Every year on or around Memorial Day, a friend from an old mailling list sends out an email that talks about the holiday….a little essay that provides some perspective on what Memorial Day represents. I liked it so much I posted it last year; when I had a home office I had a copy of it hanging on my corkboard. It’s probably still there, underneath pictures of Alex and the detritus of my former life as a consultant.

Yesterday morning, on Memorial Day, Alex and I walked down to the parade at the end of the street - Beth was sleeping in since Alex wasn’t in the parade this year - and while we were walking we talked about Memorial Day. I was curious to get the 11 year old perspective on the holiday. Alex surprised me a little; I had thought I would get an answer heavy on “day off from school” and light on everything else. What I got instead was a brief few sentences about a day for “soldiers and sailors” followed by an anxious look, his unspoken way of asking “well, am I right?”.

I told him that he was right, and we talked a little about the tragedy and inhumanity of war. We talked about the awesome responsiblity of sending men and women into harm’s way, and how it should only be as a last resort.

Most importantly we talked about the personal loss caused by a war; the lost mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends. And we talked about the danger of it becoming too abstract, too removed from our comforable lives.

Alex asked a few questions, thought for a bit, then he squeezed my hand and we walked down to the parade and immersed ourselves in securing the candy thrown off the floats. That seemed right; it’s important to remember, but it’s equally important to live. Anything less would be disrespectful of the sacrifices made.

Recently, I read a piece written by the famous war correspondent Ernie Pyle; these words were found on his body after he was killed by sniper fire on the island of Ie Shima during the Okinawa campaign in April of 1945. In these, probably the last words he ever wrote, Ernie Pyle sums up a part of Memorial Day we all should think about. A part that most of us - thankfully - never have to experience, but a part that many Americans have to experience on our behalf.

But there are many of the living who have had burned into their brains forever the unnatural sight of cold dead men scattered over the hillsides and in the ditches along the high rows of hedge throughout the world.

Dead men by mass production . in one country after another . month after month and year after year. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer.

Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous.

Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them.

These are the things that you at home need not even try to understand. To you at home they are columns of figures, or he is a near one who went away and just didn’t come back. You didn’t see him lying so grotesque and pasty beside the gravel road in France.

We saw him, saw him by the multiple thousands. That’s the difference…

During the second world war, the submarine Grenadier (SS-210) was scuttled by her crew off Penang following a severe air attack that left her incapable of returning to base. Echoing a theme that is all too common in history of the Pacific Theatre of WWII, the crew of the sub were tortured and mistreated by their Japanese captors.

I remember being horrified by these accounts when I first came across them at the age of 12 or 13. War was horrible enough, but at some very naive level I felt that as a prisoner there were certain rules that were followed - one of them was that when you were a prisoner you were treated in a certain way. Many of the books I read that were at the “young adult” level went to great pains to differentiate the way we (the Americans) treated our captives as opposed to the way the Japanese treated theirs.

I read the following paragraph last night in Silent Victory and it had me revisiting these thoughts on my drive to work:

The men on the Japanese merchant ship rescued Grenadier’s men and took them to Penang. For many weeks thereafter, Fitzgerald and his men were treated brutally by Japanese interrogators, who tried to elicit technical information. Fitzgerald was tied to a bench with his head hanging over the end. The Japanese elevated his feet and then poured water into his nostrils, holding his mouth shut so he was forced to swallow the water. When they judged him sufficiently full of water, they clubbed him repeatedly and denied him food for a week.

Part of what the author is describing in this passage is waterboarding; something that we have done to prisoners as part of our “War on Terror”. Something that - amazingly - many people are able to rationalize away as being “necessary”. I read a syndicated editorial in the Akron Beacon Journal late last year that tried to downplay this torture - somehow the author felt that the fact that there were no lasting effects (not sure if he was considering the likely psychological issues here) and since it (in his opinion) was generating useful intelligence that it was a fine tool to use.

The other components - clubbing and denial of food - are also behaviors that we, as Americans, have been accused of during the “War on Terror” and which are almost certainly true. The accounts of how prisoners have been treated in Cuba and Iraq are disturbing in the extreme.

So, when did it become acceptable for us to act in a manner that 60-some short years ago we viewed as an attrocity? Back then we were putting people on trial for war crimes, and for crimes against humanity. Now, it seems, we commit them and then clothe ourselves in rationalizations.

So our President is making a personal apology to the Iraqi Prime Minister over some holes in a book. I will be the first to state that using a book for target practice is stupid - but I would say that about any book, not just a book that a certain group of people believe to be “holy”. With all the problems in the region, I would argue that this is pretty far down the list of things that the President should be personally involved in.

It gets better (or worse, depending on your point of view) - Bush then went on to assure the Iraqi Prime Minister that the soldier involved has been sent home and will face trial (not sure for what - that should be interesting). Am I wrong in finding this whole situation patently ridiculous?

We have a soldier who is going to trial for shooting a book. Simmering tensions in Iraq because someone shot a book. A President who has to issue an apology because of a book.

Could we please get some perspective here? This story appears in a list of stories with the following headlines: “Bombing at Iraq Funeral Kills 20″, “Baghdad Clashes ‘Kill 17 Gunmen’”, “Iraq set for Baghdad Exodus”, and “Iraq al-Qaeda Chief Not Captured”. Compared to this putting a few holes in a bunch of paper seems trivial to me, “holy” book or not. There are serious issues with anyone who values the sanctity of a book over that of human life. If, as is claimed, there are eternal truths in these “holy books” (The Koran, The Bible, The Talmud, The Veda, etc) shouldn’t they transcend the mere physical representation of these truths?

Bruce’s commentary from yesterday puts it in a nutshell:

“We’ll blow you up if you get in the way of a Blackwater hum-vee, but we apologize profusely for shredding yer book.”

As I write this Todd has a robot called da Vinci somewhere in the area of his mitral valve….if all goes as planned, his mitral valve should be all fixed up mkaing him as good as new (well, as good as Durfee can be - I’ll leave the actual judgement on that score to Heather) within the next few hours.

This heart stuff is beginning to get old. First, we have Dave dropping at work with a cardiac arrest, and now we have Durfee - probably one of the most active and healthy people I know - having to go in and get a mitral valve repaired.

Sure, I had a cardiac workup a few years ago - but fellas, that’s only because I was getting weird muscle pains from riding the bike in a weird posture! OK, there was probably a whole stress component from my last job as well (Beth would probably argue that this was the bulk of the issue), but for the most part it was all my horrible posture on the bike.

The scary bit is that we are all having these issues in our mid-thirties. Makes you wonder if there was something in the water out at old Walsh Jesuit High School, no? Makes my cringe in horror when I think about what’s going to happen to us all 20 years from now.

Todd has approached this whole oredeal rather well. Personally, I would have been completely cranked around the bend knowing that I had to have someone operate on my heart. This is based on experience - I was a nervous wreck when I was having the aforementioned chest pains.

Not Durfee, though. He’s been completely low key and matter-of-fact about it. It’s the same sort of approach Sean used to take, namely, “worry about the shit you can do something about”. It’s been a bit of an inspiration to say the least. Of course, I won’t be telling him that….we’re guys, after all. We don’t do that sort of thing.

More to follow once I talk to Mr. Durfee post-op.

Coaching baseball is something that I’ve done before, but to be honest it’s nothing that I ever felt all that qualified to do. I know the rules and the fundamentals and I can explain them; I can even demonstrate many of them. However, I’m not a great athlete (I know, big shock there) - there are certain things I can explain but can’t do myself. I have a hard time with this, mostly because of my irrational perfectionism; I don’t like to do - or in many cases try and do - something unless I can do it right. The other side of that coin is that I don’t like to look foolish or stupid, which decreases the likelihood of me trying something new or difficult. It’s only within the last two to three years that I’ve finally been able to work myself out of this rut. That’s not to say that it’s become easy; it’s just that I’m able to force myself through the initial discomfort to the point where it becomes worthwhile.

I coached for two years back in what we called “Farm Ball”; this was coach pitch baseball with kids that ranged in age from 6 years old through 8 years old. Although not unexpected, the difference was still a bit of a shock. Coaching boys aged 11-12 year old level is worlds apart from the 6-8 year olds I was used to. For starters, the kids are more aware of their successes and failures, and many of them put a great deal of pressure on themselves and on each other. The competition is more fierce, especially in the highly competitive Hot Stove League. Finally, the parents are more involved, which is a double edged sword. On the one hand, it’s great to have the support. On the other, it can be a distraction; the parent is usually focused on their child nearly exclusively while as a coach you need to focus on the team as a whole in addition to the individual child.

Another - and this is something I full expected - difficulty is coaching your own son. I vowed early on to not give Alex any preferential treatment because of my position. I’ve seen this done (and, in many cases, resented this) year in and year out in the other sports we participate in; either conciously or subconciously the best positions and most playing time were reserved for the kids who shared the same last name as a member of the coaching staff. So I’ve not provided any special treatment for my son; I treat him as I would treat any other member of the team; his effort and ability determine his position. This means that he’s not playing in the infield. He’s not playing the whole game. He’s not batting lead-off. He may be capable of some, all, or none of those things; maybe as we go along he’ll be able to accomplish some of these goals, maybe not. If he has fun, learns some baseball, works hard, and interacts well with his team - including giving and receiving criticism in a constructive way - then I will consider myself to have succeeded.

That’s not only my goal for Alex, it’s my goal for everyone on the team, including (on a different level) myself and the other coaches. We’ve had some bumps in the road already - league issues with the schedules and equipment, player issues with injuries - but that hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm.

I’ll admit that there have been some issues - league, player injuries, and parent - that have bothered me; Beth can more than attest to this; sometimes our room sounds like “Baseball Tonight” until she wearily asks me if we could stop talking about the team, or Hot Stove, or about Manchester Youth Baseball. Despite this, and I know this sounds cliche, all those issues melt away when I get down to the field and start working with the team; there’s something to the game and something to being part of the team that - at least for a little while - makes everything just fine.