Friday, June 1, 2012

Well, Here I Am

. . . In Hammond LA on another of what seems to be a never-ending series of trips. I've got to give a presentation tomorrow at an annual history conference. I've just discovered after arriving in the room that I left my phone charger in Baton Rouge. Of course there's no thought of going back for it--that would be an 80 mile round trip. So I'm stuck with the inconvenience of nursing this present power situation till Sunday when I get back to BR.

I'm supposed to be meeting a couple of guys for lunch somewhere, so I have to leave the phone on till they call. Not feeling real comfortable with my talk yet either, so I have to work on it a little more.

In the meantime I've become a non-person on my blog. I think, but I'm not sure that I haven't posted since before Memorial Day. In fact, now that I think on it, this is right, because I kept thinking what I wanted to say on Memorial Day--disquisition on the theme of "let's just establish a year-long, continuing memorial to the people we send to the slaughter perpetually since our country now exists in a state of perpetual war."

I would have been outraged, nay, am outraged at the nationwide gushing of grief and the myriad parades and maudlin speeches all over the country. All the energy spent on mourning and zero energy, as far as I can tell, in working to make Memorial Day obsolete. It's pathetic. And already there are unmistakeable signs that there is a a goodly number of people in this country who are quite prepared to go to war in Iran.

For the life of me, I will never understand why war exerts such a massive attraction on humankind. It is a patently useless and cruel activity that does nothing except deal death and destruction to any it touches. God help us all. We do so love it.

1 comment:

Montag said...

You write with the spirit of Raymond Chandler, summing up the "film noir" spirit of the age...
we're always supposed to be meeting a couple of guys fer lunch... somewhere...
maybe on Noon Street, maybe on the sunny side of the street, where the light blinds us.