dual personalities

Memorial Day is coming up, but these days the meaning seems to get lost among the barbeques and long-weekend festivities. This excerpt from the famous speech that Douglas MacArthur made to graduating cadets at West Point in 1962 is a fitting reminder of what we fight for.

“Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

They give you a temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.”

Whole speech

No one uses words like duty and honor much these days, and patriotism is very out of fashion, which is a pity because it’s important.

Equally absent from public discourse is any recognition of how difficult life was for our predecessors. Recently, in an effort to amuse myself and avoid doing anything useful I started looking into our Tukey and Stanley ancestors who settled in Portland, Maine in the 18^th century. I haven’t found much new information yet, but during my search I was struck by how few old buildings there are in Portland. One of the oldest is the Wadsworth-Longfellow house built in 1785 by Peleg Wadsworth, the grandfather of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

It’s a beautiful house, but considering that Portland was first settled in 1632, not very old. Being curious, I investigated, and now I know what happened to the early settlements.

As previously mentioned, Portland was first settled in 1632. An Abenaki raid during King Philip’s War in 1676 destroyed it, so the survivors rebuilt. In 1690, when a combined French and Indian army attacked, the inhabitants took cover in a purpose-built fort. The French and Indians burned the town, and eventually set fire to the fort. When at last the settlers agreed to surrender to the French and opened the gates, the perfidious French stood by while the Indians slaughtered everyone. Portland was wiped out. Ten years later, new settlers arrived, and by 1716 they had established a thriving port. It got burned again during the Revolutionary War and was rebuilt in 1786. In 1808, perhaps anticipating the upcoming war with England, the inhabitants built Fort Scammel on House Island in Portland Harbor.

The city survived the war unscathed, though many citizens served in the navy and army. Tragedy struck once more on July 4, 1866 when a great fire destroyed much of the city. Its citizens rebuilt.

By now, the recurring theme is obvious. Despite repeated disasters and incredibly difficult conditions, the early settlers of Maine did not give up. When they got knocked down, they stood back up and rebuilt; they worked incredibly hard and they did not expect to be perfectly safe, happy, and thriving all the time. No one owed them anything but a chance. This Memorial Day let’s remember the people who came to this country before it was one and somehow managed to build what we now enjoy. That is worth remembering. (I should add that I don’t mean this as some political screed. EVERYONE had to struggle and had a hard time. As I’ve said before, to acknowledge one group isn’t to deny the others.)

*Japanese proverb

Over the past two years, many of my blog posts have remarked on the way things in the world just keep getting worse. Sure, I can live my life mostly like normal because I am privileged enough to go to the grocery store or the gas station without really having to change the way I live. Like many, I can block it all out by insulating myself in a bubble. And I do most weekends. And then Monday morning gives new meaning to a classic Liz Lemon gif.

Well, in a move that the guys at Mockingbird would be jealous of, I am now going to transition from a Liz Lemon gif to talking about Jesus and the Bible. Like my mother, I have also been doing a “read the Bible in a year” plan (we are not doing the same plan and so are rarely in the same place). I’m clearly in the middle of John (and Kings).

Anyway, I highly recommend starting a plan and sticking to it. It is incredibly interesting to read the Bible page by page and it is incredibly meaningful as well. And so, in these ever darkening times, I find that I have no choice but to turn to Jesus.

“Truly, truly I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the son of man will give to you. For on him, God the Father has set his seal. [John 6:25-27]

“Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.'” [John 6:35]

“It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh is no help at all. The words I have spoken to you are spirt and life.” [John 6:63]

“Jesus said to them, ‘My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.'” [John 7:6-7]

“Jesus said to them, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.'” [John 8:12]

“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it.” [John 1:5]

And just because this usually makes me feel better, enjoy Crowder.

When I left work today, I walked up to a nice obsidian blue pearl CRV and started to load my stuff into it only to discover that someone had parked an unlocked imposter exactly where I had left my car. Oops! This is actually the third time I have mistakenly gotten into the wrong vehicle. Does my key fob unlock other cars? Hmm…. While I was busy NOT stealing a car, my second son was dealing with some kind of mink or marten that he saw climb into his car’s engine as he walked across the parking lot at work. Why such an animal chose his car from all the others in the lot remains a mystery, but it could have been worse. Apparently, it’s fairly common for animals to build nests under car hoods. I would not like to meet an angry opossum when I lifted the hood!

Or a large rock python:

Wildlife is great as long as it stays where it belongs. After much banging of doors and repeated hood slamming, my son got the weasel to leave, but what’s to stop it from coming back?

Next time you hear funky noises from your engine check to make sure no critter has taken residence there. In the meantime, have a more exciting weekend than I will!

Well today at work we had some program partners in town from Boston for the first time since early 2020. We really rolled out the welcome mat. And by that I mean, they took us up on our offer of a tour of the Missouri State Capitol. I went along because in my job, I usually don’t venture far from our office on the second floor.

According to Wikipedia, the present capitol, completed in 1917 and occupied the following year, is the third capitol in Jefferson City and the sixth in Missouri history. The first seat of state government was housed in the Mansion House, located at Third and Vine Streets in St. Louis and the second one was in the Missouri Hotel located at Main and Morgan Streets in St. Charles. St. Charles was designated as the temporary capital of the state in 1821 and remained the seat of government until 1826.

The exterior of the Missouri State Capitol is notable for its architectural features: the Baroque dome, rising 238 feet (73 m) above ground level, topped by sculptor Sherry Fry’s bronze statue of Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture; the eight 48-foot (15 m) columns on the south portico; the six 40-foot (12 m) columns on the north portico; the 30-foot (9 m)-wide grand staircase; and the bronze entrance doors, each 13 by 18 feet (4.0 m × 5.5 m)—at the time, the largest cast since the Roman era.^[4]

It’s a very cool building. The Capitol Dome is the first intentionally designed “Whispering Gallery” meaning you can clearly hear a person on the other side of the rotunda if they are speaking into the wall. It is an amazing spectacle. You can read more about it here.

After we left the already way up there Whispering Gallery, we ventured another 200 steps practically straight up to the top of the rotunda. I am not kidding when I say I had no idea how out of shape I am. I think it almost killed me.

The interior of a dome is fascinating. And then we had to take a winding staircase to the door! But I’d say the view was worth it.

I hadn’t been up to the very top since high school when a club visited and our state senator took us up. It is truly wild that 20 years (20 years!) later I work in the building. Anyway, it was a fun field trip.

*the blog title is from a sea shanty I remember from my Michigan camp days and is truly how I felt being at the top of the dome.