Thursday, April 24th, 2003

For those of you languishing in a place other than beauuuuuuuuuuuuutiful Dakota on this glorious April day, my sympathy, dear kola. This day is perfect in every way. I've had a productive but boring early morning through mid-day sessions with computer servers and nagging problems - I've having the weest bit of respite as I listen to the Twins playing Kansas City - scoreless in the third - been a good while since my team has won a game - probably still reeling from the punishment they received from the Damn Yankees - they were clobbered those four games - and then they lost to Kansas City on Monday. Ah, well - 'tis early.

'Twas early this morning, about an hour before the 6:40 sunrise, that the birds began singing in earnest outside our house - and I found myself singing as I awoke,

Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning
No one could be sweeter that my sweetie when I meet her in the morning
Where the morning glory
Twine around the door
Whispering pretty stories
I long to hear once more

Strolling with my girlie when the dew is pearly early in the morning
Butterflies all flutter up and kiss each little buttercup, in the morning
If I had Aladdin's lamp for only a day
I'd make a wish and here's what I'd say
Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning

I've never been in Carolina - North or South. Probably a pretty fine place - 'tis a snappy tune, I think. Don't know which Carolina the tune addresses - but sure like the line "strolling with my girlie when the dew is pearly early in the morning." We could use some dew - of the the heaviest kind around these parts - rain, in fact. There's lots of songs about North Dakota weather - it's dryness, etc. And there's the famous,

You ought to go ta
North Dakota
See the cattle and the wheat
And the folks that can't be beat!
You say hello ta
North Dakota
And you just can't say Good-Bye!

Sorry - can't lay my hands on the music - you'll have to imagine what a real treat 'tis, kola - as great a treat as the caramel rolls provided by my good friend Idell Albers, long-suffering wife of my cousin Norm. I've had a couple today - hey, appetite returns a bit, sunny day, work getting done - how could anyone wish for more?

I've received a couple of notes on my 4/21/03 entry with references to Twain on war - from Maureen Kelly Jonason over at Moorhead, a note declaring that Jane Goodall found chimps waging war for no particular good reason, and another from Nanette O'Brien of Trenton, NJ, who says that ants go to war all the time.

Whatever one concludes about the offered reasons for the United States going to war with Iraq - they have changed in focus and emphasis over the course of the war - and few have been as brutally honest as the reasons offered by the Athenians to the tiny island of Melos - The Melian Dialogues present the flower of western civilization, Athens, telling the Melians that they are going to be destroyed by Athens simply because Athens is stronger than the tiny country. The chapter from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is worth reading in its entirety:

Begin Melian Dialogue
CHAPTER XVII.
Sixteenth Year of the War - The Melian Conference - Fate of Melos

THE next summer Alcibiades sailed with twenty ships to Argos and seized the suspected persons still left of the Lacedaemonian faction to the number of three hundred, whom the Athenians forthwith lodged in the neighbouring islands of their empire. The Athenians also made an expedition against the isle of Melos with thirty ships of their own, six Chian, and two Lesbian vessels, sixteen hundred heavy infantry, three hundred archers, and twenty mounted archers from Athens, and about fifteen hundred heavy infantry from the allies and the islanders. The Melians are a colony of Lacedaemon that would not submit to the Athenians like the other islanders, and at first remained neutral and took no part in the struggle, but afterwards upon the Athenians using violence and plundering their territory, assumed an attitude of open hostility. Cleomedes, son of Lycomedes, and Tisias, son of Tisimachus, the generals, encamping in their territory with the above armament, before doing any harm to their land, sent envoys to negotiate. These the Melians did not bring before the people, but bade them state the object of their mission to the magistrates and the few; upon which the Athenian envoys spoke as follows:

Athenians. Since the negotiations are not to go on before the people, in order that we may not be able to speak straight on without interruption, and deceive the ears of the multitude by seductive arguments which would pass without refutation (for we know that this is the meaning of our being brought before the few), what if you who sit there were to pursue a method more cautious still? Make no set speech yourselves, but take us up at whatever you do not like, and settle that before going any farther. And first tell us if this proposition of ours suits you.

The Melian commissioners answered:

Melians. To the fairness of quietly instructing each other as you propose there is nothing to object; but your military preparations are too far advanced to agree with what you say, as we see you are come to be judges in your own cause, and that all we can reasonably expect from this negotiation is war, if we prove to have right on our side and refuse to submit, and in the contrary case, slavery.

Athenians. If you have met to reason about presentiments of the future, or for anything else than to consult for the safety of your state upon the facts that you see before you, we will give over; otherwise we will go on.

Melians. It is natural and excusable for men in our position to turn more ways than one both in thought and utterance. However, the question in this conference is, as you say, the safety of our country; and the discussion, if you please, can proceed in the way which you propose.

Athenians. For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretences-either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us-and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Melians. As we think, at any rate, it is expedient-we speak as we are obliged, since you enjoin us to let right alone and talk only of interest-that you should not destroy what is our common protection, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right, and even to profit by arguments not strictly valid if they can be got to pass current. And you are as much interested in this as any, as your fall would be a signal for the heaviest vengeance and an example for the world to meditate upon.

Athenians. The end of our empire, if end it should, does not frighten us: a rival empire like Lacedaemon, even if Lacedaemon was our real antagonist, is not so terrible to the vanquished as subjects who by themselves attack and overpower their rulers. This, however, is a risk that we are content to take. We will now proceed to show you that we are come here in the interest of our empire, and that we shall say what we are now going to say, for the preservation of your country; as we would fain exercise that empire over you without trouble, and see you preserved for the good of us both.

Melians. And how, pray, could it turn out as good for us to serve as for you to rule?

Athenians. Because you would have the advantage of submitting before suffering the worst, and we should gain by not destroying you.

Melians. So that you would not consent to our being neutral, friends instead of enemies, but allies of neither side.

Athenians. No; for your hostility cannot so much hurt us as your friendship will be an argument to our subjects of our weakness, and your enmity of our power.

Melians. Is that your subjects' idea of equity, to put those who have nothing to do with you in the same category with peoples that are most of them your own colonists, and some conquered rebels?

Athenians. As far as right goes they think one has as much of it as the other, and that if any maintain their independence it is because they are strong, and that if we do not molest them it is because we are afraid; so that besides extending our empire we should gain in security by your subjection; the fact that you are islanders and weaker than others rendering it all the more important that you should not succeed in baffling the masters of the sea.

Melians. But do you consider that there is no security in the policy which we indicate? For here again if you debar us from talking about justice and invite us to obey your interest, we also must explain ours, and try to persuade you, if the two happen to coincide. How can you avoid making enemies of all existing neutrals who shall look at case from it that one day or another you will attack them? And what is this but to make greater the enemies that you have already, and to force others to become so who would otherwise have never thought of it?

Athenians. Why, the fact is that continentals generally give us but little alarm; the liberty which they enjoy will long prevent their taking precautions against us; it is rather islanders like yourselves, outside our empire, and subjects smarting under the yoke, who would be the most likely to take a rash step and lead themselves and us into obvious danger.

Melians. Well then, if you risk so much to retain your empire, and your subjects to get rid of it, it were surely great baseness and cowardice in us who are still free not to try everything that can be tried, before submitting to your yoke.

Athenians. Not if you are well advised, the contest not being an equal one, with honour as the prize and shame as the penalty, but a question of self-preservation and of not resisting those who are far stronger than you are.

Melians. But we know that the fortune of war is sometimes more impartial than the disproportion of numbers might lead one to suppose; to submit is to give ourselves over to despair, while action still preserves for us a hope that we may stand erect.

Athenians. Hope, danger's comforter, may be indulged in by those who have abundant resources, if not without loss at all events without ruin; but its nature is to be extravagant, and those who go so far as to put their all upon the venture see it in its true colours only when they are ruined; but so long as the discovery would enable them to guard against it, it is never found wanting. Let not this be the case with you, who are weak and hang on a single turn of the scale; nor be like the vulgar, who, abandoning such security as human means may still afford, when visible hopes fail them in extremity, turn to invisible, to prophecies and oracles, and other such inventions that delude men with hopes to their destruction.

Melians. You may be sure that we are as well aware as you of the difficulty of contending against your power and fortune, unless the terms be equal. But we trust that the gods may grant us fortune as good as yours, since we are just men fighting against unjust, and that what we want in power will be made up by the alliance of the Lacedaemonians, who are bound, if only for very shame, to come to the aid of their kindred. Our confidence, therefore, after all is not so utterly irrational.

Athenians. When you speak of the favour of the gods, we may as fairly hope for that as yourselves; neither our pretensions nor our conduct being in any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or practise among themselves. Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist for ever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do. Thus, as far as the gods are concerned, we have no fear and no reason to fear that we shall be at a disadvantage. But when we come to your notion about the Lacedaemonians, which leads you to believe that shame will make them help you, here we bless your simplicity but do not envy your folly. The Lacedaemonians, when their own interests or their country's laws are in question, are the worthiest men alive; of their conduct towards others much might be said, but no clearer idea of it could be given than by shortly saying that of all the men we know they are most conspicuous in considering what is agreeable honourable, and what is expedient just. Such a way of thinking does not promise much for the safety which you now unreasonably count upon.

Melians. But it is for this very reason that we now trust to their respect for expediency to prevent them from betraying the Melians, their colonists, and thereby losing the confidence of their friends in Hellas and helping their enemies.

Athenians. Then you do not adopt the view that expediency goes with security, while justice and honour cannot be followed without danger; and danger the Lacedaemonians generally court as little as possible.

Melians. But we believe that they would be more likely to face even danger for our sake, and with more confidence than for others, as our nearness to Peloponnese makes it easier for them to act, and our common blood ensures our fidelity.

Athenians. Yes, but what an intending ally trusts to is not the goodwill of those who ask his aid, but a decided superiority of power for action; and the Lacedaemonians look to this even more than others.

At least, such is their distrust of their home resources that it is only with numerous allies that they attack a neighbour; now is it likely that while we are masters of the sea they will cross over to an island?

Melians. But they would have others to send. The Cretan Sea is a wide one, and it is more difficult for those who command it to intercept others, than for those who wish to elude them to do so safely. And should the Lacedaemonians miscarry in this, they would fall upon your land, and upon those left of your allies whom Brasidas did not reach; and instead of places which are not yours, you will have to fight for your own country and your own confederacy.

Athenians. Some diversion of the kind you speak of you may one day experience, only to learn, as others have done, that the Athenians never once yet withdrew from a siege for fear of any. But we are struck by the fact that, after saying you would consult for the safety of your country, in all this discussion you have mentioned nothing which men might trust in and think to be saved by. Your strongest arguments depend upon hope and the future, and your actual resources are too scanty, as compared with those arrayed against you, for you to come out victorious. You will therefore show great blindness of judgment, unless, after allowing us to retire, you can find some counsel more prudent than this. You will surely not be caught by that idea of disgrace, which in dangers that are disgraceful, and at the same time too plain to be mistaken, proves so fatal to mankind; since in too many cases the very men that have their eyes perfectly open to what they are rushing into, let the thing called disgrace, by the mere influence of a seductive name, lead them on to a point at which they become so enslaved by the phrase as in fact to fall wilfully into hopeless disaster, and incur disgrace more disgraceful as the companion of error, than when it comes as the result of misfortune. This, if you are well advised, you will guard against; and you will not think it dishonourable to submit to the greatest city in Hellas, when it makes you the moderate offer of becoming its tributary ally, without ceasing to enjoy the country that belongs to you; nor when you have the choice given you between war and security, will you be so blinded as to choose the worse. And it is certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best. Think over the matter, therefore, after our withdrawal, and reflect once and again that it is for your country that you are consulting, that you have not more than one, and that upon this one deliberation depends its prosperity or ruin.

The Athenians now withdrew from the conference; and the Melians, left to themselves, came to a decision corresponding with what they had maintained in the discussion, and answered: "Our resolution, Athenians, is the same as it was at first. We will not in a moment deprive of freedom a city that has been inhabited these seven hundred years; but we put our trust in the fortune by which the gods have preserved it until now, and in the help of men, that is, of the Lacedaemonians; and so we will try and save ourselves. Meanwhile we invite you to allow us to be friends to you and foes to neither party, and to retire from our country after making such a treaty as shall seem fit to us both."

Such was the answer of the Melians. The Athenians now departing from the conference said: "Well, you alone, as it seems to us, judging from these resolutions, regard what is future as more certain than what is before your eyes, and what is out of sight, in your eagerness, as already coming to pass; and as you have staked most on, and trusted most in, the Lacedaemonians, your fortune, and your hopes, so will you be most completely deceived."

The Athenian envoys now returned to the army; and the Melians showing no signs of yielding, the generals at once betook themselves to hostilities, and drew a line of circumvallation round the Melians, dividing the work among the different states. Subsequently the Athenians returned with most of their army, leaving behind them a certain number of their own citizens and of the allies to keep guard by land and sea. The force thus left stayed on and besieged the place.

About the same time the Argives invaded the territory of Phlius and lost eighty men cut off in an ambush by the Phliasians and Argive exiles. Meanwhile the Athenians at Pylos took so much plunder from the Lacedaemonians that the latter, although they still refrained from breaking off the treaty and going to war with Athens, yet proclaimed that any of their people that chose might plunder the Athenians. The Corinthians also commenced hostilities with the Athenians for private quarrels of their own; but the rest of the Peloponnesians stayed quiet.

Meanwhile the Melians attacked by night and took the part of the Athenian lines over against the market, and killed some of the men, and brought in corn and all else that they could find useful to them, and so returned and kept quiet, while the Athenians took measures to keep better guard in future.

Summer was now over. The next winter the Lacedaemonians intended to invade the Argive territory, but arriving at the frontier found the sacrifices for crossing unfavourable, and went back again. This intention of theirs gave the Argives suspicions of certain of their fellow citizens, some of whom they arrested; others, however, escaped them.

About the same time the Melians again took another part of the Athenian lines which were but feebly garrisoned. Reinforcements afterwards arriving from Athens in consequence, under the command of Philocrates, son of Demeas, the siege was now pressed vigorously; and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves.
End Melian Dialogue

Kola, this short piece has haunted me since I was introduced to it by historian Dr. Alice Tirrell, aka Tiger Tirrell, back in the early 1960s at Dickinson State. In essence, social compacts at the crest of what we have considered the best that humans can be have and will dismiss all pleas for justice and fairness. The Athenians say, "We will kill you, enslave you, do what we will - because we're stronger - it doesn't matter if you have or can harm us in any way: "When you speak of the favour of the gods, we may as fairly hope for that as yourselves; neither our pretensions nor our conduct being in any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or practice among themselves. Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist for ever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do. Thus, as far as the gods are concerned, we have no fear and no reason to fear that we shall be at a disadvantage."

'Twas not not a fine day the Athenians came to talk to the Melians - and there's less than fine days ahead for many around the world who find themselves far weaker than their neighboring nations. Perhaps war is bred in the bone - inevitably human - and unavoidable. I would prefer to believe that 'tis not so - that we are more human when we take care of each other as I hope you, my kola, are doing this fine day wherever you are. May be a nice day in Kansas City -- but the Twins just lost -- again. The Royals are 10 and 0 at home. And the Twins have lost their sixth game in a row. Not good -- but it's still a beauuuuuuuuutiful day in Dakota.

Ev Albers

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2003

Kola --
This glorious day in Dakota finds me totally preoccupied with work -- and I'm feeling well enough to do it -- catch up with two days worth by tomorrow A.M. Please check out yesterday's posting if you didn't get a chance to read it. Be well, take care of each other and of yourselves.

​Ev Albers

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2003

​Charlie Mingus, one of the great jazz bassists and composers, would have been eighty-one today, had he not died before his time, months before his fifty-seventh birthday in 1979. Charlie would have enjoyed this beauuuuuuuuuuuuutiful day in Dakota, an April day when temperatures here in Bismarck will soar to the low seventies (sure, there may be the weest bit of wind) and the sun will shine brightly. Fishermen will be out on the Missouri - and farmers in the fields. 'Twill be a dry year unless we get some rain - and there won't be much gumbo out in those fields - not that a little patch of gumbo stops the big rigs used to seed today - much of the ground isn't even tilled - and certainly not plowed the way it was when I was growing up out in Hannover Township in Oliver County. We didn't know who in the hell Charlie Mingus was back in the 1950s when he was in his thirties -- but you can learn all about him here. Raised in Watts, California, Charlie found his way to New York where he studied with the best - the double bassist of the New York Philharmonic and with the leading jazz composers - by the 1940s he was touring with the likes of Louis Armstrong and Lionel Hampton. Charlie once observed, "Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity." He always maintained that his skill on the bass was his own - he had to work hard to be as good as he was - but he attributed his musical compositions to God.

April 22 is noteworthy for other birthdays and happenings, but none can compare with the gift whatever gods may be gave the middle world in 1922 - Charlie Mingus. Among those born on April 22 is the woman some American Indians wished she had not - Queen Isabella I of Spain in 1479 - that patron of Christopher Columbus - perhaps he might have never come west had it not been for Isabella - she was dead by age twenty-five, but by then, the damage had been done. It was this day in 1864, during the Civil War, that Congress decided to put "In God We Trust" on all of the nation's currency - and 'tis the birthday of Lenin (1870), J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904), Immanuel Kant (1724), and English novelist Henry Fielding (1707). If you're of a mind to toast perhaps the world's greatest eyebrow archer, today is the sixty-sixth birthday of actor Jack Nicholson, who is riding high these days. And on April 22 in 1994, Richard Nixon died at age eighty-one - who is my nominee for the saddest smiler of all time. And Ole Rolvaag was born on on this day in 1876 - his Giants in the Earth remains the classic of the homestead years on the northern Great Plains - and the struggle to be as human as possible in what Rolvaag describes as less than paradise.

In Iraq today, millions of Shihite Iraqis stream into Karbala after marching while they whipped their backs for as much as sixty miles - the pilgrimage was one forbidden by Suddam Hussein. They do so in anticipation of securing a place in paradise beyond this middle world. The Shihites want a religious state - and their cries today are for the United States to leave immediately and for Israel to go away. We didn't know the difference between a Shihite and a Sunni Muslim back in the 1950s in Hannover Township - but very few Americans in 2003 have any clue whatsoever what that difference is on April 22, 2003. Whipping oneself on a pilgrimage is not limited to Islam, of course - 'tis a Christian tradition that goes way back - and continues among some fringe orders of flagellants in the twenty-first century. It's most complicated - and most difficult to take Charlie Mingus' advice and make this complicated matter simple. There's the genuine element of sacrifice of one's physical well-being in return for the gift of salvation - or as partial payment for paradise. Practitioners say it's a marvelous way to focus attention on one's mortality. For the Shihites, it's payment for the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed who was martyred 1300-1400 years ago. For some self-abusing Christians, it's the same matter - punishing themselves for the death of Jesus.

Today and tomorrow are only foretastes of things to come - the Persian Iranians are fomenting in southern Iraq, and 'twill be most difficult indeed to divorce state and religion in the new Iraq - or to settle the religious differences between the Palestinians and Israelis - or to preclude further bloodshed and war in the name of God - historically, most wars have been fought in the name of God, after all.

As a young teenager in the mid-late 1950s in Hannover Township, I thought often and deeply about might have to be done to be able to sustain my freedom to believe in the one, true, and only religion, Missouri Synod-Lutheranism. Nuclear war with the Godless Soviet Union was an omnipresent possibility - and we prayed fervently each Sunday for some miraculous turn-around. On an April day like today - especially on Saturdays - I would be in the rocky fields of our half-section of paradise picking rocks and wondering about the stupidity of Indian people starving while millions of cows wandered the streets. We grew as many rocks as wheat or oats in those days - has to do with the frost pushing up the rocks each year. My father practiced the old-fashioned three-bottom-plow-make-it-black-to-get-it-ready method of farming, and many a day he would spend as much time changing plow shares after turning over a new rock as he did plowing. The rocks - large and small - would be loaded on a stone boat - a simple flat group of 2 by 8's, nailed together at one end with another - and hauled to the middle of the native grass up the hill to the south of the farmstead - land just too hilly and rocky to plow. Eventually, a guy with a caterpillar tractor came through and buried the huge rock piles - but I imagine they are slowly making their way back to the surface.

Picking and hauling rock is a humbling experience - 'tis labor at its lowliest - and one that offers the possibility of no small self-righteousness in doing elemental work to scratch a living from the soil as one contemplates his fortune in being born into the one true faith. 'Tis also the weest bit dangerous - for one's very soul might scab and die to the hardness of the eternal rocks - isolating the true believer from the rest of humanity and forestalling all understanding.

Any hope of peace in the Middle East - or any general cessation of killing each other in the name of God in the middle world - lies with understanding - and understanding comes from approaching the ideas and beliefs of those different than ourselves with respect and a genuine quest to learn why they think and believe as they do. That begins at least one step beyond dismissing others as people less than human - be they Shihite or Israeli, Islamic fundamentalist or zealous Zionists.

The fields of the middle world are rocky indeed this April 22, 2003, kola. We've got a good deal of work to do - we're far from treating all humans as equally worthy. Consider only this: we are informed daily of the casualties of the "good guys" in the Iraq war. The preliminary estimates of the members of the Iraqi military who have been killed is between 2,000 and 3,000 - but one is certain of these numbers. What is significant is that we know nothing about any one of those killed - we don't know them as a human being - with the possible exception of a high-ranking Iraqi official confirmed killed. We know a little bit about some of the civilians killed and those wounded - but not much. In some ways, our multitude of 24/7 news folks might do the future of humanity a great service by helping us understand who those Iraqis we defeated were and why they fought - peace begins with understanding.

Kola, we Americans enjoying this glorious day - arguably the most beauuuuuuuuuuutiful here in Dakota of any place in the world today - we Americans on this day in 2003 are some 290,787,869 of a total human population of 6,288,263,951 -- not even ½ of 1 percent of the people alive today. Over a billion people in the world - about one-sixth - are Muslims. We would do well, kola, to learn more about them as we strive to take care of each other in this rocky middle world.

Ev Albers

Monday, April 21st, 2003

For April 20 & 21, 2003'Tis a gloriously gorgeous day in Dakota this Monday after Easter Sunday here in Dakota - I'm sure that yesterday was a grand and beauuuuuuuuuutiful day as well, but I languished half-awake from about 10:00 P.M. on Saturday night until after 8:30 this morning - something of a narcoleptic state of strange dreams and nausea on a day that the finest of Dakota cuisine could be had across the Capital City at brunches and other eateries - my loving spouse came through with a couple of treats I could manage - crepes and the weest bit of strawberry jello with bananas. I do hope this inability to take food in more palatial form is not the new norm for me - I would look most glumly upon such - nor do I expect to quietly accept being abed or in a recliner for eighteen hours as I was yesterday.

Today is far better - I'm at my office, dealing with the emergencies and urgent requests - drinking on the job, as well - a can of non-alcoholic Sharps - non-alcoholic beer is one of the things that slide down - better than water. When I did wake Saturday and Sunday evenings, it was to the sound of the Minnesota Twins losing to those damned Yankees - that's the fifteenth time in a row - all of the games this season. The Twins have a final chance this afternoon - maybe if they score a few runs and have a chance of pulling out one victory, I'll stay awake to get some work done. 'Twill be a most welcome diversion - whatever the outcome - listening to a ballgame - I was most uneasy all of yesterday as I watched news shows - and the welding of Easter and the promise of renewal with patriotic fervor over America's conquest of the Saddam Hussein regime - and the shameless bashing of the French, Germans, the United Nations, and all those who do not agree that all we have done in Iraq is in the best interest of culture and civilization for millennia to come - from the newscasters on Fox News to Pat Robertson and his 700 Club.

Halley's Comet rode high on this day in 1910 when Mark Twain died - just as he thought, since he had come in with Halley's in 1835, he would depart with the next 75-year visit of the Comet. Methinks, were Mark Twain alive today, he would be rolling over in his grave, to borrow a phrase from President Ford in reference to Lincoln's take on a contemporary situation. Were, in fact, Twain be able to time-travel to 2003, he probably would have drawn parallels between the imperialistic element of American foreign diplomacy in his time and the new role of the United States as the "Keeper of Civilization" more than ninety years later.

Twain found no justification for war - and no patriotism in supporting war. In his darkest piece, What is Man?, Twain wrote

Begin Twain Quote
Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out...and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. ..And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man"--with his mouth.
End Twain Quote

Twain also wrote in his 1906 Glances at History, To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, "Our country, right or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation." In his Chronicle of Young Satan, Twain wrote, "Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."

Twain would be most disturbed my our failure to evolve beyond the self-serving, blind patriotism of his time - "To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, 'Our country, right or wrong,' and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation." Our patriotism - the kind that expresses itself in an American flag on every car, invocation of God on our side from pulpits across the nation on the holiest of Christian holidays yesterday, and the screeching "You're either with us or against us" from talk show hosts and now, those who call themselves newspeople, reinforces for those of us, kola, concerned about the way in which the rest of the world sees us as the latest incarnation of the capitalistic missionaries of the nineteenth century, bent on conversion to a one true faith followed by working one's ass off in order to acquire stuff one had not idea existed or was useful before conversion. Twain concluded of America in the years before his death, "We have a bastard Patriotism, a sarcasm, a burlesque; but we have no such thing as a public conscience. Politically we are just a joke." Of course, we are anything but a joke militarily in the year 2003 - and the fact that we can squish any nation like an annoying bug makes our particular brand of patriotism loathsome to the rest of the world. Finally, times like these - even to a greater extent than Twain's time because of the omnipresence of media in our lives, especially the cheering newscasters, foster a particular brand of unthinking patriotism - what Twain calls "shouting with largest crowd" --

Begin Twain Quote
We teach them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter--exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place--the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan.
End Twin Quote from Mark Twain, A Biography

Kola, I trust you have given your conscience to no other for keeping, and that it's own that demands recognition of all humans as entitled to the care and respect you give yourself and your loved ones.

Ev Albers

Saturday, April 19th, 2003

​Absolutely beauuuuuuuutiful day in Dakota, kola - cool, the weest bit of rain from time to time, a perfect April Saturday in the most perfect of places. I was thinking back to this April 19th ten years past - April 19, 1993, when the Branch Davidian compound burned to the ground in Waco, Texas - some eighty people, including twenty-two children, perished in that fire. I was in San Francisco attending a gathering of new members of state humanities councils hosted by the National Endowment for the Humanities. I remember it well, because I watched the whole of it on television while getting ready to leave for the airport and the trip home. The day before I had gone to Candlestick Park to watch a twelve-inning marathon between the San Francisco Giants and the visiting Atlanta Braves - it was cold and windy - and I got a terrific sunburn. The game was almost forfeited in the late innings because it was "Ball Day," and disgruntled fans threw hundreds of baseballs onto the field - the umpires warned, the announcer pleaded, and it finally stopped. Both teams emptied their bullpens, except for the next starting pitcher. Many fans were particularly disgruntled because beer had stopped flowing in the bottom of the eighth inning - and there were a couple of hours more to go. The place almost became uncivilized - but rules prevailed in the end.

Whether rule or rule of law prevailed at the Branch Davidian Compound near Waco, Texas, ten years ago today continues to be debated. The new Clinton Administration and the Justice Department of Janet Reno had their hands full answering questions about unnecessary use of force - and the FBI fed both information defending the conflagration as part of a mass suicide. Since then, many scholars and filmmakers have reviewed what happened - obviously, the deaths by gunshot and the fire itself were not solely the action of those inside the compound. Moreover, there is considerable evidence that both the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI did not divulge the whole truth in testimony before Congress. What is most interesting from the perspective of ten years is the eager defense of the federal by many notable Congresspeople today - it's juxtaposed with rather damning evidence to the contrary in the 1996 documentary on the incident -- Waco: The Rules of Engagement, nominated in 1997 for an Oscar for best documentary. The film aired today and tonight on True Stories on Starz Encore - the upshot of it all is that those perceived as different in American society - especially those who profess a religion other than some mainstream faction of Christianity or Judaism - these dissenters are often in deep trouble and subject to less than humane and civilized treatment. Any hint that the government agencies of our social compact have been actively involved in suppressing the rights of those who are different and in treating them as less than full citizens does enormous harm to our society - it builds distrust of the government, paranoia, and fosters the kind of warped sense of addressing wrong that was partially responsible for the death of 166 in the Oklahoma bombing of the Federal Building on this day in 1995, two years after Waco.

Among the current challenges facing citizens in the United States in 2003 is wading through the interpretations of Islam by many mainstream churches - and seeking greater understanding of the religion before accepting the quick and dirty dismissal of Islam by so many televangelists who dismiss all Arab people as subhumans who subscribe to a religion of hate and war, of murder of all who are infidels. Until we Americans, members of the American social compact, understand that individual rights withdrawn from any member of the compact jeopardize our own freedom, we are less than prepared to be responsible citizens.

Today's birthday boy, by the by, is my friend and brother-in-law, Wayne Huss of the Denver suburb, Northglenn. Wayne and I have a great deal in common - we have both been married to Kubik women - two sisters born to Alfons and Dorothy Kubik - for more than two decades, and we show every sign of sticking with them until death parts us from them. We are blessed, of course, both of us, with loving spouses who are the best of mothers and wives - and we share something of a shortcoming - at times we seem deaf to what our spouses are saying. Wayne has an excuse - he has suffered considerable hearing loss, wears ear phones - and sometimes he forgets to turn them on. My excuse doesn't wash as well - that I'm preoccupied thinking of others things - this can really get one into trouble because it hints that anything could be more important than what one's spouse is saying. Happy Birthday, Wayne! You're the greatest of dads - now grandad to little Tyler - and you deserve all the love and respect your wife Delores and daughters Chrissy & Jennie and their husbands can muster - you are a good fellow with the kindest of hearts - a Vietnam vet (platoon leader) who has inspired his daughters to careers that build society rather than destroy it - I sure hope you can find a way to set aside your incredible modesty and be just the weest bit proud of being one hell of man, Wayne Huss! I toast you with my O'Doul's - and trust you are having a grand time with your grandson today.

Kola, I trust you are taking care of yourselves and looking out for each other as you search for ways to make our society a better place in terms of our striving to understand each other and to live in harmony with those who many not share all of our beliefs --

Ev Albers

Friday, April 18th, 2003

​Good Friday 2003, April 18 - back home in Dakota, back on then tenth day since leaving the best possible place to live in the universe as we know it. 'Tis the most glorious of days, a most beauuuuuuuuutiful day - temperature in the brisk and invigorating 30s-40s - unlike that day just four days past when my spouse and I wandered aimlessly through the streets of Milwaukee in 86 degree heat - and I was chilled, demanding heat - sweat was pouring off my poor spouse's face as she tried to locate Oklahoma Street and her Aunt Agnes's house - the last surviving sibling of Lesle's father's family. Now that was quite a day - we departed after a couple of hours of visit at this place my wife visited as a child - a block or two from Lake Michigan - and went on to my son Albert's place - we've been there many times, but my dear spouse lost her way several times trying to get into Madison. Home at last - after two delightful days with Leslie's brother Don and his Joy's palatial home - and a Twins game last night - completing the sweep of the Tigers and the fourteenth consecutive win of the Twins over the Tigers going back to last year. We had a wonderful time with my daughter and her friend and our St. Paul friends Jim Smith and Cheryl Dickson at the game - it made my trip. A grand, grand time, but I'm so happy to be here in Bismarck on the east bank of the Missouri River, which we reached in six and one-half hours from Don and Joy's home - 436 miles west on old I-94.

During these past eight hours, I've been thinking about how remarkable the human is in terms of selective memory - kola, I was literally beaming as I descended the stairs to good seats around the third base line after five or six days of not being certain that I was going to recover from the pits that followed each day of chemo this time around - I still find food most repugnant and difficult to swallow - but the extreme nausea was gone - and a kind of weakness centered in the solar plexus along with low body temperature and chills - these were gone, and I enjoyed every second of sitting in those plastic seats, cheering for the Twins and talking baseball with all who would listen. And - the Twins won - three home runs, two by Bobby Kielty - ah, kola, 'twas glorious - as was the ride home with absence of discomfort. 'Tis glorious to be alive and well enough to be glad that you are among the living.

Some months ago, my friend Dave Solheim of Dickinson State College - the Chair-Elect of the North Dakota Humanities Council, pointed out a poem in Garrison Keillor's Good Poems, his collection of poetry he's featured on The Writer's Almanac. It's Minnesota poet John Berryman's "Address to the Lord" - a fitting poem for this Good Friday, methinks:

Address to the Lord

John Berryman

1
Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake,
inimitable contriver,
endower of Earth so gorgeous & different from the boring Moon,
thank you for such as it is my gift.

I have made up a morning prayer to you
containing with precision evrything that most matters.
'According to Thy will' the thing begins
It took me off & on two days. It does not aim at eloquence.

You have come to my rescue again & again
in my impassable, sometimes despairingly years.
You have allowed my brilliant friends to destroy themselves
and I am still here, severely damaged, but functioning.

Unkowable, as I am unknown to my guinea pigs:
How can I 'love' you?
I ony as far as gratitude & awe
confidently & absolutely go.

I have no iea whether we live again.
It doesn't seem likely
from either the scientific or the philosophical point of view
but certainly all things are possible to you,
and I believe as fixedly in the Resurrection-appearances to Peter
  and
                                                                                            to Paul

     as I believe I sit in this blue chair.
Only that may have been a special case
to establish their initiatory faith.

Whatever your end my be, accept my amazement.
May I stand until death forever at attention
for any your least instruction or enlightenment.
I even feel you will assist me again, Master of insight & beauty.

Like Berryman - that deeply troubled soul who managed to write poetry in spite of his depression and alcoholism - I feel every day the possibility of renewal, and that's the greatest gift of all from whatever gods may be - perhaps, in no small part, our god-given gift to be able to give the hope that we can begin the world anew to ourselves. Berryman, perhaps, forgot his prayer - and sunk so deeply into his depression that he was not able to say, "I even feel you will assist me again, Master of insight & beauty" in those days before he took his own life in 1972. We would do well, kola, to never forget that we are not alone - something I tell myself everyday. Or perhaps was despair that Berryman felt he could never again effectively connect to other human beings - the greatest of all human needs, absolutely essential to sanity and happiness. In Canada, church officials are revising traditions involving human contact in an effort to combat SARS - placing the communion wafer in the hand instead of on the tongue, not using the common cup, and not shaking hands and embracing during the observances of Easter.

In some ways, cancer treatment brings one to this unhappy pass - when the chemo lowers immunity so much that one fears normal human contact - and were such to last, transforming one into a "bubble boy" - the cure well may be worse the disease.

But this is a glorious Friday, kola - with time enough to read the weest before the Twins take on the mighty Yankees, which I'll see on TV - be well, friends, and take care of yourselves and of each other - never become so afraid of whatever germs or viruses or bacteria there may be that you think twice about giving your kola a hug of encouragement.

Ev Albers

Thursday, April 17th, 2003

April 17, 2003, in greater St. Paul, Minnesota – Roseville, to be exact. My spouse and I are enjoying the hospitality of her brother Don Kubik and his most significant other, Joy Meyers – ‘tis an eight-star facility where five is the top rating. Never has a man been blessed with in-laws like mine, kola. I married well – and got much more than I bargained for with these fine folk. ‘Tis a cool day – a beauuuuuuuuuuuutiful day, this ninth day of exile from Dakota, where ‘tis even grander, of course. But I’ll suffer through the exile by taking in a Twins game tonight – against the hapless Tigers – so if the Twins do not win for the fourteenth consecutive time against the Tigers going back to last season, I’ll know that I’m perhaps less than a lucky charm. Daughter Gretchen and Michael Moore will drive over from Glenwood, and we’ll be joined by our dear friends Jim Smith and Cheryl Dickson – and brother Don has agreed to ride along as well. ‘Twill be a grand time, and I’m resting up all day to be in the best of shape.

Today, of course, is the birthday of Nikita Krushchev, born on this day in 1894. Nikita lived long and prospered – he died in 1971. I’ve been watching him pound his shoe on the desk on the history channel this morning – on a great large-screen television that makes old Nikita about life size – that’s the one in living room of palatial place – there’s a bigger one downstairs. Nikita was, of course, far more intelligent than he ever let on – perhaps part of his survival, for, after all, he did survive Stalin. He once said, “Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river.” Think about that one . . . it has great potential, methinks.

Here in the heart of Viking country, my friend Don, Leslie’s brother, handed me a copy of The Kensington Rune Stone, a book by Thomas E. Reiersgord published last year that argues strongly for the authenticity of the stone found in 1898 in Minnesota – with lengthy discussion of interaction between the visiting Norse and the Dakota Sioux. ‘Tis a most interesting idea – built on a new interpretation of the inscription – the author says that it was probably carved in the fourteenth century and offers an account of the death scene of ten men who succumbed to the bubonic plague, the Black Death.

Don and his brother Dave – Don is an entrepreneurial chemist and Dave an engineer – are among the most well-read amateur historians I’ve ever met. Every meeting with them brings new ideas and talks of books I probably wouldn’t ever open if they hadn’t shown me the way.

I must take me to the grand bath facility in this palace – I’ve been doing no small amount of lolly-gagging today – lots of sleep, and a most delicious absence of nausea. I’m weak, but ready to get a few things done – and mightily grateful to be alive and reasonably well this fine April day. I hope for you the best of days – may your spirits soar in anticipation of all the new chances and optimism that this observance brings – Easter. Do take care of yourselves, kola, and please take care of each other. May all of your promises and work be toward building bridges where there’s a river.

Ev Albers

Wednesday, April 16th, 2003

Arrived here after the last of five treatments yesterday, traveled to our son and daughter-in-law's place at Madison after a stop in Milwaukee to see Leslie's Aunt Agnes, who has lived in the same house down on the Lake front for some sixty years. We got lost finding Aunt Agnes. took a wrong turn going into Madison -- temperature was in the eighties, but I was shivering and begging for heat while my poor spouse was sweating profusely and trying to see. Better day today -- the weest bit of rain and much colder temperatures. We are safe with Leslie' Brother Don and his dear Joy - - more tomorrow -- has been an interesting day kola. Be well, take care of each other, and take care of yourselves. I'm thinking of you and all of your kind messages.
​
Ev Albers

Tuesday, April 15th, 2003

Seventh day of exile from beauuuuuuutiful Dakota, but in a place that's quiet and nearly as beautiful as my home -- Illinois Beach Resort in the Illinois Beach State Park on Lake Michigan. I'm up to catch the sunrise this A.M. - 'bout a half-hour or so. 'Tis a wondrous phenomenon, kola, to awake early in the morning after a rather miserable afternoon and evening of chills and nausea and find oneself feeling rather perky, ready to roll out of bed. I'm in the spacious lobby of this hotel - sitting a one of the many comfortable sofas scattered here and there. This way, I can have light without awakening my spouse, who, if all goes well, will be driving for hours today as we wend our way back home via several stops - after one more session in the infusion chair beginning at 7:30 this morning. 'Twill be grand, methinks - sun coming through the windshield, I'll wrap me in one of the double blankets my sister-in-law Janet gave me and hum my way to Madison, Wisconsin, and beyond. Then surcease - no treatments, and perhaps no further downswings in the blood counts and amounts - I won't even have to shoot myself with daily $300+ shots of Neupogen this time if things go as my physician told me they should. Instead of the Neupogen, I was given some sort of white cell inducer at the beginning of my treatment last Friday. But 'twill not be the final treatment, after all - I'll come back in May for exhaustive diagnostic tests on the 8th - and then I'll know for certain what gain has been made - and whether or not the invader remains confined to the pancreas.

I dream of three weeks of productive days, getting something done, before then. If nothing else, this business of staying alive for such as I is time-consuming, and it makes any kind of planning most difficult. In the short term, I really hope to get to see my beloved Twins play this week during the homestand - we have a place to stay with Leslie's older brother Donald and the love of his life, Joy - in fact, dear friends Cheryl Dickson and Jim Smith - Cheryl's the immediate past executive director of the Minnesota Humanities Commission and Jim is an old friend from the Federation of State Humanities Council and the later the Minnesota Historical Society Press. Cheryl wrote yesterday that they would love to see a game or two - perhaps 'twill work out - perhaps my daughter Gretchen and her friend Michael Moore might come over from Glenwood - ah what a party we might have! The Twins open their home series with the Yankees on Friday night - perhaps, if we wend our way slowly northwest.

The unexpected May return visit to Zion has put the kibosh on a talk I had hoped to deliver at the Bismarck Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship on May 11 - which is Mother's Day, and also happens to be my spouse, Leslie's, birthday. The first in a series I've called Conerstones of Civilization, the lecture is titled, "Daughters, Wives and the Natural Superiority of Women." No sober male in his right mind disagrees with the basic premise - women are better at sustaining life and civilization than men are, and they always have been. It's always been true, and in the history of humankind, nothing is more universal than attempts by the male of the human species to ensure that women don't assume power based on their superior knowledge of the human soul and their practical approach to getting on with life and civilization. For the most part, men have never trusted women - neither their fidelity nor their truthfulness. In essence, we men are all Othello - unjustifiably jealous. Women have been - and still are - shrouded and kept from public view, kept out school, and treated like chattel property like a cow or ox, without rights to their own money, without a say in their children's future. Women in the United States and the rest of the developed world have come a long way, of course. Even out in Hannover Township, Oliver County, at St. Peter's Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, where women are now allowed to vote in business meetings. Back when I was growing up, women still sat on the left side of the church with the children and men sat on the right - the job of the women who had cleaned the church, painted it, got it ready for the service, including cleaning the chalice and getting the wafers ready for communion - the job of the women was to keep the children quiet so that the men on the right side of the church could concentrate on the sermon. There's been change - but the Missouri Synod still does not ordinate women, of course. When I was growing up in the late 40s and early 50s, women, in fact, ran everything and acted as though they had no control over anything. They didn't vote in church meetings - but many a man had a long talk with his wife before he went to those meetings. In many families, women, like my mother, worked in the barn and out in the fields as well as in the house and kitchen - three full-time jobs during the summer when she prepared five meals a day, did the milking, got her housework done, and joined us in the fields to shock grain. In the society of Hannover Township, many men welcomed the direction and leadership of their wives. All went well as long as it wasn't obvious to the larger community that the woman was running things. There were a few families who didn't care what others thought - the wife was in charge, and she or her husband didn't give a damn who knew about it. It must have been one of these families who first sat down together as a family in church - don't know if it was the left side or right side of the church.

By the way, no one spends much time in a medical facility without learning quickly that the places would never work without women pretty much running things - the greatest male physician is only as good as his RN - with rare exceptions. Time for me to mosey on over for another infusion, kola. I hope you are taking care of yourselves - that you kola of the male gender are men enough to admit that women are indeed naturally superior - and that you take care of each other.

Ev Albers

Monday, April 14th, 2003

April 14, 2003, sunny day in Zion on the 6th day of exile from my beloved Dakota, where 'tis really beauuuuuuuuutiful, I'm sure. Back in the old chemo infusion chair in forty minutes or so – the routine wears thin, I would think, on my spouse and my family – easy enough for me – all I have to do is sit there and take it with the diversion of television, a few great CDs, and my trust laptop. My wife and family are left wondering what good is being done and whether or not I'll rise up from the zombie condition I was in the past couple of days. This morning, I'm reasonably alert, happy to be alive, and in high hopes that there are still gifts of life and laughter I can bestow on my family. The greatest fear one has in these circumstances is that one is making the lives of one's loved ones more miserable instead of being more focused on love and the glories of shared live and laughter given the real possibility that time and opportunity for such may be limited. 'Tis complicated, especially in my case, by a blithe spirit that totally ignored the possibility of dying in my 60s – I had no intention of retiring and made little preparation for it – I expected to be able to work until a week or so before my death. I still do -–'twill be the greatest of gifts if I can --

My legacy, I fear, are a few books and manuscripts published and not – but, what I would hope would be more important, the time we spent talking about the ideas and trying to sort out together what was really worth while, after all.

The downside of highly aggressive chemo treatment is, indeed, not being able to participate in the cornerstone of gatherings of family and friends – the meal, the dinner out. Often, 'tis better to absent oneself from these occasions because nausea often manifests itself in most unpleasant ways. Not good, kola – the nauseous one feels guilty because he's spoiled the outing, the family finds itself less than festive because of the sick seems to be suffering. I think that I speak for all chemo patients – everyone of them whom I've met, at least – the nauseous one wants nothing more than for life, especially festive occasions, to go on – and to be enjoyed. I can drink an Ensure or Boost and read a book with considerable contentment – of late I've been trying the weest bit of Tibetan meditation with chants on the breath intact, something no one around one should be subjected to – while visitors eat if I'm not put to sight and smell of the food.

Perhaps the most difficult thing for those of us under the death sentence of terminal cancer is recognizing that our loved ones cannot possibly be in the best of spirits at all times – there's many a time when they are going to feel blue for all sorts of reasons, some of which have nothing to do with you. Family members should not have to be a polly-anna cheering section all the time – and they must have a way to take their minds off the omnipresence of trying to cheer up the one with the known medical problem.

'Tis no grandstanding attempt at assuming some sort of grand altruistic, caring attitude that leads me to the following conclusion after six months of dealing with this invader – most of the time with a treatment that sometimes makes one feel worse than the disease. I don't like it, but I'm prepared and ready to live and die with it – and, honestly, I'm in pretty damned good cheer about it. I'm going to do all I can to stay alive as a human who has something to offer his family and friends, a contribution to the greater world -- and when I can't, I'm doing all I can to be ready to make a graceful exit from this middle world. 'Tis far, far more difficult for those who watch us try and then finally die – sooner or later. 'Twas about a year ago we held a memorial for my dear brother-in-law, Joe Kubik – who was finally done in by lymphoma on April 13, 2002. I've written about this extraordinary lover of life many times in this journal – just today I received a note from his eldest son Hans, who lives over in Minneapolis. Hans wrote that he hoped it wasn't too difficult for me to talk with him and his siblings, Tanya and Lauren and Ian, given their father's death from cancer last year – I'll make sure that Hans knows nothing could be farther from how I feel "sentimental old fart" though I be, in dear Hans' words – he may have used another word beginning with "f," I don't remember. Fact is, I want them to know how much I love them and have enjoyed – continue to enjoy – their wit and humor and the delightful human beings they have become. I would find a way to let my own children know how grateful I am for their presence in the world and how proud I am of them – and, at the same time, let them know that just because their father isn't in perfect health, they don't have to be something no one can be – cheery, happy-go-lucky, and totally optimistic every day.

For spouses – and I've met many and heard from many others – for spouses, this situation is the pits, kola. My own has suffered the brunt of my lashing out in frustration over the nausea, shortness of breath, and abhorrence of food atimes – she tries everything to come up with something appetizing – and strongly urges downing fluids and food in the worst of times – good advice that I don't always take kindly. I hope she knows how much I appreciate her incredible sacrifice and how much I want her to find ways to get away from this preoccupation with my problems and discomfort. I would call in cadres of friends and folks who have been there to let her know.

'Tis a remarkable place – places, I guess – these Cancer Treatment Centers of America. There's no real secret to the appeal of this place as opposed to others – after a couple of days of tests and consultations, folks are convinced that they have a chance, that there's hope – as long as there is life, there's hope. 'Tis an amazing thing to witness groups of cancer patients gathered in waiting rooms – the mood is almost jovial, there's a good deal of laughter, and a degree of civility that you simply won't find in the greater community. Often, one can notice family members and spouses raising their eyebrows about the talk – after all we're laughing about our personal most embarrassing sudden onsets of diarrhea brought on by the chemo, the food cravings that exist as desire only, for once the food is set before one and one smells and tastes, 'tis not what was dreamt.

April 14, 2003 – the day after the 260th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson, born April 13, 1743. Jefferson was for a cheery disposition at all costs – even if it was less than heart-felt – he called the mask of good cheer we should wear at all time "artificial good humor." The real stuff was preferably, of course, but if it wasn't available, make it up. For those of us more or less on the same trail, for us who meet here at Zion in our ongoing effort to last the weest bit longer, there's nothing artificial about our good humor. We're happy to be alive today.

​I truly wish you a good day of genuine cheer, today, kola – and trust that it's a beauuuuuuuuuutiful day wherever you find yourselves, doing the best you can at helping others, but recognizing, like the family of terminal cancer patients – that you also have to take care of yourselves.

Ev Albers