Christopher H. Holte
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
Christopher H. Holte
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.
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.
