Michael Rice

Today marks the third anniversary of the Shock and Awe attack on Iraq. The results we know best are the deaths, to date, of over 2,300 U.S. soldiers, the maiming of tens of thousands more, and – though we are reluctant to admit it – the psychic maiming of hundreds of thousands of them, forced by their training and their needless exposure to danger to abandon their inborn inhibitions against killing.

But Shock and Awe has another, more personal meaning to me. I was ten on May 10, 1940, when I awoke in the early hours to a sky full of tracer bullets and German bombers over The Hague in The Netherlands, and the dull thud of bombs falling. The Nazis had begun their Blitzkrieg – literally, lightning war – on Holland. It was all over, except the occupation, in five days. They were days of such absolute terror, for my ten-year-old self, that I have always associated the word terrorism with bombing planes. I was lucky enough that my American visa came through ten months later – for which I am infinitely grateful – and could leave Holland and my native Germany before the Nazi occupation destroyed the little Quaker school I attended and deported and murdered the remaining Jewish students.

I remember well that more than 30 years after this Shock and Awe attack above my head, I still cringed at the sound of any low-flying plane and at the sound of every siren. Even five days of such terror deeply affected me for half my life! It is no wonder that Europeans, who have known the terror of war planes overhead, are less enthusiastic about war than the armchair soldiers who are running our United States government.

So my message is this: please try to imagine the life-long psychic damage done to the children of Iraq – the ones who survive physically – by such atrocities as the bombing of Baghdad, Basra, Fallujah and Samarra, and by the total lack of personal security in their daily lives.

We must stop this war and occupation IMMEDIATELY. Our military presence is the CAUSE not the SOLUTION of the internal violence in Iraq.

Even more than that, we must STOP THINKING OF WAR AS A VIABLE OPTION OF FOREIGN POLICY. In a time with enough hydrogen bombs to kill everyone on earth ten times over, war is simply suicidal. Finally, we must stop giving knee-jerk assent to our so-called leaders every time they put us into armed conflict.

The painters of our house were very diligent in painting every single thing, including a broken, battered, and flaked-up 60-year old screen door on the side of the garage. I attempted to buy a new door, and was elated to find a $20 screen door at Lowes. But got a kick in the face by reality when I found that it was 30 inches wide and the old door was 28 inches. There didn’t seem to be any option but re-build the old door because fitting in a 30 incher would entail completely re-building the frame, cutting asbestos shingles, and messing with lots of stuff that was good as it stands that it shouldn’t be messed with. (As our realty agent is fond of saying, “It wouldn’t be cost effective.”)

So when my Dad came to Katie’s graduation, Beth and I gave him a project: re-build the screen door. He took on the job with great enthusiasm, and had me probing the dark and dusty recesses of our garage for tools. Using a new chisel that I had bought and battered a few weeks previously, he levered away some of 3/4-inch pieces around the screen. It turned out to be more complicated than we had thought–and those complications continued to dog us as the project went on.

My dad chiseled out several 2 3/4 inch boards that we had thought were made up of 1/2 + 1 1/2 + 1/2 inch pieces, and we were left staring at one huge expanse of busted and stretched screen instead of several smaller pieces. Having a single screen was a great simplification, but it was the only simplification we encountered. The next step led to other complications. We set out to find tempered masonite at Lowes to replace the 2 3/4s, and got them to saw a 2′ x 4′ sheet into strips. The Lowes guy made his measurements with a very stubby pencil, and I had to make him re-do the cuts a couple of times to get pieces that were accurate to 1/16 inch. Geez! Even my lousy cutting skills are better than that.

Then armed with 2 3/4 inch masonite strips, some #17 wire brads and some skinny drill bits, my Dad got working again. I gave him my Dremel, my Craftsman drill and, just in case, my corded power drill, and left for my day job. When I came back from work he showed me that the two cordless drills had dead batteries, and the bit of the corded drill was too coarse to hold the fine drillbit! I turned the garage upside-down trying to find the chargers, without success (Had I thrown them way in the electronics recycling bin a month ago? Does Patrick have them?)

My dad stapled in the screen and completed the job as far as he could before returning home to California. As soon as he left, I went to Sears to buy a charger. But Sears doesn’t have my drill in stock any more. They don’t even have it in their computer! Same for the Dremel drill. Online, all I could find was an Amazon ad saying that they’d have Dremel chargers by July 23. Pah!

To nail in the masonite, we wanted to use wire nails that were just slightly larger than our finest drill bits (3/64 inch), and we needed a way to drill those 3/64 inch drill bits. I spent uncounted hours scouring hardware stores for a solution. I won’t even mention the name of the hardware store where the clerk hadn’t heard of masonite (“You want to drill through masonry?”. Then I pointed to all the masonite pegboards surrounding us in his store.) Finally I found 1/16-inch drillbits embedded in a hexagon prism base that would do fine in my coarse-bit corded drill. But the wire brad nails were exactly the same size as the bits, and I wanted to make them fit tightly. I finally decided to drill the 1/16 inch holes half way through the masonite, and let the olther half hold the nails. It worked fine.

Lots of drilling, nailing, sanding, puttying, sanding, primering, re-puttying, painting, re-sanding, and painting, and the door was ready to hang. I stuffed it into the door frame for the night and went to dinner. The next day I had to screw the door handle into the door just to be able to pry the door out of the frame. Our zealous painters had painted the frame so thick, the door was jammed in tight. More sanding, painting, and now the door is looking reasonably good.

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Here’s my estimates of the costs:

Pre-painted molding pieces 4 1/2 x 6′ $6.00
Fibergass screen from an old yard sale $1.00
Gas to drive to Lowes $4.00
Tempered masonite 2′ x 4′ $5.00
Gas to Home Depot $4.00
Wire nails, screws, drill bits $9.00
Gas to Sears, Hdwe City, Bill’s Hdwe, etc $25.00
Paint (leftovers from house) 0.00
Labor (70 hours at $6.00/hour) $420.00

Total $474.00

Next time I’ll hire Michael at $200 for a custom door, and have him ship it down.

–rakkity

Michael Rice

“Ella,” wrote my grandmother about her daughter, my aunt, in 1946, “attained a human greatness in the two years in Theresienstadt: she radiated an all-encompassing goodness, a true light – and was entirely unconscious of it. Ill and broken people built themselves up at her side, and she was always wherever things were most desolate, most dirty, and most dangerous – without a sense of self-sacrifice, quite simply, matter-of-factly, cheerfully, and entirely unembittered” (my translation). They had chosen to stay behind in the Germany my mother and I could finally leave for America in April 1941, so that Ella could carry on her work helping Jews emigrate. In July 1942 they were deported to the concentration camp. Ella was among those transported from there to Auschwitz in October 1944 and gassed. My grandmother volunteered to leave the camp that December (expecting to be reunited with her daughter) in what turned out to be a Red Cross organized trade of trucks for Jews, and landed in Switzerland.

A February 2006 phone call from Germany advised me that at the end of April a Stolperstein – literally, a stumble-stone – would be inserted into the sidewalk in front of my birth house, the last home of my aunt Ella, as a memorial to her. I could learn more about this project at stolpersteine.com It was notice enough for me to catch the last frequent-flyer spot on a flight that would take me to Stuttgart on April 27 and back again on April 30.

“Stolpersteine are 10 cm concrete cubes furnished with a brass plate and set into public sidewalks in such a way that no one can come to harm by them. And nevertheless they are called stumble-stones, for those who see them in passing should stumble in their spirit, pause briefly, and read the inscription. A piece of history is thus brought into our everyday lives directly in front of the victim’s dwelling, under the heading ‘here lived …’  Stolpersteine are intended as tokens of memory, to bring the victims out of their anonymity in the place where they lived.” Thus wrote the Cologne artist Gunter Demnig, who originated the concept. Since November 2000, he has manufactured and cemented into holes cut into sidewalks over 5,500 such stones in cities throughout Germany, with the support and funding by local committees.

Demnig writes: “Nothing is worse than collective silence. But fortunately there are people who confront history and have taken on the task to name the crimes of fascism. The deportation of victims took place from neighborhoods; each person had a name and a living place. This is again made visible by the local Stolpersteine groups.”

I did not know what to expect when I traveled to my old home. To my great pleasure, the elderly owners of the house, whom I had first met there thirty years ago, were still in good health, still there with a daughter and granddaughter, and pleased at the prospect of the stumble-stone. So at 8:30 on a Saturday morning I appeared on the sidewalk and was surrounded by more than twenty local citizens (including Mme. Mayor of the Stuttgart suburb of Degerloch). One had brought three tulips. Most were over 60, except the granddaughter of the current owners and the young psychiatrist who, as the technology-capable member of the local group did the email correspondence, and a young American woman, five years resident in Stuttgart and attracted by the newspaper announcement of the event. They were very grateful that I had come. My own spirit was healed by the stone, by Gunter Demnig, and by the caring of so many other Germans. 

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Michael Rice is La Madre’s father.

The first pre-prom gathering photo (this one of Debbie), but believe me, there are many, many more to come, and even some video thanks to Adam.

The first pre-prom gathering photo (this one of Debbie), but believe me, there are many, many more to come, and even some video thanks to Adam.

I like the way everyone else goes about their business.

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Mike,

Here are a few shots taken of the family Schmahl before, during and after KT’s party, graduation1 (Sunday, in the Comcast center) and the much smaller graduation cweremony (Monday, in the Student Union with the Language Dept). KT’s pink and blue cords represent the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. On Sunday, Senator Paul Sarbanes gave the main commencement talk (graduation1), and on Monday, the former ambassador to Romania gave the Language Dept talk. He asked the audience, “How many in the audience speak 2 languages?” About half the audience raised their hands. “How many in the audience speak 3 languages?” About 1/3 (including KT) raised their hands. “How many in the audience speak 4 languages?” At least 25 raised their hands. When he got to “How many in the audience speak 6 languages?”, only one person raised her hand–a mother of a graduate. Even including us monolingual ignoramuses, the average for the room was greater than 2.

rakkity

Al looks like Woody Hayes in Hayes’ hay day. He’s big and his husky build speaks of muscle replaced by fat. His white hair is buzzed, Marine style, and when he talks he stares right at you.

“You’ve got the right key, it’s the only one I have for the truck,” I said.

“But you use your clicker instead of the key. The key’s been frozen out. I’ll show you.”

We walked to my truck and Al squeezed by my rear view mirror to show me how the key would no longer fit in the lock. He turned to me, kinda trapped by my mirror and the truck next to mine, and told me the recall would replace both the fuel sensor valve and the fuel tank. “The tank’s on order and due in any time. “ He also told me he’d had a death in the family and that I’d have to call Dan, not him, to check on the repair status.

“If you don’t mind my asking, who died?”

“My wife’s aunt but she was also her godmother. They were very close and … .”

“It doesn’t matter who it is, at our age ( I figured Al was maybe sixty-five) everyone we lose is like losing family.”

“I’ve been on the other side, so it all means something different to me.”

“The other side?”

“I had a heart attack and died. Gone on my living room floor. The paramedics revived me, and then I was operated on for seventeen hours at the Mass General.”

“From resuscitation straight to the operating room. That’s unusual.”

“They had my heart out here (Al placed his fist on his sternum).”

“Bypasses? I asked. ”

“Five of them. That’s rare. They did the fifth one on the back side of the heart. That’s why it was flopping around on my chest.”

“How long ago?”

“Nine years. I was forty-eight.”

“Heart disease must run in the family.”

“My father had seven heart attacks. He died on the operating table at seventy-two.”

“I’m surprised he lived that long.”

“I lost three uncles. One at thirty-six, one at forty two and another at fifty-two. I have heart disease on both sides of my family.”

“And you should have been dead at forty-eight, ” i said.

Al stopped for a moment and reached into his breast pocket for a pack of Marlboro’s. He shook one out and lit it. As he exhaled he said, “And when I was in the hospital they discovered I had leukemia. They gave me two months to live.”

“That was nine years ago? You’re way past your due date.”

“I was one of one hundred people on an experimental drug. Because it was new and untested, I had to pay out-of-pocket for it for the first year and half.Thirty-two hundred a month.”

“You’ve been through a lot.”

“My life has been holy hell. I was a prisoner of war in Vietnam at twenty, but I escaped. I walked eighty miles through enemy territory before I found my guys.”

We bounced back and forth between his life, which he kept repeating had been holy hell, and when my truck might be ready. I needed it that night, but we both knew it wasn’t going to be.

We shook hands and as I walked away Al said, “Be sure to call Dan. If the gas tank comes in soon, and it should, we’ll have your truck ready late today.

“I’m a contractor, Al, I live in a world of shoulds. They don’t mean shit.”

He smiled.

“Al, I have one more question. How did you escape? In Vietnam. You had no weapons.”

“I was young, all muscle and mean.” Al paused and looked down. “I snapped the guard’s neck.”

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The other end of yesterday’s rainbow.

As it fades away.

Diane and Susan sent me Stonefield Farms in Stow to see the newly-blooming flower baskets hanging from the greenhouse ceilings.

While I snapped away, I reminded the woman working the cash register of the rainbow photo I’d given them two years ago, and I told her how frequently I see rainbows.

That evening, as if on cue, a double bow appeared over our neighbor’s house.

No, no writing yet. But a poem which I would be interested to see people’s interpretations of. My senior-year English teacher had an interpretation of this one that he was pretty certain of, but reading it again a year-and-a-half later, I’m not able to tease the same meaning out of these sparse lines.

My Papa’s Waltz
by Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

I’ll offer my teacher’s interpretation in a couple of days, after
everyone has had a chance to scratch their heads a bit and share their
own opinions.

Pesky Godson

No, no writing yet. But a poem which I would be interested to see people’s interpretations of. My senior-year English teacher had an interpretation of this one that he was pretty certain of, but reading it again a year-and-a-half later, I’m not able to tease the same meaning out of these sparse lines.

My Papa’s Waltz
by Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

I’ll offer my teacher’s interpretation in a couple of days, after
everyone has had a chance to scratch their heads a bit and share their
own opinions.

Pesky Godson

Travis

There are a number of reasons I find it easier to make quasi-anonymous snide comments on the Internet rather than contribute anything worthwhile; inexperience, not being a good writer, laziness and apathy are foremost amongst them.

I met my friend Heather in Minnesota. She was on the cycling team with which I occasionally rode. While she was away at college her parents moved from Newton, in your neck of the woods, to Santa Rosa, in my neck of the woods. She’s hecka sporty and I’ve got lots of time on my hands so we typically meet up every few months for some regrettable act of exertion. These aren’t the exciting sorts of things like your frequent contributor Rakkity was doing at my age (I’ve got other friends more apt to do things that could be fatal), but events that make me feel good about being able to do something and dumb for doing it. Typically it’s a long bike ride or running an off-road half marathon.

At the beginning of March I asked Heather if she’d be into riding the Davis Double Century with me on May 20th. It’s a 200 mile bike ride with a paltry 7800 feet of climbing. She checked her calendar and said ‘Awesome!’ and we both paid the hefty $70 registration.

I thought training would be easy. It’d give me an excuse to get on my bike, which I hadn’t done all winter. Shortly after committing both my money and to my friend, I was both diagnosed with mononucleosis, and given my qualifying exam date of May 23. Combined with the wettest winter in a decade or so I’d ridden my bike maybe 4 times for a total well under 200 miles. Still, I never really had a doubt about a double century until the night before as I was going to sleep, my alarm set for 4:15…