On this day in history

Yes, on this day in history, November 22, 1963, more than half-a-century ago, John F. Kennedy, then President of the United States, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. The assassin was allegedly Lee Harvey Oswald, but the circumstances surrounding this event, the consequences, the actual facts have been long obscured in conspiracy, fantasy, and delusion. We'll never know what really happened and why, and I'm not sure that it really matters in the end. Sure, I was an impressionable adolescent when it happened, and, yes, I think about that day from time to time (and sometimes when the date rolls around again), and, yes, it makes me wonder. (I told you: I wonder a lot; I always have and with each additional year of my life, I am given more reason to as well.)

So what am I wondering about this time? Simple: why do only Americans assassinate their major political figures? Sure, every once in a long while, someone flips out in the Middle East or in Israel and a well-known politician or Prime Minister is killed, but it's almost always someone "from the other side". No, Americans are pretty unique in that they elect someone to the highest office in the land, and then, later, for myriad, stupid reasons, they decide to end their term of office prematurely. Think about it:

• Including the current one, the US has had 44 presidents thus far.
• Four presidents have definitely been assassinated: Lincoln (#16), Garfield (#20), McKinley (#25), and Kennedy (#35).
• Two more presidents are at least rumored to have been assassinated: Taylor (#12) and Harding (#29).
• Two additional presidents were injured in assassination attempts: Roosevelt (#26) and Reagan (#40).
• And, there have been 13 assassination attempts on presidents not mentioned in the points above.

That's a pretty impressive list, if you ask me: 21 of 44 (that's 47%) have been killed, injured, or attempts have been made on their lives. Just how democratic is this? With the exception of Johnson (#36), every single president since Kennedy has been at least threatened with assassination. That doesn't make you wonder? It makes me wonder, I can assure you of that.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know what to think about that. My first reaction is, "the US is one violent society." Another thought that crosses my mind is, "why is assassination (well, murder, actually) considered a solution to anything?" More generally, "what does this say about the state of American democracy?" And the cynical side of me wants to know why America is held up as an example for anything political? Be honest. Who really wants a job in which almost half the holders have been murdered or someone attempted to murder them? And the country isn't even 300 years old! So young, so reckless, so irresponsible.

Yes, I wonder a lot ... more some days that others ... sometimes merely because the calendar gives reason to.

Just plain blues

While having my afternoon coffee, I caught part of a history show about Nero. Everybody knows what a no-account, worthless, ruthless, most likely crazy ruler he was. Or was he? That was the tenor and thesis of the show. Maybe the poor guy got a bum deal. Maybe he did, and maybe he didn't.

Personally, I don't think it matters all that much. After all, it was 2,000 years ago, and nothing in the interim is going to change if it turned out that it wasn't quite like we all thought it was. In the end, he was just another person in charge who didn't do things quite as he was expected to do, and a whole lot of people managed to find a whole lot of fault with what he was doing. Same song, different verse; same play, different actors. You would think that history consisted solely of the lives of these individuals.

Here's a city of probably around 1,000,000 people, and only a handful matter. What's that all about? Oh, sure, most of us will go through life not leaving any real mark, but does that mean we're lesser persons because of it? Well, if you accept the conventional wisdom, the "values" that we were taught in school, if you accept the usual portrayal of how things have gone down, you end up with only one answer: yes, we are lesser persons. In fact, we're really worth nothing at all. To some, we're simply worthless.

Isn't that a sad state of affairs after, what, 10,000 years of recorded human history? A handful in Nero's Rome, let it be two handfuls. 10 people compared to 1,000,000 ... a mere 0.001%. If you pay any attention to the news, if you have even the slightest familiarity with current debates about taxation and income distribution and wealth inequality, that shouldn't be that unfamiliar a number. A whole two millennia of human striving and what do we have to show for it? Not a thing. Absolutely nothing at all.

That's a pretty sad balance, if you ask me. I suppose we could read a lot into it if we wanted to, but for me, it simply says that for as big as our brains are and as many evolutionary advantages that this mere fact is supposed to bring, either the theory is wrong (which it probably is) or it's really a matter of size not mattering at all.

We do know, however, that because our brains are the size they are and are constructed the way they are, we have potentials that other animals, don't have. Whereas most animals operate purely instinctively most of the time, the exceptions where care, concern, and altruism appear to be in play are still quite rare, though I, for one, am quite happy they are there at all. But, we humans, more than any other species, all have the potential for empathy, for simply caring about others, but in more than 10,000 years, and quite evidently in the past 2,000, we've left that potential as good as undeveloped.

And we're so proud of ourselves. I just don't know why.

Summertime blues

Though it doesn't happen often, we've got ourselves just a bit of summer here, at least for the moment. Things could change quickly, and then it'd be all just a memory.

Growing up in the US meant l-o-n-g summers. Till high school came around and evening and summer jobs were on the agenda (because those were the days when you could still put yourself through college without going into debt ... it wasn't cheap, especially for a blue-collar dad helping two of us through at the same time, but it was doable), it seemed they lasted forever. Even after I started working during them, it was generally second shift, which meant late nights and very often a round of golf in the morning. The whole rhythm of life changed. But, then again, things were a bit slower then.

Growing up in Western Pennsylvania meant h-o-t summers, too. There were a couple of exceptions, but generally, hot, humid, heavy, dog-days were the standard. Part of the slowness came from the weather. Shade, breezes, especially after the sun went down were what everyone was looking for. Late summer nights on the porch, drinking mom's iced tea. Might as well sit. It was too hot to sleep.

Living in San Jose meant half-year summers. Oh, we had four seasons, but the variation between them was easy to miss. For the first seven years we lived there, we didn't see a single drop of rain. Droughts will get to you after a while. It was pleasant though most of the year, but we always got a triple-digit week in July, just about this time, in fact.

All in all, what all of these places have in common is how much better most peoples' attitudes are when the sun is shining. The temperatures may be weighing you down, but the sunshine makes things brighter and you notice people just smiling more, moving just a little bit more slowly. There's nothing like some sunshine to simply take some of the edge off life.

It's really too bad we can't keep a bit of that all through the year. I'm sure it would help, but in the end you have to take what you get weather-wise, don't you?

I suppose what gets me down about summer, in the end, is that there just isn't enough of it. Here in Southern Germany where I'm living now, we get a bit more of it than we did when I lived further north in Hessen. Oh, don't get me wrong, I know to appreciate it when I get it. Lots of folks around here like to complain when it gets too hot, but you'll never hear me complain.

The heat will simply slow you down. And we need to slow down. Life has become just one, big, non-stop, can't-seem-to-get-enough-of-anything kind of event, and that's not getting us anywhere. Slow down. Do just a little less. Take your time. It's summertime.

Epiphany. Had one lately?

Today is Epiphany. Perhaps the highpoint of Christmas, especially for those in Southern Europe (and affiliated cultures elsewhere), but traditionally, of course, it is the official end of the holiday, in particular Christmas, season. (If you didn't get that, I discussed it last year, so you can read up on it here.) If it is the Day of Manifestation, though, what could that possibly mean for us here and now?

Beside the celebrations and frivolity, today is the day when it would do us all well to take a moment to turn inwardly and ask ourselves about our own manifestation in the world: are we as we would like to be? are we to others what we want to be? do others see us as we wish to be? just what kind of presence are we making in the world?

These are nice touchy-feely exercises, to be sure, and for that reason they are probably not taken seriously enough. I'm not the one who would maintain that we should always try to live up to others' expectations of us, but we should at least be aware of the effect and impact we have on those close to us and with whom we come into frequent (and perhaps not-so-frequent) contact.

On the other hand, we should be just as aware of how we're seen by others, so that we can at least compare the images and play that game we all loved as children: finding the differences between two pictures. I say we should be as aware, but I also know how difficult that is. As far back as 1785, even Robert Burns (in "To A Louse") pointed out so aptly:

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

Yes, it takes some effort, but we're given so many opportunities to try it again. Today, as I said, is not just as good a day as any. In a sense, that's what today was made for.

It's Epiphany today. Have you had one lately? If you look, you just might find one.

Too bad the Mayans screwed up

There were a lot of you who sighed that sigh of relief on 21 December, when you realized that Mayans had got it wrong. You're not fooling me. I heard you.

OK, maybe it wasn't the Mayans, maybe it was just those fun-seekers who wanted the Mayans to be right. Don't get me wrong, it's not like we don't try often enough to 86 the planet; in fact, we're getting pretty good at it. No, there were just a lot of you who were glad that you were allowed to stay around for a little while longer. We should really ask ourselves, though, whether we really earned, that is, deserve, this additional chance.

One satirist characterized last year as the "Year of Living Stupidly", but I'm afraid that was the least satirical part of his piece. It was a year of damn near abject stupidity. Don't believe me? What about the legal spat between the US and Russia carried out on the backs of handicapped children? What about the civil war in Syria? Or, how about the saber-rattling going on in Israel? It looks like the Arab Spring got pretty wintry in Egypt, don't you think? Or, what about that star-spangled freakshow the Americans called a presidential election? How about throwing in a little mass murder (Newtown) or the ongoing violence against young people? And there was certainly no overreaction to Occupy protests and the like. No, worldwide, I think, we had plenty of opportunity to show how ill-suited we are for the title of "Crown of Creation".

I'm personally not sad to see 2012 fade from memory. It's getting ever more difficult to get through to anyone, and the amount of energy that one has to expend to simply get another's attention is getting to be burdensome. Everybody I run into seems to have a reason for anything and everything that's wrong, but not a one of them has stepped forward with a possible solution, primarily because the moment they step forward, everyone else starts shouting them down and telling them why that solution couldn't possibly work.

Sometimes I think we could simply call 2012 the "Year that Reason Died", because if there is anything that I miss more than anything else, it's reason in the public arena. It just doesn't seem to be in favor anymore. I have never experienced a year in which so many words were thrown at issues, problems and events, and which were heard by so few. Some folks don't want to hear, that's become clear, and some can't hear any longer, I suppose because the bleating of nonsense is just too hard to overcome.

Yeah, I'm having my moments when I sort of wish the Mayans would have been what they were hyped up to be. I would have liked to have seen a new world. Who knows how much longer this one is going to last?