The Label Showed it Had no Nutritional Value Whatsoever
As humans, we often ask the wrong questions about ourselves and the world- Eugenics and Race science are two examples of this. Vonnegut challenges us to think about this too, as Billy Pilgrim is watching a war movies backwards, taking us from the end of a bombing run back to the beginning - everything backwards including the bombs, to their manufacture, and firstly the digging of elements once hidden in the ground- up to make a bomb. Using nature to destroy humanity. The audacity of man - to use whats buried in the earth to harm other humans instead of something greater.
I lived near a uranium processing plant growing up - Fernald - about 11 miles away. It operated until 1989, so it functioned during my childhood - making cores for weapons, I think - something with weapons. You can read about it. I remember my dad and others having to get check ups, since they grew up and lived there longer than I did when it was really active. (Dad moved about a mile from his childhood home. and then closer with our second house) It's no longer operating - that war is dead, so it goes. However another has taken its place - it is almost like we just cant help ourselves. The site was noted for leaking into the local environment - and so they cleaned up the site, and now it's a nature preserve - back to the nature that it was I suppose? I have not visited. I wonder, if you ruin a natural site, clean it up, and then call it nature, is it? Maybe we should use a different term - like, Man Made Nature, or ... Dirty Nature? Anyway. There is a bike path and trails I think. I could go for a run. I am sure it is a massive success for reclaiming and cleaning and purifying a place that was used to create a means of death and destruction. My cousin shoots deer at a girl scout camp near her child hood home, which is also near Fernald. The girl scout camp was shut down. I wonder if the deer are tested in the area. What is the level of acceptable radioactivity in deer for human consumption? Maybe it just makes the meat more tender and spicy! Enhancing that classic gamey taste of venison- I prefer it in chili myself (and chili should always be thick with beans, and chunks of vegetables, sorry Cincinnati. Skyline is a sauce, not a chili). I made venison chili once for my co workers at Perkins - I didn't tell them it was venison at first. They couldn't tell, except for one person. He knew I was a hunter and he eyed me suspiciously, so I had to label it. The waitresses were unhappy, but they still ate it.
Vonnegut's Tralfamdorians present Billy with this thought - there is no why to anything, its all just at once. Trapped in amber. Frozen- or something to that effect, at least when I read it I am given to thinking back to the moments I have frozen in time because I want to change my behavior - alter an action, or more often a reaction but honestly who doesn't? While frozen, they are relived over and over with the alternatives never quite playing out, because you can't. I can't. I can see the right way after the fact, but I cant do a damn thing about it - all the potential pathways forward are visible now - but in the moment I couldn't. Or wouldn't. 38 years of life does teach a thing or three. I suppose, while it would be nice to have that 4th dimension view of a Tralfamadore sometimes - I don't know that I would want it all the time. If you don't screw up you cant get better, but its hard when you want to get back to that place where you screwed up and reclaim that opportunity or chance. I want there to be no why - for that moment to have no purpose in the grand scheme, but I also ascribe to it a purpose, or a result maybe. If I could drill down into that amber and pull out the right DNA and put it into a different moment trapped in amber ... I loved the first Jurassic Park book - and it's one of the movies I remember seeing just with dad. Amber. Dinosaurs. Jurassic Park. Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.
Sometimes you get a second chance, and when it comes you just pray you don't screw it up again.
Billy is on his way to a Zoo, where he will be on display as a representation of humanity - in an alien zoo. I wonder what my zoo environment would be if I was on display as an example of humanity. What would I exist within if my humanity was on display. This connects with a documentary I have been sharing in my Multicultural Education course. Race: The Power of an Illusion. Three hours, investigating the social construct of Race and its meaning and function in American society. Painting a vision of how real a social construct can be and attempting to undo the terror that is the theory of Colorblindness. In 1904 St. Louis, we did this - we put humans on display - Americans could wonder around and observe what the "other" was like - in their "natural habitats". A zoo of humanity, made up of conquered nations and people on display for observation. I can crack the bones in my right ear - or at least thats what it feels like and sounds like. I wonder if they would let the visitors get up close to me so they could listen. If you put your ear up to mine, you can hear it. I am told it is "weird" and "haunting." Perfect talent for a Zoo!
Would I have to sleep in my containment unit? An old girlfriend once thought that I needed to do a sleep study, as apparently I would stop breathing for minutes at a time - multiple times a night - to the point that it sincerely worried her. Long periods of no breathing. It was sleep apnea, but at the time I didn't think about it - I just found it funny that she would be so worried in the middle of the night and wake me up by kicking me or pushing on my back and I would come out of my sleep just enough to start breathing again and I would never remember the kicking or pushing. I just remember being rested, because she made sure I got good sleep by keeping me breathing. I wonder if I could request to have a partner on display with me, so I didn't suffocate at night. I suppose they could have a robot do it, but that would lack the personal touch of care. Staying a live is a good thing, I feel, for a Zoo.
I ignored the condition until I started falling asleep at work in between classes, sitting at my desk. I would snooze for minutes at a time, blanking on what was going on, because I was so tired. It was like waking up with a hangover, after 8 hours of sleeping, and having no alcohol the night before. I did the sleep study. The guy was impressed at my lack of breathing all night. I got a C-Pap, and I am fortunate that while I used it for a long time, I eventually started running, lost weight, and it seems not to be an issue much these days. It will rear its ugly head on occasion - but stress usually just keeps me up, instead of allowing me to pretend to sleep. No surgery necessary. I guess that would be one aspect of my Zoo enclosure. The C-Pap machine. What a handsome image. I'd have many leather bound books and it would smell of rich mahogany, and there would be the soft gentle sound of a humidifier pumping air into my face. Priceless.
George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People
I have seen disaster - or the results of a natural disaster anyway - not war related, but mans neglect of -and trust in - mans making - the levees of Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans pouring into the 9th ward due to Hurricane Katrina. I was asked to help chaperone a mission to trip to New Orleans, through my church. I was more voluntold, but I didn't mind, Nancy was a good Youth Group leader and I was happy to help. We were headed to New Orleans to provide assistance to a Catholic church and some of their parishioners who were trying to rebuild in the wake of the flood. In total, I worked 3 trips with the youth group - and the first one is really the one that sticks out -most recently in memory anyway.
Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On
Jimmy wrote about it. I took a few pictures, and I am only sharing three. There is just no way a picture can capture the absolute desolation and destruction- or the feelings of the people attempting to find life again. Smells, sights - sounds - you cannot get that unless you were there, and even I wasn't there, I just came in for a week. One week. Reading Vonnegut share the desolation and destruction of war through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim brought me back to my pictures and as I looked through them - it seemed like I was there a lifetime ago, and it was still able to come right back to the forefront of memory, but I was not there -I was not unstuck in time, not this time anyway. I have visited that part of my time stream before, but it has been a while. We worked long days - demolition mostly - cleaning out houses down to the studs, hauling the lives and histories of people out of their houses to the curb, to be carted away to a dump. Piles lined the streets reaching heights almost equal to the roofs they came out of - and still people were coming back. Along the street you could see FEMA trailers, the silence was occasionally broken by the sound of hammers and saws, pounding nails and cutting boards. While we destroyed the insides of houses, taking it down to a shell, there were others in the process of rebuilding - but at the time it was not much of a balance. More silence and demo than the noise of life. We worked to remove everything but the studs, they would bomb it for mold, and then eventually hang new sheet rock. Sledgehammers and crowbars flew and strained under the pressure of my kids, breaking and clearing the way for something new. The kids were amazing - working hard in their masks, glove's, and white body suits for protection - there were no complaints. They tended to be in more awe of the situation, and set to their tasks diligently.
Earning their sleep each evening, we retired to our classrooms for bed in the attached school building. The church was a concrete floor. Chairs. The bare minimum. Still rebuilding, but enough for Mass. We took one evening trip for dinner, and we rode out into the Bayou, fed some gators marshmallows.
I have been fortunate to return to New Orleans the most of any city I have ever visited in my professional career - presenting at conferences and doing archive research. But I've never returned to that church, and I have never returned to the streets we worked. I should. I'll have to track down the address. I have been to the National World War II museum - why is it in New Orleans? Higgins Boats. Thanks Beth.
Kurt Vonnegut had some thoughts after Katrina. I'll leave this here. He has opinions. Political and social. Presidential and his book A Man Without a Country. He actually continues my first paragraph thoughts at one point - he says:
"The Earths immune system is trying to get rid of us...we are a disease on the planet."
From a certain point of view, humans could be an infestation on an otherwise pristine ecosystem on this planet - not that we have to be, but we choose to be. I don't think God intended us to blow the planet up or slowly grind it into nothing with chemicals, bombs and misguided human ingenuity.
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