We’re all about the sweetness and light here at Mad Blog Media, as you know. In that spirit, it being Memorial Day, we present “Other than Honorable,” a special report from Dave Philipps and photographer Michael Ciaglo of The Gazette.
I’d not read the series until I heard a report on it from Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! But I have now, and you should, too.
A bit of Doors trivia for you: The band did not include a bass player — onstage, Ray Manzarek provided bass lines via his left hand, using a Fender Rhodes piano bass. Bon voyage, Ray.
Mostly when the phone rings, I let it go to voicemail. There’s usually a robot on the other end, selling something, and reading it the riot act — to wit, Isaac Asimov’s Second Law of Robotics — is every bit as effective as shouting at the television.
But on Monday, I picked up, having recognized the name on the Caller ID. And that’s how I learned that our friend Ken Stauffer had died.
Ken and his family settled in the neighborhood before we got here, just across the street from the house we eventually bought. We shouldn’t have gotten along, I suppose. Left and right rarely do these days, and the Stauffers and O’Gradys would never have the same political signs decorating their respective yards come election season.
So what? The Stauffers were the sort of conservatives who put many a so-called progressive to shame. James 2:17 types who rarely talked the talk but walked the walk, Ken and his wife, Ellen, worked hard, lent a hand to those less fortunate than themselves, and raised three of the most interesting children I’ve ever met. Scott, Will and Margaret were neither intimidated by nor contemptuous of their elders, and in our years across the street we watched them blossom into fine adults.
We’d shoot the breeze and share a laugh in the street, break bread and tip a glass from time to time, enjoy all those little interactions that make a neighborhood more than a collection of boxes with roofs on them.
When the kids grew up and began scattering — Scott to the Army, Will and Margaret to college — Ken found a new job in Atlanta, and he and Ellen moved away.
The four of us went to dinner before they left for Georgia. It was the last time we would see Ken. His death at age 50 stunned his old neighborhood, where he is remembered as a dedicated runner and occasional bicycle commuter; a husky guy with a hearty laugh, who enjoyed jumping out of perfectly serviceable airplanes while attending the U.S. Air Force Academy; a “boyfriend” who perked up the little old ladies with his visits to the gym; and a devoted father who hoped his children would find lives they loved, as he loved his.
I spoke with Scott on Monday, and he was bearing the weight as best he could. He said the family had gathered around Ellen in Atlanta, and that he planned to write his father’s obituary, as I did for mine. Shortly afterward, on his Facebook page, he posted a photo of Ken helping Will get all dolled up for his wedding earlier this year.
“This is how I want to remember my father,” wrote Scott. “At his best, taking care of the people he loved. Thank you for all you did for us, Dad.”
Do you suppose a mass shooting of fetuses might move the Senate to action on gun control? Naw, they’d just vote to station armed guards in American wombs.
Herself and I sent the usual NastyGrams® to our senators, for all the good that does. Two more mutts yapping. You don’t even hear it after a while. I’ve lived next to runways and railroad tracks, crack houses and frat houses, and if I’ve learned one thing it’s that a fella can learn to sleep through any kind of godawful racket, even me screaming at you over the phone.
If the killing of 20 children in Newtown can’t motivate “our” elected representatives, I don’t know what can. Oh, yeah, right — money. How silly of me.
The National Rifle Association spent $500,000 on Wednesday alone, for advertising critical of “Obama’s gun ban.” Of course, this is above and beyond what they’ve already invested in the best Congress money can buy.
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be. — William Hazlitt, English essayist, 1778-1830
I first stumbled across Hazlitt’s notion by way of Robert A. Heinlein, in “Stranger In a Strange Land,” which I was reading when I should have been reading English essayists. Valentine Michael Smith had asked Jubal Harshaw, “What is ‘Man?'”, and the answer took Jubal a little time to puzzle out.
There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself. Man was his own grimmest joke on himself. The very bedrock of humor was—
“Man is the animal who laughs,” Jubal answered.
There will be many ponderous pronouncements over the coming days. While we endure them, let’s all remember that Man is the animal who laughs.
We’re all about the sweetness and light here at Mad Blog Media, as you know. In that spirit, it being Memorial Day, we present “Other than Honorable,” a special report from Dave Philipps and photographer Michael Ciaglo of The Gazette.
Mad Blog Media 