ROBERT FROST

by William H. Benson

March 27, 2003

     “When April with his showers hath pierced the drought

      Of March with sweetness to the very root,

      And flooded every vein with liquid power

      That of its strength engendereth the flower.”

With those four lines of English words Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century began his Canterbury Tales of thirty pilgrims travelling together and telling the stories of their lives.

     From Chaucer to Shakespeare to Dickens to Emerson to Thoreau to Dickinson to Twain and to Robert Frost.  Dramatists, novelists, essayists, humorists, and poets–they each loved words.  They loved the English lanuguage, its syntax, its vocabulary, and its grammar, and each used it and then left it in a better condition than when they had found it.

     English is “the treasure of our tongue” and has been transported around the globe.  It has become the most widely spoken language in the history of humankind, the linguistic wonder of the modern world.  Stephen Baker, an immigrant to America from Hungary, said, “No doubt English was invented in heaven.  It may be the lingua franca of the angels.  No other language is like it.”

     So often in classrooms across the nation, about when March turns to April, the English instructors put aside their units on composition and short stories and novels and dust off their lessons on poetry.  It is the season for poetry.  Especially in the midsts of war, we do need a poet.

     If Shakespeare is England’s national bard, then America’s is Robert Frost, born on March 26, 1875.  He reached national prominence on a cool day in January of 1961 when he stood on the Capitol steps at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration and read his poem, The Gift Outright:

     “The land was ours before we were the lands. . . .

      (The deed of gift was many deeds of war).”

And it was Robert Frost who wrote Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening:

     “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

      But I have promises to keep,

      And miles to go before I sleep,

      And miles to go before I sleep.”

     On September 14, 2001 seated in the National Cathedral in Washington D. C. were our nation’s governing officials–President Bush and his family, his father and mother, and former President Clinton.  On that day prayers were spoken, songs were sung, candles were lit, tears were shed, and decisions were made–promises to keep.

     The columnist Mona Charen put it this way in her column last week.  “The President declined to buckle to the conventional wisdom. . . . Bush stood his ground. . . . He understands the link between extending freedom and making the world safer for Americans. . . . He is pursuing a Pax Americana. . . . And then in the wake of victory, America will help to create the first democracy in the Arab world.”

     It appears to me that President Bush made up his mind to go to war against the “faceless cowards” that day while seated in the National Cathedral, mourning the tragic loss of lives, and nothing since has dissuaded him from that decision.  Promises to keep.

     “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–

      I took the one less traveled by,

      And that has made all the difference.”

     In Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, Emily asked the Stage Manager, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?–every, every minute?  And the Stage Manager replied, “The saints and poets, maybe–they do some.”

     And Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “When we become tired of our saints, we can still turn to Shakespeare.”  And we, as Americans, speakers of the English language, not only have Shakespeare and Chaucer to turn to, but we also have thinkers like Emerson and Robert Frost.  As March gives way to April, we can hope that war will give way to peace.

LABELS

by William H. Benson

February 27, 2003

     In Shakespeare’s King Richard II Henry of Bolingbroke tried out various labels to discribe his grab for England’s crown.  Was it a deposition, in that he was removing Richard from the throne?  Or was Richard resigning by abdication?  Or was it a peaceful transfer of power from Richard to Henry?  Or was it a coronation of a new king?  Henry wanted the proper label to justify his actions, for he was kicking out Richard and placing himself on the throne.

     Each science and each discipline has its own labels, terms fixed to a thing or a behavior or an event or an action.  Learn the terms, and you know the science.  Labelling is defined as trapping a living thing in the catch of a human phrase, and it is a powerful act.  For example, Adam was told to name the animals, and by that act he held dominion over them.  And the answer–“I am that I am”–to Moses’s question meant that He would not be trapped in the clutch of a human term.

     Right now George Bush is searching for the label whereby he might describe his end game with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.  Coming from the Oval Office are sentences such as, “Certainly we would welcome an administrative change in Iraq.”  But how will that change come about–through a deposition, a resignation, a capture, an internal revolution, or a gentle transfer?  The proper term is out there and remains to be played out.

     We can easily fix labels upon the Middle East–rich in oil but masses of poor people, a weak military, biased toward the masculine, a single focus upon religion, ruled by elites, and closed to new information.  And just as easily we can attach labels to the U.S.–rich, democratic, powerful, inclusive, a splintered religious focus, and open to new information.

     So by the labels we catch the apparant differences between the East and the West, and immediately we then judge which of the labels are good and which are bad.  But looking below those labels we can see what they truly mean to people, in terms of feelings and the human costs and the disrupted potentials.

     Women in America have fought their way into the office, the workplace, the schools, and the universities.  Ralph Peters, a military intellectual, said, “Rosie the Riveter is in the boardroom, she’s on campus, she’s flying jets off carriers.  Look at our tremendous openness to the utilitization of human capital, the opening of our society to women, to minorities, to old people.”

     And yet across the Pan-Islamic world, Ralph Peters argued, we can witness a neurosis, a primeval terror about female sexuality.  Only Sigmund Freud could perhaps decipher what there is in a culture or a religion or a people that would subject their women, half their population, to wearing black robes and veils and hiding terror-stricken in the shadows, as if less than human.

     Because a Martin Luther-style Protestant Reformation never happened in the Middle East, Islamic followers have only one path to final truth, and it has calcified.  But because of the Reformation, the West could then cultivate various forms of religions, different paths to the same ending, and even then embrace a secular religion, that of science.

     Being open to new information allows people to question their myths about themselves and their governments.  Carl Sagan entitled one of his essays, “Real patriots ask questions”, because ultimately in a democratic government it is the people who rule, not their elected representatives.  About closed societies, Ralph Peters said, “Listen to our enemies’ rhetoric.  They’re in love with their myths of themselves, both old and new, and they’re myths of self-justification.”

     Evidence exists that the governments in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine have at times supported the terrorist organizations: Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and Al Qaeda, and for this they should be held accountable.  For it is the duty of the West to bring the rest of the nations of the world, including the Middle East, around to the point that they understand that the label terrorism is an ugly word, equal in ferocity to piracy or the slave trade or genocide, seen not as a legitimate means of addressing shortfalls, but as something condemned by all civilized peoples as well as the international community.

JACK BENNY

by William H. Benson

February 13, 2003

      “I was seventeen years old the first time I saw Jack,” Johnny Carson said.  “I hitchhiked to California, and went to see one of his radio show tapings at CBS.  I was fresh out of high school, and about to go into the service.  But first, I wanted to see Hollywood–and Jack Benny.”

     Born Benjamin Kubelsky on February 13, 1894 to recent Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, Jack grew up in Waukegan, Illinois, just north of Chicago along Lake Michigan.  At age six his parents gave him a violin, and although he hated the long hours of practice, he had some talent.

     He dropped out of high school his sophmore year, and at age eighteen he took to the vaudeville circuit with his violin, never looking back.  Eventually he began to work jokes in with his violin playing, and his career steadily progressed through the years as a standup comic, then on to radio and  television, into the movies, and even performing in Las Vegas.  All of America loved Jack Benny for all of his thirty-nine years.

      Even President Kennedy said that when he wanted to relax he watched Jack Benny.

      For fifteen years Jack had his own television show, and a steady stream of guests showed up to enjoy Jack’s zany style of comedy.  Marilyn Monroe appeared only once as a special guest on a television show ever and that was in 1953 on Jack’s show.  Rod Serling from Twilight Zone, Ann-Margaret, Jimmy Stewart, Bobby Darrin, and even Billy Graham came on as Jack’s guests.

     And then there was the night that a young Carol Burnett played the part of Jane while Jack played an over-the-hill Tarzan.  Instead of swinging through the jungle on a grape vine, he was confined to a porch swing.  At one point Jane told Tarzan, the King of the Jungle, to yell, and out came a pathetic whimper.  So Carol Burnett playing the part of Jane cut loose with her famous Tarzan yell, startling Jack and the audience, and she has done that yell hundreds of times since. 

     Jack’s comedy was a combination of gags, jokes, and actions that blended together.  There was the violin, the stingy jokes, the idea that he was forever thirty-nine, and his petulant outcry–“Now cut that out!”.  Even his walk seemed funny.  Then there was the way he would hold up a hand and gently slap his face in a moment of astonishment.

     But what brought out the biggest laughs was the Look, that moment when the joke was on him and he realized it; he would then stare blank-faced into the camera and out into the audience.  Now on paper the Look does not sound funny, but the way he did it made it funny.

     In 1959 Jack called former President Truman and asked him to appear on his show, and Truman agreed.  Not even a former President could say “No” to Jack Benny.  Actually, Jack took his show and his cameramen to Kansas City where he toured Truman’s Presidential Library, and Harry was a most gracious host.  And Jack was most dignified.

     Then, just before the close of the show the two of them went back to Harry’s office, and Harry instructed his secretary not to disturb them.  Then, Jack and Harry closed the door behind them, but then the secretary walked over and opened it slightly so that the audience could hear off camera what they were doing–playing music.  Harry was on the piano, and Jack had his violin.  Together they were playing a  duet–Tea for Two.

     As a fund-raiser Jack enjoyed playing his violin with symphonies and orchestras across the nation.  He would begin the performance by walking out with his violin and tell a few jokes and get the audience on his side.  Then, when it was time to play the music he would look around and realize that he had forgotten his bow.  And then there was the dumbfounded Look, and the audience would roar.

     Jack Benny’s birthday is Thursday, February 13th, and he would have been thirty-nine plus seventy.  Valentine’s Day is Friday, and President’s Day is next Monday.  They all just seem to go together.  Jack Benny, the lighthearted loveable court jester, could get all of America laughing and then reach over, pick up his violin and bow, and play Tea for Two with a former President.

SOLITUDE

by William H. Benson

January 30, 2003

     In the book Dances with Wolves Lieutenant Dunbar finds himself alone at Fort Sedgewick, abandoned and forgotten by his superior officers and fellow cavalrymen.  He had his horse Cisco, and occasionally he saw a solitary wolf he named Two Socks.  However, the point of the story is that Dunbar did not choose to remain alone but gradually fell in with the Comanches to the point that he abandoned his own society and fully accepted the Native American’s.

     Men and women are social creatures.  It is indeed a rare human being who will choose absolute isolation from others, separate and outside of society.  The anxiety and terror of permanent separation is bred deep into our thoughts, for supposedly “No man is an island.”

     On January 31, 1709 an English ship stopped at the Juan Fernandez Islands, some three hundred miles west of Valparaiso, Chile in the Pacific and discovered Alexander Selkirk, a Scotch sailor who had lived alone on the island for four years and four months.

     Shoeless and dressed in goatskins, Selkirk reacted with the greatest indifference to his rescuers, for he said that after the first eight months he had conquered his loneliness and had learned to enjoy his days marooned on an island.  Surrounded by cats and goats, he had adapted.

     Selkirk was the exception, for most people are not psychologically suited for absolute solitude.

     Although Sigmond Freud devoted most of his thoughts toward discovering how individuals think and then behave, he also examined the tension between the individual and society.  He understood that individuals have universal desires and that society expects people to curb those desires for the benefit of the society.

     The psychologist studies the individual, and the sociologist studies the society and its methods of limiting individual desires.  Societies set up rules and create laws, defining what is acceptable and what is not, what is criminal and what is legal, and what is proper and what is inappropriate.

     The sociologist even digs deeper and discovers what it is that each society accepts as the arbiter of public truth.  In many societies over the centuries that arbiter was religion.  But in recent decades in America and Europe, science has superseded religion as the dominant way that society sets its limits on what is acceptable and what is deviant.

     Perhaps what is needed today is a new arbiter of public truth that rises above both religion and science, and steps us away from confrontational discussions of right and wrong.

     Roe v. Wade just celebrated its thirtieth birthday, and that court decision, right or wrong, is an example of science overwhelming religion as the arbiter that led to the decision.  Whether to legalize drugs or not is another of our society’s perplexing questions, and America now is searching for the arbiter which will point to the truth.

     An excellent way to solve the problem of crime and to empty our prisons is to make everything legal.  Nobody and nothing is then deviant.  All things are permissable.  And we all will be looking to live alone on a deserted island.  

     Each society at any point in time is constantly negotiating the meaning of truth, for everyone is a moral entrepreneur trying to determine what is wrong and what is right.

     There is much good to be said about solitude, slipping at odd moments away from society’s pull.  Henry David Thoreau wrote, “I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.  To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.  I love to be alone.  I never found the companion that was so companiable as solitude.”

REPUBLIC OR EMPIRE

by William H. Benson

January 16, 2003

     George Washington never delivered his Farewell Address.  Instead, he had it printed on September 19, 1796, and in it he said, “Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections.”  In other words, if an American, love America.

     He warned future generations against entangling themselves in Europe’s alliances and foreign  intrigues, for he saw empire with its wars and responsibilities as the very enemy of the republic. 

     In ancient Rome the elected Senators commanded the real power.  But once Julius Caesar had conquered Gaul, central Europe, and a major part of the British Isles, Rome possessed an empire and an ended up with an emperor, Caesar Augustus, who retained all power and made all decisions.  In this transition from republic to empire, the Roman citizens lost their right to self-government, but in exchange they received peace, security, bread, and games.

     Throughout the four centuries of the Pax Romana, all citizens of the Roman Empire were left alone as long as they kept the peace and paid their taxes.

     A historian once wrote that Britain acquired her empire in “a fit of absence of mind,” and so she became Great Britain.  However, King George III was no match for the capabilities and intellect of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.  In another fit of absence of mind King George III and Britain lost America to Americans who declared their independence from Britain.

     Both Rome and Britain are examples of how through sheer will power and force ambitious leaders can carve out empires across foreign territories, but always at a cost.  The Romans lost self-government, and the British lost America.

     Today the citizens of the United States of America are poised at a crossroads.  Will they choose empire or retain their republic?  Will they embrace an imperial Presidency and an acquiescing Congress and United Nations, or will they insist upon self-government?

     Last June George Bush spoke to the graduating cadets at West Point and said, “America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish.”  Then, last November at the White House he spoke to a group of veterans and said that America has “no territorial ambitions.  We don’t seek an empire.  Our nation is committed to freedom for ourselves and for others.”

     On August 28, 1963 Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before 250,000 protesters and said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin but by their character.”

     How far can we as Americans extend King’s dream of equality and opportunity and freedom?  Shall we extend it to citizens of foreign countries?  Is our faith in representative democracy, in a republic, so determined that we would force it upon other lands, and in so doing create an empire and lose our own republic?  America would then give up its own soul to save others.

     George Bush sees his actions in Iraq primarily as self-defensive for America and secondarily as giving the Iraqis a chance for self-government, once Saddam Hussein is ousted.  But in a country without a history of self-government, the choice is often not between dictator and republic, but rather between dictator and anarchy.

     Given those two choices, many would rather groan under the whims of a dictator rather than suffer the devastation of a civil war and the uncertainity of the unknown.  And America will be asked to sort this all out, the very thing that George Washington warned against.

     A quote from The New York Times: “The impending operation in Iraq is thus a defining moment in America’s long debate with itself about whether its overseas role as an empire threatens or strengthens its existence as a republic.”

ISAAC ASIMOV

by William H. Benson

January 2, 2003

     Isaac Asimov often told the story about the day he met with one of his professors, Joseph Mayer, to discuss the low grade that the professor had given him on a lab report.  Dr. Mayer looked at the intense young graduate student and bluntly said,  “The trouble with you, Asimov, is that you can’t write.”  The professor was quite unaware of what Isaac had already achieved in writing science fiction, ever since he was a teenager.

     Isaac sat there stunned for a moment, gathered up his papers, and said, “I’ll thank you, Professor Mayer, not to repeat that slander to my publishers.”

     Wearing dark-framed glasses and sporting mutton-chop sideburns and wild hair, Isaac enjoyed life best sitting in front of a typewriter and pouring his ideas on to paper, something he did for almost 60 years, producing an incredible amount of material.  Besides science fiction, he wrote on mathematics, astronomy, geology chemistry, biochemistry, physics, biology, history, literature, and even humor.  Book after book after book rolled off his typewriter.

    Unfortunately, the typewriting ceased on April 6, 1992 when Isaac Asmiov died due to complications from AIDS, something that the general public was not told.  Two days later Arthur Ashe, the tennis star, announced that he also had AIDS, and he died the following February.

     Both Asimov and Ashe had become HIV infected with tainted blood during heart surgery in the mid-eighties, in the days before blood was screened.  It is ironic that Isaac Asimov, a scientist and a science-fiction writer, would be overcome by a scientific phenomenon–a virus that had invaded his body, quietly replicated itself, and then suddenly attacked, shutting down his auto-immune system.

       AIDS is now 21 years old and is a viral terror.  Today somewhere between 40 and 60 million people worldwide are HIV infected.  The worst of this human catastrophe is in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the virus has killed more than 12 million people.  By 2010 experts believe that the disease will orphan roughly 20 million African children.

     The global crisis is spreading into India, China, southeast Asia, and Russia.  Because the numbers keep exploding, the news in those places is bad, and the word Holocaust is cropping up.

     The good news is that in the U.S. deaths from AIDS has dropped from nearly 50,000 per year to less than 17,000, mainly due to the AIDS “triple cocktail” drug therapy, called HAART.  Unlike Asimov and Arthur, Magic Johnson is still alive, some 11 years after he was diagnosed.

     January 2 is Isaac Asimov’s birthday, and he would have been 83 years old today.  Much like the ancient Roman god Janus who was blessed with two faces, one to look back into the past and another to look forward into the future, Isaac Asimov thought and wrote equally well in both mental hemispheres.

     His best known science-fiction work was the Foundation series in which his fictional character Hari Seldon devised a new science called psychohistory and wrote complicated mathematical formulas, all designed to predict the future based upon past events.

     We begin a new year this week, and looking into 2003 we see biological terrors that could cripple the very psyche of humanity–HIV and AIDS, the West Nile Virus, and the threat of a resumption of smallpox, eradicated from the planet in 1979.  I would like to think that perhaps in 2003, scientists will discover a cure for HIV, that national leaders will seek and find a solution for the AIDS orphans, that a biological war with Iraq will be prevented, that smallpox will remain locked in laboratory freezers, and that humanity will retain its hope for a better future. 

     Shortly before dying, Isaac Asimov said, “I don’t feel self-pity because I won’t be around to see any of the possible futures.  Like Hari Seldon, I can look at my work all around me and I’m comforted.  I know that I’ve studied about, imagined, and written down many possible futures–it’s as if I’ve been there.”