7.9.2026 – we are all to blame …

we are all to blame …
sometimes is wiser not to
look over the hill

Been thinking a lot of the next 10 years.

The years when that current man in office is no longer in office and those folks who supported that current man in office will have to explain their support for that current man in office.

Let me be clear, I am confident that the current state of affairs of this ship of state will not last, cannot be sustained and in the words of Longfellow will:

Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee, – are all with thee!

But of those who support this current man in office?

Those who support this administration that wraps itself in the Bible without bothering to read the words that say so simply:

… the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law (Galatians 5:22-23 KJV).

Love.

Joy.

Peace.

Longsuffering.

Gentleness.

Goodness.

Faith.

Meekness.

Temperance.

Against such there is no law!

I mean, come on, what does anyone have to tell themself to bend the meaning of these simple words so that they can be applied to that man currently in office?

Last night I was reading On my own : the years since the White House by Eleanor Roosevelt (Harper: New York, 1958), and Mrs. Roosevelt wrote about visiting Germany when she had been appointed as a member of the US Delegation to the United Nations meetings in 1946.

She wrote:

I remembered my friend, Carola von Schaeffer-Bernstein, born Passavant, as a very lovely blonde girl when we were at school together at Allenswood. She had a soft pink and white complexion, and she had been a very earnest kind of person. In the First World War, her husband was a general on the Eastern or Russian front and I remembered that following that war she had written me a rather sad letter in which she expressed sorrow about the war but said that “we are all to blame” because we have not lived by the teachings of Christ.

Now, in American headquarters at Frankfurt, I expected to find a greatly changed person but, in fact, she was no more changed by the passage of years and the long years of war than I, perhaps less. She was still lovely, and it was only when you looked the second time that you noticed that she was tired and worn by the strain of life in an occupied country. She was dressed plainly but well and her attitude toward me, while a bit reserved, was much as it had always been. I suppose, too, that our conversation was not much different than it had been when we met in earlier days. They were living in straitened circumstances but they were not destitute. If I had originally felt that she might be in difficulties and that I might in some way help her, it became obvious that she was not.

We said nothing — I suppose we avoided saying anything — in particular about the war until she was almost ready to leave, when I made some remark about the tragedy of Germany. She answered promptly.

“It was everybody’s fault.” Then, echoing what she had written me a quarter of a century earlier. “We are all to blame. None of us has lived up to the teachings of Christ.”

I thought to myself that this was perhaps an easy way of not facing the problem, particularly for a German woman with education and social standing. But in my reply I pursued another thought.

“You have always been a very religious person,” I said. “How is it possible that one can be so devoted to the principles of the church yet not protest the mistreatment of the Jews?”

“Sometimes,” she replied, “it is wiser not to look over the hill.”

Soon afterward she left to return home. I never did ask her whether she or her family had been Nazis, but then, after the war practically no one had ever been a Nazi!

I think about the next 10 years.

I think about those responsible, those to blame.

We are all to blame when you get right down to it.

Sometimes, it is wiser not to look over the hill.

7.8.026 – ups downs but always

ups downs but always
the sense of motion and the
illusion of hope

But the years 1895 to 1900 which are the staple of this story exceed in vividness, variety and exertion anything I have known—except of course the opening months of the Great War.

When I look back upon them I cannot but return my sincere thanks to the high gods for the gift of existence.

All the days were good and each day better than the other.

Ups and downs, risks and journeys, but always the sense of motion, and the illusion of hope.

Come on now all you young men, all over the world.

You are needed more than ever now to fill the gap of a generation shorn by the War.

You have not an hour to lose. You must take your places in life’s fighting line.

Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years!

Don’t be content with things as they are.

‘The earth is yours and the fulness thereof’.

Enter upon your inheritance, accept your responsibilities.

Raise the glorious flags again, advance them upon the new enemies, who constantly gather upon the front of the human army, and have only to be assaulted to be overthrown.

Don’t take No for an answer.

Never submit to failure.

Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance.

You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.

She was made to be wooed and won by youth.

She has lived and thrived only by repeated subjugations.

From My Early Life. A Roving Commission by Winston Churchill (London: Thornton Butterworth, September 1931).

Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years!

Enter upon your inheritance, accept your responsibilities.

Never submit to failure.

Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance.

Is this not possibly the best GraduationAddress ever made?

This was Winston Churchill looking back in 1931 to a time when he was 25.

Looking back.

Spent the holiday with the kids and grand kids.

And I thought about this speech and I thought about young people who are growing up today.

I can look back to a time when I thought Twenty to twenty-five! Those are the years!

But what the kids too young to look back.

Those kids who grew up in this day and age and feel that this day and age is the norm.

They have no clue to how it was before the darkness started.

I hope they have a future to look forward to because these days are not much worth being excited about.

I am reminded of this passage from the book, 1984, where George Orwell writes:

” … it occurred to him that the old man, who must be eighty at the least, had already been middle-aged when the Revolution happened.

He and a few others like him were the last links that now existed with the vanished world of capitalism.

In the Party itself there were not many people left whose ideas had been formed before the Revolution.

The older generation had mostly been wiped out in the great purges of the Fifties and Sixties, and the few who survived had long ago been terrified into complete intellectual surrender.

If there was anyone still alive who could give you a truthful account of conditions in the early part of the century, it could only be a prole.

Suddenly the passage from the history book that he had copied into his diary came back into Winston’s mind, and a lunatic impulse took hold of him.

He would go into the pub, he would scrape acquaintance with that old man and question him.

He would say to him:

“Tell me about your life when you were a boy.

What was it like in those days?

Were things better than they are now, or were they worse?”

“Tell me about your life when you were a boy. What was it like in those days? Were things better than they are now, or were they worse?”

Echoes deep into my toes.

7.7.2026 – its damnatio

its damnatio
memoriae in latin
rewriting the past

From Wikipedia, “Damnatio memoriae (Classical Latin pronunciation: [damˈnaːti.oː mɛˈmɔri.ae̯]) is a modern Latin phrase meaning “condemnation of memory” or “damnation of memory”, indicating that a person is to be excluded from official accounts, or remembered after death in a way contrary to what that person may have desired.

In ancient Rome, the practice of damnatio memoriae was the condemnation of emperors after their deaths. If the Senate or a later emperor did not like the acts of an emperor, they could have his property seized, his name erased and his statues reworked (normally defaced).

Compounding this difficulty is the fact that a completely successful damnatio memoriae results—by definition—in the full and total erasure of the subject from the historical record. In the case of figures such as emperors or consuls it is unlikely that complete success was possible, as even comprehensive obliteration of the person’s existence and actions in records and the like would continue to be historically visible without extensive reworking. The impracticality of such a cover-up could be vast—in the case of Emperor Geta, for example, coins bearing his effigy proved difficult to entirely remove from circulation for several years, even though the mere mention of his name was punishable by death.

The impossibility of actually erasing memory of an emperor has led scholars to conclude that this was not actually the goal of damnatio. Instead, they understand damnatio:

not so much as an attempt to obliterate memory entirely as to transform honorific commemoration into a form of visible denigration. That is: the power of an act of damnatio relies, at least in part, on the viewer of a monument being able to supplement the gaps in an inscription with their own knowledge of what those gaps had once contained, and the reasons why the text had been removed — Polly Low, "Remembering, Forgetting, and Rewriting the Past

In the United States you can find an example of the concept of Damnatio memoriae in the Old Chapel at West Point.

Inside this chapel, George Washington and all his Generals havea plaque in their memory.

One plaque looks like this:

It is there in honor of this feller named Benedict Arnold.

This same feller has a monument on the Battlefield at Saratoga where this same feller led an attack on the Redcoats.

Notice again, no name.

The next generation in Washington going have a lot of Damnatio memoriae to do but I will volunteer to help if I can.

7.6.2026 – structure no longer

structure no longer
concerned with the purpose for
which it was designed

Adapted from:

The last mile or so he had been concentrating on suits and the government and decided he no longer much believed in either.

Suits obviously had helped to promote bad government and he was as guilty as anyone for wearing them so steadfastly for twenty years.

Of late he had become frightened of the government for the first time in his life, the way the structure of democracy had begun debasing people rather than enlivening them in their mutual concern.

The structure was no longer concerned with the purpose for which it was designed, and a small part of the cause, Nordstrom thought, was probably that all politicians and bureaucrats wore suits.

From the Man Who Gave Up his Name as published in Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison, (Grove Press Collection,: New York, 2016).

Suits.

Congress.

The Courts.

The Executive Branch.

The structure is no longer concerned with the purpose for which it was designed, and a small part of the cause, is probably that all politicians and bureaucrats wear the same suit.

7.5.2026 – aware of the toil

aware of the toil
blood, treasure, cost to maintain
this declaration

As I will be traveling and with family for the 4th of July Holiday, I prepared a series of three holiday haiku based on the same letter.

It is a letter written by John Adams to his wife, Abigail, where Mr. Adams described the events of July 2, 1776 when the resolution of independence was adopted with twelve affirmative votes and one abstention, and the colonies formally severed political ties with Great Britain.

But on July 4th, the Declaration of Independence was ratified and approved so that the Declaration starts out … In Congress, July 4th … and so it went down in history.

Writing on July 3rd, Mr. Adams felt it would be the Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epocha.

The most memorable day in history.

This is the third in the series and is based on the lines You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. — I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States.

Here is his letter.

Philadelphia July 3d. 1776

Had a Declaration of Independency been made seven Months ago, it would have been attended with many great and glorious Effects . . . . We might before this Hour, have formed Alliances with foreign States. — We should have mastered Quebec and been in Possession of Canada …. You will perhaps wonder, how such a Declaration would have influenced our Affairs, in Canada, but if I could write with Freedom I could easily convince you, that it would, and explain to you the manner how. — Many Gentlemen in high Stations and of great Influence have been duped, by the ministerial Bubble of Commissioners to treat …. And in real, sincere Expectation of this effort Event, which they so fondly wished, they have been slow and languid, in promoting Measures for the Reduction of that Province. Others there are in the Colonies who really wished that our Enterprise in Canada would be defeated, that the Colonies might be brought into Danger and Distress between two Fires, and be thus induced to submit. Others really wished to defeat the Expedition to Canada, lest the Conquest of it, should elevate the Minds of the People too much to hearken to those Terms of Reconciliation which they believed would be offered Us. These jarring Views, Wishes and Designs, occasioned an opposition to many salutary Measures, which were proposed for the Support of that Expedition, and caused Obstructions, Embarrassments and studied Delays, which have finally, lost Us the Province.

All these Causes however in Conjunction would not have disappointed Us, if it had not been for a Misfortune, which could not be foreseen, and perhaps could not have been prevented, I mean the Prevalence of the small Pox among our Troops …. This fatal Pestilence compleated our Destruction. — It is a Frown of Providence upon Us, which We ought to lay to heart.

But on the other Hand, the Delay of this Declaration to this Time, has many great Advantages attending it. — The Hopes of Reconciliation, which were fondly entertained by Multitudes of honest and well meaning tho weak and mistaken People, have been gradually and at last totally extinguished. — Time has been given for the whole People, maturely to consider the great Question of Independence and to ripen their judgments, dissipate their Fears, and allure their Hopes, by discussing it in News Papers and Pamphletts, by debating it, in Assemblies, Conventions, Committees of Safety and Inspection, in Town and County Meetings, as well as in private Conversations, so that the whole People in every Colony of the 13, have now adopted it, as their own Act. — This will cement the Union, and avoid those Heats and perhaps Convulsions which might have been occasioned, by such a Declaration Six Months ago.

But the Day is past. The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epocha, in the History of America.

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. — I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. — Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 3 July 1776.