"I don't read fiction, Doug. Fiction's just not true!"
"I don't have time to read the newspaper. I just form my own opinions."
"I'm fed up with all the media concentration. I've decided, from now on, I'm just going to listen to NPR."
Tags: information, media, public opinion[video included above]
No world surpasses the beauty of this our world.
Tags: butterflies, cooperation, flowers, harmony, here, now, partners, peaceImagine a poor but close-knit village. Your family has lived there for decades and knows everyone. No one has a telephone or a television, and few have cars. In your village, everyone has similar skin color, hair color, and facial features. You are a devout Catholic, and some of your neighbors are enthusiastic Protestants. You all work together as Christians on common projects for the village
Mataba, a village in western Rwanda, was a village like this. In 1994, three days after Easter Sunday, neighbors began massacring neighbors, chopping them up with machetes, shooting them, and burning them alive. Hutus and the Tutsis were "tribes" invented in administrative and political history and had little basis in ordinary life. Nonetheless, Hutus set out to exterminate their neighbors who were Tutsis.
Immaculée Ilibagiza, a Tutsi who grew up in Mataba, experienced this horror. Her book, Left to Tell, is a deeply moving account of human beings at their worst and at their best.
Disparately seeking a place to hide from killers, Immaculée found Janet, her best friend since primary school. Immaculée recounts:
I threw my arms around her, hugging her as tightly as I could, but her body stiffened. When I pulled back and looked into her face, it wasn't friendly at all -- in fact, her eyes refused to meet mine. ...
Janet bent down, grabbed her purse, and stood up. "I don't know what you can be thinking, Immaculée," she said, still not looking at me. "I'm certainly not going to hide you, and neither will my father. We don't hide Tutsis in our home."
"But... Janet?"
She turned to the other girl and said, "I'm leaving," and then walked out of the house and never looked back.
This was Immaculée's "dearest friend.... We'd loved each other like sisters once." How could a close friend's betrayal cut more deeply than when you are in great danger of being slaughtered?
Despite the horrors it recounts, Left to Tell is in part a love story. It describes love as a divine gift. It also describes love as a capacity of a disciplined will that overcame extraordinary motivations for hate. Near the end of the book, when Immaculée is trying to rebuild her nearly extinguished life, she describes this experience:
Standing on the doorstep, weeping with joy at having found me, was my dear friend and college roommate, Sarah. She'd managed to track me down, and we both screamed and threw our arms around each other. We spent hours catching up and shedding many tears. My heart broke all over again when I told her how the pastor had sent our brothers Augustine and Vianney out into the night -- and how they died together. ...
"You will always have a family with us," Sarah said. "Come live at my house ... we'll be sisters again!"
That is a miracle of love for Immaculée and by Immaculée.
Immaculée's father, Leonard Ukulikiyinkindi, and her mother, Marie Rose Kankindi, were hard-working parents who clearly loved each other and their children greatly. Not only that, they loved their neighbors, with love expressed in acts like tutoring children, sewing a neighbor's wedding dress, counseling others, and building up the local Catholic schools. When the massacres started, a huge crowd gathered at their house. Leonard climbed on top of a rock and addressed the crowd:
"I know you're afraid; don't be. These people -- these killers -- are few, and we are many. They're not stronger than we are, not if we have God's love in our hearts. If they are acting out of evil, if they come to harm us for no reason other than their hatred for us, then we will defeat them. Love will always conquer hatred. Believe in yourselves, believe in each other, and believe in God!"
Both Leonard and Rose were brutally killed.
After the massacres ended, Immaculée met a man who had helped to kill her mother and her brother, and who had sought to kill her. Called Felicien, he was "a successful Hutu businessman whose children I'd played with in primary school." He became a vicious killer, and then a broken, shamed prisoner. Meeting him in prison, Immaculée recounts:
I wept at the sight of his suffering. Felicien had let the devil enter his heart, and the evil had ruined his life like a cancer in his soul. ...
Felicien was sobbing. I could feel his shame. He looked up at me for only a moment, but our eyes met. I reached out, touched his hands lightly, and quietly said what I'd come to say.
"I forgive you."
Love conquered hatred.
To understand the fullness of life, in its astonishing extremities, read Immaculée Ilibagiza's luminous book, Left to Tell.
Tags: genocide, Left to Tell, love, Rwanda
This sunset appeared to me as I was riding my bike home from work and thinking about the failure of my singles' party.
William R. Evans was a torpedo-bomber pilot in Torpedo Squadron 8 (VT-8). That squadron operated from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet in World War II. Evans and all but one of his squadron mates were killed in action in the Battle of Midway on June 4, 1942.
Bill Evans and Charles Gillispie were roommates in the Wesleyan University Class of 1940. On December 2, 2007, Charles discussed his friendship with Dan Sachs and the creation of the Sachs Scholarship. Charles also remembered Bill Evans.
Acclaimed film director John Ford made a special short memorial film, Torpedo Squadron 8, for the families of members of Torpedo Squadron 8. Only thirty copies of the film,which was never shown publicly, were developed. The film has been available in the U.S. National Archives. Now it is also accessible on YouTube and the Internet Archive. Ford made this film in conjunction with making his widely viewed film, The Battle of Midway (1942).
Torpedo Squadron 8 received the Presidential Unit Citation on April 5, 1943. Its members were also awarded the Navy Cross. The citation for Bill Evans' award states:
The President of the United States takes pride in presenting the Navy Cross (Posthumously) to William Robinson Evans, Jr. (0-098626), Ensign, U.S. Navy (Reserve), for extraordinary heroism in operations against the enemy while serving as Pilot of a carrier-based Navy Torpedo Plane of Torpedo Squadron EIGHT (VT-8), embarked from the U.S.S. HORNET (CV-8), during the "Air Battle of Midway," against enemy Japanese forces on 4 June 1942. Grimly aware of the hazardous consequences of flying without fighter protection, and with insufficient fuel to return to his carrier, Ensign Evans resolutely, and with no thought of his own life, delivered an effective torpedo attack against violent assaults of enemy Japanese aircraft fire. His courageous action, carried out with a gallant spirit of self-sacrifice and a conscientious devotion to the fulfillment of his mission, was a determining factor in the defeat of the enemy forces and was in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.
Born: August 11, 1918 at Indianapolis, Indiana
Home Town: Indianapolis, Indiana
The Presidential Unit Citation similarly described the action.
The August 31, 1942 issue of Life Magazine featured as its cover story Ensign George Gay's account of Torpedo Squadron 8. Gay was the only pilot who survived the squadron's mission at Midway. This article includes an excerpt from a letter that Bill Evans wrote on December 7, 1941, the evening of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Habour.
A letter that Bill Evans wrote in April, 1942 appears in the Fetridge, William Harrison, ed., The Navy Reader (Indianapolis, New York, The Bobbs-Merrill company, 1943) pp. 36-38, under the title, "Letter from a Navy Pilot."
Alvin B. Kernan's recent book, The unknown Battle of Midway: the destruction of the American torpedo squadrons (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005) considers Torpedo Squadron 8. This book generated many reviews, some detailed and some highly critical.
The Douglas TBD-1A 'Devastator' that Bill Evans flew has recently been identified.
Robert J. Mrazek, a distinguished writer of military fiction, has a book on Torpedo Squadron 8 forthcoming this spring.
Dan Sachs' words included in the video above are from a letter excerpted in Matt Nimetz's memorial, "Sachs Legacy Endures, Inspires," a part of the booklet Celebrating 35 Years of the Daniel M. Sachs Class of 1960 Graduating Scholarship (May 30, 2004).
Tags: Midway, Navy, pilots, USA, VT-8, WWII
While I was looking at the O Project installed at the Arlington Arts Center, a bird crapped on me. Wet, dark brown mush hit the top of my glasses and dripped down the left side of my nose. Once someone told me that this sort of indignity is auspicious. That's merely a comforting rationalization. I feel I will die from this bird-dropping, along with everyone else on earth.
"Pollination is the act of transferring pollen grains from the male anther of a flower to the female stigma. Over 80 percent of the world's flowering plants require a pollinator to reproduce. Animals that assist plants in their reproduction as pollinators include species of bat, butterflies, moths, flies, birds, beetles, ants, and bees. Without pollinators, the human race and all of Earth's terrestrial ecosystems would not survive."
The above text comes (with some re-arrangement) from the USDA publication, The Simple Truth: We Can't Live Without Pollinators. Think about pollination the next time you squash a fly or crush a beetle. Given the importance of pollination to human survival, I favor mandatory pollination education classes in schools.
Tags: education, pollination, reproduction, survival
In the handcycling division of the 2007 Marine Corps Marathon, Scott McNeice of St. Petersburg, FL, won in a time of 1:22:27 for the 26.2 mile course. He edged out by one second Chris Peterson of Tierra Verde, FL, in a thrilling finish. Middle-aged men will rejoice to know that McNeice is 50 years old, and Peterson, 47.
David Swope of New Windsor, MD won the wheelchair division with a time of 2:05:53. Like the leading handcyclists, over the whole course he was much faster than any runner in the event, in fact, faster than any person has ever run a marathon. But going up a steep hill in a wheelchair isn't easy. Especially after wheeling 26 miles. Watch Swope on the final climb about two hundred yards from the finish at the Iwo Jima Memorial, in the midst of the tail end of the 10K runners. Imagine that next time you're struggling!
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