Defiance

For the past week I haven't really known how to respond to the terrorist attacks in France, though I suppose it is kind of ridiculous to think that I should have to respond to them in any way, aside from being upset. No one, I am sure, has been waiting by the computer to see what I think about it.

But you may have been surprised to see that I didn't superimpose the Tricolor over my Facebook profile picture or anything like that.  I mean, it is true that I have eaten the brie and have sometimes walked out of the house with a scarf to go see paintings made by the great French artist's, including Renoir.

But that makes me no more a Frenchman than eating with chopsticks makes me Chinese.  John McCain may get up and say something like "today, we are all French," but the truth of the matter is I am not.  But I also felt bad about suddenly having a huge public display of grief for France when there have been very few similar lamentations for Syria over the past four years during its cataclysmic civil war.  I understand we are closer to France nationally and culturally, but the time to cover oneself in sackcloth and ashes is long since past.  

Still, this morning I finally came down off my high horse and watched video of French and British singing La Marseillaise before a France/England friendly and I found myself near tears.

It is such a defiant song, written in 1792 after volunteers were called on to rally to France's defense during the War of the First Coalition, when France's despotic neighbors sought to end the Revolution or at least keep it from spreading.  The troops from Marseilles sang the song as they marched through Paris on their way to war, and it was soon adopted as the French anthem.

Defiance is at the core of Liberty, and it is a heroic virtue not only in France but here as well.  Our country is the one where our forefathers defied the world's greatest military power over principles and a few pennies tax.  It is the country of Rosa Parks and so many like her who sat down and sat in and marched through the streets singing "we shall overcome" in defiance of institutionalized hatred.  It is the country whose flag Brig. General McAuliffe fought under, who when asked to surrender Bastogne to German forces during the Battle of the Bulge simply replied "Nuts!!", and held out until reinforcements arrived four days later.  These are all celebrated events in our nation's history, all great examples of the American "can-do" spirit.

Which makes our nation's response to these attacks all the more damning.  We're cashing in our principles for national security when we talk about watching certain mosques and creating databases of Muslim individuals.  If we are too scared to help others in need and would rather shut our doors to people trying to flee war, oppression, and tyranny, then the terrorists have already won. 

We make a big deal in this country about the bravery of our men and women in uniform, stationed all over the world defending our freedom.  I've often heard people say that they do what the rest of us could never do.  

Well, with all due respect to our military personnel (who are indeed extremely brave), I think that's bullshit.  The rest of us do and should have the courage to defy those who seek to do us harm and destroy our way of life.  We should start by not letting them stop us from doing what is right and taking in the 10,000 Syrian refugees our country has already pledged to take,  and then go further and take in even more.  

It should be done safely, of course, and carefully.  But it must be done, and we must boldly be our best selves if we are to continue to play a part in this world with any leadership and dignity at all.

Defiance.  Defiance of tyranny, Defiance of terror, Defiance of the tendency to be our worst selves.  This is what America should be on the world stage.  We should be, to borrow the Navy's latest recruitment phrase, "a force for good".  That takes all of us.  Don't be surprised to see me without a tricolor over my Facebook photo....but don't be surprised if you see me whistling La Marseillaise as I march into sunlight on my way to the cheese shop.

In Which Nick Reads "Blood, Tin, Straw", By Sharon Olds

It's unusual for me to read a book of poetry cover to cover.  I tend to skim, read a few pages, pick it up again a few days later, read a few more.  Eventually it goes back to the library, half finished.

And, in all honesty, I kind of did that with Blood, Tin, Staw, a collection of poems by the celebrated Sharon Olds.  But I did actually make the effort to read most of this book, and I did read it more or less all at the same time.  It's the first time I have really done that with a poetry book.  It was a fascinating experience, one that I would compare to sort of wondering through an art expedition with unlimited time to take everything in.

The great poet Sharon Olds

It's fitting that it should be Ms. Olds, as she is one of the first poets I read during my single creative writing class in college and it was a relevation, not in terms of form or of thought but of boldness.  This is the woman, after all, who wrote a poem about the Pope's penis.  Her poems can be erotic, at times unsettlingly celebratory of utter decadence; but they are also bold, and raw, and I thought that if she could write with that freedom about such subjects, well, what does it matter if I drop an F-bomb here or there?  It gave me the freedom to start writing with my own voice, or at least what I thought was my own voice.

All that said, with this book I found myself skipping a few poems here and there.  That is because a great many of Sharon Olds' poems are about sex, or about childbirth, and at times it can be a bit much.  There are times when I feel that maybe Olds' (at least in her current incarnation) is at her best when she focuses on other things. There are poems about her family, poems about the end of life (or at least preparing for it), and one poem about the Challenger explosion written probably several years on, which is excellent.

But what I value now about Olds is the way that her words feel.  This is a poet who writes more with the heart than with the head, her poems are visceral.  She describes in one poem, called "The Remedy" opening a honey jar (what she is going to actually do with the honey I will leave to the interested reader), and she describes how grainy the honey gumming up the jar lid is, and how hard it is to finally get it moving, and you can feel that, you've experienced it, and it adds a sort of depth to her poems because they are so real, it puts you in the midst of whatever it is she is trying to convey.  It makes her poems very accessible, and that gives a sort of power.

And that is pretty cool.

Thank you, Sharon Olds.  You are pretty great.  And I like your hair.

Frank Beamer ist Kaput!

Ha ha!

My friends, it has been a horrible sports weekend.  Chelsea lost 3-1 to Liverpool, showing an utter lack of fighting spirit (it is almost as if Jose Mourinho pulled his players back and played with the 1-0 lead to try and prove to everyone that they can still do it...but a 1-0 lead is simply not a safe one for Chelsea, Special One or no).  Australia lost the Rugby World Cup to the entitled and favored All Blacks.  And yes, the Cleveland Browns did find another way to lose in a wonderfully awful way, but Pittsburgh did the same.

But then out of Blacskburg comes some fantastic news.  Not only do the Hokies walz into Boston and defeat Boston College, but Frank Beamer also announces his retirement.

Hasta La Vista, Frankie.

My friends, I welcome this news with open arms. Frank Beamer is a wonderful man and he really made Virginia Tech football something.  But I think the program has lost the plot over the last five years and I am glad that the man at the helm has finally realized he has lost the power to steer the ship to where it needs to go.  It's a shame that he can't leave at the top of the game, but the time has come and I applaud the decision.

Of course, I wonder what Frank will do next?  Hopefully he'll finally polish off the highly anticipated sequel to Turn Up the Wick! (many copies of which, I am sure, are still in the warehouse of the Tech Bookstore), which I understand is a three volume history of the French-Indochina War, in which he posits the theory that maybe the French would have been more successful if they had supplied their troops with Gatorade, because it's very hot in the jungle and hydration is a key to victory.

Of course gatorade was invented in 1965 and the French had left Vietnam long before.  Still, it is a cogent argument, and if the French had developed the sports drink first instead of spending so much time on wine and fucking bread maybe they would have won a few wars here and there.

Then I imagine the man will try and open a successful restaurant in the Tidewater region, which thus far he has failed to do. I know it bothers him, I know it does.  There is a space in his office reserved for the certificate he will get when he wins a Daily Press Choice Award for "Best Restaurant".  Beamer's, he thought, would really work.  But the unsettling juxtaposition of fanciness and football really doesn't work for the Hercules of the Hokies;  something far more down to earth is surely required.  I'm thinking breakfast, I'm thinking pancakes, I'm thinking grits, I'm thinking gravy, and most of all I am thinking ham.  Lots and lots of ham, with a nice pepper relish on the side.

Oddly, no Turkey legs.  I'm sure Frank has seen enough of them.

And what's next  for the Hokies?  Will Bud Foster finally get his chance to go ape-shit for reals for reals?  Or will Shane Beamer continue the Beamer dynasty?  Or will Tech look farther abroad for their next coach?

If it was me....I'd hire Sylvester Stallone to just kind of pretend to be a coach.  You know.  Head down to the field with his ball cap on, have the team chase some chickens around, mumble some mumbo-jumbo about fighting and victory and how he never stopped asking you to stop being a woman so please don't ask him to stop being a man and maybe how if I can change, and you can change, then maybe everyone can change.  The play calls?  Those can be left to the coordinators, the bench coaches.  A head's coaches job is to inspire, and nothing is more inspiring than old man hopped up on HGH who once pretended to be a boxer, a veteran, a mercenary, and now a football coach.

And, if Frank's recent performance is anything to judge from, a head coach is also supposed to look sort of bemused whenever his team totally and completely mess up, or a call goes against them, or what have you. You may be wondering if I think Stallone actually has the acting ability left to handle that.  Well, I do, and I think he would do a damn fine job of it too.  

Yes, it would be something to see!