The 3 get five stars for their tribute to the five boroughs! 

About the Iraq Essay

This is a thesis essay I wrote for a class at Guilford College last spring. I felt that Orwell's experience shed light on the experiences we are now having in Iraq, but I found it difficult to draw similarities out of the two works in order to argue my point. I still feel I demonstrated, to some extent, the futility of an occupying force. 

Iraq Essay

George Orwell's Burma and America's Iraq

From 1926 to 1927, George Orwell was a policeman with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. He was there during the time of the British Raj, which ruled over India and its territories for over a century, and led to the rise of Mahatma Gandhi. While he was there, he shot and killed a rampaging elephant that was terrorizing the village where he was stationed. These events are described in an essay Orwell wrote nine years later entitled "Shooting an Elephant". While the death of the elephant was the central event in the essay, Orwell describes, in vivid detail, the strained relations between the natives of the village and himself, an outsider representing a ruling force.
In the November 24th, 2003 issue of the New Yorker Magazine, there is an article by George Packer which describes how the planners and troops of the Iraqi occupation view their situation. This article, "War after the War", describes how occupation forces are having a difficult time getting the local Iraqis to cooperate in securing peace in the region and rebuilding its infrastructure. The article implies that there is an underlying resentment towards the American occupying forces and gives examples of these resentments. Perhaps the most notable of these examples occurs when Packer follows Captain John Prior, a twenty-nine year old company commander from Indiana, on his rounds around the streets of Zafaniya, Iraq. The attitudes of the locals in Iraq and the local Burmese in Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" have similarities. It is the purpose of this essay to point out these similarities by citing examples from both texts.
In the opening paragraph of "Shooting an Elephant" Orwell states that the feeling towards Europeans by locals was bitter in an "aimless, petty kind of way".(Orwell, pg.167) He states that the feeling was not enough to cause a riot, but he and others were continually baited by being spit at or tripped during soccer games. When he was at a distance from a crowd, he would hear taunts and see sneers on the faces of the crowd. All of this derision, he confesses, got badly on his nerves. He was already becoming disillusioned with the British Government and its ruling system, but these personal attacks led him to hate the locals as well. This hatred, he states, is a "normal by-product of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you catch him off duty."(Orwell, pg.169)
In Packer's article, he describes Captain Prior as brisk and practical in his dealings with the Iraqis, and even states that it seemed that the Iraqis respected him. The Iraqis seemed to always be talking or trying to argue their case to the captain, who was all business. The mission his unit was on that day was to visit nine sewage pumping stations in Zafaraniya, a southern suburb of Baghdad. The stations were pumping untreated sewage into the Tigris and Diala rivers. Packer quotes Prior as saying the Iraqis are "capable, competent, intelligent people. We're just giving them a different way to solve certain problems."(Packer, pg. 70) At this part of the article the situation seemed manageable from Prior's point of view.
Prior's mission became more complicated, however, when he was trying to settle a price dispute between neighborhood council members and local gas-station managers. The arguing grew intense. Prior was a representative of the wealthiest country on earth, and the Iraqis looked to him to settle the dispute. Packer states that the attitude of the American forces is not to judiciously settle all of the disputes in Iraq, but to help the Iraqis rebuild Iraq themselves. Soon a commotion erupted outside the council hall, and Prior put on his helmet and flak jacket and went outside. His men were trying to intervene with the crowd that had quickly formed. An oil ministry representative was being accused of stealing fuel. Prior told the crowd to follow him. As he was inspecting gas cans, he received a full spray of hot diesel fuel in his face. The crowd fell silent for a moment and then started to shout again. Prior did his best to control his professional demeanor, but the situation had forced him to lose control. He singled out the accuser and brow-beat him, finally showing his frustration.
In Packer’s article, he demonstrates that while the main goal of the American soldiers is to help to rebuild infra-structure in Iraq, many instances require the men to act as settlers of petty disputes. In many ways, the U.S. forces are acting as policemen, just as Orwell was in Burma. The dispute between the council members and the oil ministry representative required Prior to intervene, just as the rampaging elephant required Orwell to do the same. This demonstrates two events, separated by almost eighty years, which show the enormous responsibility foreign occupying forces have in keeping the peace.
Orwell calls the events of the elephant shooting “enlightening”.(Orwell pg 168) He claims that it gave him a “better glimpse than I had before of the real nature of imperialism.”(Orwell pg.168) He was directed to a very poor quarter of town where the elephant had been spotted. He began questioning people and was given contradictory and indefinite information. He claims that this is invariably how it is in the East; the story is clear at the beginning but the closer one gets to the scene, the more grey the facts become. He was about to get discouraged when he was led to the body of a man who the elephant had trampled to death.
When he decided to take action, the whole population seemed to be following him. Before, when he was just gathering information, the population seemed slightly interested, but now, with the prospect of the elephant’s death, the crowd was considerably more interested. Orwell claims that this made him “vaguely uneasy.”(Orwell pg.170) He had not yet decided to shoot the elephant. Finally, he saw the elephant and felt he should not shoot it, but he glanced back at the crowd of two thousand and saw the excited faces who were all expecting him to shoot it. He knew he had to. It is here that Orwell realized that it was not the British Government that is in control, but the will of the natives of Burma. He calls himself an “absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind.”(Orwell pg. 171)
In George Packer’s article, he recounts a similar situation involving Captain Prior and his men. Prior was sent to find a suspected fedayeen militiaman. He had received a tip from an operative, nick-named Chunky Love, who had supplied helpful intelligence in the past. Like Orwell, Prior and his men are sent to a poor area with sketchy information and have to deal with a local population that is not one hundred percent loyal to the American cause. The soldiers began a search of the suspect’s house, but were unable to find him. At one point in the search, an Iraqi woman stated, “We were happy when you Americans came to get rid of the dictator--and now here you are searching our house.”(Packer pg. 71) Two young Iraqi boys watched the proceedings, and Packer realized that this would be an event that they would never forget, big, fully armed soldiers of an occupying army, breaking down doors in their house. Later, when the soldiers had left the house, the Iraqi translator turned to Packer and said, “Like Vietnam”.(Packer pg.72) Packer claims that at that moment Iraq did feel like Vietnam. He states, “The Americans were moving half blind in an alien landscape, missing their quarry and leaving behind frightened women and boys with memories.”(Packer pg.72)
There are many points of similarities in these two incidences. Both Orwell and Prior have to trust inaccurate information to reach their objectives, therefore trusting the population that they are there to police. This takes the control out of the hands of the occupying forces and puts it directly into the hands of the population. The population is, at best, suspicious of both Orwell and Prior. When it looks as if Orwell is going to shoot the elephant, the population is behind him, but only because he is an instrument to provide excitement and food in the shooting of the elephant. In the same sense, the Iraqi woman is glad that the Americans came to depose the dictator, Saddam Hussein, but resents the searching of her house. The Americans can also be seen as a tool to free the Iraqis from oppression but, in turn, may be seen as oppressors themselves.
Finally, Orwell grasps “the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East.”(Orwell pg. 171) And while Captain Prior may not demonstrate similar feelings, Packer reflects on them in his thoughts on Vietnam and how that war was lost to an overwhelming resentment of the native people of the country.
George Orwell’s essay, “Shooting an Elephant”, was a demonstration of the problems that occur when one powerful nation exercises dominion over a less powerful nation. The remarkable point of his essay is that Orwell demonstrates these problems, not by distant facts and figures, but by giving us a personal example of the forces at work. In much the same way, George Packer in “War after the War” gives us a similar scenario of the perils that befall a country who uses force, and arrogance, to invade and occupy another country.        
 
  
    
Works Cited
 
Orwell, George. “Shooting an Elephant.” Autobiography A Reader For Writers. Ed. Robert Lyons New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. 167-174.
Packer, George. “War after the War” The New Yorker   24 Nov. 2003:  59. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
 

Mandela Essay

Nelson Mandela and the Altruist Archetype

 
“I have always believed that to be a freedom fighter one must suppress many of the personal feelings that make one feel like a separate individual rather than part of a mass movement. One is fighting for the liberation of millions of people, not the glory of one individual. I am not suggesting that a man become a robot and rid himself of all personal feelings and motivations. But in the same way that a freedom fighter subordinates his own family to the family of the people, he must subordinate his own individual feelings to the movement.”
 
Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, pg. 228

 

 
 
Nelson Mandela, the South African freedom fighter and leader of the African National Congress, fought, for the majority of his adult life, to have the policies of racism eradicated from the South African system of  government. In doing so, he sacrificed his relationship with his family, his way of life, and finally his freedom, to ensure the freedom of his people. Mandela spent over twenty-five years in prison, during which time he became the symbol of South African pride in the struggle for African rights. He sacrificed more than most of us can imagine, and did so with dignity and humility, becoming a walking embodiment of the altruistic hero. Truly one of the great men of the Twentieth-Century, Mandela stands as an example of how great sacrifice of the individual can aid in the ultimate struggle for human rights. There are many examples of altruistic behavior through out Mandela’s life as a revolutionary freedom fighter. It is the purpose of this essay to give examples of the many ways Mandela gave of himself for the good of his people.
Mandela was born on the eighteenth of July, 1918, in a small village in the Transkei, in south- eastern South Africa. He is a member of the Xhosa nation, which encompasses this region of Africa, and  he grew up with the traditions of that people. Mandela describes the Xhosas as a proud people with an “expressive and euphonious language and an abiding belief in the importance of laws, education, and courtesy.” (Mandela, Pg. 4). These were qualities that were not lost on Mandela, and he developed a fascination with education and law that has lasted his entire life. He would use this interest in law to help in the struggle to end apartheid.
The literal translation of apartheid is “apartness.” It was officially instated into South African policy at the end of the nineteen forties by the National Party, a party made up of descendents of the Dutch colonists called Afrikaners. The National Party had publicly sympathized with the Nazis during the Second World War, and actually fought their election on racist slogans, pandering to the white, ultra-conservatives of South Africa. The Nationals held almost absolute power over South Africa for forty years, until Mandela’s release from prison. During this time they practiced the policies of apartheid, which holds the premise that all whites are superior to the other ethnic cultures of South Africa.
The National Party, and its supporters, were Mandela’s main rivals in his struggle to end racist policy in the country, although his struggle wasn’t limited to the Nationals. Many factions inside the freedom struggle worked against him, including the Communist Party, the Pan African Congress, and elements inside his own party, the African National Congress. Mandela handled these rivalries with humility and patience, often conceding his own opinion to the good of the struggle.
As a young man, Mandela was the head of the Youth League of the A.N.C. He was opposed to the Communist Party because he felt that it diluted the message of the struggle, and he was suspicious of its motives. As he matured he realized that in the struggle against the oppression of a race one had to make concessions with others who could aid in the defeat of the ultimate enemy. This is often known as choosing the lesser of two evils. He rationalized that Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had to ally themselves with Joseph Stalin in order to defeat Hitler, and he saw the same situation in his struggle. He states, “The cynical have always suggested that the communists were using us. But who is to say that we were not using them.”(Mandela, pg. 121) He was met by fierce opposition within his own party and by the Pan African Congress, who were dedicated to fighting the struggle as a black only organization. He stood his ground on the subject, and subjugated himself to criticism from all parties concerned, including the Communists. He was able to sacrifice his pride in order to show how necessary it was to unify against a common enemy. For his alignment with the Communist Party, Mandela was required to resign from the ANC and was restricted to the Johannesburg district under the Suppression of Communism Act.
Mandela not only sacrificed his political pride in the struggle to end apartheid. He gave up the opportunity to have a normal married life, and to watch his children grow up. He was often banned by the government for speaking out against apartheid, and could not move freely about the country. At one stage before his life sentence, he led the life of a fugitive from justice, hiding in safe houses, and moving about the country with the threat of arrest constantly looming over his shoulder. He used this time to organize and rally the members of the struggle, and to form a policy of resistance that could be implemented throughout the country.
On March 21, 1960, sixty-nine Africans died during what is known as the Sharpeville Massacre. Police opened fire into a crowd of thousands, shooting most of the victims in the back as they fled. Due to fear of African retaliation, the government started rounding up suspected leaders of the resistance. Although Mandela had little to do with the protest that led to the shootings, his house was ransacked and his mother’s history of the family and tribal fables were taken. Mandela was led off to prison. Sharpeville marked a watershed in Mandela’s philosophy about resistance. Up to this point he had been mainly a pacifist, believing in non-violent activism. Now he started to sacrifice his belief in non-violent forms of protest, and began to believe that acts of violence were the only way to bring about social change in South Africa. He had to suppress his revulsion toward violent acts, and align with the more militaristic elements of the movement. He helped to form a faction of the ANC called the MK which was to oversee militaristic acts apart from the main body of the party. Even then he urged the use of sabotage rather than the harm of individuals, as the most effective use of violence for the struggle.
In 1962, after over a year of hiding underground, Mandela was arrested for the final time. He was to stand trial for sabotage, and faced the very real possibility of the death sentence. He says “From that moment on we lived in the shadow of the gallows.” (Mandela, Pg. 350). Mandela was now preparing himself for the ultimate sacrifice, the loss of his life for the struggle of his people.
During the trial, which lasted through February of 1964, Mandela was to be the first witness for the defense. It was decided that Mandela would make a statement instead of being cross-examined. In South African courts, statements from the dock carry less weight than ordinary testimony, so Mandela was putting himself in a dangerous position legally because his statement would be discounted by the judge. Once again Mandela was using his notoriety to make a statement of ideals and policies for the betterment of the cause with little regard as to how it would affect him personally. In his address, he carefully explained the ideology of the ANC and the freedom movement, using the opportunity to speak to all South Africans of all races. He detailed the huge chasm between life for the blacks and life for the whites in the country, and he formally disputed allegations that the aims of the communist party and the ANC were the same. In his closing statements he made this declaration: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." (Mandela pg. 368)
Towards the end of the trial Mandela and his compatriots decided that if they were found guilty they were not going to appeal the decision, even if they received the death penalty. They felt that appeal proceedings would hamper the massive protest campaign that would most likely rise up. To quote Mandela “Our message was that no sacrifice was too great in the struggle for freedom.” (Mandela, pg. 373)
Mandela was not given the death penalty but received a sentence of life imprisonment instead. He was forty-six years old. He was taken to South Africa’s notorious island prison, Robben Island. The width of his cell was about six feet, and when he lay down he could feel one wall graze his head and the other touch his feet. His first occupation was breaking up large stones into gravel and later in a lime quarry. He was allowed only one visitor every six months, and he was allowed mail only once in the same period.
During this time Mandela never gave up his hope for justice. His new campaign seemed to be to improve the conditions in the prison, and he fought this battle just as he had fought apartheid on the outside. He believed that the two were the same, fighting injustice in prison and fighting the injustices of a race spiritually imprisoning another. He defended criminal prisoners that had been beaten by the prison officials, and he fought tirelessly for more privileges, such as the right to study and receive more frequent visits from family. He stepped out of line when an important prison system official was visiting the island, in order to relate grievances to the official. For this he was given four days in isolation. The list of selfless acts he committed for the good of the community is seemingly endless.
In 1969 Mandela suffered one of the most grievous losses of his life. His first son, Thembi, was killed in car accident at the age twenty-five. He says. “It left a hole in my heart that can never be filled.” (Mandela, pg. 447) He asked for permission to go to the funeral but was denied. He had sacrificed even the right to attend his deceased son’s funeral in order that South Africans could have justice.
By the 1980’s Nelson Mandela had become one of the greatest living symbols of world wide human rights. He had spent over twenty years in prison, patiently waiting for world opinion and inside agitation to slowly but steadily decay the archaic system of apartheid. While he was imprisoned Mandela never stopped fighting the battle and never abandoned his altruistic nature, which caused him personal sacrifice, but seemed to give strength to the movement with every selfless act.
 Nelson Mandela was released from prison on February 11th 1990. Earlier that month the president of South Africa, F.W. deKlerk, had started proceedings that would officially dismantle the apartheid system. The bans on the ANC and the PAC were lifted as well as the South African Communist Party. This eventually led to free elections in South Africa. On May 10, 1994, Mandela was inaugurated as President of South Africa.
Mandela still is fighting for justice. Even as the remnants of apartheid are becoming less apparent, many other social and political problems face South Africa today. Aids is ravaging the country and political infighting between the ANC and the Inkatha party have caused violent deaths throughout the country. At eighty-four, Mandela is still stepping in and working to find solutions to these and many other problems. He is still giving his life to the cause of a better life for his people.    
 
  
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Works Cited
 Mandela, N. (1994). Long Walk To Freedom, Boston: Little, Brown and Company

About the Costa Rica Paper

The following is a paper that I wrote for an autobiography writing class I took last spring at Guilford College. It is about a trip I took to Costa Rica in 1991. The A- is reflective of a limited knowledge of the use of commas and the difference between independent and dependent clauses.
I had to post this from a scanned image because the original file is not compatible with the new operating system I am using. To read this posting, click on the image and point at the enlarged image until a little box with four arrows appears at the bottom right hand corner. Click this box and the image should be large enough to read.

Costa Rica 1 

Costa Rica pg. 2 

Costa Rica pg. 3 

Costa Rica pg. 4 

Costa Rica pg. 5 

Costa Rica pg. 6 

Happy Earthquake. One of my favorite paintings by my sister Lindsay 

I call this "Too much time on my hands" 

Cartoon 2 

My sister is an artist. She painted this! 

This is me with my family in Ivy, Virginia 

Cartoon 1 

Matt

Matt
Matt was a cook that worked for me at the Sidewinder Café. He was a good friend of the nephew of my girlfriend, who had gotten him the job. He worked part time at the Sidewinder because he had another job at an area restaurant, so I only got to work with him once a week, on Sundays. He was only nineteen and it showed, as he was a little undisciplined, and came in a few minutes late from time to time. He was a good natured guy though, and any frustration I felt with him being late disappeared when he got there because of his affable attitude.
He was enthusiastic about cooking. He had made decent strides in the two years he had been at it and impressed the owners of the other establishment, as well as myself, with his dedication. He was on the track that many guys take when the partying wears thin and one must figure out a way to support oneself. The restaurant business is a good choice for a lot of these kids, because it facilitates the partying and the night life, and it is an exciting job, with a significant amount of colorful characters.
Matt and I would work the Sunday night shift which was usually slow. We would listen to music and he would give me gossip about the other restaurants where he had worked. He and his friends were into Insane Clown Posse and Stained, which I happened to think, sucked. Once he let me listen to a new release from one of these bands and said, “This is one of their more mellow albums.” It sounded like bags of cats being run over by monster trucks.
I was playing the Grateful Dead one night and he asked “What’s this song? I recognize it. I like this song.” It was Uncle John’s Band. He said “Oh yea, Jason used to play this for us all the time. Yea I like this song!” He made a full hearted attempt to sing along. Matt couldn’t sing. I tried to help him out and the waitresses peered around the corner to hear our off-key chorus.
Matt would surprise you with something out of the blue. He was kind of typical in his dress and appearance for these days, wearing a lot of black clothes and big chrome studs in his ears and lip. He looked kind of intimidating at first, but his nature sometimes didn’t fit his outward image. Once he was telling me about living out in Mocksville or somewhere, and how he didn’t have much to do except read. He told me had read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. I was duly impressed as I hadn’t read any of these.
One Sunday Matt didn’t show up for work. I called his cell phone and only got a cryptic message, recorded by him, about how if you couldn’t reach him, he was probably dead. This was Matt’s sense of humor at work. I called up someone to come in and cover for him’ and finished out the shift. I really didn’t think too much about it. The kid was nineteen, after all, and this was the kind of thing that nineteen year olds did all the time. Still, a no call, no show was pretty serious, and I would have to take some action.
After about four days no one had heard from Matt. This was worrying to his friends because Matt was always someone who kept in contact with his friends. The Police were notified, and a missing persons report was filed. Family and friends started to get frantic.
They found Matt in Richmond, Virginia, stuffed into the trunk of his car. He had been dead for some time. The news came over the small TV in the kitchen of the Sidewinder, and flooded my emotions, and I walked quickly outside, away from people, with all my emotions brimming to the surface. I was in a leadership position and had to keep my composure, but this was the most difficult time I had ever had in controlling my emotions. He was only nineteen, and starting out in this business.
Every one in the restaurant was in a state of shock, and the owner, who should have closed that night, decided to remain open, and made a speech that the customers were not to hear any thing about this. The asshole was still thinking about his business.
I worked out the shift in a daze and kept my composure, for the most part, through out the days to come. Matt was a victim of a drug deal gone wrong, according to the police. Some one had probably killed him in Winston and taken his body up to Richmond to dispose of the body. There were rumors and speculation flying around the restaurants involved, but they mostly went unnoticed by me. I still just couldn’t believe it.
Once, during that first week, I was driving on the highway alone, and I just started bawling like a baby. I couldn’t stop the waterworks no matter how I tried. It felt like a release in some ways, but it made me uncomfortable, and snot began to run down my lip. I had no way to wipe it off. I felt embarrassed that the truckers might see this grown man, hauling ass down the highway, bawling like a baby, trying to find something to wipe his nose with.

Thoughts on Music

I am passionate about music. I have played the guitar since I was fourteen, when my friend Bert taught me how to play the opening chords to Stairway to Heaven over the telephone. We had a cheap classical guitar, and it was never in tune, but it was more quiet than an electric or steel string guitar, so my parents tolerated my un-metered plucking. Soon I was working my way up to classics, like Smoke on the Water and Dust in the Wind.
The problem was, there were already plenty of guitar players at school, so Bert suggested that I take up the bass guitar. Then we could have a band. I fit the physical requirements of a bassist; I was tall and incredibly skinny, I had a massive Adam’s apple, I was hunched over a great deal of the day, and women ignored me. I had found my musical calling!
I bought a second hand bass from a friend and started learning scales. I learned most of these from a book my sister had bought for me called, ‘Jimmy Hendrix Guitar Made Easy.’ One thing that I learned with the bass, the strings are bigger and are rougher on your fingers. I stuck with it, and soon we were playing the rare party, from time to time.
When I was fifteen my mother bought me a Sigma six string guitar and I switched back over. I've been playing regularly ever since then and have developed a certain style that comes from being self taught. I play with a band called Dante's Roadhouse and we've been together for about six years. People ask me if I ever think of trying to make it, but that’s not what I do it for. We play to feel communication through music as a language. When we hit a certain point, and we know we're doing well, and the audience senses it and gives it back to us, that is where the passion comes in.

A Marathon Trip Across the Country

A Marathon Trip Across the Country
When I finished Culinary School in 1992, my friend Michael flew out to Portland, Oregon so we could drive back to North Carolina together. We had always talked about seeing the country together and here was the opportunity to ride the ribbon of highway made popular by folksingers and beatnik writers for decades. We ended up making the trip in about three and a half days and barely saw anything except a monstrous storm front that followed us across the country.
I had been in Portland for a year, and, at that time, had been maintaining a long distance relationship with my girlfriend, Margaret, back in North Carolina. She had come out to visit me twice, and those weekends had been like an oasis in a desert of Garde Manger classes and seedy Portland nights. But a year from your gal is a year from your gal, and sightseeing around the U.S. was taking a backseat to the not yet docile hormones of my twenty six year old physiology. In other words I was horny.
At the time I was driving a 1984 Nissan Sentra station wagon with no registration, an expired inspection sticker, bald tires and only three working cylinders. The tape deck worked though, so we had plenty of Dead tapes to see us through. We piled all of my earthly belongings, mostly clothes and cookbooks, into the back of the Sentra and headed south to San Francisco.
After a night staying with my aunt outside of San Francisco, we spent a good part of the day in the wharf area of the City by the Bay. In a year I had seen Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, and now San Francisco, and I was sure San Fran was the best one. It was something about the feel of the city and the history. I was enamored at the time by hippy culture and philosophy, as was my traveling partner, and we reveled in going to Haight-Ashbury and walking by the Dead’s old Victorian. God we were tourists!
Now it was time to go. We made a marathon dash to the Grand Canyon. It was like we were bar hopping across the U.S., each sight a different watering hole. We arrived at America’s most famous gash at six in the morning. It was November, and the wind was whipping up the canyon furiously, blowing us and the Japanese tourists back to our cars and down to a pancake breakfast at the monolithic lodge set up to accommodate thousands of gawkers per day. Michael took the wheel after breakfast and I got some sleep as we headed east, to Albuquerque.
Enter the Storm System. After a couple of beers in the hotel room we half heartedly watched the weather report and snoozed off. The following morning we awoke to six inches of snow on the ground. It was still coming down hard.
I wanted to head out right then, but Michael, being a big guy with big guy appetites, was ready for another pancake breakfast. We ate at Denny’s as I worriedly surveyed the winter wonderland piling up outside. Big rigs thundered down Forty as Michael sopped up his blueberry syrup. Finally I insisted that we go, using the excuse that we had to get gas and check the pressure in the bald tires.
After the service station attendant unsuccessfully tried to sell us good tires we headed down the ramp and onto I-Forty. It took us about six hours to outrun the storm and about another six hours to reach Oklahoma City. All the while huge trucks were throwing icy debris up at my windshield and wind gusts were blowing my little three cylinder around like a duck on Lake Erie in January. We crashed at the hotel again and awoke, again, to the storm that wouldn’t die. We had a repeat of the day before, and we finally made it to Memphis, where the weather man predicted rain for the next day. Rain, we could handle rain.
Now I’ve done some driving in my life, and in some pretty hairy situations, but driving through the Appellations in the worst storm system I’ve ever experienced has got to be the worst. After a while I was longing for the snow again. The snow offered a little traction. A reader might ask, “Why in the hell didn’t we stop and let the storm move past?” Actually, that was what Michael was asking me quite a bit by that time, but a year away from your gal is a year away from your gal, and no damn storm system was going to keep me from my gal. We skidded on.
It’s about thirty miles from Statesville, North Carolina to Winston-Salem. The rain was still coming down in sheets but was easing up a little by the time we made it to the I-77 overpass. There was just a little way to go. I was almost home.
In the distance, up the highway, we made out a white sports car, stopped, in the middle of the road facing toward the right shoulder. There was a figure in white waving its arms frantically. We had to stop.
When we got up to the car we found a young woman who had lost control of her car and spun out into the middle of the highway. She was soaking wet and hysterical. While Michael and I were pushing her car over to the shoulder we heard a large crash to our rear, and we realized that there had been another accident. A tractor trailer had rammed into a car slowing down in order not to run into us. This had caused a multi-car pile up. We were going to be there for a while.
After waiting around in the rain to give our statement to a State Trooper we finally pulled onto I-Forty for the last time during the trip. We were soaked, tired, frustrated, and smelly. Oddly enough though this story is the one that Michael and I relate to, and revisit, more than any other in our large arsenal of stories.

9/11

I want to write about September 11th 2001 for a journal entry because of all the days of my life thus far I am sure that this was the most emotional I have experienced. The feeling of collective grief with fellow Americans, and fellow human beings, was surreal and very moving. Also, two and a half years later, it is remarkable how so much has changed, and how what once was a feeling of unity, has now become one of partisanship, politics and polarization.
I had just taken some time off from work and had spent four days at Nags Head by myself, drinking beer and sight seeing around the Outer Banks. That weekend I visited my parents in Charlottesville where all three of my sisters were visiting. It was the first time we had all been together in years. It was a loud, boisterous weekend and by the end of it I was pretty worn out. I retuned to Winston-Salem and had a message on my box from my boss who told me to take one more day before I came back to work. How great! I remember that the big news of the day was the Gary Conduit scandal.
I woke that Tuesday to the sound of the phone ringing. My girlfriend Margaret picked it up. It was her business partner, Alex(an old friend of mine), and he said something like, “Is this it? Turn on the TV.”
The first image we saw was the Pentagon burning .We couldn’t tell from the report what had happened because they were talking about the effort to get people out or something, but we did see on the ticker at the bottom of the screen that a plane had hit the Pentagon. We were riveted. This was big news.
Then the image of the World Trade Center came up. Everything about what we had just seen in Washington changed. This wasn’t a news story anymore. By this time, both towers had been hit, and images of the streets of New York were being dispersed with ones of the bigger picture. One of the symbols of modern Western Civilization was in flames, poised to collapse. Tough New Yorkers were weeping and scrambling to get uptown. We watched, as both towers collapsed.
Then to a field in Pennsylvania. Another plane had crashed and we heard the words terrorism and the name Osama bin Laden. The idea of all of these innocent victims perishing roughly at the same time began to hit us. To be watching it in real time was surreal beyond words and, we stayed glued to the television for the rest of the day.
About a year later I met a young woman who had been in the Pentagon when the plane hit it. She said that even though the Pentagon is the biggest office building in the world, you could still feel the repercussions of the crash on the other side of the building so much so that she thought a bomb had gone off in her section. She said that she felt that this was it, it was over. She was evacuated out of the Pentagon eventually, and said that she had problems dealing with what had happened for some time after that. I can only imagine. She offered me this information willingly, but after talking to her a while I felt a need to change the subject, she seemed to be revisiting a place she was reluctant to go back to.
The most disturbing images for me were of the people jumping from the upper stories of the World Trade Center. The thought of those images still gives me chills. The desperation, the feeling that all hope is lost, that these people must have felt to compel them to plunge to a certain death still fills me with grief.
For some months after the tragedy I looked at George W. Bush as a hero. I no longer feel this way because as the dust settled from the wreckage of the WTC, Bush systematically turned a sympathetic outpouring from the civilized world into a feeling of suspicion and alienation. And now the Quagmire of Iraq…

African Story

African Story
When I was working at Ikwezi Lokusa School for the Physically Handicapped, one of my duties was to run errands and transport students and nuns to various places around Umtata, Transkei. The school employed an official driver but he was often too drunk to operate the school van. I was the only volunteer with a driver’s license so the duty fell to me. I didn’t mind though because the job took me away from the school and out into the real world of Africa.
Often, I would be required to take a trip away from Umtata to transport kids to East London, or even better, Durban. This got me out of Transkei all together and into The Natal, where tall, swaying green grass blanketed rolling hills which sporadically revealed villages and sugar cane fields. I would often be taking the students to be refitted with leg-braces which would take hours, and during that time I was free to wander around the city of Durban, a city not unlike Miami or Ft. Lauderdale. It was a very different place than Umtata.
The longest trip I ever took for the school was to Pretoria. Ikwezi Lokusa was sending its table tennis team to the South African Special Olympics and I was their official driver. Pretoria was approximately five hundred miles north of Umtata and we were to leave early in the morning and drive the entire day until we reached the hotel. Along with myself and the table tennis team, we were joined by Sister Consulata who stood about four foot nine and had the sweet disposition of the Thembu people of that area of the Transkei. She was in charge of Physical Therapy at the school and was along to make sure that we had all of our arrangements for the week long trip.
Sister Consulata had just received her driver’s license in Umtata which was encouraging because it meant that we could split up the driving a little. We left very early that morning so we could make good time. This was South Africa, so roads were of variable condition, and many times it would take much longer to travel distances than in the United States. Roads were often being worked on, and guard rails were rare. Drivers would pass on the right, (we drove on the left side of the road, like in England) regardless of blind curves, and one would have to be mindful of herds of cows and women walking in perfect posture with heavy loads balanced on their heads. One had to be very alert.
Around five o’clock in the evening I began to get drowsy. I asked Sister Consulata if she wanted to take a turn at the wheel. She said, “I don’t know Ian, I’m not used to driving on these types of roads.” I told her that if she took it slow, she would be fine. I would take a quick cat nap and resume driving for the rest of the trip.
It was about this time that I felt a frantic tap on my shoulder. It was Dappi, the captain of the table tennis team. I glanced back at him and he had a look on his face I’ll never forget. It was one of complete terror. He was wagging his finger at me and mouthing the words “no, no, no.” I took his warning with a grain of salt and pulled over to exchange places with Sister Consulata.
She sort of peaked over the steering wheel and gripped the stick shift with a look of uncertainty. In the back of the van I heard the table tennis team muttering to each other excitedly in Xhosa. I still didn’t quite get it. She had her driver’s license, she passed the test, and she was legal to drive in South Africa. What was the big deal? I slumped down in the passenger seat, putting my knees on the dashboard and felt the first lurch of Sister Consulata trying to get the hang of the clutch.
After coaxing her off the shoulder and onto the road I tried again to resume my sleeping posture, but immediately found myself sitting bolt upright saying “Sister, stay on the road, Sister, try to stay on the road, SISTER, watch out for that cow.” The muttering in the back of the van had turned into the universal language of “Whoa, Ahhh, Whoa, Ahhhh”. Soon we were veering off towards a shear drop off with no guard rail in sight. The whole table tennis team was emitting a high-pitched shriek by this time, and Sister Consulata was grabbing for her rosary beads instead of the break. In a rare instance of quick thinking, I grabbed the emergency break and yanked it up as far as it would go. We stopped. We were looking down a cavernous ravine.
We had traveled about a quarter of a mile. Sister Consulata and I exchanged seats again, and we resumed our journey. I never got my cat nap, but by this time, I really wasn’t that drowsy anymore.

Movie Review, Sort Of

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I wasn’t planning to write in the journal tonight, and, as I sit here, the NCAA basketball finals are taking place, but I just saw a remarkable movie and I want to write about it while it’s still fresh in my mind.
We went to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind this afternoon and were blown away. For some reason this movie really struck a chord in me. And it’s a love story. Yikes.
The screen play was written by Charlie Kaufman, whose other films include Adaptation and Being John Malkovich. Adaptation was probably the best movie I had seen in a few years, and I was expecting to be disappointed by this one, but I wasn’t. This film is typical of Kaufman, with plenty of confusing twists, and imagery that makes you cock your head several times during the first half hour. But things start to come together subtly, until you are immersed in the story and tied to the characters, almost as if you knew them.
The premise is that an agency has the ability to erase unpleasant memories from your mind. The main character, Joel, played by Jim Carry, finds that his girlfriend unexpectedly doesn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore. He is devastated, and is led to the agency, where he decides to have the procedure to erase the memory of her. Kate Winslet plays his soon to be erased girlfriend Clementine, and is very good as an impulsive, free spirit type coming to grips with an ultimate need for love. This is a far cry from her character in the melodramatic love story Titanic, and thank God I can take her seriously now.
Carry is good too, finally reigning in his exaggerated, jerky demeanor without seeming out of his element, or straight jacketed in any way. He plays a shy, awkward, nice guy very believably, and pulls off the few moments of comedy without any of the scene stealing he is sometimes known for.
But this is sounding like a pretentious review. The acting, mixed with a brain twisting plot and innovative directing made for a great film experience. Sometimes when my girlfriend and I see a movie, we disagree on whether we liked it or not. I was expecting the same this time, but when we got to the car she said “Wow, that movie was really good.” That’s pretty high praise from her.
The last current release we saw was Lost in Translation with Bill Murray and we were bored out of our minds. We just couldn’t find anything interesting in it. It was Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter’s movie, and we suspected that the good reviews came from Coppola’s henchmen leaning on the reviewers. We were just kidding about that of course.

A Food Related Story Involving a Foreign Country

A Food Related Story Involving a Foreign Country
When I was twelve, and our family was living in England, I would ride to school with a family called the Boils. The school was in a town called Seven Oaks, and Mister Boil would drop us off at school, park his car at the train station, and ride the train to London to work. The drive from our little town of Mark Beech to Seven Oaks took about forty-five minutes, and took us through those narrow country back roads that crazy English blokes love to zip around regardless of cumbersome lorries coming in the other direction.
On the very first day of school for me in England, I climbed into the Boil’s little Renault or Vauxhall, or whatever weird little car they had, for my first trip round the Kent country side. Little did I know. The family chatted happily, while Mister Boil careened effortlessly around blind curves and complicated round-a-bouts. The trip came to a nerve rattling halt when we all heard a loud thump under the car.
“Wha wos that?” Nick, the oldest, said.
“Bet it wossa pheasant.” Robert, his brother said.
The father and the two sons got out of the car to investigate, and sure enough, it was a pheasant. A now very dead pheasant.
We drove on and the family started making plans for dinner. We would pick up the pheasant on our way home from school. Robert suggested that his Mum make a white wine sauce for the bird. Nick wanted a Béarnaise. How about Fricassee, Mr. Boil suggested.
This was all at the same time horrific and amusing to me. This family just took this dead bird as an opportunity for a good meal. They were going to let it sit in the dead leaves until late afternoon, and Mrs. Boil was going to work her magic on it that night. I was a long way from the land of Velveeta.
We did pick up the pheasant that afternoon. I don’t know what sauce they decided on, I wasn’t invited to dinner.

Some of my "art" 

Me with my dog Booker at Guilford College