How Should the Troops Die?

Alan Grayson, Democratic congressman from Florida’s 8th district, who urged his colleagues to vote against war funding in order to shut down those wars and bring the troops home, was accused by one of his opponents, Kurt Kelly, of putting “our soldiers, and our men and women in the military in harm’s way, and maybe he wants them to die.” Naturally, the accusation was made on Fox News. Here’s the key passage of Grayson’s response, from an August 17, 2010 email, which echos my own longtime thinking on this matter:

Yes, Kurt, I do want them to die: of old age, at home in bed, surrounded by their loved ones, after enjoying many Thanksgiving turkeys between now and then. And you want them to die: in a scorching desert, 8000 miles from home, alone, screaming for help, with a leg blown off and their guts hanging out of their stomachs, bleeding to death.

And how can anyone but a U.S. President be accused of placing U.S. military personnel in “harm’s way”? Ever since Presidents began illegally bypassing Congress to start wars, or otherwise involve troops in combat, they’ve been ultimately responsible for any occasion on which the troops were in “harm’s way.”

Grayson was defeated for re-election in 2010, doubtless clearing the way for a politician whose idea of “supporting the troops” is keeping them on battlefields in routine danger of death, mutilation, and mental and physical injuries that will last them a (possibly quite short) lifetime. “Support” like that is something our troops would live longer, better lives without.

Margaret Bamberger in the Austin American Statesman

My friend Margaret Bamberger received a nice write-up in the Austin American Statesman newspaper today.

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The following photo is from Margaret's anti-strip-mining days, as mentioned in the Statesman article. Margaret is kneeling in the foreground, with a copy of her crying cow artwork held up behind her.

Bill Carter, by way of Margie Crisp, writes the following about this photograph:

This picture at Hub Cap Annie's was part of the "Don't Buy It" campaign to keep Austin from investing in a lignite unit at the Fayette Power Plant — after Austin opted out, LCRA dropped plans for the lignite plant and went in with Austin on another Western coal unit. If the lignite unit had been built, a large part of Fayette County would have been strip-mined — hence the crying cow, which also appeared on fund-raising letterhead and so forth.

All the folks in the picture other than Margaret and me were part of the pre-city council Max Nofziger entourage. Max is on my left (to my right in the photo) in shades and cap. On the other side of me is Ester Matthews, who was Max's administrative assistant when he was on the City Council. I don't remember the other folks' names.

Mark Twain on Death

Years ago, an author I respect, Joe Straczynski, in one of his postings on the Internet, stated his opinion that Mark Twain's autobiography was the greatest work in the English language. With a recommendation like that, I promptly bought and read the book. I'm not a writer, have never been an English major, and there are still quite a few books in English that I haven't read, so I cannot say whether or not I agree with Joe. I can say that I found it an excellent book.

Mark Twain was no stranger to the death of loved ones, and he did us the courtesy of writing eloquently about his experiences. His recountings give the inexperienced some understanding of what is to come, and provide the experienced with some company in their pain. And with his credentials in such matters established, he saw fit to share, from the safety of his own grave (for he had insisted that certain portions of his autobiography not be published until he was dead, or dead for some particular number of years) his own view of death. Though it flies painfully in the face of many established beliefs (a pain Twain regrets), it has stuck with me, and I pass it along for the benefit of any kindred souls.

From chapter 49 of The Autobiography of Mark Twain, as edited by Charles Neider, pages 326 to 327:

[...] I have long ago lost my belief in immortality—also my interest in it. I can say now what I could not say while alive—things which it would shock people to hear; things which I could not say when alive because I should be aware of that shock and would certainly spare myself the personal pain of inflicting it. When we believe in immortality we have a reason for it. Not a reason founded upon information, or even plausibilities, for we haven't any. Our reason for choosing to believe in this dream is that we desire immortality, for some reason or other, I don't know what. But I have no such desire. I have sampled life and it is sufficient. Another one would be another experiment. It would proceed from the same source as this one. I should have no large expectations concerning it, and if I may be excused from assisting in the experiment I shall properly be grateful. Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born—a hundred million years—and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.

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[Update of March 9, 2009] I agree with Alison in Austria's critique of the quote above. Nothing can be experienced of nothingness, so it is a blatant failure of logic when, at the end, Twain claims experiences of the nothingness prior to his birth – the same nothingness that he asserts will follow his death.

Personally, when I read that quote, I assume that the failure wasn't lost on Twain; that in his mind he did equate death with annihilation, and the result of annihilation with nothingness, but that he decided that it was simpler, and/or more effective from a literary standpoint, to express his perspective by ignoring the logical failure of attributing qualities to nothingness. I further assume that he trusted the readers who accepted the death-is-annihilation view to see through his sophistry, while trusting everyone else to be sufficiently offended to move on to the next paragraph without further ado.

Of course, that's a lot of assuming, and I could be wrong. I'll just add that I don't associate Twain with clumsy thinking, while I am aware (because he tells us so in his autobiography) that he was not above toying with the facts in his stories when he thought the stories would benefit. In this case, he may have been toying with the logic of the piece in order to make it easier for his readers to wrap their minds around a concept (absolute nonexistence) that might be unfamiliar to them, and/or antithetical to their beliefs. If so, it was a dubious tactic, because it conflated incompatible concepts (nonexistence and existence), and that leaves us to guess about what he really thought.

Granting all of those problems, I must admit that I still enjoy that passage every time I think of it.

Goodbye Margaret

Margaret Bamberger died this morning. More information can be found in her obituary, which it was my burden and privilege to write.

Goodbye old friend, you changed my life.

Saying Goodbye to Margaret

My dear friend Margaret Bamberger is sleeping comfortably. She is not expected to wake up. Her fight with cancer is nearly over.

I had spoken with her by telephone on Sunday. Her responses were slow and her speech slurred, but she was still there, just barely. Yesterday, I called the ranch to ask about her. To my surprise, I received an email reply today telling me that she was still smiling at familiar voices, and that if I wanted to come out and be with her, I was welcome. I got to the ranch as quickly as possible.

In Margaret's bedroom, I found her daughter, Margie, looking after her. Margaret, bald from a month of full brain irradiation, was asleep in a hospital bed that had been brought in for her. She was no longer responding to familiar voices. She slept. If she was aware of voices anymore, I believe it was only when they bled through the thin spots in her dreams. I hope they were good dreams, and that we made them a little bit better.

I spent about four hours there, talking with Margie, Margaret's husband David, and a few visitors, sorting out some computer problems that were arising from Margaret's absence, enduring awkward silences, blowing my nose much too often, and crying as little as I could. I was grateful for every distraction that came along. Without them, all I could do was watch Margaret die a little more with each breath, and struggle to think what I would say to her whenever I finally managed to leave. In all those hours, it seemed that I ought to be able to find some right set of words that would capture a small, choice fraction of what she'd meant to me. Something I could leave behind in her dream, echoing warmly, slow to fade.

I never found those perfect words. In the end, I stroked her head with one hand, stammered-out a few essential truths, and made my exit into the recently fallen night as quickly as I could.

Sometime later, as I eased my truck past the end of the ranch house driveway, a large bat dove through my headlights, and a nightjar flushed from the side of the road. Those are things Margaret would have liked. Of course, Margaret loved almost everything about the ranch, and much too soon for all of us who knew her, she will be laid to rest there. The grave has been dug. A green burial is prepared. The ceremony will be restricted to immediate family and the ranch family. She has too many friends to do it otherwise.

I have seen my friend Margaret, who added so much to my life, for the last time. When I'm not numb, it hurts a lot.