< I was listed on Facebook as being "In a Relationship" with Bella Stierwalt. For those of you too lazy to check, Bella is actually an English Bulldog owned by Sabrina, a graduate student in the department. I decided to end our FB relationship for reasons outlined in a letter I wrote below:
Dear Bella,
I know, the FB feed was probably a bad way to find out. But we knew it might happen like this, even if we didn't want to admit it.
We need to remember that we had lots of good times, and that we're both better for having known each other.
Remember Paris? Who could forget when you tore the hair off a French poodle giving me the eye as we walked along the Seine? Or when I held you in my arms as you gave Paris a Taco Bell salute from the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower?
I don't want to focus on what went wrong, but it's probably something worth talking about. I didn't mind the drooling, or the humping of my leg in public - both were kind of cool. And I really didn't care that you refused to get your teeth done - it's so consumer culture anyway.
If you must know, it's the illicit tummy rubbing. I knew you were getting your tummy rubbed by others - I've known since November. I thought it would stop - maybe it's your way of dealing with seasonal affective disorder. But even though spring came a bit late, I thought it would've stopped by now.
I understand that maybe it's ridiculous to think that any one man could satisfy your complicated needs, but still, it was a bit much when I walked into Space Sciences and seeing you in a group tummyrub with the entire Alfalfa group, Patrick, and three plush toys. Who the hell needs three plush toys?
And I know that those were someone else's bite marks on that rawhide bone I gave you on our anniversary.
I have to be honest. I've been told by a lot of women that they assumed I was in a relationship, with, you know, a human woman... the implication being, that some very nice women thought that I was taken and decided not to express interest.
You know that I would never break up with you because I've met someone else, or because you're, you know, a dog. The truth is, I don't really see us getting old together, relishing our golden years before encroaching incontinence takes all the fun out of being a senior citizen.
Bella, you're a wonderful dog, and deserve someone who can love you for the dog you are. You'll find that man/woman/dog/tree someday, and no one will be cheering louder for you than me.
1968 is considered by many historians as an amazing year. It seems a moment in which people felt a decade's worth of emotion in a single year. Revolutions in France and Czechoslovakia. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Race riots in America. Vietnam.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
On April 4, 1968, Robert Kennedy was campaigning in Indiana. He was scheduled to give a campaign speech in Indianapolis. As he was boarding a plane, word reached him that Dr. King had been shot. He used the flight to put his thoughts on paper. After landing, Robert learned that Martin was dead.
The two had initially been suspicious of each other - King regarding Kennedy as an example of the timid white reformer, where "tomorrow" was the answer to every problem. Kennedy regarded King as empowering the militants within the Civil Rights Movement, who had hindered their own progress by being "angry". But their relationship would grow to friendship, as they both realized each other's greatness, and their common vision for America.
His advisors cautioned him that the news could be dangerous, and might trigger a riot. He was warned by the Chief of Police in Indianapolis that protection could not be guaranteed, but Kennedy decided to continue. He stood on a podium mounted on a flatbed truck. Looking out on a sea of black faces, he realized that they did not yet know. He then proceeded to give perhaps one of the finest speech ever given to a nation in tears.
He told them. There was screaming, and wailing. He waited, and continued. He recognized their anger, and told them that the assassin was a white man. He said he shared their feelings, and remembered what it felt like when his brother had been killed. It may have been the first time he had spoken in public about his brother's assassination. He quoted a poem by Aeschylus:
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.
That night, 110 American cities burned, with 43 killed and thousands injured in riots. But that night, Indianapolis remained calm. Such was the totality of the grief, that it erased, for one moment, the gulf separating a white man of privilege, quoting a Greek poet, and the poor, black audience.
Just two months later, on June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy was assassinated in the Ambassador hotel in California. His eulogy, delivered by his brother Ted, drew heavily from Robert's own speeches, in particular, a speech delivered two years earlier to South African students on the Day of Affirmation. The audience, and the world, heard him speaking beyond the grave, words as important in 1968 as they were in 1966, important and relevant for all times.
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On behalf of Mrs. Kennedy, her children, the parents and sisters of Robert Kennedy, I want to express what we feel to those who mourn with us today in this Cathedral and around the world.
We loved him as a brother, and as a father, and as a son. From his parents, and from his older brothers and sisters -- Joe and Kathleen and Jack -- he received an inspiration which he passed on to all of us. He gave us strength in time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty, and sharing in time of happiness. He will always be by our side.
Love is not an easy feeling to put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust, or joy. But he was all of these. He loved life completely and he lived it intensely.
A few years back, Robert Kennedy wrote some words about his own father which expresses the way we in his family felt about him. He said of what his father meant to him, and I quote: "What it really all adds up to is love -- not love as it is described with such facility in popular magazines, but the kind of love that is affection and respect, order and encouragement, and support. Our awareness of this was an incalculable source of strength, and because real love is something unselfish and involves sacrifice and giving, we could not help but profit from it." And he continued, "Beneath it all, he has tried to engender a social conscience. There were wrongs which needed attention. There were people who were poor and needed help. And we have a responsibility to them and to this country. Through no virtues and accomplishments of our own, we have been fortunate enough to be born in the United States under the most comfortable conditions. We, therefore, have a responsibility to others who are less well off."
That is what Robert Kennedy was given. What he leaves to us is what he said, what he did, and what he stood for. A speech he made to the young people of South Africa on their Day of Affirmation in 1966 sums it up the best, and I would like to read it now:
"There is discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress their people; millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere. These are differing evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility towards the suffering of our fellows. But we can perhaps remember -- even if only for a time -- that those who live with us are our brothers; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek -- as we do -- nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. The answer is to rely on youth -- not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress.
It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world has had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation; a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth; a young woman reclaimed the territory of France; and it was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the 32 year-old Thomas Jefferson who [pro]claimed that "all men are created equal."
These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. *It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.* Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe.
For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged, and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that event.
*The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society.* Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live."
That is the way he lived. That is what he leaves us.
My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.
As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:
"Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not."
I turn to this speech, periodically, to remind me of something about myself, and about human nature in general, whenever I seem in danger of forgetting it. I couldn't tell you what it is - all I can say is that this is the single most important speech I have ever heard. If I had to describe it, I would say that it is the touchstone to my self-awareness of citizenship and dignity.
We have wandered the desert for 40 years, with manna and misery, but unlike the ancient Israelites, we see not the frontier of the Promised Land. But this speech, and this life, at least serves as a guide to what we can be, what must be, and what will be.
On October 4, 1957, Leave it to Beaver premiered on CBS. This show, more than any other, would capture the spirit of optimism and simplicity that characterized America at that time. Few Americans were aware that that same day, the Soviet Union had launched the first man-made satellite into space - Sputnik. The illusion of innocence was evaporating as the beep-beep of the Red Moon rising ticked off the seconds of the new era.
Sputnik immediately challenged the basic assumptions upon which Western security and American confidence, rested. American confidence depended upon the assumption that, by empowering the individual and not the state, a free and open society could better harness the collective energies and intelligence of its citizens to preserve peace and prosperity. Postwar American strategy presumed scientific superiority and depended upon high-tech solutions — in particular, a nuclear bomber deterrent — to balance Soviet numbers in Europe. Imagine the reaction, then, when it became apparent that this backward, repressive regime was able to beat the free world to the ultimate missile. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that if the Soviets could launch a satellite into space, they could launch a nuclear weapon at American cities.
The American response was swift and substantial. In 1958, Congress created NASA to better direct the efforts of America’s various military and civilian aeronautical programs, whose petty rivalries had prevented the United States from being first to space. In time, America would use its own satellites to provide needed intelligence about the world beyond the iron curtain. That same year, Congress passed the National Defense and Education Act, which revamped science education and, for the first time, provided massive amounts of financial aid for college students.
Yet in spite of Eisenhower’s efforts to reassure the American people, fears of American technical inferiority and a “missile gap” helped decide the 1960 presidential election. Not since World War II, and perhaps never since, have science and technology been so politically central, so intimately linked in the American mind with the survival of the free world. Space exploration was a vision that transformed potency into existence, dreams into global impacts and politics into progress.
Sputnik created a host of institutions and a strong federal commitment to fund science. But its greatest, most critical legacy is a generation of scientists and citizens who embraced that shared vision of at last touching the heavens.
They were inspired and organized, trained and mentored, and overcame fear and challenges to explore the possibilities of this new age. These individuals now teach our classes, and serve in leadership positions in all areas of society. These men and women continue to expand the frontiers of science, to bring us sometimes wonderful, sometimes frightening, but unfailingly miraculous tomorrows.
No one living in the age of Sputnik, save the most farsighted scientists and unrepentant dreamers, could have imagined the world of today. We are equally ill-equipped to predict the events of the next half-century, either here on Earth, or in space.
This new ocean, like the seas of the twentieth century, may become the battlegrounds for bloody conflict. Or, space might be the exception in human history, the one frontier not consecrated with the blood of the innocent as well as the brave.
Perhaps in our efforts to explore beyond this pale blue dot, we might find the wisdom and means to build, here at home, what Langston Hughes called “the land that never has been yet — and yet must be/The land where every man is free.”
Whatever the future holds, one thing is certain — America and the world depend upon the genius, vision and character of its citizens, who dare to ask why, dare to dream, dare to challenge the frontiers of what is known, and dare to challenge themselves to become better through greater knowledge and wisdom.
History in general, and Sputnik in particular, tell us that there is little that collective human action cannot overcome, though it be matched against great challenges, natural or man-made. Thanks to that belief, and those believers, we can look at the heavens today and the earth below, with both greater knowledge and appreciation than any other generation in all history.
Information about a little piece of American History: inspired by a quote.
The Bonus Army
(from Partners in Command)
With the nation mired in an economic crisis, World War I veterans lobbied to be paid the bonus promised them when they had signed up to fight in France. A "Bonus Army" of veterans descended on Washington to pressure Congress to act, but in July 1931 the Bonus Bill failed. Encamped in the swampy Anacostia Flats, the Bonus Army (some five thousand strong, including women and children, all living in hovels) became increasingly militant, greeting police patrols with bricks and stones. At the end of July 1931, Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley ordered MacArthur to intervene: "Proceed immediately to the scene of disorder.... Surround the affected area and clear it without delay." Summoned to the chief of staff's office, Eisenhower was ordered to accompany MacArthur at the head of the troops. Eisenhower was skeptical: "I told him that the matter could easily become a riot and I thought it highly inappropriate for the Chief of Staff of the Army to be involved in anything like a local or street-corner embroilment." MacArthur waved off Eisenhower's warning: there was incipient revolution in the air, he said, and he was going to do something about it.
With MacArthur in the lead, troops under the command of George Patton used tear gas to disperse the camp. the decision brought howls of protest from a nation that remembered the use of gas in the Great War. Told by President Hoover to use restraint and to stay out of Anacostia Flats, MacArthur later claimed that he never received such an order. That was a lie, and MacArthur and Eisenhower knew it. MacArthur had received the order; he just refused to obey it. Eisenhower was horrified by MacArthur's actions, but he defended them, writing an official report for MacArthur that was a model of discretion. But the difference between the two was obvious for all who saw them at Anacostia Flats: "there is MacArthur in full regalia, complete with several decks of ribbons, looking sternly upon the 'battlefield,' with the look of eagles in his eyes," a reporter later reflected. "Next to him is Ike, dressed in a regular unadorned uniform. If you take a close look at the expression on Eisenhower's face, you realize it is one of cold, caustic contempt. This is the closed Eisenhower, who later observed he had learned acting from MacArthur." Eisenhower was enraged by MacArthur's actions, telling the historian Stephen Ambrose in an interview toward the end of his life, "I told that dumb son of a bitch not to go up there." [1]
One footnote - one of the leaders of the protest was Joe Angelo, winner of the Distinguished Service Cross for saving his commanding officer, George Patton's life during the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, Sept 1918, during World War I.
Another quote:
In the smoldering aftermath, a dazed, rail thin Joe Angelo approached his old boss but was harshly rebuked. "I do not know this man," Major Patton growled. "Take him away and under no circumstances permit him to return." [2]
[1] Mark Perry, Partners in Command [2] http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/5532
Be good fathers. Be good men, of character and integrity, who are unafraid of meeting their son's and daughter's and wife's eyes when bearing swaggering victory or bruising defeat. It is that trust and love that will redeem that swagger, and heal those bruises.
Be a man worthy of understanding and available for instruction. I do not have to tell you how much that means to a hungry young man, eager for guidance, vision, inspiration, and a spark to kindle ambition for a better life in a greater world. You know this yourself, either by the presence of that blessing or its gnawing absence.
Be a man who teach intensity and peace from the same book, who sees the continued necessity of the warrior as the product of our fathers' failure, and not their greatest triumph.
Be all these things, and more, as every holy book ever written has commanded, and every atom of good sense has suggested.
Long after you are gone, your guidance and strength will fortify those whom you love, through drought and famine and storm. It will also enrich them in times of peace and happiness, and will be the critical difference between prosperity and luxury.
You will know you have done what you must if, at your end, those by your side whisper those words of Dylan Thomas:
And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
A man does not rage at his children, his wife, or his parents, or at his life. He rages against death, which seeks to deny his final attempts to give with final gasp and howl his last lesson: Devour the days, sons and daughters of woe. Devour the days with earnestness bordering on desperation.
For anyone who hasn't been paying attention to my life in the last three years, I'm leaving grad school to go to work. This process has actually ended up being a lot more painful than I thought it might be. In fact, my personal sense of self-worth and competence has been pretty hammered over the last three years.
As part of the process of finding a job, I decided to do something recommended by both What Color is Your Parachute and a Cornell Career Services representative. Both recommend that in order to identify potential jobs (and consequently items to stress on a resume), it's helpful to write out everything that one's done in one's life. After making such a list (chronologically, initially to help with recall), it's recommended to sort it by subject area.
At first, it seemed daunting. But ignoring lots of crap that didn't matter professionally for me (lots of episodes of Simpsons, lots of video games, a very short cross country career, etc.) I was able to come up with about two pages of things:
Caretaker Helped with bedridden grandfather two days a week, (1998-2000)
Journalism many awards for essay writing in K-12 co-editor in chief of high school newspaper (2000-2001) wrote article on activism after cross-burning on Harvey Mudd campus (2004) wrote article on Sputnik 50th anniversary for the Cornell Daily Sun (2007) maintain blog reporting comments from various talks at Cornell (2006-2008)
Education head of Academic decathlon team in high school (2000-2001)
Public Speaking public speaking at school assemblies in 4th grade (1993) 8th grade graduation speech (1996) Toastmasters (2007-2008) Read books about political speeches (Kennedy, Churchill, etc.)
Government/Political Science lots of history classes at Claremont EU political science class at Claremont science policy classes at Cornell read books about history and political science Partners in Command Blowback Sorrows of an Empire Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic regularly attend Peace Studies Program Seminar at Cornell (2007-2008) regularly attend political science talks at Cornell
Financial/Business/Law Setting up retirement investment plan and helping others with IRA planning (2006-present) Applied for and received NSF graduate fellowship (2006) Helped my mother handle monthly invoices for grandfather's trailer park (1993-1998) Helped family understand contract at the age of 16 governing property management issues (1998) Dealt with family issues surrounding living trust issues involving inheritance of small property (1999) Drafted business plan for nonprofit group, Rosemead Citizens for Science (2006) Developed funding guide for graduate students (2007) Read management books (e.g. Winning by Jack Welch) and tax law books (Estate Tax for dummies) Helped mom plan and execute retirement strategy (2008) Worked on establishing special needs trust to protect Dad and his siblings from extraordinary medical expenses (2008) Developed a personal investment strategy based on existing tax law (2008)
Science Astronomy research at Harvey Mudd (2003-2005) Three years at Cornell in Astronomy department (2005-2008) Drafted business plan for nonprofit group, Rosemead Citizens for Science (2007) Considerable outreach to high school, visiting groups (2005-2008)
Nonprofit Saturday brunch program with the homeless (2005) summer work at the Inland Valley Hope Center - hunger and homelessness (2004) HMC volunteer coordinator (2002-2005)
Church Assisted pastor in Confirmation class (2007) Worship and Music committee (2007-2008) Consecration Sunday committee (2007)
From this, it's pretty evident that my interests definitely lie in the political science/economic/business realm, and a fairly high degree of interest in writing.
But above and beyond telling me where I spend most of my time and seem to have most of my success, it also reminds me that I haven't completely wasted my young adulthood. I've done some good in the world, helped out my family a bit, and participated in (er, maybe listened in on) the ever-continuing conversation about the role of American in the world.
Another thing it's pointed out is that I have trouble closing the deal on a number of tasks. A few of these projects just never got off the ground. Even though that may be normal, I'll need to think about whether the range of topics and the handful of abandoned projects illustrate well-roundedness or a lack of focus on a few key projects.
Anyway, if you're stressed and a little depressed, try this process. At best, it will tell you - through the economists approach of revealed preferences - what you might want to be doing with your life. At worst, you might need a polished resume to transition out of an unhappy situation.
