Three Score and Ten: Second Life Begins This Year

In the first Canto of the Divine Comedy Dante Aligheri tells us he is 35 years old because he is "In the middle of life's journey."  Life's journey is three score and ten years, seventy years, which I will reach and pass in ten days.

Dante never reached three score and ten. He died in 1321 in exile from his beloved Florence at the age of 56. The belief that 70 years is the lifespan of a human being is a quote from the Book of Psalms, 90:10  

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Seventy is a major life milestone, so it has me thinking about what I will do with the next decade. 

The previous seven years have been "the best of times and the worst of times" of my life.  Living has been wonderful. My family is healthy, I have been healthy except for a few smashed bones, but the major illusions of life got crushed since 2015.  

It seems crazy in retrospect, but I really, really believed America was getting better.  All of my life from 1964 (The Civil Rights Act) to 2015 (Gay Marriage) more people got more rights and more freedom than ever before.  The Jim Crow South became illegal in 1964. By the 1970s women had many more rights, including the the right to choose their own health care options.  

In 2004 George W. Bush won re-election with a dirty, Karl-Rove-run campaign against gay rights.  By 2015, gay marriage was legal across America.  I not only believed more people would get more rights, but I thought the racist rednecks would die out.  A Black man was elected President in 2008!  

But in 2016, it was clear that the gains of women, Blacks, gay people and other minorities were fragile.  The rednecks I thought were going to fade away were cheering their flaccid hero at hate-filled rallies across America. The hater-in-chief promptly put neo-Nazis in the White House.  Every action by Trump from then to now is to reverse freedom and end democracy. His fake Christian base loves and supports him and will give up all of their freedom for the white "Christian" nationalist nation he wants to rule as king.

Which leads me to my goals for the future.  

• Preserve democracy in the US and abroad--in Ukraine and Taiwan particularly as the front lines of democracy in Europe and Asia.
• To support candidates and protesters here and abroad who want to preserve democracy and fight tyranny.
• To do what I can to keep Israel from falling into illiberal democracy or outright religious tyranny.
• To fight for women's rights and gay rights and minority rights alongside those who are attacked Republicans who want to reverse all rights--except for themselves.
• To enjoy the wonderful life I have that allows me to see friends in America and around the world and support what they are doing.  

Three Score and Ten is just the beginning.

Dante's Inferno in Iraq: A Podcast

This post is just a link to a podcast on Sectarian Review. The podcast is about the Dead Poets Society Book Group I led on Camp Adder, Iraq.  Also on the podcast is a professor who teaches Dante every year.

That group started almost eight years ago in July 2009.  Here's the link.

What Place and Period in History Do You Want to Live in? HERE and NOW!

On a recent bicycle ride, a Trekkie on the ride told me about a Star Trek episode he liked in which the crew traveled back in time and visited great moments and times in history.  He talked about times and places he would want to visit.

I would like to visit Florence when Dante was alive, Rome when Julius Caesar ruled, and be in the room when the Constitution was debated.  But if I could live any time, anywhere, I would stay right here in America in the 21st Century.  No question.

It's not like America is perfect.  We have to be the biggest gathering of whining, privileged bitches in the history of the entire Universe.

But by living with whiners who have not missed a meal in their entire lives, I get to live in a time and place in which every injury I manage to inflict on my aging body can be fixed.  I live in a place where I can choose to fast, but otherwise I can eat every meal, every day and if I want to eat snacks till my ass fills two seats on a Greyhound bus.

This month on my Army drill weekend, I swam underwater with a GOPRO Camera making video tape of pilots, crew chiefs and flight medics going through water survival training.

Wow!!

I am 61 years old and because of 19 different surgeries to repair more than two dozen broken bones,  remove shrapnel from my eyes and repair torn ligaments, I can still serve in the Army.  And I can run, shoot and swim underwater, not just fill out paperwork.

With all the whining about our military, our enemies never do anything more than push us then run.  No nation is declaring war on us, invading our territory, or seriously threatening us in any way.

The protests in New York and Missouri and elsewhere say clearly that racial problems still afflict America in the 21st Century, but in my lifetime Black men in the South were lynched.  Jim Crow laws were enforced in "The Land of the Free."  In the 1950s America in which I was born, I could not have adopted two Black sons.  Not in Boston, Birmingham or Boise.

On Fox News, there is a war on Christmas, faith is under fire, and Jesus wants you to Open Carry.  But the freedom of worship in America is truly amazing.  World history reeks with religious murder. In most Arab countries they will kill their own citizens if they convert from Islam.  Our tolerance has led almost infinite stupidity in the name of faith.  Just try to imagine Joel Osteen walking the roads of Sanai and Asia Minor with the Apostle Paul and facing persecution and death with Joy!

Next month I will have surgery for the 20th time in my long, healthy life.  A life that keeps getting healthier!  I am writing this post in a warm comfortable home while my strong, healthy sons clean the kitchen and their rooms.  My wife is beautiful, brilliant and an Ironman, and she is the chair of the math department because women who have the drive and talent in America can do that stuff.  Two of my daughters already own houses.  One is having a baby next year.  One is on her way to an academic career.  Another works with very troubled Veterans.

In American in the 21st Century is where all this can happen.  God Bless America!!  He certainly has blessed me.

Pissed Off At Dante: "Virgil Got Screwed!"

I just finished Purgatorio, the second book of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.  Next week I will be having lunch with Brian Pauli who was part of the Dead Poet's Society book group at Camp Adder in Iraq.  Re-reading Dante in Iraq gave me new insight into this beautiful epic poem because I read it with younger soldiers.

Easily the biggest surprise I had was when most of the soldiers in the group got angry at Dante because of Virgil.  At the end of Purgatorio, just before Dante crosses Lethe and begins his ascent into Heaven, Virgil gets sent back to Hell.  Virgil, with other great and good pagans, gets to stay in Limbo, the penthouse of Hell.  Limbo has none of the torments of Hell proper, but it is Hell and has the greatest torment of separation forever from God.

The first time I read Dante, I remember feeling sad about Virgil, but the poet creates his own world so I accepted Virgil's condemnation.

But in human terms, the injustice is glaring.  Virgil was only in Hell because his birth pre-dated Christ.  This is consistent with the theology of the Catholic Church, but strikes modern readers as eternally cruel.  I can't remember which soldier said, but one said, "Virgil got screwed!"

I was surprised at the time, but have since come to agree with the group.  I will push on through the very Roman version of Heaven in Paradiso, but believing that the Virgil was, in reality, dealt with more justly than by Dante.