and sterile beauty of the communist architecture that remains in places, and mentioned it is one of my favorite European countries. It is cold, and I don’t want to live there, but it is beautiful. The other individual has a Polish fiancé so perhaps the man-crush conversation was driven by ulterior motives on the other end of the phone. The ability to have such a conversation with someone else is stop in your tracks amazing. I’m not talking about things I’ve read, heard, or seen in movies or on television. Rather places I have seen and been to with my own eyes. I have touched the soil, breathed the air, discussed the history, spoke some of the language all inside this far away place I never dreamed I would be able to see. The grandiose visions of the future I had in high school never included the ability to have experienced such a thing. And high school itself was on the forefront of my mind today as I heard two different songs on two very different radio stations that were both released in 1989. Again, I get it. It’s rough to be me.
At lunch today a German colleague said to me, “In a perfect world. . .” As he continued to talk, I looked around the room and outside the window then interrupted him to say, “Peter, we are in Germany. It IS a perfect world.”
Tonight, Faith asked me what my favorite continent is. I’ve been on three. I’m not bragging, I know people who have been on six and I’ve met people who have been on seven. People who know me know that I am an American by birth, Southern by the Grace of God kind of guy. A dyed in the wool, unapologetic, arrogantly proud Southerner who busts all kinds of stereotypes because I have seen as much as I have of the world. It is only a start of what I plan on seeing though. Again, I get it, it’e rough to be me.
If I could have only one wish for everyone that has ever read anything I have written it would be that you could join me in the surreality of the last parts of this story. Travel is fatal to prejudice, it is good for the soul. Seeing the United States of America from the outside can provide a viewpoint that is simply incredible. Cal Fussman, a podcaster I listen to (and encourage everyone to hear), once talked of meeting a famous author who stayed drunk. I want to say it was Hunter S. Thompson but that isn’t right. Cal asked him how he could work drunk and not forget the good stuff. To which the author replied, “The good shit sticks.”
I can’t offer everyone a free ticket, but I can offer a free place to stay, a home base if you want it. Come on over to see the good shit. It’s all good shit, and it’ll stick.
For good measure I’ll hope you also get the problem of too much leave at least once, too. Though when I say that I run the risk of sounding like I’m bragging.
What is Writing
If writing is writing, and thinking about writing is writing, then what is writing about writing to keep from writing? Writing?
That sentence started out to be less nonsensical but ended up like my favorite grammatically correct yet seemingly nonsensical sentence. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. But even that sentence reiterates the conundrum of the first paragraph.
Thanks to Norman R. Augstine we all know that "Simply stated it is sagacious to eschew obfuscation." But is the word buffalo repeated 8 times obfuscated or sagacious due to its economy of words and power of its precise terms? An American bison from the town in western New York that is intimidated by other American bison from the same town in western New York also tend to intimidate American Bison from western New York. Or is it puzzled instead of intimidated? Or is it upstate instead of Western? Or is it an just an oxlike mammal and not a bison? Or are there even bison in New York? Is it more succinct to use 8 words than to use 35 to describe the same thing, especially if all three of the words that are the same word have different definitions other than just the fact that they are 3 different words that are the same?
Powerfully succinct, vaguely precise, or generally specific the sentence and the question remains. Is writing about writing as a distraction to keep from writing, writing?
So what keeps me from writing? It isn't that I think my writing stinks. Parts of it do, but overall I think I'm the most humble person you'll ever meet. Not one of the most, the most period. As a result whatever drivel I spew must be high quality literature on a par with Hemmingway, Faulkner, and Borges.
My writing needs work. It needs an editor, it needs a content editor. I would even relish and appreciate an editing. It isn't perfect, far from it, but it isn't the rantings of a confirmed lunatic. There is purpose and meaning, and even subtle meanings deep in the story, plot, and characters. It is literary styled if not literature. And that in itself is a bit of a rub.
No one wants to read literature. No one. Everyone wants to have read literature. I had to re-read that the first time I saw it. But the third time I read it I got it. I wanted to have read before i read it, but having read it I got it. Which is the way literature works at times. Those not educated in the nuances of allusion, metaphor, similes and the like can easily dismiss the need for such an education. Once educated though, the importance, indeed the pleasure that can be derived from such a training is clearly evident. Even though the underlying desire to have done rather than to actually do may still remain.
So it isn't fear of perfection, my writing isn't. It isn't fear of rejection, even if it is. It's not a lack of ideas. So what is left?
I began his post last weekend, clearly as a distraction to keep from writing. But this morning it hit me, writing is like golf. By which I mean two distinctly different but very important things. My golf handicap is that I think I am a golfer. I spoiled a long walk (for Twain fans) in over a decade but when your score gets to be so high it is becomes a primer in math it becomes discouraging and makes you want to quit. And then it happens. You hit one shot so beautifully perfect it makes you say, "I'll be back."
The best thing about golf though is something I found and have stolen so long ago I cannot credit the person who said it. In the game of golf you find your self on some dewy morning or balmy afternoon standing in a manmade meadow and you realize: Any man can make a golf ball white, but only God can make the grass green.
Labels
One problem I see rampant in our culture today is the desire to label anyone we meet and talk with (whether it's virtual or face to face) in a manner that classifies them. "Oh, you're a _____." These all-encompassing labels will allow us to know your political affiliation, ideology, religious beliefs, what kind of work you do, which side of the bed you sleep on, whether the toilet paper rolls over the top or correctly, and sometimes even what colour your underwear is. But these same labelers when asked what label fits them will say that they don't fit just one label. "I'm a new urbanist, civil, contrarian, neo-classical baroque, Hungarian-Irish, chi-peek-a-doodle Centrist."
A corollary to this problem is that more often than not if you speak disparagingly of what group that makes you a member of the polar opposite. For example, if you insult a Democrat you must be a Republican. Or the more important, if you make joke that has the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa as its focus you must be an Auburn fan. This also is not necessarily the case. (Just in case my favorite joke is when the cashier invites me to the express lane because they aren't busy but I have too many items and I ask if I have to act like an Auburn graduate that can't read or an Alabama graduate that can't count?)
My point here is of course dual but the main one is that we want to believe that we are multi-faceted but others are so easy to understand that one label covers all. That is almost certainly not the case. My second point is much less obvious.
I work with a German who is mostly a very typical German. He plans, he is prepared, he is on time, he doesn't break the law even if it's a stupid law like not killing the massive nest of hornets I have in my shed, and he puts his cellphones in the back seat of the car when he drives to keep from being distracted. While it sounds very spur of the moment to say he got married in Las Vegas, it actually was a very well planned out event when he and his wife toured the western United States and stopped where they arranged to get married in Vagas.
He is atypical in that he drives a lot. He actually drives more than I do, probably more than I drove in my last job where my daily commute was 1.5 to 2 hours one-way. We have driven many times together. Our trips to Wiesbaden or Garmisch are 3.5 hour trips one-way if we don't hit traffic. Driving through Wurzburg, Frankfurt, and/or Munchen we almost always hit traffic. When we started traveling together 2.5 years ago I would have my phone connected to the car's bluetooth but after a year or so he connected his to the car if he was driving.
Another atypicality of his is that he has never gotten a speeding ticket. Here in Germany they have speed cameras to give tickets. In speaking with a German lawyer on a different subject I mentioned a ticket I had received and he said, "Drive like a German. You'll get a ticket, pay it, and forget about it." Germans tend to get their licenses much later than Americans. He is six months older than me, but I got my license at 15, he did not. Partly this is because to get a license in Germany costs over 1000 Euros. The advantage is that their insurance is much cheaper. It should be, they can drive unlike us Americans with our cheap licenses and expensive insurance.
So it came as a surprise Friday when he told me he may have gotten a speeding ticket. You don't know until something gets mailed and since he was driving one of the vehicles I am signed for the notice comes to me. It arrives with a picture as well as the date and place so I can easily know to whom I need to send it for payment. I didn't think much of his revelation until a few minutes later when he said, at least I had the phone connected to the car so I wasn't holding my Blackberry to my ear. That would be a real sin in Germany. Another German I know got pulled over for just looking at his Handy (what Germans call their cellphones) while driving. Getting pulled over is a rarity because there are not roving bands of Polizei like we have in the US. They don't need to with speed cameras, and red-light cameras, and law abiding citizens. I may have mentioned before, in the US we will say, "That is the best law any politician has ever passed. I'm not going to obey it, but it's a great law." In Germany they say, "That's the stupidest law that anyone could have ever passed. It's so dumb we don't know how they dreamed it up. I mean, we're going to follow it, but it's dumb." And yes, those three sentences probably contain at least four 8 letter words that sound like you're angry when you say them even if you whisper.
A minute or two later in my conversation my friend revealed to me that his problem, and why the camera may have caught him, was that he was trying to connect his laptop to his iPhone for a data connection. This caused me to come to a full stop. I clarified, "You were speeding, because you were talking on your bluetooth, while trying to connect your laptop to your iPhone to access an email for a number?"
"Yes, for a conference call. The number was in an encrypted email," he said. We can't see encrypted emails on our Blackberry but to see it he would not only have to connect the phone to the laptop but log into the VPN and pull up the email. A third-order distracted driving task that only the most experienced should never attempt.
Shaking my head I said, "I'm wearing off on you the wrong way. You don't even sound German when you say that. I mean, you sound so American I think you'll be voting in the mid-term elections in November."
"Is that all it takes?" he asked.
"Pretty much," I said, "And if you're dead you could vote Democrat twice."
In answer to your unspoken question, no I have never been called right in the head.
Overthinking
For those that know me, you know I have a lot of information rumbling through the blank space beneath my hat. The least little thing is likely to start me talking about something that seems so incredibly off subject that right about the time you lose interest (or sometimes well after) I hit on something that smacks right back to the subject at hand that spun me into the original tangent. A had a friend once tell me they wished they could be inside my head for a day. I asked them why, because there are times I don't want to be inside my own head.
All the world is one big connection. The more of this great big giant globe I see the smaller it becomes. But the other thing that happens as I see more of the world is that I see what drives some of the world and definitely get a small glimpse of what drives us crazy Americans.
When I first started working for a government entity I was appalled at the lack of urgency and sense of leaving something undone. In my defense, I had worked for almost a decade at private consulting firms where the rules of capitalism mean that if you don't please your customer he isn't your customer long. My last job before government work was one where I learned the most about this because I spent a lot of time working alongside the President of the company who would ask me on Thursday what the client had demanded we have done by Tuesday. Not next Tuesday mind you, two days prior. I have long said that if it wasn't for the last minute I wouldn't get anything done, but Mark would not do anything unless it was critical mass and probably overdue. So comparing that to either the unspoken attitude of leaving it for tomorrow or the more brazen spoken, "It'll be there tomorrow" was a polar opposite.
Many even told me that I'd get there. My naiveté would wear off. My optimism would run out. But it hasn't. It still bugs me today when I have to deal with people that don't hustle, don't care, and simply don't get worked up over anything whether they need to or not.
Two and a half years later, I have finally realized that the attitude in Europe is one of "it'll be there tomorrow." Problems don't have to be solved today because they weren't made in a day and they won't be fixed in a day. The problem will be there tomorrow and we can nibble off a little more of that problem tomorrow. If we didn't finish it today and it's Saturday, we can do it on Monday because tomorrow is Sunday. The only two things open on Sunday in Germany are the churches and the restaurants and they don't open the latter until the former lets out. People here know that we work to live and we must live now.
Compare this to the United States and its live to work attitude. Fix it now and don't wait. Big or small issue it must be corrected now because there will be a new problem tomorrow. Now, faster, bigger, more efficient, less wasteful. Except of course for the things that are opposite. In those cases it must be slower faster, smaller in a huge way, more efficiently less efficient, and waste nothing in making it more wasteful.
Every time I hear someone say the US can have healthcare like Europe, or welfare like Europe, or like the article I read last week that said ALL it will take for the US to institute universal basic income is to increase our taxes to match Europe it makes me laugh. These people do not understand. They choose to see only a part of the problem, only a part of the solution, and fail to understand that their sprint to the finish attitude will not help them gain an edge on the marathon.
It is quintessential American idealism that we are stubborn and stuck in our ways. We unabashedly will not quit. Everyone should be like us because we're better, except for the things we are not better at. And those should be like someone who does that better, only we don't want to give up what they gave up to get it, because we are American. But wen're young.
Europe can wait until tomorrow because there was a yesterday for so long. I've long said that what is old in the US is still called new in Europe. There is a road in Grafenwoehr called Neue Amberger Strasse. The new road to Amberg. It replaced Alte Amberger Strasse (Old Amberg Street) because it goes through the Grafenwoehr Training Area. The infamous Tower of Tower Barracks is on Alte Amberber Strasse. So they needed a new road that didn't go through the military base when they started building the base--in 1908. Over 100 years and the road is still called New. In a town near me, Vohenstrauss, there is a castle built in the 11th to 12th century which has five towers. In the late 1800s they added a sixth tower to add in some indoor bathroom facilities. In the late 1980s, literally a hundred years later, as a part of repairing and updating the structure they tore down the tower because it was an add on. In Garmisch, the "new" church is 650 years old. It sits on the site of the old church which was there for 650 years.
In America a hundred miles is a short distance and a hundred years a long time. In Germany, a hundred miles is a long distance and a hundred years a short time. An attitude that is reflected in almost everything.
Editorial comment: I've updated quite a lot of things. Check out the new About the Website (added some new bits), and the links at the bottom (or the side) now go to some of my fiction work. Or just leave a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts on my thoughts. And thanks for reading this far. I cannot make you understand how much I appreciate that.
Another Birthday
It's that time of year again. Time for me to make my annual birthday post. And yet another re-telling of the greatest birthday present I have ever received. Back in June in another Outside the Comfort Bubble moment I sat at a table with 9 people who spoke English as a second language and tried to relay the story and STILL, 13 years later it chokes me up.
Many of the times I have posted this story I have used photos, which admittedly are powerful images of the destruction. But those photos do not truly show the intensity of the destruction. The sheer power of the 360 degree as far as the eye can see up, down, left, right, ahead, or behind, damage cannot possibly be relayed in a picture, only re-lived. There were other images burned in my memory from when I got to town the Saturday after, Seeing flotsam that was storm floated three stories high. Historic homes that had disappeared. Buildings that had been hit by floating casinos. Casino barges sitting atop former buildings. Beachfront property that did not even have debris left to comb through. The Church of the Redeemer bell tower foundation. The bell tower itself, the stalwart, unbreakable, unmovable icon that had withstood Camille, fire, lighting strikes, and my own childhood was missing. Picking up broken pieces of stained glass from the windows I had admired as a kid. Watching a helicopter and an LCAC land on the front beach. Powerful images that no photographer can capture but that make them want to try.
Katrina. The bitch that changed it all. No one who lived through the storm will ever forget, and most will remind those who didn't experience the storm firsthand to never forget that the storm did NOT hit the city of 400,000 plus to the west, it hit the coast of Mississippi. There were articles set to go out, and some already in the newspaper printers talking about how that town had dodged a bullet when the levees cracked.
Eventually the intensity of the storm was downgraded from Category 5 to 4 at landfall, but that was when it hit the dooey of Louisiana which turned the storm due north to Waveland. By the time it hit Mississippi it had downgraded to a 3 (because MS has never been hit by a Category 4). The reason the storm caused more damage than the biggest bitch Camille is that Katrina hit as the high tide was starting to go out. Her storm surge included extra water that was already at the high mark. But we didn't know that yet.
We all knew it would happen. When we legalized gambling in Mississippi we all said that we'd have one hurricane wipe the casinos out and they'd be legal on land. Technically it was two hurricane because Georges didn't do it. But likewise, we all knew what else would happen in the aftermath. In my interview with Fox 6 in Birmingham the Sunday after the storm on the grounds of missing church I had been baptized in at 1, the same spirit that kept people in their homes for the storm would cause them to rebuild afterwards. I said it may not be a month, it may be more than a year, but come back to Biloxi because it will be rebuild better than ever. It has been. It now is.
Thirteen years ago Wednesday, I lost contact with all but one of the family I had in the middle of Hurricane Katrina. My Dad, Mom, Uncles, Aunts, Cousins, there are too many to count. Predominantly they were in Biloxi, a few in Ocean Springs, one as far away as Diamondhead (near where the eye passed), but brackish blood runs through the Byrd veins.
The unwritten rules of hurricanes seem strange to most uninitiated. Cutting the grass the day before it hits, having an ax in your attic, calling everyone you know after the power goes out. I was at work 320 miles away as the storm hit, but still in contact with my family. My sister had half-evacuated. She left her home a half mile from the beach in Biloxi and went to her fiance's house in Saucier, maybe 10 miles inland. Mom, Dad, 3 uncles, 2 aunts, at least 2 cousins and a second cousin all stayed in Biloxi. Another aunt, uncle, and at least 2 cousins were in Ocean Springs watching the storm arrive.
About 10 o'clock. I couldn't get Dad. He, Mom, and a friend of the family were in his house four miles from the front beach. I heard from my sister about 10:30, there was water up to the window sills in the house. None of my other relatives were reachable. Then my sister again about 11, the house had 4 feet of water in it. And then the reports stopped. Not the calls mind you, just the reports there was no news to report. No one knew anything. I was on the phone with cousins in Texas, Washington, an Aunt in Georgia, and people I had not talked to in over ten years. But no one in my family on the Coast except my big sister. The storm passed through my own neck of Alabama. Bad wind, lots of rain, a few limbs down, power out. A neighbor lost some shingles. The power came back on, still no news.
Eleven o'clock turned to noon, one, three, nine pm. The phone was glued to my ear but not with family on the Coast except T-Byrd. On the way home from work I flagged down an SUV that was so full of people there were two guys riding in the back with their feet hanging out the glass because there was no room and told them to follow me for a meal. I tried to take them to our church where we housed a Red Cross Emergency Shelter full of people with names like Thibodaux and Arceneaux with thick Cajun accents. Working with them reminded me of the family I had no contact with. These were the lucky ones that got away just before the levees cracked. They were anxious to get back home to pick up the pieces and start rebuilding, as they had three times before. Yet still no word.
Tuesday, 8 am. Noon. Two o'clock. I talked with people I didn't even know. Someone who lived down the street from my second cousin twice removed--this is not an exaggeration but the actual relationship. I relayed messages and numbers from friends, old friends, and strangers to anyone I could find. Five pm, and still no word. Seven, midnight. My cousins in Texas and Washington were as frantic as I, yet none of us wanted to admit it to each other--a fact I later verified. I was the connection between all of them. I had no idea where our family was, but I was not going to let them down. My own wife had our children under control, freeing me up to do what little could be done to find out about the rest of the family.
Wednesday morning, six am, nothing. Eight, nothing. Then nine, a strange number on the phone. Nothing odd about that now. I had been dialing and being called from area codes and phone numbers I still don't know. I answered and heard my Dad's voice.
The relief that washed across me was strong, but guarded. They were alive. The conversation went like this (not a paraphrase or fuzzy memory here, this is my occasional anal-retentive memory at its best):
"Dad, you have no idea how worried I was."
"Why, we were alright?"
"Dad, the last I heard there was 4 feet of water in your house."
"And?"
"Dad! Mom's only 5 feet tall!"
"Ehhnn."
I could hear him shrugging his shoulders. They had borrowed a neighbor's car and went out checking on things until they found someone who had a working cell phone and called. Within an hour I had reports from all of the Byrd extended clan, no fatalities, no injuries, two and a half houses in need of complete stud to stud, floor to ceiling rebuilding. Uncle Pat and Tara had some pine trees down in their yards (within a mile of one another).
This was the point at which the wave of relief was complete. I hung up my phone for a half hour and basked in the glow. After nearly forty-eight hours of not knowing, I received the greatest Birthday present of all time: the knowledge that my family, that had not bothered to evacuate or retreat in the face of a hurricane was alive.
At the least it was better than my sister's who now shares a birthday with not only the late Michael Jackson but the anniversary of the storm that changed it all.
Flossenbürg
Back when we were traveling to Auschwitz for a visit I suggested to Lizi that we also go to a concentration camp in Germany later so we could see if there was a difference in the way the camps are treated in occupied territory rather than inside Germany. Once we completed our trip through the death camp though, neither of us had a desire to visit another.
But of course, the best laid plans of mice and men, right?
Not far from where we live, about a half hour, is the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp. Unlike Auschwitz which was a death camp, this one was "merely" a labor camp. The main emphasis here was labor and not eradication although it served both purposes.
Quite some years ago I first heard of the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He could be considered a German theologian though he was born in Poland since at the time of his birth Poland was swallowed up by Russia, Prussia (later Germany), and Austria-Hungary. When I began researching my soon to be home before moving on a whim I searched for camps and saw how close Flossenbürg was which in turn let me to a brief search on it and discover that it is where Bonhoeffer was held and executed. Not that a camp needs to have a "most famous" inmate, but he would certainly rank as among the most well known.
One of the few things my Dad wanted to see on his visit was a camp, so I used this opportunity to finish the observational experiment started two years before. At the start of Dad's trip we visited Nürnberg and went into the Congresshalle. As the largest piece of Nazi architecture left, it has been made into a very well done museum. There is a steel and glass shaft-like protrusion that seems to pierce the building and as you make your way through the exhibit you end up at the tip hovering over the open air, bombed out courtyard that would have been a stadium covered portion of the complex. The displays were very well done and didn't display either pride or necessarily shame in what was done. Rather they were informative and explained how what happened had. But the center courtyard, that was different.
After touring the displays that showed before, during, and after pictures you make your way to the center where the bombed out building was left. Very stout building, so it isn't crumbling, but the pockmarks, the grass, trees, and even weeds growing in the center of this building is very much a middle finger in the air to the bigoted shitheads that built it. I know I've used that phrase before, but it is just as accurate here.
There was a display about the building which also mentioned a spot nearby where they had constructed sample seats which, like all the buildings at the Nazi complex, had used stone quarried from Flossenbürg. So this served as a tie to the bookend excursions of the trip.
A colleague I work with from nearby Weiden told me he doesn't go to the city Flossenbürg because with the camp it just has an air about the whole town he finds depressing. He has even told me that when he goes into the woods nearby that the weather is colder and more repressive. That was not the experience I had though. We had the top down in the Peugeot as we cruised the backroads to the town. We parked at the bus stop and walked on to the site which was itself very strange indeed.
I mentioned in my Auschwitz post that someone lives right next door and can look down into the complex. In Flossenbürg they not only look down into the former camp, they knocked down most of the barracks and built houses on the site. A road goes through the houses and then through the site, there is no fence or barricade. There is even a restaurant that looks down into the site. The old wall is mostly gone, but several of the towers remain.
Walking through the few buildings that remained I didn't take many pictures. Until the end when I took pictures all the way back out. There were stories about the camp, it's history and growth, as well as detailed listings, pictures, and information about both the captors and the captees.
One particularly memorable "escape in place" attempt is chronicled well and also includes the spot in the wall he crawled and hid among the pipes between the floor and ceiling. It describes how he almost gave up hiding because the hiding place was as bad as being dead. I call it "escape in place" because he didn't go with them when they evacuated the Jews, rather he hid, then he was still open about being a prisoner but avoided detection as having been on the supposed to have been evacuated group.
There was an entire library full of books on the inmates of the camp. Famous or not, they have their histories indelibly inked as much as is known separated by country of origin.
In another spot there were plates with pictures and biographies of the camp's staff. Not just the head, but the guards. It talks of where they came from, where they went, if they disappeared later, and if they were discovered as several of the more cruel were.
The site still contains part of a prison complex (weird because the whole place was a prison) where the non-working laborers were kept, the laundromat/washroom, the kitchen, and the administrative SS Headquarters. Much of the city was taken over by the SS guards, but the HQ building is by far one of the nicest, most imposing structures that remain.
As I walked through the exhibits in the laundromat and kitchen there were paths to the parts of the building left un-converted. Some of the walls and floor were covered with glass, or metal grates, but it was possible to step off and into the spaces that had been occupied when the camp was operational. For example, the shower heads were removed, but the tiles on the wall and floor remained. I walked in awe examining the ceilings imagining when it was operational. Running my hand along the same tiles, walking the same floor tiles that seventy years ago had been touched and tread by the captive laborer prisoners.
The sense of tactile actions allows someone to become more connected to anything observed. I long to touch and become a piece of the historic and infamous locations I get to see. There was an authentic set of stairs with well-worn handrail full of patina that I slid my hand down imagining connection to the prisoners of once ago. In this manner I became a part of what I was observing.
At the back of the camp is what they called the Valley of Death. Overlooking it they have built a chapel but the Valley of Death is the part of the camp the town cannot see into from their bedrooms, or their front yard. Surrounded by trees and down a slope is where the worst things happened.
There are many monuments from countries honoring their dead. There is a HUGE mound covered in grass called the Mound of Ashes. It does not take a smart man to understand what lies beneath. A small field with concrete pads is marked as the location where executions by gunfire took place. And in the corner stands the crematorium.
At one point a railway track was added to ease the transportation of bodies from the camp to the crematorium which was really just outside the boundary fence of the camp. At this point the original gates of the camp were set up as the first memorial to the camp by former prisoners. These gates are right next to the crematorium.
My travels through the camp culminated at the crematorium. I walked past it a few meters to see the original camp gates. It is connected to the ubiquitous walking trails throughout this country. This one through the woods. Unlike the last crematorium I was in at Auschwitz, this one had not been destroyed by retreating forces. It had been in operation when the camp was liberated. Inside were the small rooms where bodies had been stacked and prepared for burning. And the ovens themselves.
I did not use my sense of tactile connection in this building. I have no desire to be connected to the folks that orchestrated this travesty. I care not if they were following orders, or even if they themselves were prisoners forced to toil away at the macabre task. The despair and gloom Klaus made reference to centered on this spot. I could feel it here.
On the way back out, I took pictures to chronicle my visit and to use when I explained it. Previously I had no desire to visit another concentration camp. Currently I still had no desire to visit this one twice.
One thing that was poignantly different was that here I found out that after the war the courts extended the statue of limitations to allow prosecution of Nazis involved in concentration camp atrocities. Many of the guards that had disappeared were found years later and recognized by the former prisoners and brought to justice.
Justice here is used rather loosely though. While many were convicted and even sentenced to long terms including sometimes life, most got out after three to ten years. It has taken me quite some time to process the fact that after the war the only people that really had the heart and desire to go after and prosecute were either victims that had survived, or family members of victims that had perished. The country wanted to, needed to, and did move on. They didn't brush it under the rug and forget about it per se, but the overwhelming desire was to get on with correcting the path of the country. It was not, and is not, a sense of ignoring the past, but not vehemently punishing those that did what was done. I'm still not sure I have processed that level of information.
One thing that I am sure of, this visit helped me to better understand what happened afterwards. It helped me in processing my thoughts of the first visit. I finally finished and posted my Auschwitz visit after seeing this site.
When I got here I was told that the Germans don't like talking about this 12 year period of their history. There are thousands of years of history to discuss instead. But if it were not for this 12 year period, I would not be here today. The reason I can work here is due to that time, so it is incredibly interesting and necessary to view for me. But in the minds of modern Germany it is like Alsace and Lorraine were from 1918 on, spoken of never, but thought of always.
End to Prejudice
Few things make us feel as good as finding others that think like us. When a quote from a famous person matches our feelings it seems to drive home the point that much better. As a general rule I would say that had we found the quotes before the underlying concept they may not have as much an impact on us but I challenge any who disagree to comment.
I have long loved to travel. Whether it was to my aunt and uncle's house in rural LA (that's the original LA, Lower Alabama), or to family reunions in central Mississippi, of course trips to New Orleans, Mobile, and Atlanta were always full of new things too. Once I reached a point I could truly set out into the world those trips became longer and more fascinating.
Early on I had found Innocents Abroad, but found the film adaptation (perhaps it was a PBS adaptation) to be more interesting than the book, a rare occurrence for me. It tells of Mark Twain's adventures when he convinced a newspaper to pay him to see the world. This is a step away from con man but I leave it to the individual to decide if it is above or below. My own interpretation is clear as I have regularly used my employer as a means of funding my trips to other parts, of the state, of the country, and of the world. It was only once I had reached a Twain level of employer-funded jaunts that this quote knocked me off my feet.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” —Mark Twain
No less accurate is his quote from On Life, "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." but these are days that can occur at home. One by definition would occur where you are from, but the other may well be after you have begun to knock the prejudices of our upbringing off of your character. But by that point we should realize a little better what Hemingway was talking about.
"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self." —Ernest Hemingway
In many ways this blog has become my own version of Innocents Abroad. I have chronicled my travels and noted my observations on employer funded, as well as personal funded, jaunts of various lengths, distances, and durations. As they began I felt uncomfortable. I could feel my comfort bubble if not bursting at least being left behind. In many ways I am more comfortable outside my bubble than I was inside it. Perhaps the most shocking revelation to me was a quote I stumbled upon more recently.
“The American is always an alien abroad. He never can assimilate nor do other peoples ever accept him otherwise than as a foreigner. His own heart is in his own country, and yet there is less and less of a niche for him when he returns.” —Herbert Hoover
Whether the comfort bubble has popped, expanded, or merely been exceeded, life outside is an incredible place to be. You never know what tomorrow may hold. You never know what is around the next corner. And you never know what may happen when you return back home. Rest assured though, as your world expands, your narrow-minded petty thoughts are wont to disappear.
Lunar Dreams
The longest blood lunar eclipse of the century is ending. I’ve always looked at the moon. The moon and the stars. My Dad was a telescope nut. Still is. In 11th grade he built a telescope and took it all the way to the national science fair. Growing up I looked through that 8 inch reflecting telescope many nights.
The moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, comets, anything celestial we watched. At 4 am he would wake us and drag us across the street to Uncle Jimmy’s yard, the highest point in town, where we’d lay out on lawn chairs, towels, or just the dewy grass and watch meteor showers twice a year. Sometimes more.
I always look for a flag. You can’t see them. Even if they weren’t bleached out from decades of ultraviolet radiation. I still look. I found an online aerial map of the moon, browsable, a Google Earth for our satellite if you will. Excitedly I looked up the latitude and longitude of my favorite mission, Apollo 17. I zoomed and panned, zoomed and panned and finally got to the spot. It was fuzzy resolution but you can make out the legs of the lunar module, the flag is kind of visible but no details, there are spots of equipment and tracks foot and buggy. Happy and content I sat back and clicked a few other controls where I stumbled upon the button that turned on the highlight locations. Such as the lunar landings. Nerd that I am I did it the hard way.
So tonight I did my other long standing tradition. As the trailing edge of the earth removes its shadow from the moon I looked to see features. Someone walking around, waving, or maybe just a building, a mountain, anything. But alas it is not there. Somewhere along the level of flags are the wistful dreams of seeing an earthen feature shadowed on the lunar surface.
There wasn’t one tonight. Only the wispy waves of atmospheric interference. And now the eclipse is all but over. No more opportunities to see. But I’ll be back. I’ll look again. Until I get to see the shadow of a tree.
The Circle is a Bubble
During my visit to the US I had a chance to sit with my Dad and two uncles. An impromptu meeting in a gas station deli with the best oyster poboys in Biloxi. A table full of Byrds is a dangerous place to be.
When I started typing this I got off onto a bit of a tangent which led me to describe my Comfort Bubble. Eleven hundred words later I still finished it up with "that's my bubble in a nutshell." I'm reading a book of essays by and about Southern Writers and one essay I read said that we Southerners tell stories. It's just what we do. To illustrate the point the author, Joe Formichella, told a story about his older brother visiting Myrtle Beach and attempting to order a piece of pie. Describing the encounter he said that after listening to the ". . . history of its origin, a cautionary tale about its proper pronunciation, a dissertation about the preferred method of eating it, 'When all I wanted was a goddamned piece of pecan pie!'" Seems right.
Back to your piece rather than my whole pie, I grew up in Biloxi with my paternal grandparents two blocks east and maternal grandparents six miles west. My Dad was the middle of seven and my Mom the middle of six and most all of them still lived in Biloxi. Across the street was my Uncle Jimmy, whose wife was Daddy Byrd's sister. We're Southern, we know what Great Uncles and third cousins are, we just don't mention the details unless we have to. I knew four of my great grandparents, and lived in a house that was another set of great grandparent's house before they passed. I didn't know everyone in the town, but there could not have been more than four degrees of separation from knowing any of them. The way I describe it is that there were 50,000 people in Biloxi and my Dad knew all 70,000 of them.
The Biloxi of my youth was not a huge town, even though it was the second largest in the state. It had not only a hometown feel but a welcoming home town touch. It was easy, especially with my familial connections, to think the whole world knew itself. As a fifth generation Biloxian, I never imagined living anywhere but Biloxi. Once I left I've never imagined moving back.
No matter how far away I've been I always have to go home and recharge my Biloxi Battery. It was more frequent at first, and never takes real long, but it's a must. Several years back it finally struck Ginger who said, "No matter where we live, no matter how long we've lived there, you will always call Biloxi home." She knows me better than I do. I've taken to telling people I'm from Missibama because I've lived in Alabama about 4 months less than I lived in Mississippi. More accurately I'm from the whole Mississippi Territory. But Biloxi is my home.
We once traveled 350 miles for a pizza. A Hugo's Pizza, the establishment that brought french dressing to pizza, ask any old school Biloxi resident they'll tell you. I can still taste that 18" shrimp pizza even though I think they closed before Katrina wiped out the building. Traveling 5000 miles for an oyster poboy doesn't seem that far fetched to me. I try not to tell Ginger that's the point of the trip and she acts like it isn't so we're all good. But part of the reason I can travel intercontinentally for a meal is that I know I'll get to recharge my battery and see at least some of my huge family.
This trip was no exception. Of course Dad was there, and Bea who had traveled with him to Germany for 2 weeks in May. Then Uncle Doughnut showed up. Things were going great when Uncle Pat called so he headed over too. Now we're having an impromptu family gathering in a gas station. Bea and her granddaughter left, then Faith and Ginger went out to the car leaving two generations of Byrd Boys shooting the breeze around the table.
It comes as no surprise, but I talk. I talk a lot. It surprises people when I tell them I want to kiss the Blarney Stone because they can't believe I haven't already. But I also listen. I listen more than anyone who talks as much as me can. Listening to two conversations at the same time is easy. The problem is that at some point you will be drawn into one conversation over the other and you can't tell when (or where) that happens. In Afghanistan I had one 12 second interval where I was listening to one conversation in my right ear, one in my left, and talking to a guy in front of me. After 12 seconds I told everyone to quit because I will never be able to top that.
Part of the listening is paying attention. In the midst of our conversation I noticed that my Dad was more quiet than he normally is. Not sure what's going on there yet. I think we all kind of deferred to Uncle Pat a bit. My Dad wasn't the youngest, but he did seem to have the least to say. I suspect he was recharging his battery, too.
The interesting point that started this whole post was something Uncle Pat said. He talked about some of the things he's lived through, especially the civil rights movement, and said that everything is a circle. It all comes back around. And now, even that is coming back around.
The first instinct may be to say that no, the civil rights movement is not coming back around, but before you say that think in terms of parallels and equals. In many ways there are similar situations happening. And it's uncomfortable. The world of political correctness and offense over words taken out of context is immensely uncomfortable. The words taken in context are often poorly formed. And with the age of instant notification a misspoken word can be sent around the world in a hundred different ways before the smell of expulsion of words has dissipated.
I'm reminded of a line from one of my favorite poems. I don't like much poetry, I don't read much poetry. Taking it out of the whole could mean taking it out of context but the line is "Success in Circuit lie."
Life outside the comfort bubble is by definition uncomfortable. No matter how one defines the bubble. Sometimes the bubble defines you no matter how hard you try to avoid it.
Tell all the truth but tell it slant--
Success in Circuit Lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind--
Emily Dickinson (1263)