The Day the USA Marines invaded Savage, Md

I forget the exact date, but I lived in or near, Savage Maryland off and on from about 1971 to about 1988. And while I was in College at the University of Maryland in the late 70's I worked at the Savage IGA, which was where the WAWA is now off of Main Street. It was run by a nice man who's name I can't recall and I was there part time stocking his shelves, cleaning and sometimes helping the Butcher. I remember his wife, who filled in for him on weekends so he could go to Shul. And his daughter who he put through college so she wouldn't have to run a grocery store. I also remember his butcher, a man named Izzy who seemed old as sin to me and had numbers on his arm, at the time, but was probably actually younger than I am now. Anyway I still remember one weekend day working there as clear as a bell. It was the Weekend Savage got invaded by the Marines.

It was a beautiful day. Not super hot. The kind of day when people came to Savage to take advantage of the mild rapids in the town where the water moved fast enough to avoid leaches and bugs, but was safe enough so that people could swim with a relative lack of fear. People came from miles around to swim there and party. It was a hangout for redneck and hippy type alike. And also got some pretty wild people. But that day I wasn't enjoying the water, but a few local marines were. They went down to the Little Patuxent that we affectionately called "The Savage River" to swim. Parked their jeeps and went into the water.

Apparently a few of the local bullies harrassed and attacked them. I don't know which bullies they were but I can guess as I had a few run ins with them myself. The bullies beat up one of these three marines and they beat a retreat back to Fort Meade. We all knew that Fort Meade contained the National Security Agency and were proud of our non-existent agency and it's mission to keep us safe from the evil Communist menace, and I was too. So were the Marines who then provided the NSA security detail.

The three came back with a small army. I don't know how many jeeps, but they came in with a battallian strength hunting for the bullies who attacked that Marine. One Jeep pulled up to the Store and a few tough looking and angry looking guys asked me if I knew what was going on. I didn't, and they kept on going. I hear they caught the three guys who'd attacked one of their own a few minutes later. I don't recall how the administrative justice went. But I don't feel sorry for the guys who attacked the marines.

I actually thought the whole thing was funny. To me it will always be "the day the Marines invaded Savage."

The Marines eventually were replaced with Federal Protective Service officers. And eventually the existence of Fort Meade was hidden behind new roads, bypasses and the relocation of soldiers to other bases unless they were involved directly in NSA operations. But I was thinking of the story because today is a beautiful day like that, and I wanted to write the story down. Savage is normally a peaceful place, but there were a few wild people and most of them aren't around anymore or would like people to forget they once thought they were bad arses.

This is me around that time

The Fire

Forged in fire, bent and annealed

broken assunder, reforged and healed.

Heated and beaten, beaten and healed.

This is a good sword, created and forged.

 

The fire tests us, sometimes bests us,

as we struggle just to live,

The ineffable, Lord of the Firmament

Tests our metal,

Tests our willingness to forgive.

 

The Lord of Creation;

A word spreading over the ocean

born, reborn, winds and eternal waves

Is defined, redefined, we participate in creation

like a drop of water in the ocean

waves spreading from first contact.

We define the ineffable, we create our image;

In our hubris or blasphemy, we imagine what the divine is all about

and our delusions are crushed

and burned in fire.

 

And we can pray that waves will spread from each point of light,

that we can heal the world, and make it right.

For We either teach and learn,

Or we taste the fire, and are beaten and healed.

Or are broken and discarded.

What do we bequeath?

I will be home one day. And home for to stay.

Deep in a hole in the ground, where the soil is good.

The world will get us, and get us it will.

And we will depart this world....

as will our children....

as will our children....

 

My own fate, bothers me little.

But the fate of my grandchildren...

and the fate of the children of my loves...

that bothers me more than the fears of the day.

We all will one day depart this world...

as will our children....

Sadly, as will our children.

 

What monstrous eggs have we planted in the ground?

That rise up to haunt us, Monstrous and cavernous.

Taking our children, before they should.

We planted glowing dragon's teeth.

And what will we reap?

What have we taught them?

What do we bequeath?

 

Deep in the ground, where the soil is deep.

At the end of my days, sleeping for good.

The world will get us yet into it's maw.

And what do we leave our children,

when they depart too?

What do we reap?

Why do we weep?

Christopher H. Holte

The companion of a mirror

I say good night to I in the mirror,

and the mirror says good night right back.

It's companionship couldn't be clearer

I enjoy the company of my creaking house,

and the odd sounds in the night.

The House talks to me when no one is around.

and I talk to it in turn.

And when I think of loved ones who passed,

I set a candle in my window to burn.

 

Oh, my little dog is companion enough,

and I am companion to my self.

And, I've friends who lend a hand when it's tough,

I am grateful to them for my mental health.

 

No man is an Island, a Rock, Dunn said,

But I think he understood we are more like a ship instead.

We need our ports and we need our journeys,

We need our trials and we need to rest and be repaired.

I am lonely for missing dear friends long gone,

And sometimes I sing that despairing song.

But their voices are alive within my mind

And I hold onto them tightly in my heart.

Christopher H. Holte

The Arrogant Monkeys

Once there was a tribe of monkeys who thought they were so clever. God saw them and wanted to warn them, so he cut off their beautiful tails. They being the arrogant monkeys they were just congratulated themselves on how fine they looked without tails and what fine monkeys they were. They didn't learn anything. But learned to hang from branches with their hands and race through the trees.

So God punished them by taking away their trees and surrounding them with lions, panthers and bears. And now they were very afraid because monkeys without trees have nowhere to run when the predators come. So they banded together and stood up all the time to watch for the predators and learned to throw rocks at them. They learned to fight off predators with sticks and stones and after a while they started congratulating themselves on how tall and strong they were and were even more arrogant at being able to stand straight and look far away for enemies. They hadn't learned a thing.

So God punished them by giving them all scabies and taking away their fur. So they learned to use their sticks to kill animals and wear their skins or build shelters from them. And they began killing things for sport and taking animals and making them do their work for them. Once again they hadn't learned a thing.

So God sent fire to them to burn their huts and burn their food. But the clever monkeys took the fire and kept it and even learned how to make fire from rocks and sticks. They started cooking food and eating it. And they lived like locusts on the land eating what they chose and using the fires to keep predators from eating them. They congratulated each other on their wisdom and learned to sit around the fires jabbering at each other and to call that talking. They became very dangerous. Not just to themselves but to all the animals and plants of the world. At that point they began calling themselves humans.

God next tried flood. But one of them built a giant boat and brought his livestock and goods on it. And after this the strange monkeys got even more arrogant.

God had tried fire, and rain, flood and earthquake, but at length after all these punishments God showed them a poisonous rock. And told them never to gather all those rocks in one place. Being the arrogant monkeys they were the monkeys of course gathered the rocks in one place and they called it Fukushima. Naturally the rocks grew very hot and melted and killed all the monkeys. And God was very sad and he wasn't sure what to do because they killed everything else too.

Shana Tova.

Turkey's Role in settling Mideast Conflict

There are many great examples of peace making. All of them required leadership. Not always of a single individual, but always of a vision that switched from pre-programmed default behavior to more universal concepts. All of them involved uniting previously separate people into a more functional whole. Examples are Egypt where the Northern Kingdom was united with the Southern Kingdom creating a peaceful kingdom for more than 3000 years. Hammarubi's Babylon where disparate city states were united and came to be under a uniform civil code which aimed at ending the constant tribal warfare that had been the previous state of human relations. And we have many other examples, including Saladin's defeat of the Crusaders and revival of the middle east

And the successes of the Ottoman Empire, which may have been enabled by Ottoman arms, but were secured by Ottoman justice and relative tolerance of subject people. For example when the Greeks in what had been the Byzantine Empire were forced to choose between "Franks" who came to "help" them by looting and for a time conquering the Byzantine Capital, the Greeks wound up preferring Ottoman rule to Frankish rule. Why? Because the Ottomans were (relatively) more fair than the Roman led Franks. The Ottoman Empire was created through justice and tolerance and foundered on corruption and intolerance.

When the British were contemplating the oil resources in the Middle East, their first thought was to preserve the Turkish Empire. They changed their minds when the Turks sided with the Germans during World War I and because they and the French's greed and hubris overcame any common sense about the long term future of the mideast. We now know that foresight was better than implementation. The best solution for the Middle East would have been to transform the Turkish Empire into something like a commonwealth Union modeled on the British. All this talk about a "Caliphate" would be moot if they'd been able to do this. The Turks already were a "caliphate".

The Brits practiced divide and Rule in creating future nation states instead. Syria, Iraq and Jordan were more lines on a map than divisions respecting the actual people living there. Creating Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states was simply a means to get hold of the oil in the ground in those places or ports. They eschewed a General Government that could respect the needs of all the people in the area to work together and engage in commerce; and that could serve as a place of appeal for problems between local people and each other, ethnic and religious conflict, was eliminated in exchange for nation states that were too small to be universal and too large to be fair to principles of local rule. It is time to correct that gross error. Without a functional general government, with a constitution, basic rights and representation of all parties the mideast has been a chaotic place since. The Sunnis rightfully dream of a Caliphate. The Shia rightfully fear it.

Turkey could play a role in rectifying this. The Turks, the Persians and all the ethnicities that are among them and in Syria and Iraq, should have local rights to elect their own local governors and to representation in local government and in higher orders of organization. The mideast needs it's own Union that respects Mideast History and analogous to the European Union. Turkey could help birth that.

Key is a system that respects local autonomy and that reduces religious power to a local affair. One that provides and governs transportation, infrastructure, ports, trade and mutual self defense to it's members. It should guarantee religious freedom, freedom of speech and similar.

The Scholar's Role in settling the conflicts of the Middle East

I have a book called "Interpreting Difficult Texts" by Clark M. Williamson, written by a theological scholar which is actually about how to interpret anti-semitic Christian Texts. The book makes a great parallel text to my other Book "Verus Israel" by Marcel Simon which talks about the genesis of Christian anti-semitism in the Early Church in the estrangement between Jews and what was originally a Jewish Messianic Sect. I've done a lot of reading on exegesis and religious interpretation and found that every religion has it's texts with problematic passages.

I bring this up because there are "problematic passages" in Muslim teachings too, and there is a duty for religious scholars and ministers (in broad sense including Rabbis, Imams, Priests, or anyone who preaches and teaches religion for a living) to understand that texts are preached in a context, that contexts change, that many of them are themselves interpretations of other texts. And that divine word passes through human beings. So when a person says "this is what God said" it doesn't mean that G-d is instructing folks to do the same thing now. That is a problematic thing, hence the author referring to it as "interpreting difficult texts." If the Five Books of Moses admonish Israel to "Blot out the Name of Amalek", whether or not anyone or any group can be considered "Amalek" in our own day another matter. Joseph Smith labeled settlers on their way to California as "Amalek" and his General took him seriously and infamously massacred a caravan. All religions have problematic passages. All religious sages, except those who've been thoroughly mythologized, are imperfect human beings at some level.

Mohammed preached some things that modern angry fools are taking into a destructive, revanchist absurd implementation. He preached some things that were moderate or advanced in his own time, but act to repress women and are injust in our time. Times change, and our understanding of both justice and the divine evolve with times. If any text is infallible, it is infallible in it's original context. Jews once insisted that the Torah was infallible. With time they've interpreted the difficult passages to be more just in execution. Christians once attacked the Torah as fallible and their "New Testament" as infallible. They tend to ignore their own teachings but still cling to that claim.

Muslims, likewise, need to recognize that holding women down in the name of the prophet is wrong. That cutting off heads is repugnant. That cutting off hands is injustice. And that we don't need to return to the 7th century. If a preacher issues a religious holding, that doesn't mean it's infallible. It's his opinion! Mohammed's Mecca teachings should apply in this day. His Medina teachings and his efforts to conquer the world didn't produce that much good for his people in the long run. In fact religious chauvinism and conflict has brought only suffering. The Caliph of Baghdad was conquered by the Mongols because he was greedy and corrupt[and didn't do a good job defending his kingdom], not because he was either irreligious (thought that might have played a part) or God's representative on Earth. Catholic dogmatism led to good people being burned at the stake. The protestant reformation led to darkness for millions. We've all been rebuked. None of us owns G-d. Some even believe there is no G-d or that he's turned his face from us. This is just the message that the ineffable seems to be sending us in this day. I hope my muslim brothers and sisters will start to listen. A spiritual struggle is a political struggle, but it is first a spiritual struggle. To hear truth and light, not darkness and hate.

I've come to admire the Sufi, the culture of Islam, and the history of the Muslim States. At its best religion exalts us and uplifts us. I am a human being who loves all religions, but I don't want to become a Muslim and I'd never even consider going deeper into my research until I'm sure they truly are a "religion of peace" and have shed hatred and can respect non-Muslims. I both admire and Critique all the Fearless leaders. The Caliphs, the Sheikhs, the Kings, the Emperors, Tsars, Pashas, Kings of Kings, Caudillos, Dictators. My own feelings are based on exegesis of the story of the Golden Man in the Book of Daniel and throughout subsequent Jewish and Christian Literature, to Ozymandias. What kind of monuments, eroding in the sand, do we want if none remain to admire them?

Clark M. Williamson bio: http://www.disciplesworldmagazine.com/node/5260

Verus Israel:http://books.google.com/books/about/Verus_Israel.html?id=90YwAAAAYAAJ