Eulogy for Cooper

We lost Cooper on Monday. A car hit him and within five to ten minutes it was over. The driver did not stop. Maybe the driver did not know he had hit a cat. Barbara rushed out, picked him up and wrapped him in a sheet. She said it looked like all his legs were broken. Some blood was coming out of his mouth. Jake had stood by Cooper as he lay dying in the street. Barb rushed out again and grabbed Jake to bring him in. He did not resist. She held Cooper as she desperately tried to call someone. Jake licked Cooper and cried. Cooper died as she held him against her breasts.

It was early in a glorious morning. I would normally have still been at home, but I left for New York City at five to take care of our post office box. The Sun was rising over The Bronx when Cooper died. Barbara did not tell me until I came home that evening.

Something did not click immediately. I felt as if Cooper was out, just roaming around Church Street. The gentle creature who loved me dearly, who snuzzled this stranger in the shelter the day we adopted him, and who acted at all times with dignity, and who loved to curl up in our bed with us is dead. We were five, then three, when we brought Jake and Lilly to the shelter. We were lucky to reclaim Jake and tried to regroup in Beacon, NY. Now, the sweetest member of our family is gone.

It is self-indulgent to wail for a loss so relatively small. I have blamed Beacon, Barbara and myself in a round-robin of grief-induced anger. Most of the anger was directed against the gods, who cannot, it seems, leave us be. There is famine in Somalia. Riots have broken out all over England. American families are facing much more disastrous than the loss of 16 pounds of fur. I can try to write away the pain, as if words can act as a salve. The crickets and the katydids chirped tonight as they do every night. Heavy rain came and went. Jake sleeps in one of the chairs. Barbara breathes steadily in the bed. And I put down words and wait for the cat with the elegant, long white gloves to come home.

There is nothing profound about death. We hate it partly because it is so reliable. Death never makes an unforced error. It always wins, so it is boring to watch, unless you have an interest in the player. Everyone takes the field with death and loses. There is nothing to do except bury the defeats and wait for our turn.

Cooper had been through so much with us. He lost his compatriots and his home, too, and endured a hellish ride (he shat himself) to end up in a strange new dwelling. Then a second long, scary ride to a place that took yet another adjustment. Reunited with one of his “siblings”, Cooper and the rest of us were finally feeling we had found a home, however temporary. It turned out to be very temporary for him: less than five months. On Saturday he will be placed in the soil of my mother’s garden. For now, he is in a cold, animal morgue, as unaware as a stone.

There is nothing new under this Hudson River community’s sky this early morning. I hear the train in the distance. A street lamp shines in the window less than 30 seconds of human steps away, but too far for Cooper; he never would have walked the distance to that utility pole. His territory was no more than a house or two in any direction, and too far across the street. If the accident left a mark in the street, the heavy rain that came at sunset would have washed it away. I do not know if it would be fair to the dead if something as simple as rain could wash away our pain. Wine and beer only help me to sleep. Words keep me awake. There is nothing new about any of this.

So here is a short a eulogy for a large, mostly grey and white tabby. Last words for a cat whose soul was as loving as any that I have known. He walked, he hunted and he purred up to our faces and rubbed against our ankles. When he shared our bed, he often stretched out his long white arms to me and his claws would lightly mimic a human squeeze. Barbara, Jake, Lilly, Elisabeth and I loved him without hesitation, and he loved us. That love will find new people and pets, in time, but we will never find a soul to match Cooper’s.

Hateful Expectations

It did not take long for the wagons to form around the issues of politics, violence and guns. They always do whenever a very public display of the worst in human behavior catches our collective attention. With our computer skills, I would not be surprised if groups save argument templates that search-and-replace tools can efficiently update with the latest names, dates, places and wounds.

At least enough time should have been allowed to pass, to bury and mourn the victims of the Tucson killings, before we blathered on about who and what is to blame.

Nothing I can say here is new or enlightening. Then again, nothing anyone has said in the past several days is new or enlightening. From the very first public murder I remember, the assassination of John Kennedy, there has been little originality of thought or debate. So much finger pointing takes place after events similar to the latest killings, it makes me want to recommend limitations on the possession of these offending digits.

The fingers tapping out the words on this keyboard are not being used to point blame, but to record, as honestly as I can, my thoughts and feelings sans any pronouncements about how recent events should change politics or the law. I have the same low opinion of mine own plan, and plans nearly everyone has ever had, to save civilization.

By coincidence a cable television channel the night of the Tucson killings was showing the 1969 movie version of True Grit. It is a deceitful movie. I say this because it celebrates the killing of eight men, uninvolved in any crime we know was committed. None of the eight hombres can be mistaken for Mr. Rogers. One kills his partner before our eyes. Even in terms of frontier justice, however, the killing of eight people to get one murderer is grotesque.

I am not blaming movies or other story-telling media for inuring us to violence. I only note that the violence it depicts is plausible and accepted to a degree that made the movie very popular. We the audience delight in the violence it depicts and we desire these men to be killed. Such stories make sense only because of such hateful expectations.

I began worrying about the expectations of hate because of another movie, this one from Iran called The White Balloon. (The film is the first by Jafar Panahi who is now in trouble with Iranian authorities.) It involves a seven-year-old Teheran girl who is desperate for a goldfish. After much family tumult, she is given the only bill the family has at the moment, which is far too much for a goldfish and too big a burden for a little girl, who is sent alone on the city’s streets to buy the fish. The city is unusually alive since the New Year’s celebration is about to begin. Throughout the film, I anticipated violence, especially as the girl turned a corner or walked past an alleyway. At one point a young soldier on holiday leave joins her, and I thought to myself, here it comes. Nothing came. The young man just wanted to talk to the little girl, who reminded him of his sister at home.

There is plenty of tension in the film. First, a snake charmer artfully enlists the girl and her bill in his act. Then, the girl drops the bill, and it falls in a the grate of a closed store, where she can see, but not reach it. Her efforts to retrieve the bill and get the goldfish are as heroic as Jason’s search for the golden fleece. For whatever reason, I had an expectation of violence before walking into the movie theatre and this wonderful movie, whose sole purpose seemed only to give viewers an idea of what life is like in modern Teheran, frustrated that expectation, and I am grateful for this.

I do not wish for a world where all the films are as violence free as The White Balloon, or where True Grits are banned or censored. That will not happen by regulation, even if such laws could be enacted. The gritty truth is anger brings in listeners, viewers, readers and voters. Without our hateful expectations, True Grit could not have been remade. Violence sells because we buy it, or vote for it. Now, if someone can figure out how to extinguish the anger in our hearts, we might be in for some progress.

A reduction in our hateful expectations is needed, but I am as flummoxed about that as I could be suggesting how to achieve world peace. My only hope is to lower how much hate I can personally accept. That and trying to stay out of the line of fire is enough for anyone.

REPOST: The iZation of Afghanistan

In light of the publishing of the war logs by Wikileaks, The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel, I am reposting this from December. It is hard to admit I have feelings of guilty pleasure about this. Easier to admit is that my heart aches for the people of Afghanistan and the brave members of our military who, again, have laid down their lives in a cause that exists only in the warped minds of our leaders.

Most days that summer, on our way to or from the town pool, we stopped in the library for an hour or so each day to read. We plopped down our swim wear, wrapped in towels, on chairs and tables and raced to the stacks, browsing for our individual interests. There was one book we read together that summer, and the librarian was far sighted enough to allow a group of seventh graders to do so: Dr. David Reuben’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). We boys were at the age of wanting to know everything about everything. It was 1969.

That was the year the Jets won Super Bowl III and The Beatles gave their last performance; when there was a summer of love in Bethel, NY and of hate orchestrated by Charles Manson in Los Angeles; the Mets became Amazin’ and John Lennon and Yoko Ono astonished us by staying in bed for a week; Chicago had four Days of Rage while the outrage from Mai Lai was first revealed. We first landed men on the moon in 1969, and it might have been the year AIDs first landed in the U.S.

That was some year, that 1969.

One more event: on November 3, 1969 President Richard Nixon announced the Nixon Doctrine, or the Vietnamization of our war on Vietnam. He also announced that by December 15, 1969, 60,000 men, including 20 percent of all America’s combat troops, would be withdrawn from Vietnam.

There was a catch. The war did not end until 1975, until after Nixon resigned, and more than a third of all Americans who died as a result of the war died after Nixon announced Vietnamization.

Today, President Obama is announcing another iZation of an American war, eight years after we entered Afghanistan in our decision to punish it for 9/11 and as we continue to ignore the failure of iZation in Iraq. Nixon pointed out that President Johnson had Americanized the war. What he failed to address in his policy was that the war in Vietnam already was, first last and always, a "Vietnamized" war. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon all believed a country, especially one as small and “weak” as Vietnam, could not be viable without America. The excuse, then, was the communists. Now, Presidents Bush and Obama believe Afghanistan (will he include Pakistan?) cannot survive as a country without America. The excuse is terrorism. What excuse will the American President give to the next Richard Van De Geer?

“… I am somewhat fatalistic about believing that I shall never come to serious harm in the military ….” Air Force 2Lt. Richard Van De Geer spoke these words into a tape sent to his friend, who received it on May 15, 1975 (from Dear America, Letters Home From Vietnam, published by W.W. Norton and edited by Bernard Edelman). “I can envision a small cottage someplace, with a lot of writing paper, and a dog, and a fireplace and maybe enough money to give myself some Irish coffee now and then and entertain my two friends.”

Van De Geer was the last official American casualty of the war on Vietnam. He said his helicopter unit helped pull close to 2,000 people out of Vietnam.

President Obama has decided to add more lives to the list of useless dead America has compiled in dozens of wars. The simple truth is that Afghanistan will remain as it is and America will withdraw. Nothing we do between then and now will change those facts. No amount of soldiers or bombs dropping from drones will change Afghanistan. The Nixon, now Obama, Doctrine, can only deliver destruction and despair.

“I wish you peace, and I have a great deal of faith that the future has to be ours.”

“Adios, my friend.”

These are the last words Van De Geer spoke into the tape.

It is 40 years since President Nixon gave us details about his plan to end the war on Vietnam. President Obama should have heard those words by now. Given the announcement of his decision tonight, it is clear he cannot understand them. Nixon told future generations, and presidents, that if his Vietnamization policy fails, we aught to heed its critics.

“If it does succeed, what the critics say now won't matter. If it does not succeed, anything I say then won't matter,” said President Nixon on 11/3/1969.

I wanted to know everything about everything in the summer of 1969. Now, I would be happy to have wiped from my understanding these certainties: that whatever President Obama says tonight will not matter and that the Obama Doctrine will fail. For the sake of the people Obama will add to the path of destruction, I pray I am wrong and that I haven’t learned enough.

Sammy the Cartoon Cat

I buried a large orange tabby in April. It was not Sammy. It helped me to think that it was Sammy since we could not bury him. A neighbor found the orange cat dead in his still-blooming forsythia. There was dried blood on the cat’s nose and mouth; my neighbor thought a car had hit the cat and it crawled in the bushes to die. There were no signs of his being feral or stray. All I could guess is that a large orange tabby had vanished from some family’s life.

Sammy was a semi-feral cat who came to us four years ago. The little orange guy was scrawny and scared, but mostly hungry. Babs fed him half and half. At first, he lapped the semi-cream so anxiously that much of it dotted his face and wet the ground around his bowl. He lost the chary, mean look of a stray and before long and became a round, happy fellow. He had muscular shoulders and looked a little bow-legged. When we called him for dinner, he trotted down the road on front paws that seemed curled, like Popeye’s fists. It is why we called him the cartoon cat. He was part of our life for seven months.

One cold day he went out and never came back.

FOUND A CAT

One, large, orange tabby on XXXX Road. We are sorry to tell you he is dead. It looks as if he had been hit by a car and was able to walk into a neighbor’s bushes. He looked like a well-cared for pet.

We carefully wrapped him in a clean blanket and buried him in a quiet spot on our property. If you think this was your cat, please feel free to call us at XXX-XXX-XXXX.

This is what I posted the old fashioned way, on the local supermarket bulletin board. Someone took down the sign, wrote the following, and moved my note to another part of the board.

Yes People drive way to fast on XXXX You know who you are This time a cat next time what Please use you heads!! [sic the whole note]

Nora and Paul had their weekend home in the upstate forest where I live. They retired there in the mid-1990s. Paul was an engaging, wry man who could twist an irony from nearly any casual conversation and played with words as delightfully as anyone I have ever known. Nora edited a book on the local flora and fauna of the area, had a sharp intellect and took great care of her husband, especially after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, a few years after we met them eight years ago. Nora was masterful in covering her husband’s lapses. Not until we visited Paul in the hospital, after the accident, was the disease clearly evident.

There are no speed signs posted on the forest road. The road is narrow, and even if the state speed limit is legally 55, going that fast down the road is risky business.

One part of the road has a deep dip. It is impossible to see a vehicle coming until it is nearly on top of you. Nora wanted Paul to keep up his driving skills in case something happened to her. They chose to turn around at the bottom of the dip. A hunter’s cabin is there; its parking space is not an ideal place to turn.

From the other direction came another vehicle. I do not know if it was traveling fast enough to break the “official” speed limit. It left long and dark skid marks that ended in broken glass and plastic by the time I surveyed the scene.

Nora and Paul’s car was turned so the passenger side faced the vehicle when it hit them. Paul was nearly unscathed. Nora had broken ribs, a pierced lung, horrible bruises on her face and upper body. She needed a machine to help her breath. The doctors did a tracheotomy. Paul was on a separate floor from the IC unit. His Alzheimer’s was worse. He spoke to us as if it was still WWII and he was just off the bomber on which he served. When they left the hospital, Nora and Paul went to different nursing facilities. One place could not manage their separate needs. Their house was sold and we lost touch with them.

It was a bad place to turn by a driver who should not have been behind the wheel under any circumstances and they were hit by a car going “to” fast.

I took the FOUND A CAT sign down after I saw the scrawled comment. I did not want its writer’s anger to make the situation worse than what it was. I had taken a dead cat from my neighbor’s bushes and buried it. That is all.

Raising One Hand and Another

I was a small child, born in the last month of the year. The public school system transformed my life by allowing me to start school a year later. Instead of being the youngest, smallest kid in class, I became the oldest and one of the smallest kids in class.

My local Catholic church did not see it in the same way. When I attended catechism class for for the first time, I was put into the class of older children the public school administration decided I was not ready to join. So, I was thrust into a school room full of unfamiliar children who were all older and bigger than me. That in itself was a life-changing childhood experience and then I had to go to the bathroom.

I raised my hand and asked the nun if I could go to the bathroom. She said no. I wet my pants. When my mother picked me up and saw what had happened she would not allow me to go back to catechism. Thus, I became a lapsed Catholic at a very early age.

Though I continued to go to mass for several years, I never received Confirmation. The beauty of the Latin mass still rings in my head and I would have liked going to confession and to have been a part of the ornate ritual and ceremony of the Catholic church. Maybe it was all for the best. A friend of mine was a devout Catholic and after we saw The Exorcist together he told me he suffered from horrible nightmares; I experienced the movie as one would a roller coaster and nothing more. God works in mysterious ways.

There was one more thing about the Catholic church I learned when I was young. It was from my mother who told me her aunt, who brought up my mother in the Sudetenland of the 1930s, warned her about the priests. My mother’s aunt told her not to go anywhere alone with a priest. My mother passed along this little bit of wisdom.

So it is with mixed feelings I entered a Catholic hospital this week to visit a friend and neighbor who suddenly discovered he has lung cancer. About a week ago he was suffering from lung congestion, a nagging flu, or so he thought. It was pneumonia and in the x-ray of his chest the doctors saw a small tumor. The tumor is cancerous and was the cause of the pneumonia. He faces either an operation to remove the tumor, which may or may not be possible, or chemotherapy. He has no health insurance and not enough money to pay for an operation nor therapy. The hospital took him in, did the tests, put him in a private room (they feared the pneumonia would spread to other patients) and are working with him to apply for Medicaid. His survival might be in the hands of God, but because he is in a Catholic hospital, his prognosis might include seeing his two small children grow up.

There is no bitter language being spared by church critics to describe the comfort with which the Catholic church has abetted its pedophiles. The least persuasive way the Church defends itself is by pointing out sexual abuse of children is not exclusive to any large organization entrusted with the care of children.

That, of course, is malarkey. Because, as we now sadly realize, nobody, nowhere, no time, no way, no how knew the extent, depth, or horror of this scourge, nor how to adequately address it.

If my mom, a poor little girl, living with her aunt and uncle (who ran a small tobacco/candy/newspaper store), and who was not even 10 years old when WWII started, was warned about priests, it cannot be too "malarkish" to expect responsible adults, professionals, especially those who oversaw the clergy, to have known what was happening in their own institution. And yet the Catholic church certainly is not the only institution that harbored pedophiles; it is malarkey to believe in the exclusivity or near exclusivity of celibate priests engaged in pedophilia or even to blame the sexual abuse of children on celibacy. I imagine if we examined the juvenile justice system, for one, we would find similar institutional neglect on an even greater scale.

I said it was with mixed feelings I entered the hospital.

It is with similar mixed feelings I heard and watched the health care debate unfold. It will take years to discover if the recently passed health care reform will actually start our secular health care system on the road to universal coverage. I have my doubts. It will take a long time for all of us to receive the medical care that we all support with our taxes, but we do not all receive. My friend does not have years to wait. Meanwhile, despite the experience and doubts about the Catholic church, one of its hospitals is the only institution that stands in the way of my friend and lung cancer. God works in mysterious ways.

I would like to raise my hand and ask that the forces now bitterly engaged in fighting for and against universal health care, for and against the Catholic church and its behavior regarding pedophiles, respond with common decency. There is enough cruelty in life, acts of God we cannot control. Whatever suffering we can alleviate should be done without horribly angry rhetoric that serves neither man nor God.

While it is easy to be angry at the Catholic church, institutions like it are the only protection some of us have when facing illness.

The Two Davids

In a wonderful Tour de Farce, Nicholas Confessore goes over the latest scandal regarding Gov. Paterson and the case of the gratis sports tickets in this morning’s New York Times. At first, I thought, like Casey Stengel: can’t anybody play this here game? Then I realized the problem is that everybody knows how to play this game all too well.

There is a Broadway comedy that can come out of all this, but we’ll have to wait until the whole story unravels. In the meantime, here is a suggestion for Act I of the play.

The cast of characters:
David Paterson: governor, state of New York, the accidental sports fan
David W. Johnson: aide to Gov. Paterson, a passive/aggressive testifier/ticket procurer
Michael G. Cherkasky: chairman of the Commission on Public Integrity, “Cherk”
Cato: Cherk's assistant; a wholly-fictional character made up for the purposes of this farce
Oscar Michelen: Johnson’s curiously incurious attorney
Jeffrey Pearlman: Gov. Paterson’s attorney, the incomplete messenger
Theodore V. Wells, Jr.: another Paterson attorney, the disturbed one
Nicholas Confessore: a New York Times reporter who gets caught up in the process
A large breasted waitress: another wholly-fictional, but visually interesting, character

Act I:

The Commission on Public Integrity (CPI) is trying to learn about the sports tickets Gov. David Paterson received gratis last fall. With Inspector Clouseau-like vigor, CPI Chairman Michael G. Cherkasky (Cherk) issues a subpoena for David W. Johnson, Paterson’s aide. Cherk gives the subpoena to his bumbling assistant Cato to deliver. Cato gets the two Davids mixed up and gives the subpoena for Johnson to Paterson’s attorney Jeffrey Pearlman.

Pearlman, realizing Cato’s mistake, gives the blank, unopened envelope to attorney Oscar Michelen, Johnson’s lawyer, during a lunch meeting. Pearlman tells Michelen the envelope is from Cherk, but Pearlman and Michelen are distracted by the large breasts of the waitress who has come to take their order, and before Pearlman can inform Michelen the envelope contains a subpoena.

Michelen is also distracted by the worry about how his client, who has just been suspended without pay, can afford his services, stuffs the envelope in his pocket, saying he will read it later.

When Michelen gets home his wife sends the suit to the cleaners, but not before, as usual, she goes through the pockets. She discovers a phone number (of the lunch waitress) and becomes so enraged, she neglects to search the rest of the pockets. The subpoena goes with the suit to the cleaners.

After making sure with Cato (who is beginning to realize his mistake, but does not want to get in trouble) that the subpoena was properly delivered, Cherk and the CPI issue a finding that David Paterson accepted the tickets and lied under oath about paying for them.


Then, Cherk gets a letter in a blank envelope from Theodore V. Wells, Jr., another Paterson attorney, complaining about the CPI's finding. Wells also noted in his letter that David Johnson never testified, which shows, Wells charges, that the CPI rushed its findings for political reasons. Cherk writes a reply, puts it in blank envelope in his out box. Rushing out to lunch (he is excited to see the new waitress with large breasts everyone is talking about) he calls Cato to pickup and deliver the letter. Cato comes in and takes the wrong letter: Wells’ letter.

Meanwhile, a reporter for the New York Times, Nicholas Confessore, is checking out the story. Confessore calls Wells’ office about the letter he heard Wells had sent. Wells, finding his original letter (the one Cato mistakenly delivered back to Wells) thinks he never sent it and tells the firm’s spokeswoman to deny any knowledge of such a letter. Next, Confessore calls Cherk, who can no longer find Wells’ letter, due to Cato’s mistake. He covers by telling Confessore the letter is confidential. Confessore calls Gov. Paterson’s office and Paterson’s spokeswoman, who knows nothing about anything, refers Confessore to Wells. The circle is complete.

Confessore is next seen interviewing the new CPI spokeswoman, the large breasted former waitress, at lunch. She tells Confessore that Cherk and Michelen are in discussion about David Johnson’s appearance before the Commission.

End Act I

The problem with producing this farce is that the audience will have to be asked to sit in its seats for four months, and that is just for Act I.

Quick Hit: Massa vs Ensign

Senator John Ensign has been in the news for having an affair with the wife of an aide, Douglas Hampton. He is under investigation for steering lobbying work to Hampton, evidently in order to make up for Ensign's affair with Cynthia Hampton, Douglas' wife. The New York Times first reported on the affair and the alleged arrangement in October 2008. Ensign has been a Senator since January 2001 and served in the House from 1995 to 1999: about 15 years as a national political figure.

Representative Eric Massa resigned his seat on March 8 for allegations he groped male staff members. Massa asserts the charges were part of a White House effort to change his vote against its health insurance legislation. Massa has served in the House of Representatives from January 2009 to March 2010: about one year and two months and he has held no other political office.

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