Thursday, August 31, 2006

The American Flag at Rutgers: The Shame of Old Glory

THE SHAME OF OLD GLORY

By: David J. Maxham III

Last week, along with some fellow students[*], I went to Old Queens to ask if the Rutgers administration would consider putting American flags in classrooms. While I’m still not sure if we were surprised or if we expected the response that we got, it was saddening nonetheless.

 On our way to Old Queens, we interviewed students on the street at random. Without exception, each agreed that the American flag should have a place in the classrooms of Rutgers’ hallowed halls. And really, why not? As one girl put it, “Well, it is the State University...”

 Our first visit was to Assistant Dean Julie A. Traxler, who told us that she felt putting up the flag was “a bad idea” and that our time would be better spent on “other things.” Dean Traxler was quick to change the subject once we told her that we knew individuals that were ready and willing to pay for the flags. Incredibly, she expressed her dismay that there were people out there willing to fund flag in classrooms, but not our Rutgers sports programs. Horrors!

 Next we spoke to Brian T. Rose, Assistant to Gregory Blimling, Vice President of Student Affairs at Rutgers. When I asked if we could hang American flags in classrooms, Mr. Rose didn’t miss a beat. “I don’t think so... but I’m willing to check into it for you.” Mr. Rose’s immediate logic was such: if one student group – for example, students who love America – put up an American flag, then that opens the floodgate to any other group – like the terrorism apologists at NJ Solidarity – to display a “message” of their choice. Or, as Mr. Rose put it, “Do we make our classrooms available for people to put up whatever message they want?” That’s an interesting question, albeit rhetorical.

 Apparently Mr. Rose hasn’t been in a lot of classrooms recently, because many lecture halls and rooms are littered with posters and flyers, some of questionable and possibly offensive content, many of which have nothing to do with the subject taught in those rooms. Never mind the fact that courts have already ruled on the issue, finding that the American flag in and of itself does not constitute a distinct message belonging exclusively to one or another group or entity. It’s too bad people like Mr. Rose live in a world called Academia, a world that lives by its own rules, infringed upon by no external authority, least of all an authority that might disagree with Academia’s radical – and often anti-American – worldview.

 We also paid a visit to Dean Michael Stillwagon, whose response included the brilliant deduction that with the American flag, “there’s an issue of propagandaing [sic].” Bad grammar aside, the notion that the American flag, minus any additional text or images, comprises “propaganda” is so mind-numbingly stupid that it hardly deserves a response. However, considering that this mindset seems to permeate the Rutgers faculty, my response is forthcoming.

 For two hundred and thirty years, Americans have fought and died under the American flag. It was a symbol against British colonial oppression, and for the more than two centuries that followed, it was a unifying symbol for the millions upon millions of immigrants that came to this country – my own ancestors included. Our soldiers are buried with the flag, and the flag adorns every institution that makes our great Republic function. The flag doesn’t belong to any political party, any race or class, any sectarian ideology, any private club.

 In short, the American flag belongs to all of us; according to the Supreme Court, even desecrating the flag is protected by the ideals of liberty the flag represents. For any official, either in the government or at our beloved alma mater, to eschew display of the one thing that all Americans have in common ought to be a matter of scandal and shame. Let’s end the politically correct garbage, and return Old Glory to a place of honor in our classrooms and in our consciousness.

NJO: Originally published in the September 2006 issue of The Centurion.

* Also James O'Keefe, who by this point was no longer a student, at Rutgers anyway.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Dixie

 
Special thanks to the 4000 dollar 60 inch HDTV monitor LI bought me to produce and edit movies.

NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com. "LI" is The Leadership Institute. There was probably a bit more to this post, but the above title and sentence or sentence fragment are the only bits of it I could glean from the webs. Credit here goes to "wanderindiana" in this post on Daily Kos.

The matter of the Leadership Institute's role in providing James with video equipment is dealt with in further detail in this 2009 blog post (mirrored here) by Ben Wetmore.

The relevant paragraph:
"All the good things at the Institute while I was there happened despite the management, or by going around them. I was nearly fired, as was my boss Cong. Steve Stockman, for buying the initial video equipment that James used. It was a maddening place to work, frustrated by reality, exasperated by managerial incompetence but buoyed by hope and ideology that kept people working in the worst of circumstances usually until they were forcibly expelled."
The title of this post - either "Dixie" or "Dixie Special" - could therefore possibly be some sort of reference to Steve Stockman and/or Ben Wetmore, who are both from Texas.

Friday, June 09, 2006

The Man in Bogota



It's wrong to reprint books online, but I just started reading Hempel, I read this very short story today. It has spiritual implications. I felt the urge to share it, so here it is. It's minimalist, which means the entire book is 243 words long. It's written in condensed format, summarzing complicated ideas and vast amounts of time in a few words. Enjoy


The Man in Bogota

by Amy Hempel,

The police and emergency service people fail to make a dent. The voice of the pleading spouse does not have the hoped-for effect. The woman remains on the ledge – though not, she threatens, for long.I imagine that I am the one who must talk the woman down. I see it, and it happens like this.I tell the woman about a man in Bogota. He was a wealthy man, an industrialist who was kidnapped and held for ransom. It was not a TV drama; his wife could not call the bank and, in twenty-four hours, have one million dollars. It took months. The man had a heart condition, and the kidnappers had to keep the man alive.Listen to this, I tell the woman on the ledge. His captors made him quit smoking. They changed his diet and made him exercise every day. They held him that way for three months.When the ransom was paid and the man was released, his doctor looked him over. He found the man to be in excellent health. I tell the woman what the doctor said then – that the kidnap was the best thing to happen to that man.Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota.

He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn’t good.


NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.

Illiteracy Count: 2
  1. summarzing
  2. Enjoy [no period] 

Sunday, May 28, 2006




Here's to you Zach

A tribute to my friend


Once upon a time an outsider was led by a strange being through time and space to an alternative paradise on earth.

In this paradise people spoke the language of the swaying trees and were capable of understanding their intense love. They spoke to those trees and looked at the stars, and talked about the stars to each other with an immense knowledge that was higher and deeper than any scientific knowledge could fathom. These people were unconcerned about how they were perceived – they had an incredible gift to not incite jealousy and envy in the outsiders who interacted with them, for, the people that lived in this alternative paradise came so close to being altruistic that they made the outside braggart and liar kiss their feet and cry tears of amazement – perhaps most amazing to the outsider that interacted with the people in this paradise was how they were not tempted to impress or impart himself; to boast or forcefully show off whatever relatively small talents or knowledge he had. In short, the love in Paradise to the outsider was immediately contagious, and all around was an environment of service. The people did not worship, but were constantly aware of an uninterrupted living union with the Universe at large. Their love was a song of appreciation for nature, earth and sea. The words they used were almost unimportant, trivial, or maybe beyond the grasp of reason. No matter, the meaning behind them somehow sank unconsciously deeper and deeper into the hearts of outsiders. And the harmony was enchanting and beautiful and so intensely true. They were playful, high-spirited with gentle, self-sufficient, and contemplative rapture, even when confronted with death.

after some time, the outsider does, in fact, manage to corrupt the people in paradise – they begin to understand the lie, from that, know sorrow and treat shame as a virtue. Isolation brings about injustice which in turn brings about law. Alliances and countries form as proportion and harmony begins to weaken. Finally, suffering is glory. The outsider, aware he had caused all this just by being around the people for some time, witnessing this evolution over thousands for years, demands to be crucified – for sorrow and martyrdom entered his soul with such force he was uncourageous, incapable of killing himself – for it felt like he was already dying.

Then the outsider awakes, all this was, simply, a dream. And who was once a ridiculous man who wallowed like a nihilist through life imagining the world as place only his conscience, now a man who knows the truth. The Truth: People can be happy and beautiful without loosing their ability to live on earth. That truth can be so simply realized: simply by loving thy neighbor as thyself. And that was only in his dream. As such it is a living image of hope that leads a previously ridiculous man on the right path, even if such a dream can not be put into words or communicated to others, It can be realized immediately, the world could be rearranged in an hour, if only we truly wanted it to be - only if we loved our neighbor.

The incredibly poignant and somber existentialist allegory aforementioned is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. 

I’m going to be honest, and say that after I read “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” I cried.

I cried for someone I consider my friend, Zach. I’ve always believed that in life you count your friends with your fingers. Zach has always been non-envious, non-scornful, non-lying breed. Truly supportive, truly joyful truly appreciative, all-embracing love for that which is around him. But it does not matter what his relation to me was when I cried just then. My tears of joy, though not sad, were excruciating – I anguished because I felt touched in a contemptuous world that hasn’t allowed me to be, in my moment of vulnerability, but protected privacy, I experienced true love for a friend, the real love, and for the briefest of moments with that love I realized his words, “too busy spending too much time placing consciousness above living, too busy placing knowledge above happiness, too busy dismissing states of happiness as fairy tales” – it was not elitism, I was intimidated by this love, so much so that I bowed my head down in a sort of shame as the tears fell to the desk. And what was my intense feeling of love for Zach in that beautiful moment? A sort of fond appreciation of who he was, and how he was, how he to me represented the people in the place Dostoevsky describes. Someone who truly does love thy neighbor – who looks out for others, who has indeed reached out to me. And as I, James O’Keefe, wandered through Rutgers, from a Freshman year ridiculous-man roommate who scorned and lied, I stumbled into somewhat of an angel disguised as Zach. I cried also because hopefully this will enable me to look for the good in all people, all it takes is a desire to choose to serve, to be virtuous. And I have only a couple true friends, people like Zach, I cried because I realized their truly beautiful qualities are disguised to the world and as a result, unappreciated, maybe because people like us are too busy feeling ashamed, maybe because us outsiders are too caught up in the wrong impressions of dress, style, manner, or taste, that beauty becomes wrongly relative – maybe because good people truly are aloof (most beautiful people have a tendency to be) that we take for granted our potential best friend: a person who is wise, who cares, who gives. We surround ourselves not with our friends but with those who are powerful, witty or attractive. While these qualities may overlap, they are not correlated with what we know to be true.

After my moment of intense tears, it was like I was before without much of the fervent passion I had acquired in that intense moment, it was then I realized living like the person I admired was simple, but not easy. For a heterosexual man to love a woman neighbor without sexual thoughts, or to love a man without being accused of being gay, in this world, is tough. All the more reason to look up to the men that are capable of feeling it all the time – that are capable of being too busy loving to even care about what we think of them.


So here’s to you Zach.

A man who never once thought about himself – and to someone that studies how to be a better person, focuses on truth rather than form. Although me met each other recently, I have never known someone so selfless and so decent. You're one of the more honest and sincere people I've ever met. And thankfully, I got to know you well. I've never been happier with you as my roommate. It's just a pleasure to be with, you are a positive, optimistic, person - and one that made my Rutgers experience a positive one.

Once we got past the politics, or the quarrels, debates, funny as they were, I got to see the real man, still entrenched in his beliefs, his passions, such as LBJ, but having “good times” all around.

I can not tell you how proud of you I am. you are going to graduate school, graduated with highest honors and part of Phi Beta Kappa amongst other awards. I know that one day you will achieve your dream (you've probably already achieved a few) and change from the little engine that could to the little engine that did - and your students and the university you teach at will be better for it. And for one of the first times, I am not envious, I am truly happy for all that you are.

You are an example to the world, and you will make the world proud.

Your friend,
James

NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006


Tolerate This

By James O’Keefe

Note: This is an authentic “slam” poem written in the Winter of 2003 in my passionate, reactionary response to Annie DiFranco.

It is to be performed in the spoken-word/hip-hop format.

Very few people at Rutgers are about to agree with what I have to say
But because you believe in acceptance and diversity
I’m ‘bout to say it anyway
You think you’re all Peace?
You think I’m all war?
You don’t know what it is we’re fighting for
It’s kill or be killed and we’ve been killed before
You don’t seem to understand the fundamentals of war
Like anxious butterflies behind closed doors
You imply utopia, logic you ignore
You disagree with dieing hard likes its
Some choice to make
You defy society like it’s some claim to stake
Hurry up and bitch because tolerance won’t wait
But we can’t let impatient hippies determine our fate
You blame this nation
For what madmen have done
On the Eleventh of September, 2001
You Support Palestine
But ignore about their laughter
Emanating from their celebrating the hating of Jews and destruction of America
On the day after
You use shady language and class dividers
You label suicide bombers as “freedom-fighters.”
You’re pro-harmony but never stop causing noise
Still
Against Capital
Against Capital punishment
Against Capitalism
On the Steps of Capitol
Hill
Sometimes it seems from your unpatriotic screams
You’d rather be in chains
In a Communist nation where a dictator reigns
Your ignorance just thrives when you describe
Bush as a Texas cowboy running astray
You stereotype him so I can stereotype you
Smoking weed and drinking your double cappuccino latte
How does it feel?
Just deal
No blood for oil but gas prices to high for sale
No tax cuts but stash the cashed check in the mail
You won’t make sacrifice for homeland protection
You often question but never offer suggestions
You’re in constant defense of criminals somehow
You persecute people for not being politically correct
Who’s hypocritical now!
You make up slogans and accusations
Believe anecdotes without a single citation
Brand me a racist with an agenda to gain
Hand me your bluff but I’m tough not insane
You spit on our honor cause division and pain
When you say the victims died in vain
Sitting on your pedestal of judgment
So-called “tolerance,” progressive, cosmopolitan, comfortably, cool, seriously doubting
Whining and pouting
Shouting against Inequality for the disunited States
And rising crime rates
You don’t care about the cause, just want the effect
You Dine in the paradigm the military you hate is trying to protect
You think I wouldn’t die for this country you’re wrong
I realize America’s where I belong
So you can stab me with your words
Protest me to the ground
Call me a fascist, racist, selfish clown
But I wont’ let hypocrites put me down
I’m American and I realize how fortunate you are
Why your teacher made you salute those stripes and stars
It’s ok to criticize but think before you speak
Think about the rights you have
What happens when the shuttle crashes?
Instant gratification
No more space exploration
We put a man on the moon 40 years ago
But now it’s too soon to send
A man into space?
A slap in the face
Of our imperialist plot to conquer a lot
Don’t rebuild the WTC higher
Simply build a tiny spire
It’s time to abandon all structural endeavors
Hide under our beds and cover our heads
Like the sissies you are
Don’t salute those stripes and stars
Fire Bill Maher
Because he told us we’re cowards
And we’re afraid that we are
We all care about our civil liberties being taken away
But only some parts of the constitution are ok
Not the electoral college part?
It works both ways doesn’t it?
The FBI, CIA should have done its job then
Its got all the evidence now
But you don’t care
You want infinite proof there
You wouldn’t sacrifice one fraction
To Save Millions of lives and when
Those lives are lost you blame those who didn’t take action!
The least I can do is ask you
TO not use sugar coated language and abuse our sensitivity
Our communication
Please do not call killing babies equipping young women with a choice
Don’t defy those who protect us
You’re making the enemy rejoice
It’s easy to hate
To accuse me that I discriminate
But to those who raise their fists
Answer me this
When the bomb is dropped by Iran (rhyme with bomb)
You look up and see the mushroom cloud
In the Sky
With forgotten rebelliousness and futile messages at your side
The day, when perfect hindsight is suddenly all around
And a billion tear drops fall to the ground
The day when you look into your child’s eyes and have to explain
More innocents have died
And your pedestal, your ability to be free is taken away
Then you’ll see something other than a President’s blue blood royalty
Tell me THEN your opposed to war
And the reasons for which we’re fighting for
Tell me THEN we’re imperialist clowns
Who operate on fallacious grounds
So if it’s true, your division’s still tall
Then perhaps the most powerful truth of all
Is you’d look the families in the face
Tell them one-by-shun
You helped cause another 9/11,
2001.

NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.

Illiteracy Count: 9

  1. Annie DiFranco
  2. dieing hard
  3. like its Some choice (apostrophe?)
  4. gas prices to high for sale
  5. Who's hypocritical now! (question mark?)
  6. our honor cause division (comma?)
  7. die for this country you're wrong (comma?)
  8. wont’
  9. Its got (apostrophe?)

Monday, May 22, 2006

For *Paul*

This story will make you believe in Karma

("My freshman year I was kicked off the Paul Robeson floor by Kelly Hennessey. "
This week I graduated, and thus came to an end 4 productive years. Interestingly enough, most of my friends, activities, glee club, centurion, etc began in my junior year. Thus formulated my college experience. My freshman year and the beginning of my sophomore were the dark ages looking back, a time when I was very alone, lost without purpose, constantly on the phone with a high-school girlfriend, indeed, I spent most of my time alone in isolated sadness with no friends....

My freshman year of college I was placed in a triple room on the second floor of Campbell. One of my roomates was gay. The other was just bizarre. Two months in I volunteered to leave and was put on an all-black, floor, the Paul Robeson floor, on Mettler 3 in November. I was placed with, no joke, an Indian midget named "Hashish" who smelled like shit. Then he transfered. I had a single. For the month of January, I never left my room. Then on Valentines day, the one year anniversary of James/███████, in came a greek kid named Paul. Paul was an absolute nightmare. From the get-go, he told me he wanted a single. He told me he would do whatever it took to kick me out of th room. Paul lied, planted his girlfirends underpants in my bed, poured granuals in my keyboard destroying my computer, threw my internet box on the ground. In a climax of frustration, I put an article from The New York Times criticizing Greece on my door. (He had told me he plans to go back to Greece and soon as he's done "milking" America for our education system.) He made up some lie about me physically harming him, planted evidence and called the police, as well as his "lawyers." Paul was openly racist. He had referrred to everyone on the "Paul Robeson" floor as "monkeys." Then, to my horror, he actually said to the all-black RAs that I called everyone on the floor "niggers." - a complete lie. It was my word against his. I was lead out of the room crying and screaming at him and my situation, no friends, no one one to talk to., forced to go in front of a black man, Dean Tolbert, to defend myself and help explain that I did not call anyone any names. Paul then told Kelly Hennessy, the multicultural dorm director, that I "touched" him. (We shook hands the first week). in April Paul then did the unfathomable- he actually went ahead and logically took my confession of having shook his hand as a confession that I "Touched" him. Kelly Hennessy bought the bullshit. I was Out-witted by a manipulative fuck of a Greek. And all I wanted to do was Transfer from Rutgers- the god-awful place that did all of this to me.

In short, My freshman year Paul Torinidis had me kicked off the Paul Robeson floor by lying to Kelly Hennesey. Hennessy and Tolberd heard accusations of racial bias and didn't give me a chance to defend myself. After I was kicked out, Paul then flew a huge greek flag in the window where I lived.

Three weeks later, Paul failed out of Rutgers.

I wrote this in March, 2003 in a pool of my own tears. Because words could not express what Paul had done to me, I was just confused and cheated. What do I do, who do I talk to, where do I go from here? Is this what college is about?


The subsequent poem I wrote was a national finalist.


My roomate and I haven't spoken in two weeks and now this. Some people arepurely evil. Some people are so deceitful, manipulative, hurtful and cunning, thatit makes you feel that when yourwith that person the world isn't even worth fighting for. When you encounter a situation where your dignity is being held against your will, when someone threatens your emotional well-being for their own cheap advantage, when that same person uses you and violates your mind in ways you didn't know it could be violated, it forces you to reavaluate who you are as a person. This could be in the form of aninjustice, such as a wrongful conviction, it could come in the form of abetrayal from a friend or an ex-lover, whatever it is, it leaves you helpless bracing that reasurrance deep inside yourself that comforts you. I haven't really ever experienced these people in my life. for the most for the most part people are inherently good and there are some invisible laws and trusts and principals that are always upheld. People i've always been associated with have never crossed that line into the realm of irratioanlity, and if they have, It's easy to distance yourself from them ,it's easy to isolate them in your mind, your capable of realizing that they're wrong and your right. Right?

Not with PaulPaul has fucked with my mind, broken the rules of interaction that you deem unnescary to even lay out, gone beyond irrationality to the point he is evil in a rational way, destorting reality while maintaing the truth, threatening me and making me feel like the shit on his shoe, and then celebrating another victory. Why did it come to this? Why?


Because I fought back. Because when he called me an ass hole and said that i smell, i said i didn't like that language, and his girlfiend smells. When he retalitated by saying America sucks, i said Greece sucks. When he Told me not to plug MY COMPUTER into the interent socket (Becauseit happened to be on his side of the room and he's territorial) I did it anyways, when he throws my computer part on the ground in rage i told him he was going to have to pay for it, in defiance i stood up and screamed athim and told him I'm NOT swallowing my pride for you, I respect you even though you don\'t respect me, I speakto you kindly, i treat you decently, I've made compromises, taken your accusations, AND YOU ARE WRONG. Paul called the police, told me his daddy was going to arrest me, he had his lawyers ready to file charges of assuault, threats, SEXUAL ABUSE,RACISM, GREEK BIAS, and he even threatened to have me kicked out of the university in handcuffs. He told everyone he knew lies and manipulated everythign i have ever said, sometimes even jovially; into serious accusations , and worst of all, he made up shit about my pyscholgical history and started telling everyone he knew that his safety is in danger and James needs help.

From once making me a cd and offering me a slice ofpizza, he now holds that against me saying he treated me like a king. He now says i sniff his girfirend's underwear, and he told his girlfirend's parents who are out after me, he told me his lawyers would hang me, and he's got proof, evidence angainst me in "a court of law"he has taken statements i have made, purpously embellished them into theworng context and used them against me, trying to kick me oiut of myroom. this is the person who has treated me like shit from day one. WHOCWOURLDNT EVEN LET ME PLUG MY COMPUTER IN!!! but i have no evidence, i'm not a sneeky rat, and my quick wit doesn't come in false accustaions orsadistic threats, and i certainly do not document his actions, even though he spends everyday in my room with his girfriend all day for hours, I respect them and leave them alone always-- i ran out and he told me not tocome back. So instead of punching him in the face and having him win (i seriouslywould have done it) i ran outside, crying hysterically not knowing who to call or what to do, i simply have neverfelt so terrible before, at least in the last couple years, never felt so alone inside myself or so captured by another human being, all i wanted todo was have someone anyone know the TRUTH, i didn't even want a hug,becuase i was set up, and i still feel inside captured by his evil trap, and I've never encountered anyone so manipulative, so decieveing, so pernicious, in Paul. He's very sick. If you have encountered someone like this in your life, you can relate, you know how it feels, it feels like cancer, it drains you completely, t ohave someone attack you in such a awful way, and have people beleive him and hear him tell them whacked-out sick things about me,and i guess thats what scares me, i need to get very far very very veryfar away from people like that in my life. I need to be around peoplethat love me for me, and will not attack me in such a way. This is a warnign to you that people like this exist out there,sometimes in the beginning camouflaged in jovialness or laid back-ness butbe careful what you say, be careful what you reveal, and you don't have to sacrifice yourself for these people you don't have to become evil tocompete, you just have to stay far far far far far far away and know thatyou are loved

Thanks for listening.

For Paul

There's no way to Summarize People Like You

Putting me Down and Loving it too
I wasn't born knowing the Color of your skin
Your Deep-rooted hate
The way you manipulate
Your bitter angry conscience
Or your national origin
You can abuse my innocense
But be forwarned
I don't have your quick-wit
I got more
The Wind is my only friend
Through the Air I soar
I burn like a fire
And fight for my right to roar
You want to spit and lie?
Soak me with despair??
Slander my character find solace there...
Magnify my weaknesses and fuck with my mind?
Look for an evil in my you can't find?
Behind closed doors you run and you hide
And you scream so loud it hurts inside
Because beneath your pretending and all that you sell
The man that I am
Scares you like hell

NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.

Thursday, May 18, 2006



Goodbye Switzerland


Arrivaderci Svizzera

Mention the names, Lugano, Ascona, Locarnoand Bellinzona located in a region called “Ticino,” and the listeners might naturally assume they’re inItaly.
Send them a postcard and it might not set them straight: palm trees, mimosas, Mediterranean red roofs, loggias, azure waters with bellagio fountains piercing through indigo skies, surely this must be either the coast of the Adriatic or that of Sicily. But behind the waving but stiff date palms and velvet lilacs are telltale signs are freshly painted crosswalks, manicured gardens, punctual trains, a 6 PM curfew and men traipsing around train stations with machine guns wearing berets. You’re not inItaly anymore, Toto.

Coziness under guarded control, anarchronism versus state-of-the-art technology, strange bedfellows in an isolated, majestically storybook fantasy land with no natural resources but rock and earth. Cautious but Resolute, Welcoming, but alien, claustrophobic and prudent; clean, rich, stingy, prudent, orderly, beautiful and sparsely populated, comfortable and as transparent as a disengaged glass cable car rising up above the clouds; as quietly paranoid as a red-bellied hummingbird, with the fervent militarily mettol of Braveheart.

These are the Swiss.

Walking paradoxes, whose principal national aesthetic pitches rustic Alpine coziness against high-tech efficiency. Proud, sober and self-reliant, the Swiss have maintained so much independence and neutrality, yet remain some type of microcosm of Europe, composed of alternative French, German and Italian types. But don’t dare call them one of those. “They’re…… Swiss!”

Painfully neat and rigorously prompt, shabby and the slipshot, the Swiss have a weakness for cuteness. They indulge in coy diminutives. A German Biertsube becomes a Stubli, a Wurst become s a Wurstli. And as they fly off mountains with sticks attached to their feet they yodel in their predominant dialect, the pseudo-German dialect of Schweizerdeutsch, crackling with “K” emphasis in a innocent yet raspy Alemannic rebellion of the Country that gave them their language. Don’t dare call them German. Fur-clad socialites raise jeweled fingers at Geneva’s quai du Mont-Blanc, as the women of Appenzell stand beside their husbands on the Landsgemeindeplatz, raising their hands in the purest form of direct democracy on the planet. (They were only given that right to vote since 1991!) But don’t dare call the French.17 year-olds party their asses off in Bellinzona at a “Discoteca” for Carnivale. But don’t dare call them Italians.

And there are perks to them not being French or Italian or German. For one there is the infrastructure. Trains are always on time and seem just too clean. Hiking trails are equipped with freshly manufactured signs every 35 feet telling you your exact coordinates. The cable car has gone through myriad inspections. Curtains are broiled, hotel rooms are spotless. Cheapness isn’t offered as an option. Your clocks are all made by Rolex, and your bed linens are tossed four times a day, with a slice of chocolate turned back at night. The smoke that accumulates in the cafes are aired out, as the soil is turned in the flowerboxes in the quiet town of Goeshnen. Men with mustaches and recessed cheekbones air out their cottages each and every day to allow mountain air to flow through.

Wealthier than Sin, the Swiss are also stingier than a Mormon at a strip club. Shots are measured with scientific precision as if it was poured in lavatory beakers. Towels in your bathroom will be straightened, spaced, toes pointed in the same direction, as orderly as little Soldiers. Glass, Steel, Concrete, and the electronic turbocharged engines in the Mercedes and Alfa Romeos are cleaner than a Virgin’s honeypot. Law Enforcement agents look more like tourists, strolling through their safe, clean, boring cities making sure pedestrians aren’t deviating from the crosswalks.

In Beogoius, Zurich, behind closed doors mysteriously sly little Swiss gnome bankers rub their hands and manipulate world currencies by sitting on top of their gold, then return to their homes transient of their wealth.


Then, take a yellow “Postbus” 2,000 meters above sea level and the country is transformed. Amidst the Alpine whiteness find rocky trails and brisk clip, cheeks glowing, eyes as icy bright as the glaciers, and the healthy faces disappearing behind mirrored goggles and war-paint sun block. A Horse-drawn plow peels back thin topsoil on an impossible steep hill above the clouds in the country where the government spends as much on subsidies to maintain their farmers harvesting cheese and chocolate as they do on manufacturing.

The German-Swiss cross through the Saint Gotthard pass and emerge in blamy Ticenese Sunshine, vacationing in the Italian portion of their country. They drink Merlot and eat gnocchi while resting assured that the hotel they are staying in is strictly regulated by the Swiss Hotel association, and they are spending the Franc, not the euro.

The Italian-Swiss only constitute a mere 8% of the population.They are geographically cut-off from their northern countrymen by a mountain chain, and have a minature geography that allows from constant sunshine amidst stunning foothills. The people are more rustic than their fashionable Milanese counterparts, old women putting on wigs and lipstick like they were 7 year old Americans playing make-up. Ticino is the most glamorous of regions. Along the water promenades of Lake Lugano or Locarnoyou’ll see pollards, rododendrons, and bobbying yaughts. You’ll even see sailboats in Janurary. The mountain villages are scattered with stone huts and castles, church towers that serve as a testament to latin Dukes of Milan, from whom they gained independence from in 1798.

NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.

Y'all caught that one simile, right? About what the fucking car engines are like? I KNOW RIGHT.

Friday, April 14, 2006





Alone on the Atlantic
A True Story

On the eve of July 31st, 2004, The NJ Coast Guard received a call from a frantic mother who's son's friend's tiny Sunfsh had not returned from a casual sail early that afternoon off the bay near Long Beach Island. The friend had not said were he was headed and did not have any food or water on his tiny sailboat. A boat so small could not battle ocean currents.




Six HH-60 Jayhawk helicopters scoured the South Jersey Coast all night and well into the next day, from as Far South as Bringantine to as far North as Barnegat Inlet. Then, before dawn on a foggy morning a deep-sea fisherman shined his spotlight on a young man wrapped in a nylon sail lying face down on what appeared to be a 12 foot sailboat without a mast. The boy signaled to the fisherman and told him the follwing.
"I'm from Beach Haven, NJ. I've sailed from the the Mullica River near the Great Bay. I think I have hypothermia. Where are we?"


The fisherman quickly radioed the coast guard who in turned asked to inquire into the boy's identity.
It was indeed who they were looking for.

He had hypothermia, been at sea for three days without food or water, unconscious for two of them, and was found 30 miles off Cape May.
This is his story.

* * *

Sailing is one of those visceral experiences that done every now and then, let’s us know we are free. It is form of meditation. On one hand, for that time, you are completely isolated from all other forms of human life. The steady wind in your ears is loud enough to drown out most other sounds. Water surrounds you at all times, closer to you in a small sailboat. Usually you are far away from shore to render civilization as abstract if it were from an airplane. The art itself requires concentration and focus, but success comes when it is a second nature, at by that time, the actions are instinctual, without thought, the rewards are spontaneous. It is a dichotomy of control and precision during complete relaxation of the mind and body. Similar to skiing, you only steer and direct, you do not empower. Unlike running and tennis, weight lifting or hiking, writing or singing, dancing or sex, you, the human being, does not give or expend any of your own energy for some end justifying the means. Your control is the end, the choice is yours, you may go in any direction you chose, and there are an infinitely many destinations, the bridge, the mountain, the tributary, or an endless expanse of blue. What does it matter? You harness the energy of nature around you and are one with your surroundings wherever you go. The sensation of control and virtue of natural beauty and the elements; sun, sand, water and air against your face, current at your side, brasher with a quicker pace, completely liberate you. But unlike skiing, the craft is stopped by these elements. The body of water is the Oijia Board. Your arms, taught but poised, are the fingers holding down the lines. Yet somehow, without slackening, yours gradually loosen. The powers that be which determine the pace of the wind, guide your trajectory. After a while, the rhythm of each tack matches your heart beat, and that is all that matters. For the briefest of moments, you are satiated; content with the feeling that you have from the sun and the mist against your face, whether it be on the Hudson River near East Point or the The Great South Bay near Fire Island or a small pond in the Adirondacks, you feel a combination of hope and adventure. Impatience, restlessness, and tension of modern, feaful life all seem to vanish with the stiffness in our muscles. The water tower is your only benchmark, it begins to grow low on the horizon. And on that long steady tact during a summer day when you’re trapeze-ing off the side of a spooner pulling a 35 degree angle towards the sunset, you understand why God put you on that earth in the first place. You close your eyes, and you find yourself in love.
- written in a journal staring out on little egg habor 6/14/04

* * *
BEACH HAVEN, NJ. I worked at Fleet Bank that summer, and dreaded putting on Khakis and a Button Down while others around me had sandals and went shirtless. Every morning I wiped the dew off the steering wheel of my Triumph Spitfire, (salty dew that no doubt caused damage to the undercarriage of the British classic), ate a pop tart, and hopped in the two seater for a wonderful 7 minute ride from my Will Marty’s house in Holgate, the southern tip of Long Beach Island, to the bank in Beach Haven. It was 75 degree top-down ride to work. Along the way, the orange sun rose on the horizon to the east on the Atlantic. The thistle grass blew in a warm breeze. Beach Mansions to the right. Tourists and locals rode their tricycles along the shoulder of the two lane road. I shifted into 4th, put one hand out the window, and leaned back against the English made leather seat – for about 4 minutes every morning, it felt like I was in heaven.
Then I drank a Boost from 7-eleven, bought a copy of the Wall Street Journal (which the Branch President did not like to see me reading during slow hours), and went about my day, recording transactions, debits and credits inside my financial dungeon. They pay was good, but the irony of my disposition was tantalizing. I dreaded the air conditioning and the view from my chambers towards Fred’s Diner, 15 more degrees left out of the teller drive through window, and you could almost make out the ramp to the beach. Almost. Scantily cladded tourists from Brooklyn would request credit card advances for 1000 dollars in Cash (25% interest rate), and the next day business owner who’s product the customer bought would bring in the same cash for deposits. It was a never-ending flow of money in and out, usually 600 dollar deposits a day from Sunglass Hut, 2000 from the Pizzaria. Predicatable, booring, but like clockwork. But the day would go buy, I would eat my hot dog and slupy on the beach, taking off my brown loafers, rolling up my khakis, and staring out at the Turquoise ocean feeding tortilla chips to the seagulls, trying my best to soak up my summer working in the resort, trying to appreciate the beauty of the ocean and the seagulls, this place, looking forward to my day off tomorrow when I could rip off my formal attire and hop into my sailboat, newly purchased for 400 dollars from the local marina.
At the end of the day I locked up my 15 thousand dollars cash in the safe and headed over to the bay to watch the sunset– even more important, to monitor the wind and currents. It was a still current, slight wind. I watched the sailboats – and I anticipated what it would be like on the bay. I had been teased by the other sailors on the bay for a month now. The bay was still at dusk, it was a sight to behold. Little islands dot the Beach Haven side. You hear nothing but the quiet roar of a distant skee-do, the twinkle of the now redish sun reflecting against the water, a young boy catching a fish and showing it to his father. The dry wooden planks beneath your feet. No memories or regrets. No future, no emails, no return in a few days. The beauty made me think of ███████. But my life and job were both on the beach for that summer, what seemed to me so far away from home. And my eyes were set on sailing the bay in the next day.

Mr. Marty, father of my friend who’s house I was staying in, always warned me about the currents. Beach Haven is on Long Beach Island, a 40 mile stretch of thin sand dune off the coast of South Jersey. To the north is Barnegat Inlet, one of the most dangerous inlets on the East Coast. To the south is beach haven inlet. Trillions of gallons of icy-cold sea water flow in and out of these waterways into the bay, and then they flow out again, two times a day. That accounts for Beach Haven’s tremendous tide flow. Most who venture out into the Ocean are experienced fisherman with twin-engine outboards. But Mr. Marty told me he never had the courage to do it. The current of all that water flowing in the bay and dumping out of it, is too much for the power of his engines to surmount. I took his observations with a grain of salt. One hand, I was no rookie to maritime navigation. My father owned a 32 foot Welcraft with twin 12 c, Chevrolet engines, we took vacations all over the the tri-state area from Fire Island to the Block. On another, Mr. Marty was a stubborn man, who had a myriad other eccentricities (as did his son). I listened to his cocksure advice on many matters, not just relating to the sea. There were his views on politics. On religion and above all, how to treat your employees. There was no debate to be had with the man. And I listened to him without saying much of anything, since I was never asked for my dissenting opinion. I was an anthropologist seeing how another father raised his family. I was paying a paltry 20 dollars a week to stay at his house. He even made me dinner, every night.
So when Mr. Marty strongly advised me not to venture out to far from the Bay in my newly purchased Sunfish that day, I nodded accordingly agreeing, half listening to his story about what happened to a man who got caught in the current. I walked into the other room and asked Will if he would help me drag the craft to the Bay cove. I grabbed a plastic bag of beef jerky and a juice box.

It was a beautiful day. 80 degrees. Boats and sailboats were everywhere, especially in the narrow canal toward the middle of the bay. To the south or left about 1 mile, was the outlet to the atlantic ocean. In the distance you could see the haze of atlantic city over the dozens of unihabited marsh islands. No one lived south of holgate. There was a bird sanctuary, a few abandoned buildings on the islands, towers, lights. Watertowers. Other strange, infrustracture, signs, staircases. I planted my 10 foot aluminum mast, connected the lines to the rudder from the mast. Ran the tiller half way through the slot in the middle of the craft. I partially hosted the sail, de-snagged the lines from the rudder in the bow, and felt the boat jerk in the direction opposite the wind. It was a wonderful feeling, the straightenting of the rudder, the concave sail and the steady stream of current flowing behind you. You have captured he first gust against a raised sail.
TO BE CONTINUED

NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.

So, yeah, this post ends with a TO BE CONTINUED which isn't followed up on.

But you get the gist, I think.  

1. Sentimental young ingrate with boat (Could it be...?) goes off in boat

2. Gets swept out to sea

3. Gets cold and famished
 
3. Gets rescued -- O-o-o-ohhh! Worra letdahhn! Wot cruel twifst of fate! Wot infinite unfairness! An' the 'orrible little toerag din't even 'ave to cut 'is bleedin' arm off or drink 'is own piss or nuffin'! O-o-o-ohhh! Woy duvs calamity only befall the undeserving? Whe-e-e-ere were you God on that black day? O-o-o-ohhh! There ain't no bloody jufstice in this world I tell you, no jufstice at all! Ain't it all a bloomin' shame! Don't it all jufst break your heart, o-o-o-ohhh! and so on and so on /inexplicablecockney