Christmas

by William H. Benson

December 18, 2014

     Della sold her hair to buy “a platinum watch fob” for Jim, her husband, and he sold his watch to buy “tortoise shell combs” for Della’s hair. On Christmas Day they opened their presents, and neither he nor she could enjoy his or her gift. Without her long hair, she no longer needed the combs, and without his watch, he no longer needed a watch fob. That is the plot that the American author O. Henry reveals in his splendid short story, The Gift of the Magi.

     “The Grinch hated Christmas.” And why did he feel that way? “It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right. It could be, perhaps that his shoes were too tight, or perhaps that his heart was two sizes too small.” Whatever his motivation, he decides to steal Christmas. When Cindy Lou in Whoville asks the Grinch why he was taking her Christmas tree up the chimney, he lies, and says that he needed to return it to his workshop to repair “a light on this tree that won’t light on one side.”

     After he steals all the trees, presents, and food, “leaving crumbs much too small for the other Who’s mouses,” he hears singing down in Whoville. “He HADN’T stopped Christmas from coming! Somehow or other, it came just the same!” That is the plot that Dr. Seuss reveals in his children’s book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

     Charlie Brown feels depressed because of the commercialization of Christmas. To snap him out of his blues, Lucy van Pelt suggests that he direct the Christmas play, and he tries, but the other children are more interested in dancing to Schroeder’s song that he plays on his small piano rather than learning their lines. Charlie Brown leaves and purchases a pitiful sapling that he brings back to the auditorium. The other children see his tree, ridicule it, laugh, and leave.

     Charlie Brown wonders aloud if he knows what Christmas is all about. Linus overhears him, and so he reads aloud the Christmas story. He reads of shepherds who watch over their flocks at night, of an angel that appears before the shepherds, of the angel’s glad news that a child is born that night and is lying in a manger, and of the “heavenly host singing ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill towards men.’” Linus concludes, “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown!”

     That is the plot of Charles M. Schulz’s animated cartoon special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, that first aired on December 9, 1965.  

     Ebenezer Scrooge’s business partner, Jacob Marley, appears one night in Scrooge’s dream, even though Marley had died seven years before. Scrooge notices that Marley carries chains, and so Scrooge asks him, “You are fettered. Tell me why?” Marley replies, “I wear the chains I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”

     Marley warns Scrooge that three ghosts will appear that night. The ghosts so terrify Scrooge that when he awakens, he decides that he too will celebrate Christmas that year. That is the plot that Charles Dickens reveals in his classic tale, A Christmas Carol.

     James Herriot, the country veterinarian in England, receives a call on Christmas day from Mrs. Ainsworth. “It’s Debbie,” she says. James learns that Debbie is a stray cat who appears at Mrs. Ainsworth’s door every two weeks to warm herself before the fire for no more than ten minutes and then leaves. On this day though she appears with a small kitten in her mouth, and then she stays.

     James examines Debbie and discovers “a hard lobulated mass deep among the viscera. Massive lymphosarcoma. Terminal and hopeless.” There, before the fire, Debbie slips into a coma and dies. Mrs. Ainsworth sobs as she pets Debbie’s matted hair.

     One year later, on Christmas day, Mrs. Ainsworth invites James into her home, and he sees that that pitiful kitten, now named Buster, has grown into a sizable tomcat that loves to retrieve a hard rubber ball. Mrs. Ainsworth says, “Debbie would be pleased. Buster is the best Christmas present I ever had.” The Christmas cat is just one story in James Herriot’s wonderful book All Things Wise and Wonderful.

     In The Gift of the Magi, the difficulty is not permanent. Della’s hair would grow and months later she could use the combs, and Jim could save some of his salary until he could purchase another watch. Both the Grinch and Ebenezer Scrooge experience a welcome change of heart, and each can then enjoy Christmas. Charlie Brown listens and understands the Christmas story, and Mrs. Ainsworth’s sorrow and tears, when she watched Debbie die, were replaced by pure joy when she cared and played with that Christmas kitten that she named Buster.

     When we read the texts of Christmas—the season’s sights, sounds, smells, and symbols—we transform ourselves into better people. Charles Dickens said it best. “Nearer and closer to our hearts be the Christmas spirit, which is the spirit of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness and forbearance!” Although Andy Williams is no longer with us, we still hear his words, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” ‘Tis true. If we read the season’s texts, we can enjoy Christmas.

Space Flight

by William H. Benson

December 4, 2014

     On November 23, a week ago last Sunday, another Soyuz rocket launched three astronauts into outer space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and after a six-hour flight they docked at the International Space Station 268 miles above the Pacific Ocean. The three included the Russian cosmonaut Anton Schkaplerov, the European Space Agency astronaut from Italy Samantha Cristoforetti, and NASA’s Terry Virts.

     They joined the three others already there: NASA’s Barry Wilmore and two Russian cosmonauts, Elena Serova and Alexander Samokuyaev. On Thanksgiving Day, the six-person crew of Expedition 42 enjoyed smoked turkey, candied yams, green beans, cornbread dressing, and cherry-blueberry cobbler. The six will conduct experiments aboard the ISS over the next five and a half months.

     United States astronauts and Russian cosmonauts assembled the ISS a unit at a time. The Russians launched the first unit, Zarya, on November 20, 1998, and two weeks later, on December 4, NASA launched the Unity Module. When the the third unit, Zvezda, docked with the first two units on July 12, 2000, it permitted a crew of at least two to live inside the three units for weeks at a time.

     After twenty-six space shuttle flights that carried a stream of units, trusses, and solar panels into space, ever since 1998, the ISS now has fifteen pressurized units: seven from the United States, five from Russia, two from Japan, and one from Europe. The ISS’s total cost now stands at $150 billion. NASA has focused upon the ISS since July of 2011, after Congress, in a budget-cutting frenzy, terminated the space shuttle program after thirty years and 135 missions.

     There are some though that are not sorry to see the space shuttle retired. Carol Pinchefsky of Forbes magazine argued that “it killed more people than any other space vehicle in history,” that “it was very expensive,” that “it never went very high,” and that “it was designed to fly fifty missions per year.”

     Fourteen people died in the two space shuttle explosions. It cost a total of $173 billion, or an average of $1.3 billion per flight. It was intended to last for only ten years, and yet NASA extended its life for another twenty years past its expiration date. On average it flew only four missions per year.

     In 2005, the NASA official Michael Giffin called the program “a mistake,” and “inherently flawed.” Because it stifled creativity and innovation, it missed its intended goal to “get more people into orbit, more often, and for a far reduced price.”  

     NASA has decided for a time to exit the space entry business, turn it over to private industry, such as SpaceX, and concentrate on experiments in space at the ISS.

     While NASA was spending vast sums of money on the space shuttle, the Russians stuck with their big, simple, and inexpensive Soyuz rockets, designed in the 1960’s. “Russia in seen as having the world’s safest, most cost-effective human spaceflight system available.” Although the Russians hesitate to provide official data, rumors speculate that each Soyuz flight costs less than $100 million.

     NASA now depends upon the Russians to deliver its astronauts to and from the ISS, a predicament for the United States, and some have warned of the consequences. First, the Russians will continue to increase the price NASA pays. This year NASA signed a deal with the Russians that will last until 2017 to pay $70.7 million per seat to fly on a Soyuz rocket, an increase of about $8 million. 

     Prior to his passing, Neil Armstrong said that we now have an “unacceptable flight risk,” because “Soyuz lacks airlocks, life support systems, and a robotic arm to repair the ISS.”

     Chris Kraft, a retired engineer from the Johnson Space Center, warned of a “catastrophic re-entry” of the 400-ton space station should it collapse into “a shower of debris” upon Earth’s surface. “It is never wise to play Russian roulette in space,” he said. John Glenn said that “Our astronauts will have to be launched in Russian spacecraft, from a Russian base in Kazakhstan, to go to our space station,” and so he added, “this is hard to accept.”

     And after witnessing Vladimir Putin’s seizure of the Crimea this year, we know that the Russian leader is determined and aggressive, someone the United States should hesitate to trust. 

     The two questions of the day are, “How will NASA sustain the ISS’s operation without the space shuttle, and how can NASA lessen its dependence upon the Russians?” NASA is not forthcoming with answers, but the space organization must answer them someday. As for the second question, I say that either a private company or NASA should begin building its own Soyuz-styled rockets, inexpensive but effective and safe. NASA needs a taxi into space that is based upon United States soil now.

     As for the first question, I wonder if it is wise for NASA to focus upon the ISS and lessen its focus upon space missions, manned or unmanned, to the moon, to Mars, or to Jupiter. The questions remain.

     In the meantime, the six-person crew will celebrate Christmas at the ISS in three weeks.

Camp David and Gettysburg

by William H. Benson

November 19, 2014

     On November 9, 1977, Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s president, set aside his speech to the Egyptian People’s Assembly and said, “I am ready to travel to the ends of the earth. Israel will be surprised to hear me say that I am willing to go to their parliament, the Knesset itself, and debate with them.” Few believed him, and so they wondered, “What good could come from a debate with Israel?”

     Egypt and Israel were bitter enemies, and so all wondered, “What did Sadat want?” Menachem Begin, Israel’s prime minister, extended an invitation to Sadat to visit Israel, and he accepted.

     Ten days later, on November 19, Sadat’s plane landed at Jerusalem’s Ben Gurion Airport, and Golda Meir and Menachem Begin welcomed Anwar Sadat to Israel. That morning Sadat and Begin visited the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and also the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. Begin explained to Sadat that the Nazis had murdered his parents in Poland.

     Next, Sadat stood at the podium and addressed members of the Knesset. “You want to live with us in this part of the world. In all sincerity, I tell you, we welcome you among us, with full security and safety. Peace is based on justice, and not on the occupation of the land of others. You have to give up, once and for all, the dreams of conquest, and give up the belief that force is the best method for dealing with the Arabs. We insist on complete withdrawal from these territories.”

     So that was what Sadat wanted. To the Israelis he was offering an intangible item, peace, in exchange for a tangible item, the return of the territories that Israel had seized in the 1967 Six Day War, including Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. It was doubtful that Israel would agree to Sadat’s offer.

     Sadat departed Israel, but nothing much came from his bold gesture. Blinded by past grievances and prejudiced backgrounds, neither he nor Begin knew how to forge a peace treaty with each other.

    The following summer, Jimmy Carter, then the President of the United States, invited Sadat and Begin to his Presidential retreat at Camp David, just minutes away from the White House. “Carter assumed that reasonable people of good will could surely solve the problem if they escaped the pressures of their home environments and sat down to talk. That was about as wrong then as it is now.”

     Carter knew nothing about what he was doing. This was a high risk gamble, a risk-it-all venture that laid his presidency on the line, a most foolish thing to do. All his advisors cautioned him not to do it.  

     In recent weeks, the author, Lawrence Wright, published his most recent book, Thirteen Days in September, his stirring account of the Camp David talks. Wright reveals how entrenched, arrogant, and intransigent Begin acted. He was “absolutely convinced that he holds the truth in his back pocket, by his overbearing manner.” His tools included: “anger, sarcasm, bombast, exaggeration, wearying repetition of argument, historical lessons from dark chapters of Jewish history, and stubbornness.”

     Carter came to admire Sadat, but he grew to loathe Begin, whom he thought was a “psycho.” “Sadat was the only one among the Egyptians at Camp David who really wanted a deal with Israel, and Begin was the only one among the Israelis who did not want a deal with Egypt.” The two men quarreled, squabbled over details, and often threatened to leave. Carter came to realize that he must lead the way.

     He presented a plan and asked for Sadat and Begin’s agreement. He would then lock down that portion of the plan that the two men approved, and then he would work towards agreement on the points that they disputed. Revision after revision Carter presented, and each in turn they rejected.

     By Sunday, September 10, the three men were suffering from cabin fever, anxious to leave and go home. Carter decided that that day he would drive the two men to Gettysburg in his black limousine.

     Carter’s great-grandfather had fought for Georgia at the battle, and like most boys raised in the South, Jimmy Carter felt an attraction for the battle when the Confederacy had invaded the North. At the cemetery, filled with rows of tombstones, Carter explained that it was there that President Lincoln had delivered his Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863.

      Begin surprised everyone there that day when he began speaking in a quiet voice, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

     Jimmy, Rosalyn, Sadat, Moshe Dayan and all their advisors looked up at the Israeli leader and listened as he quoted Lincoln’s words, gaining power as he continued, “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Lincoln, the tallest of men, had cast a shadow that fell across a school in a Polish village where a young Menachem Begin may have first read the Gettysburg Address.

     The three men returned to Camp David, and days later Begin and Sadat agreed to Carter’s “Framework for a Comprehensive Peaceful Settlement of the Middle East Problem.” Both Sadat and Begin received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978, but all three men—a Southern Baptist Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew—recognized the arduous effort that is required to end war and establish peace.

     Lawrence Wright ended his book with a most remarkable sentence. “Since the signing of the treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979, there has not been a single violation of the terms of the agreement. It’s impossible to calculate the value of peace until war brings it to an end.”

Patricia Hearst

by William H. Benson

November 19, 2014

     The Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped nineteen-year-old Patty Hearst, a sophomore at the University of California, Berkley, on February 4, 1974. For the next 57 days, this small-time urban guerrilla organization detained Patty in a studio apartment’s closet, dressed only in her bathrobe. They beat her, abused her, changed her name to Tania, and brainwashed her. She helped with a bank heist.

     When given a chance to flee, she chose to stay. Long after the core SLA members perished in a gunfight with police, Patty remained underground. When police did arrest her, no one was holding her captive. She weighed 87 pounds, smoked all the time, and had deteriorated mentally. When asked to explain her actions, she said, “I accommodated my thoughts to coincide with theirs.”

     She was tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison for seven years. She remained in prison for the next twenty-two months, until 1979, when President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence for time served. On Bill Clinton’s last day in office, January 20, 2001, he pardoned her.

     The noted columnist Maureen Dowd said, “Somehow you feel that Patty, deep down, understood that she was involved in something horrifying.”

     Patty herself said, “I keep trying to forget these people, and they keep dragging me back into it.”

     But John Wayne said it best, “It was odd that people accepted that one man, Jim Jones, had brainwashed 900 human beings into mass suicide, but would not accept that a group like the SLA could have brainwashed a kidnapped teenage girl.”

     Patty Hearst came from a wealthy family. Her grandfather, William Randolph Hearst, had pioneered “yellow journalism,” the printing of sensational exposé’s and the rawest of crimes, with the sole intent of publishing more newspapers than did the other major publisher, Joseph Pulitzer.

     Last month, Leah Remini published her book, Troublemaker, an exposé of the Church of Scientology. For nine seasons she had starred with the comedian Kevin James, on the sitcom King of Queens, but for decades she had worked hard at “clearing the planet.” In recent years she clashed with the church’s Chairman of the Board, David Miscavige, over the favoritism he showed for Tom Cruise.

     Leah asked one question too often, “Where is Shelley Miscavige?” because no one has seen David’s wife, Shelley, in public for years. Leah even filed a missing person’s report. The church responded that Shelley is fine, but no official will identify her whereabouts.

     Leah reflected upon her time in the church. “Scientology is great,” she said, “at preparing a person for a life inside the church, but not so great at preparing a person for life outside the church.”

     Last Friday evening, terrorists struck Paris, France, and killed at least 127 innocent people. ISIS claimed responsibility. A sad weekend in what is called the City of Light. A nasty ideology has captured those people-turned-terrorists, and now dozens lay dead. The terrorists had accommodated their thoughts to coincide with their rulers. A sad weekend.

     Last week, the two journalists, George Will and Bill O’Reilly, clashed over O’Reilly’s book Killing Reagan. The feud started when George Will wrote an opinion that bashed O’Reilly’s premise that the assassination attempt slowed Reagan, left him mentally unfit for the Oval Office, and that he “was addled to the point of incompetency, causing his senior advisors to contemplate using the Constitution’s 25^th Amendment to remove him from office.”

    Will called the premise “a tissue of unsubstantiated assertions.” Yes, he said, Reagan “was shot on his 70^th day of his presidency, and in the next 2853 days he produced an economic boom and the Cold War’s endgame.” Reagan saw the big picture.

     Will appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s show, and the two men bickered. My first thought, “Yellow journalism,” a fight engendered to increase viewer numbers, but I think Will is above such motives. He pointed that O’Reilly and his co-author, Martin Dugard, failed to interview Reagan’s associates during his presidency, because they would have “shredded the book’s preposterous premise.”

     O’Reilly’s book listed only 151 footnotes, “only one of which is even remotely pertinent to the book’s lurid assertions.” Will concluded, “The book is nonsensical history.”

     Jim Jones at Jonestown, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Church of Scientology, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, each an ideology gone awry. When people are beaten, wounded, kidnapped, or killed, the ideology responsible is misguided.

     Often it is based upon a false historical supposition. Someone has reached back into the distant past, produced a document, and now insists that others believe their version of the past, and to act upon that version. Historical facts are brutal things. They get in the way of our prejudices, and force us to look at actual events. They force us to think for ourselves, to arrive at our own conclusions, and not to “accommodate our thoughts to coincide with theirs.”

     I agree with Maureen Dowd that deep down people who are swept up in an extreme ideology understand that they are involved in something horrifying.

Longevity

by William H. Benson

November 6, 2014

     Billy Graham will celebrate another birthday this week, his ninety-sixth. As far as I know, he still lives, despite a lifetime of poor health: “hernias, retina clots, pleurisies, headaches, nauseas, removal of a salivary gland, urinary infections, ulcerative colitis, jaw abscesses, tumors on the forehead,” plus “cysts, polyps, infections, pneumonia, chronic high blood pressure, spider bites, and a series of falls that have broken eighteen of his ribs.” When he was twenty-six, he came down with the mumps.

     Today he suffers from respiratory problems, poor eyesight, a lack of strength, and Parkinson’s disease. Decades ago, he asked his associate T. W. Wilson, “Can you think of anything I’ve done in all my life, anything at all, to deserve these sicknesses?”

     He has outlived many of the 215 million people he preached to in 185 countries over a six-decade blazing evangelistic career. His mellifluous soloist, George Beverly Shea, passed away in April 2013, at 104, and the crusades’ song director, Cliff Barrows , is 91. On Billy’s team, longevity is the rule.

     Babies born in 2011 can expect to live an average of 77.9 years. Life expectancy at fifty is 30.9 years, but at ninety-five it is 3.2 years. The oldest person to live, and with documentation to prove it, was Jeanne Calmnet of Aryles, France, who passed away on August 5, 1997, at the age of 122 years, 164 days. She attributed her longevity to her unflappability, and her daily bicycle ride. She ate two pounds of chocolate every week, and smoked cigarettes until she was 117. 

     Animals live far shorter lives than human beings. The average lifespan for a dog or a cat is twelve years; for a baboon, polar bear, chimpanzee, gorilla, horse, or rhinoceros, it is twenty years; but only two animals—elephants and hippopotamuses—live an average of forty years. There are exceptions. A giant tortoise can live for 150 years.

     The dinosaurs ruled our planet for 135 million years. Countless generations lived, ate and digested their food, walked about Earth, stared at events that unfolded before them, as their hearts beat inside them, and then they too died. Researchers estimate that the herbivores may have lived as much as seventy years, but that the smaller carnivores, such as Tyrannosaurus Rex, lived only twenty years.

     But it must have been a pitiless and heartless existence in the wild, as it still is for most animals. Infections in wounds and diseases caused by viruses and bacteria produced as much pain and suffering as they do now. The meat-eaters had to attack, kill, and devour other dinosaurs, if they would live another day, and so cruelty was ever-present.

     As far as we know, no animal comprehends its own mortality. Members of each species live unaware that they too will die. Only human beings are blessed, or cursed, by the knowledge or their imminent demise; hence the need for religion.

     For what purpose does any plant or animal live? I say that it is Earth’s free gift to all that live: plants, trees, dogs, cats, men, and women. Indeed, it is a privilege to walk about Earth, to breathe its air, to meet others, to see with our eyes. It is Earth’s gift to each, bound up deep inside a creature’s DNA.

     A writer in the New York Times wrote last week, “At least here on Earth, things just don’t naturally work out so that people get what they deserve. If there is such a thing as divine justice, the world we live in is not the place to find it. Instead, the events of human life unfold in a fair and just manner only when individuals and society work hard to make this happen.”

     Millions of turkeys will die this month so that we might live another day. For them, life is not fair.

     Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The years teach much which the days never knew. It takes a good deal of time to eat or to sleep, and a very little time to entertain a hope and an insight which becomes the light of our life.”

     For Billy Graham that light appeared when he was fifteen, the night he attended an evangelistic service in Charlotte, North Carolina. He knew his purpose then and never veered from it. If he had played a piano, he would have tapped on middle C again and again. Why change to other keys on the piano? He claimed he found the best, and so he stuck to it. Constant to a fault, his story never changed.

     One biographer said of Billy, “He has seemed unable to cease, to relent from that almost manic urgency to spend himself on and on before great crowds in distant places: it has continued to propel him on almost blindly.” As a result he lived most of his life on jets and in hotel rooms. His wife Ruth joked, “When Billy gets to heaven, he will expect to check into a hotel room.”

     One of his critics, Harold Bloom, said of Billy, “He does little harm; he does little good. He has remained a fifties period piece, bound to that decade’s vision of a prosperous, well-scrubbed America.”

And that comment, I think, is unfair. No one can take away from Billy Graham the extraordinary and phenomenal success he enjoyed for sixty years, preaching his religious vision across the world.

     Throughout the last half of the twentieth century, he was omnipresent. After Bill Clinton became president, he said, “Everywhere I go in the world, Billy Graham has already been there.”