David Buck Patterson

"April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers."

It turns out that T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" is an eminently apt poem for today. While composed over 100 years ago, the central question of the poem on whether the wasteland of the modern world can regenerate itself is as central today as it was a century ago. Beyond that the world in 1919 was in the midst of a world flu pandemic not unlike what we are facing today.

That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! 

Big Frank has no lilacs but has mixed memory and desire in this cruelest month of May through his genealogical work (memory) and its record (desire). While "The Waste Land" is, no doubt, an unusual springboard into genealogy it seems to be connected to pretty much everything else so why not? The connection, tenuous Big Frank agrees, is the year 1919. That year the Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919 was raging and that is the year that Big Frank's Great Granduncle, David Buck Patterson, died.

Big Frank is back from a marathon drive cross county - out to Sacramento and back. In all it was a total of 8 full days of driving, mostly done at top speeds of 80 mph. No speeding tickets; however, Big Frank did get nabbed by the California Highway Patrol for passing in a no-pass zone, an infraction that has cost him $280.00 plus some addition $40 in online traffic lessons to keep the points away from the insurance company!

While in California Big Frank's daughter, Gina and Big Frank had a terrific time visiting wine country and it's summer resident, Jack Stack, working in her yard, playing with her cats, meeting her friends and visiting Loyalton, CA to gather family history on Big Frank's great granduncle David Buck Patterson (1826 - 1919). He was born in Hammond, NY, moved to Jefferson, Wisconsin where he ran a logging gang and then bought a team of oxen and traveled cross country to prospect for gold on the Yuba River. He struck gold and parleyed that into a saw mill, renting donkeys, setting up a meat packing business, and finally running a ranch in Loyalton. He was one of the original settlers there. His portrait is in the local museum and there are streets in town named after him.
 

Happy Birthday, Pam

Today is Pam's birthday and so Big Frank started the day with baking a cake. This is a spice cake, which Big Frank baked in a standard rectangular pan. Then after taking it out, Big Frank decided that he wanted a double decker cake. He had looked for two round cake pans but found them not. Not to be outdone, Big Frank took the cake out of the rectangular pan and then after cutting it in half, he stacked the two halves and applied cream cheese frosting. In the end with the frosting running out it turned out somewhat disappointing. See below:

Big Frank, in addition to the cake, gave her a telescope. This particular one is called the Celestron EQ70. It will allow her to observe the moon, the planets, and moons of the planets along with some of the constellations. We spent a good two hours putting the damn thing together. Big Frank sometimes wonders who are the nitwits that write the instructions on how to assembly such things. Big Frank tried Youtube as well and was disappointed. The best instructions were given by a guy speaking Hindi, a language Big Frank is not familiar with despite the fact that he his brother Fuzz often feigned knowledge of its cousin tongue, Punjabi. So Big Frank turned down the sound of the Hindi instructions and followed the assembly silently on film. In the end this is what Big Frank and Pam ended up with. See below:

The telescope works, but does not seem to be assembled 100% as intended. We are taking a break for now. The rest of the day is for Pam's birthday. The telescope will remain at home while we along with friends go out for dinner and drinks. Happy Birthday, Pam!

Ukrainian Hope

 Francis Fukuyama, of the End of History fame, recently published an article in American Purpose entitled Preparing for Defeat. Basically Fukuyama states that Russia is heading for defeat. He believes that Putin mistakenly believed that the Ukrainians would welcome the Russian troops and the Ukrainian army would collapse quickly. That ain't happening! It's not going to get better, "Putin at this point has committed the bulk of his entire military to this operation—there are no vast reserves of forces he can call up to add to the battle. Russian troops are stuck outside various Ukrainian cities where they face huge supply problems and constant Ukrainian attacks." 

Fukuyama expands on his article in an interview published in the Washington Post here: "Russia does not begin to have a large enough military to occupy Ukraine and bring Ukraine to a point where they’d make that kind of concession. This is a country with a population of over 40 million, and Putin has already committed the vast bulk of his military.

It’s extremely costly for the Russians to keep up this kind of siege. Every single day, they lose a large number of armored vehicles, men, supplies. The morale in the Russian army appears to be extremely low." The end will be, according to Fukuyama "sudden and catastrophic." With this defeat will be the end of Putin for how can a strong man continue if he's seen to be weak. NATO does not need to supply MIGs, they would not make much of a difference. What needs to continue is a "continuing supply of Javelins, Stingers, TB2s, medical supplies, comms equipment, and intel sharing.

A man pushing a bicycle in front of a building damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Thursday.Credit...Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press 

The war in Ukraine continues. The Russian forces are closing in on Kyiv, have taken large swaths of territory along the Black Sea coast, but seem to be stalled and are suffering losses in manpower and in equipment. So Russia is now bombarding cities including hospitals and residences. President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused the Russians of terrorizing Ukraine in an attempt to break the will of the people. “A war of annihilation,” he called it. The dead increase on both sides and the destruction mounts. We are nowhere near the end of this war, but with all the destruction one cannot help but think of how it all can ever, if ever, be put back to normal. Wislawa Szymborska wrote a apt poem on just that.

The End and the Beginning

by WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA

Translated by Joanna Trzeciak 

After every war

someone has to clean up.

Things won’t

straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble

to the side of the road,

so the corpse-filled wagons

can pass.

Someone has to get mired

in scum and ashes,

sofa springs,

splintered glass,

and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder

to prop up a wall.

Someone has to glaze a window,

rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,

and takes years.

All the cameras have left

for another war.

We’ll need the bridges back,

and new railway stations.

Sleeves will go ragged

from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,

still recalls the way it was.

Someone else listens

and nods with unsevered head.

But already there are those nearby

starting to mill about

who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes

sometimes someone still unearths

rusted-out arguments

and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew

what was going on here

must make way for

those who know little.

And less than little.

And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown

causes and effects,

someone must be stretched out

blade of grass in his mouth

gazing at the clouds.

Source: Miracle Fair: selected poems of Wisława Szymborska (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 2001)

The Way Out

As can be seen from the sidebar listing what Big Frank is currently reading, he is interested in learning more on "How to Overcome Toxic Polarization" in Peter R. Coleman's recent book, The Way Out. From what Big Frank haa read so far this is not a book that lays out a roadmap for how one side or the other triumphs over the other. This is not a manual on how to debate better nor is it a treatise laying out the moral superiority of one side over the other. Rather it appears, from what Big Frank has read so far to be a book on how the two sides broadly understood to be facing off against each other in the U.S. today could stop thinking of themselves as people in opposition to each other despite differing viewpoints on any number of issues. How does this happen? Perhaps the best method is, according to for example the experiences of pro-choice and anti-abortion groups in Boston, having the experience of being with the opposition, as it were, of learning that the point of opposition between you does not define either of you, and that there is so much more to each of you, more for each of you to share and care about. It reminds me of Emmanuel Levinas' philosophy of The Other wherein he writes that because of the asymmetrical relationship of our relatioship with our neighbour, we have an ethical responsibilit that compels us to respond to him. In this way our humanity is released as the solipsistic all-for-myself becomes a being-for-the-other. In this way we become ethically responsible for our neighbour. Those of us who have taken the time to sit down face-to-face with those on the other side of many issues we feel strongly about (abortion, vaccines, guns, election outcomes, healthcare, etc.) and continue the conversation for some time often find an acceptance of and growing affection for that person/those people who were previously primarily defined as the opposition.

Solidarity with Ukraine

Today is day four of Russia's invation of Ukraine. The Ukrainians are holding strong in the face of the reported 150,000 Russian soldiers with their tanks, jets, helicopters, etc. etc. In some ways it is amazing that the country has withstood such a powerful invation as well as they have. However, many question their ability to hold on to control of the country and hold off the Russians for much longer. I spoke again with my son and daughter-in-law who live in Krakow, Poland. My daughter-in-law is Ukrainian and has indicated that her parents, who live near Odessa, are safe and currently out of harms way. They had one friend with her daughter stay with them last night. This woman is now on her way to Warsaw to stay with friends. She had to make her way to Poland via a very circuitous route traveling through Moldova to Romania, and then through Hungary and Slovakia to Poland. It took her two days. They have another friend who was arriving tonight after a two-day train journey. The numbers of refugees on trains and on the highways is tremendous and has clogged movement down to a crawl as women and children exit Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands are leaving. Men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave and are expected to report for service defending Ukraine from the invading Russians.