All of the flags were flying at half staff today around the city.  I'm not sure if it was for the victims of the mall shooting that just happened or if it was in commemoration of the attack on Pearl Harbor.  

I sort of hope it was for Pearl Harbor.  Not that I don't think the victims of the mall shooting should be remembered or mourned.  It is just that I hope that attack on Pearl Harbor isn't forgotten.  

The attack on Pearl harbor is one of those moments in History ( ya know capital H history that ends up with big sections in the junior high text books) that has personal family history significance for me.  My maternal great grandfather was stationed at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.  The family was with him including my grandpa. They had moved from Chicago, to Hawaii.  So much of my memories about my grandpa are tangled up with his stories about Pearl Harbor.  But his stories were all sort of funny.  He was teased about being such a heavy sleeper.  

" He sleeps so soundly, he slept through half of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. "  followed by a round of hearty laughter.  But the thing is that he did actually sleep through most of it.  The actual bombing didn't take all that long from my understanding.  Grandpa was 15 or 16 at the time.  He was the oldest boy still living at home.  His mom, older sister, and two younger brothers had gone to church.  His dad was on duty.  I don't think they lived on the base but they were close.  But all of that I heard from other people.  Grandpa just told the joke.  The stories that were scary or worried were told about him and not by him.  

My Great Grandpa was an officer, and I think he had command of a ship.  In some of the pictures the one he was on was pointed out to me.  There was construction going on, and his ship was under a large crane.  That is probably what kept that ship safe from the Japanese planes.  It was Sunday morning though, not many ships had that many officers on them.  So great grandpa moved from one to another where he was needed.  I guess it took some time after things started calming down a little before the family was sure where he was and that he was okay, because of that.  One of the stories that I have only heard from other people was that at some point before he headed out to sea he made it home and handed my grandpa a handgun.  He told him that if the Japanese landed, invaded, to kill his mother, sister and younger brothers, then kill himself.  Everyone was so scared and had heard such horrible stories about what had happened in China when the Japanese had landed.  I cannot even begin to imagine what could possibly go through our mind to hear that from your father, who is leaving to go to war.  How truly horrible.  

That one just baffles me.  Other stories were told more often, and are more telling or explicative of some of my personal attitudes.  Or I don't know if I can even call them personal attitudes it is almost deeper than an attitude.  Public service is something that has been pounded into my very being.  The first time my grandpa and Aunt Sis gave blood was after the bombing.  They sat on the front porch of the hospital because there wasn't room inside, and donated into a mason jar and a coke bottle.  At that point glass containers were the standard anyway but they didn't have any more proper containers and were sterilizing whatever worked and using it.  I always stop at blood drives and think of that story when I do.  The thing is it is not just Pearl Harbor stories that carry these messages it was lots of things but they get nicely encapsulated in the Pearl harbor stories.  I mean everyone was on the volunteer fire department when I was growing up.  It was expected that if you saw something that needed to be done you just did it, you pitched in, you helped people out.  It is one of those things that is so much apart of me that I am confused when other people don't share the outlook.  Sort of like when you are a little kid and you go to your friends house and find out that their mom makes PB and J sandwiches differently than your mom.  I'm an adult and I know that people have different belief systems and experiences that inform their decisions.  I still get that feeling though for a moment  and have to catch myself when people walk by some one who needs some help.   

There are so many other stories... about my great grandma flagging down a big flatbed truck to get the family out of there, great grandpa developing a way to clear the big guns from a misfire during the battle, and then my cousin Josh being taught it when he went into the navy.  the hilarious story about the neighbor lady who was "helping" dig a bomb shelter and got stuck in the bottom of the hole. Grandpa had dug stairs into the wall of the hole so people could get in and out.  she just dug them out.  Apparently she was a rather large Polynesian woman and it took a whole lot of work to get her out.  

I could keep going but this is already a long post.  But this is the context, my mom's side of the family tell stories and laugh and have a really hard time stopping the story telling and going home.  The Michiels lack some vital "goodbye" synapse.  We say goodbye but then we recap everything we just said and think of one other thing that we needed to tell you.  I miss Grandma and Grandpa.  

75 years ago today....

Today is a day that may go by unrecognized by most in this country but it is a day to celebrate.  Seventy -five years ago today our fore-bearers got it together and decided that producing, selling, and drinking alcoholic beverages should be legal in the good ole U.S. of A.  The 21st amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed which repealed the 19th amendment.  And just in case you are not a political science nerd like me.  The 19th amendment was the one that prohibited the production, sale and consumption of alcohol by everyone in the United States.   In celebration I think we should go out in some public setting and exercise our right to imbibe fermented fruit and grain.  I encourage those of legal age to raise a glass and toast the 21st amendment, one of my favorites..... ( Yes I have favorite amendments.)

I am being silly and flippant, but it really is an important part of the history of the US and how our government can get really out of whack.  At the time that Prohibition was passed women had just gotten the right to vote with the 18th amendment.  There was also a system (forgive me I'm not totally clear on the details) where rural areas had more clout in elections, and state legislatures than urban areas.  So the women in the country, which at this point were still fighting against laws that in many instances treated them as chattel especially after they were married, got it in their heads that if the guys couldn't buy beer they couldn't get drunk and beat the living snot out of their wives.  The reasoning wasn't that bad.  The problem is that our national government wasn't set up to restrict people it was set up to restrict government.  It does a really poor job at restricting the rights of people.  

I think we need to realise that personal choices are important and that in a free society you get to make bad ones if you got the itch to do that.  Libertarian political philosophy takes it a little far for my personal tastes because I think there has to be a basic starting point of knowledge and power before you can really be said to have the liberty to make certain choices.  I mean to really choose you need to know what the options are and have the ability to see at least some of the possible outcomes.  I don't think Libertarians take that in to account enough.... but their ideas a certain appeal to me.  I don't think the majority is always right and even when they are I can be downright obstinate.  I'll drink and smoke and cuss if I damn well feel like it.  And too the fuck bad if it offends your genteel sensibilities.  Now if I drive in a car drunk, if I beat someone up,  that is another matter.  In those cases I'm not offending your sensibilities I'm assaulting  your person.  And one of my favorite Supreme Court Justice quotes (yes I have favorite Supreme Court Justice quotes too) is "your right to wave your fists around ends at the tip of my nose"  In essence saying that you can be as big of as an ass as you want to but you can't infringe on others rights to be just as big of an ass.  

So on that note, don't take your freedoms for granted, and cheers to the 21st amendment.

Search for accurate history

Not much worth writing about has happened in the last couple of days.  I could complain about work, or the weather but who wants to read about other people's day to day complaints.  I can't think of many who would.  

Then again, the stories I find most interesting about history are always filled with day to day details.  Those details are the things that make the make it interesting and alive and not just a cartoon.  So someone had to have done research and read all of the day to day complaining of someone in some journal or diary to get those details.  I could be helping out some future history graduate student with my whining and moaning about my day to day life.  Just a normal non famous person at the turn of the century.

  

The thing that makes me write tonight though is the question about how accurate a picture do you think anyone can get of a person from others accounts of them and their actions, or even from journals and letters.  I just read a book, Into the Wild.  The book is a retelling of a the life of a young man who gave everything away after graduating college, lived on the road and died in the Alaskan wild.  The author didn't have much information to go on to reconstruct how this young man lived and died.  There were the recollections of his parents and sister.  There were a few postcards to friends, random infrequent records where he had some interaction with the official world (police, government).  He also found books with passages underlined, notes in the margins.  At one point the guy kept a kind of journal, the date and four or five word phrases.  

It was an interesting story but it made me think about what kind of story could be gleaned from the written traces of my life.   I am not trying to hide from the "authorities" like the guy in the book was.  There are plenty of records that could tell part of the story, stuff like bank and tax records, census documents, school documents, driver's license.  I have infrequently kept a written journal, my senior year in high school I wrote at least twice a week.  Other than that I write sporadically at best.  When I was in Spain I wrote rather regularly to one of my friends who was in the Peace Corps at the same time.  There are my emails but they don't last that long.  But even with all of the information that is out in the world about me it is mostly my random impressions of the world.  I mean it is highly colored by my mood.  Most of the time I expect the reader to have more than half of the information that they are going to need to understand what I am talking about already.  I think it would take a whole lot of sleuth work to put together any type of coherent story, and even then I'm not sure they could even get the main gist of my life.  Not that this isn't the biggest exercise in self importance, and delusion.  I mean there is no reason for anyone to  piece together my story so it doesn't matter how accurate a story they could get.

 

But if I don't think "they" (whoever, they, are) could get an accurate picture of my life when there is a good amount of  information out there if someone were to really look for it, how can I expect to really know anything about history.  Not that it isn't a worthy goal, but it is such an incomplete picture.  History is tough, anthropology almost impossible.  So much of it is trying to figure out what picture is on a puzzle when you have less than half of the pieces and the top of the box is missing.  

Star light star bright

I ran out of time with my last blog but I felt I needed to post something just to get myself started.

Why I ran out of time was because I went and saw the new bio pic about Bob Dylan entitled "I'm Not There".  It was a very interesting movie, not at all linear.  There were six different people playing the "Bob" part but none of them were named Bob in the movie.  And there wasn't much of a narrative thread, but I enjoyed it.  

I am jealous of songwriters and poets.  They can get their points across in so few words, distill what they mean into a couple of poignant phrases.  I write and write and ramble on and on and never really get to the core of what I really wanted to say.  Sort of like the difference between drinking vodka and watered-down beer, both will get you drunk but it takes longer, and there are more bathroom trips with the watered-down beer.   Enough writing though.....

I walked back from the theater, and I really miss hiking at night.  Or not so much hiking but walking at night.  At my parents' farm my mom and I would take the dogs out walking through the fields and admire the night sky after dinner at least twice a week.  During the summer we would go right at dusk and end up straining to see the first stars and pointing out Venus on the horizon.  During the winter most of the time was spent tracking Orion as the constellation moved throughout the season.  Neither of us were super knowledgeable about the stars or the constellations.  We picked out the ones we knew and made sure we were out during the Perseid meteor shower in early August.  It was just a relaxing fun time to talk to mom and enjoy nature.  

Now I'm in the city.  I am in a rather small city and a great neighborhood , but walking alone at night in the park is still not the best idea and besides that practical reason (you know not wanting to be raped and murdered) you can't see any freakin' stars here.  I mean it, just now walking back from the movies I could just barely make out the three bright stars that make Orion's Belt.  Those are very bright stars.  Light pollution sucks, and what is the point anyway in having street lights if everyone has their headlights on.   Also letting your eyes adjust to darkness and leaving them there for a little bit is healthier than switching back and forth from bright to dark all the time.  I have no source for that information it just seems to make sense to me and it supports my argument so I'm gonna stick with it.  There are definite advantages to living in the city.  I'm not driving as much, both back and forth to work and just running errands.  I can meet people for last minute plans.  I like the whole artsy-fartsy vibe.  But I do miss certain things about the country, the night sky is towards the top of that list.    

Here I go again

Well fall has come and once again I am trying to make myself write. It is odd to me because I enjoy writing letters to people. Actual pen and paper letters that you put in an envelope, with a stamp and send through the postal service. I will bather on about everything that is going through my mind, on every subject and ask for opinions about current events and age old dilemmas.
When it comes down to writting without a specific audience I get self-conscience. I have decided that my problem is that I think I must seem strange out of contex. (Hence the title.) The people I write letters to know me in my natural environment, more or less. They cut me a little slack when I say something that could seem a might bit strange to the average bear because they have a little context to put it in, (especially if they have met any of my family, not that my family is bad or deranged or anything we're actually a very functional family, but it explains some quirks in my character.)