Oregon's amputated Civil War memory

While Oregonians celebrate the coming of "The Civil War” football game on Saturday, we will continue to blindly forget that the words "Civil War" have chilling meaning.

In is now believed that some 700,000 Americans died in our American Civil War. That’s a number larger than the population of Portland. Imagine a city erased by death.

And yet we persist in calling a football game “The Civil War.”
 
For decades Americans and fought and died abroad in what were civil wars: in Korea, in Vietnam, in Iraq. Today they fight and die in Afghanistan. Tomorrow young Americans could join the civil war in Syria. As I write the fighting going is going on in Gaza, a battlefield in an endless, intermittent civil war between Palestinians and Israelis.

And yet we persist in calling a mere football game “The Civil War.”

To Duck and Beaver fans and other Oregon sports spectators, I commend reading THIS in today's New York Times:

The article closes with the following words:

Amputation was the most common Civil War surgical procedure. Union surgeons performed approximately 30,000 compared to just over 16,000 by American surgeons in World War II. One postwar British traveler noted that amputees were “everywhere in town and farm communities through the South.” The men who had survived the surgeon’s knife were a visible reminder of the Civil War for decades.
No longer. Today's veterans more often suffer from the torment of memory. The haunted have taken their own lives by the thousands.

Yet today, in Oregon, we and the media have amputated the darker meaning of “Civil War” from our minds. We are victims of our own ignorance and insensitivity.

Oregonians, it is well past time for us to come up with a joyful, playful name for our friendly, passionate rivalry — and to end our "Civil War."

Pastor/Journalist in Palestine

Some years back I met Wayne Smith, a pastor at Praise Covenant Church in Tacoma, Washington, through my wife. I took an instant liking to him for his sincerity, candor and clarity of spirit.

Last December he and his wife, Ruth, embarked on a four-month mission to the West Bank. Wayne has been blogging as a witness and a journalist there.

I strongly recommend visiting his blog site. His reporting is rock-solid, eye-witness journalism. Often he takes the reader right down to ground level, as he did in his short essay about boundary stones as ominous Israeli warnings, as affronts to Palestinian pride and as telling historical markers referenced in the Bible.

I don't say this lightly when I suggest that Wayne Smith's reporting reminds me of George Orwell's essays describing the wounds of injustice and tyranny in British-ruled India, Burma and Fascist Spain.

In his classic essay "Why I write," Orwell noted the primacy of political purpose to his writing. When he lacked such purpose, he admitted to writing "lifeless" prose.

Wayne's prose is palpably driven with purpose — spiritual and, inevitably, political.

Lifeless it is not.

Does Israel's loyalty "shoe" fit America's "foot"?

The Congress is considering passing a law that requires all new US citizens to pledge allegiance to this country as a “Christian state.”

Well, not really.

That’s just a “shoe” I’m trying on because Israel’s cabinet just voted that all new Israeli immigrants must pledge loyalty to Israel as a "Jewish, democratic state."

So how does the "Christian state" shoe fit, fellow Americans?

A little tight in the toe?

At the very least there’s a contradiction here. No state can provide “democratic” protections when it requires allegiance to any religion. Not Israel, not Iran, not Britain, (where the Queen is still the head of the Church of England), not, ahem, the Vatican etc.

Under a democracy, minorities (whether religious or not) have equal rights.

Back to Israel.... I assume, the term “Jewish” here is being used as a religious, not a racial, classification.

If race is part of the definition, the equivalent here might call for loyalty to the US as a “Christian, Aryan” state.

The shoe is no longer a shoe; it has the feel of a jack boot.

As perverse as the Israeli government’s pledge is, one wonders what non-Muslim immigrants are required to do in, say, Iran or Indonesia?

Just how many religious pledges are there around the world?

Of course the US Congress would never, ever consider such a pledge — at least not yet (let’s see what happens after the Nov. 2 election) — but one thing it might consider is denying foreign (including military) aid to any country whose government requires such a pledge.

That should save us a few billion bucks.

Actually, our own Oath of Allegiance, which new US citizens must take, is hardly squeaky clean. Fortunately, it offers "outs" for those who find they can’t stomach it.

Among those given a "pass" are Quakers, who don’t take oaths and who practice non-violence.

Here’s the oath (the source is Wikipedia) followed by the exclusions:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

In some cases, the US government allows the oath to be taken without the clauses regarding the bearing of arms and performance of noncombatant military service.

The law also provides that the phrase "so help me God" is optional and that the words ‘on oath’ can be substituted with ‘and solemnly affirm’. Also, if the prospective citizen can prove such commitments are in violation with his or her religion, the lines "that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law; that I will perform non-combatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by law" are sometimes omitted.

Cat Diplomacy

Jacques Von Lunen, a former student of mine from PCC, has taken over the pet column in The Oregonian. Over coffee and croissant today, he shared that a whole new world is opening up to him. Covering the domestic animal kingdom is no small task. But for someone who once dreamt of being a vet, Jacques seems to have landed a dream job — at least as long at The Oregonian survives.

Part of his assignment is to contribute to the inevitable Oregonian “OregonLive” pet blog. While blogging, he’s discovered that the mere mention of the word “pit bull” is a reader magnet.

His weekly column appears in the paper on Tuesdays, and today’s topic immediately grabbed my attention. It is about getting a cat to accept new arrivals (nuisances, interlopers, intruders, mortal enemies) to its domain.

We have a cat, who now owns the house we once thought was ours. Occasionally I have wondered whether Izzy (seen above) might accept another cat. After reading Jacques' column, I’ve concluded that The Great One, who barely accepts me, would go ballistic if we tried to introduce him to a “new friend.”

But Jacques did offer some intriguing ways to try to get a well-established cat at least to consider allowing another cat — or dog, or baby — to enter its world.

As I read the advice, my mind wandered to diplomacy. I wondered whether Hillary Clinton might pick up a pointer or two from the column.

There are an awful lot of human beings out there who have trouble sharing real estate. They’ve been known to fight like, well, cats, to keep each other at bay — and, coincidentally to keep the arms industry thriving.

So take Jacques' suggestion that two strange cats initially should be placed on opposite sides of a closed door but let them eat near the door so they can hear each other munching away. That’s like putting human adversaries at opposite ends of the table. “Hey, he’s eating the same food; he can’t be all that bad. I wonder how he likes the shrimp cocktail?”

Then there’s the ploy of tying two cat toys at the ends of the same string and threading the sting under the door. The cats can both “play” with trying to pull the string away from the other without actually seeing the rival. In this scenario, the game’s the thing, not the rivalry.

Diplomats do this with agenda setting and preconditions. They never have to see each other during the give and take.

The suggestion that there be a “pheromone exchange” is a little hard to imagine. It entails rubbing a towel or sock over the cats’ faces and then putting one’s rubbed cloth in the other’s room. I suppose this is worth a try with humans. What if Shiites and Sunnis or Israelis and Palestinians took in each other’s laundry? At the very least it could lead to some serious cuts in defense spending.

The next suggestion is to open the door between the rooms but put up one of those protective, telescoping baby gates. I think the Pakistanis and the Indians have something like this along their borders. There’s a good deal of ritualized posturing, grunting and snarling, but nobody gets killed.

Finally comes the moment of truth when you put both animals in the same room. Jacques recommends keeping a squirt gun handy, just in case. With humans, squirt guns would be novel, but fire hoses, Mace or tear gas might work better.

Jacques adds that it’s also good to create an upbeat, good-times mood “with toys, treats and play.” With humans that might translate into bribes, beer and back rubs. Whatever.

Finally, he says, if none of this works “separate them again and start the process over.”

Patience is the order of the day. Think Ireland, Korea, the Holy Land, Pakistan and India.