Healing Is The Thing That Hurts You

Why should we ever read fairy-stories, when the truth of history is so much interesting and entertaining?

 

Hendrik Willem van Loon, The Story of Mankind (1921)

 

 

All righty then! Yesterday I would have posted a good part of what you're reading now if 1) I had not been precluded by the fact that it was Batman's birthday and I wanted to recognize it and 2) some office equipment at my primary job where I usually compose these messages in downtime was not behaving and needed some time-consuming maintenance. By the way, today's title was something Jeffrey said late Monday night and I make it a point to listen to my kids and write down some of the things they say that especially stand out to me. Should they ever read what I write, I'd like to believe that my kids will remember their dad's thoughts and who and what moved him, or want to, more than their iPad, NOOK, laptop computer, and Nintendo DS offerings they favored.

 

 

And today's opening quote brings to mind three books I've finished reading over the last few weeks. I think today's title might relate best to the book I JUST finished, Ronald Schechter and Liz Clarke's Mendoza the Jew (ISBN 9780199334094). “Mendoza the Jew” was the professional name of Daniel Mendoza, an eighteenth-century boxer in Great Britain. This five-part book – resembling the structure of the Pentateuch? – is a graphic-novel account of Daniel's rise and fall, primary sources that enabled the story to be written, the historical context (the position of Jews in eighteenth-century Britain, which wasn't great, and how the expansion of print and art made people feel they were part of “nations” and not simply ethnic groups), how the book got put together, and sample exercises.

 

 

Pretty much it's got everything, and though I'm not likely to become any more interested in professional sports or the figures in them than I am now (which is not much, and I have family that considers it a crime), I can appreciate a little more how such a shared physical event can be the glue that makes a community. Just as the North Dakota State Fair now in its seventh day (Seven of Nine, so it's happening on Voyager) is doing a great job through its activities and events and food of bringing people and families together. We all got to go Saturday, and yesterday Sarah got to go again with her friend Addy and HER mom and dad. She came back home about eleven thirty at night while Martha, Jeffrey, and I hung out at the house and it was a pink snow leopard who came to the door.

 

 

 

The Leopard … let's see, it was the British frigate Leopard that shot at the U.S. Frigate Chesapeake about thirty years post-Declaration of Independence to take some British “deserters”, and several repeats of events like this coupled with a delay in trans-Atlantic communication led to The War of 1812 (ISBN 0822517051). To the Americans at the time, and still when you think about it, it was the War for Independence Part Two while the mention of this might leave the typical Briton or Canadian scratching their head. Robert B. Morris' text and Leonard Everett Fisher's shaded illustrations made this book about a three-year war that ultimately settled “we are AMERICANS, not ex-British subjects to be picked on at your will” and was a growing-up of sorts fun and interesting to read.

 

 

Mutual respect, not sex, money, and love, is what we all want. The lack of it results in the wars you see today. Which brings me to my third installment of recent and bears repeated readings, Jacques Tardi's graphic novel It Was The War of the Trenches (ISBN 9781606693538), a story told from several French and German points of view – though more time gets devoted to the French – and by and large you come to realize that war is someplace no one wants to be, someplace that brings out the basest and worst in people. From the Germans driving women and children in front of them through Belgium and the French officers ordering them to shoot anyway to the brigadier general who has his own men shelled after they fall back to the trenches to push them forward to executing soldiers who either don't understand a command or find themselves in the unlucky position of finding a surviving enemy soldier.

 

 

Don't think I don't appreciate the irony of reading this on the centennial of the beginning of World War I … it's the dark side of nationalism; we find it easy to say we will die for our country but the closer that comes, the long dark tea-time of the soul that it takes to actually lose your life, the harder it is. Am I only saying that because I've never served in my country's military? Maybe, but I doubt it. It's easy to DIE for any purpose you are committed to, or to die for one you love, but living for a purpose and living for (and yes, sometimes even with) the one you love can be a headache. But it doesn't take me long to get over a headache.

 

 

It's just the healing that hurts me, David