The Big Eight O

Trey Smith

If my mother were still alive, she would have turned 80 today. As it is, she didn't live to see 60. She died nearly 22 years ago.

So, today represents nothing more than a day of remembrance and yet, I only vaguely remember my mom. Because of the way my autistic brain works, I can't hear her voice in my mind. If not for photographs, I wouldn't remember what she looked like. I certainly don't remember her presence. All I do remember are facts and tidbits that have been stored away in my rational archives.

In some ways, my lack of personalized memories is sort of sad. On the other hand, I see some benefit to it as well. I don't tend to dwell on the past like so many other people do. I soak in the present and, when now becomes then, it disappears down the proverbial rabbit hole.

The Martian Chronicles and Back to the Future

Trey Smith

After our moving sale in South Bend ended, we did something drastic: we cut-off our DirecTV service. Here in Ocean Shores, we are going a different route. Instead of cable or satellite TV, we signed up with Hulu and then purchased a Roku digital streaming device. Della can still watch most of her network TV shows -- albeit the day AFTER broadcast.

Me? While I've added channels like Free Speech TV, The Young Turks and Democracy Now! to my line-up, I have also rediscovered classic television shows from my youth of the early to mid 60s. I've been working my way through the entire episode collection of My Favorite Martian and The Time Tunnel. While a good deal of the acting seems a bit hokey by today's standards, I think both programs stand up well to the test of time.

You Could Say That I'm One of the Lucky Ones

Trey Smith

It is not uncommon at all for those of us with a form of autism to go through life without ever having an intimate teenage or adult relationship. I suppose, in this regard, you could say that I'm one of the lucky ones. While culling through boxes of old keepsakes, I came across a satchel filled with old love letters.

Upon reading a few, they seemed so quaint. I sounded like your average lovestruck teenager! Some made me laugh and a few made me tear up. Many exposed the angst I suffered from unrequited love.

While it was nice to go strolling down memory lane, I realized that, in the overall scheme of things, I can count the total number of girlfriends on less than two hands and the number of "serious" relationships on less than one hand. I have a niece who has dated more times in one year than I have in 50+ years! In fact, I think most teenagers probably have dated more in high school than I did from junior high until now.

By my count, I had two girlfriends in junior high, 1 during my high school years, two during college and two (both of whom I married...at separate times) post-college. Of those 7, three could be categorized as "serious" ones.

My first real girlfriend in junior high told a friend of mine years later that I was a rather strange boyfriend. Not only did I never kiss her, I never even tried to hold her hand! It's not that I didn't want to do those things -- plus a few others -- it is more that I have trouble reading people and so I couldn't tell if she would be receptive.

To remedy this problem, I usually waited for the young lady to make the first and, sometimes, the second move.

Still More on the Butterfly Dream IV

Scott Bradley

When I was a kid I had this sudden idea (insight?) that at death one becomes a new consciousness without the transference of identity. I have never been able to understand it well enough to put it into words. Even now, the statement above says "one becomes", which of course suggests a transference of identity. When I told my mother, she said this was not a new idea, but simply the belief in reincarnation. I knew immediately that this was not what I had 'seen', but was unable to better articulate it from then until now, more than fifty years later.

Perhaps one way to try and get a handle on this is to take consciousness as primary and identity as secondary. You and I are absolutely different identities, but we share the experience of consciousness, and it is consciousness that determines identity rather than the other way around. The source of your 'I-me' is really the same as that of my 'I-me'. One can lose one's 'I-me', one's particular identity, but consciousness continues as a completely other 'I-me' identity.

I obviously have made little progress in the attempt to articulate this. Perhaps in another fifty years as another 'I-me' 'I' will have more success, but language does not seem capable of saying anything without reference to identity; a word stands for something.

All this comes to mind because in Zhuangzi's butterfly dream story the conclusion tells us that Zhuangzi and the butterfly are definitely two separate identities. If this is the case, then the identity of both is exceedingly tenuous, to say the least. Zhuangzi does not 'become' a butterfly; he ceases to be Zhuangzi; the butterfly never was Zhuangzi; there is no discernible connection between them.

This observation is not intended to tell us how things actually are; how could we possibly know such a thing? It is therapeutic. It is intended to help us to release our grip on our identity now, in this life. Why? Because Zhuangzi identifies this addiction to being a someone, a someone who must ever strive to try and be a someone in a context of absolute groundlessness, to be the cause of so much of our individual and collective grief.

The Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi are little more than a ‘how to manual’ that might best be put in the ‘self-help’ section of the library. I know I say this ad nausea, but it is essential to the ‘how to’ and the ‘help’ that we realize this is not intended as a metaphysical explanation of things or a way to be ‘saved’ from the stark implications of death. Reality remains Mystery.

You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.

Far Worse Than a Headache

Trey Smith

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has long been aware of studies showing the risks of acetaminophen – in particular, that the margin between the amount that helps and the amount that can cause serious harm is smaller than for other pain relievers. So, too, has McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the unit of Johnson & Johnson that has built Tylenol into a billion-dollar brand and the leader in acetaminophen sales.

Yet federal regulators have delayed or failed to adopt measures designed to reduce deaths and injuries from acetaminophen overdose, which the agency calls a “persistent, important public health problem.”

The FDA has repeatedly deferred decisions on consumer protections even when they were endorsed by the agency’s own advisory committees, records show.

In 1977, an expert panel convened by the FDA issued urgently worded advice, saying it was “obligatory” to put a warning on the drug’s label that it could cause “severe liver damage.” After much debate, the FDA added the warning 32 years later.
~ from Use Only As Directed by Jeff Gerth and T. Christian Miller ~

The snippet above is from Part 2 of a 3-part series. It makes for interesting, albeit disturbing, reading. While I was aware of the potential damage that acetaminophen may inflict on the liver, I still was surprised by the number of annual deaths. You would think that either the manufacturer or the government would do something substantive to try to minimize the problem!

~

A lot of the people I know pop pills without thinking much about it. Trouble with a headache or a nagging backache? Take some aspirin, acetaminophen or ibuprofen. Suggest that such over-the-counter drugs may cause more harm than good and a lot of people will scoff at you.

I am on the opposite end of the spectrum. A lot of people think I'm a masochist because I won't take any pain meds unless I am basically in agony and even then I sometimes forgo them. Why? Experience!

When I was in my early teens and experiencing a lot of trouble with navigating the social environment, my parents sent me to a shrink. Rather than investigate as to whether or not I might, possibly, be autistic (?), Dr. Shrink merely prescribed some tranquilizers for me. They didn't work as intended as they hyped me up even more than I already was! We tried several different varieties and none of them did the trick. While none of these prescriptions lessened my anxiety to the sought after levels, each one caused side effects that I was none too pleased with. At some point, I told everyone concerned that I wasn't going to take any more of those damned pills and I damn well didn't.

Also, at about this time, I really started to suffer greatly from pain associated with my diseased left hip. My doctor grandfather prescribed a series of pain relievers. While some were more effective than others, I again suffered from the side effects. My most common complaint was that they made my irritable bowel syndrome even more irritable than usual.

These two situations taught me a valuable lesson. Why take a drug that addresses one problem while creating another? While I certainly don't enjoy dealing with anxiety and pain, I'd rather deal with the devil I know than to deal with one I'm not accustomed to. In addition, as someone who researches the drugs doctors attempt to prescribe for me, I am well aware that many -- particularly pain relievers -- can be hard on a person's liver. Why take the chance of compromising this needed organ for a brief respite from pain?

If a person's liver fails, that will hurt a lot more than an aching hip...and possibly kill you in the process!

From the Armchair

Trey Smith

There was an old 1978 Saturday Night Live skit that hit dangerously close to the truth about how modern US society deals with those it fears. Steve Martin, playing a 12th century judge, Theodoric of York, is confronted with the case of a woman, Lorraine Newman, charged with being a witch. With the townsfolk calling for her to be burned at the stake for “consorting with the devil,” he says the only way to determine her guilt or innocence is to put her in the “trough of justice” -- a deep vat of water into which her bound body will be cast. Theodoric advises the woman that she has “nothing to fear” since if she is guilty her body will float, rejected by the waters of justice, but if she’s innocent she will sink. When her body sinks, leaving just a few rising bubbles which indicate she has drowned, Theodoric announces: “Ah! Not guilty!” Leaving her in the tank, he then moves on to the next case.

The trial of Pvt. Bradley manning has far too much in common with this skit to be funny. Manning, a young man of principle who said he had decided to release hundreds of thousands of documents exposing the true brutal nature of the US war on Iraq and the so-called war on terror, as well as the self-serving crudeness and imperial corruption of US global diplomacy, stood accused in a military court of hugely inflated “crimes,” including causing death and injury of American troops, aiding the enemy, harming America, and treason. The judge, Col. Denise Lind, proved to be an even a more ludicrous mockery of justice than Martin’s Theodoric of York. Blatantly promised a big promotion by the Obama Pentagon as an inducement to assure her reaching a guilty verdict against Manning, she assured that the trial was conducted largely in secret, and denied all efforts by the defense to have Manning freed based on the year he spent being tortured and held without charge by his military captors in what was a transparent effort to get him to cut a deal blaming his document release on the organization Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange.

In the end, Manning was tossed into the trough of justice and found duly guilty of all but the most specious and overblown charge of “aiding the enemy,” and was left to face a possible 90 years in jail which, for a 26-year-old man, would be a life sentence.

At that point, Manning had two choices. He could stand his ground, insist as he had through the course of the trial and earlier in his on-line chats, that his actions had been motived by the noble goal of exposing the crimes of the military and the government, and take the consequences, or he could lie, claim that he had been deluded, mentally ill, and the victim of parental abuse, and plead for the mercy of the court. Understandably, given the way the authorities had stomped on him for the past several years, Manning chose the second alternative and made a fawning and pathetic apology for all his actions, and begged for mercy. Rather than sink to the bottom of the trough of justice, he allowed his body to float, in hopes that he would not be burned at the stake.

It remains to be seen whether the judge or a higher authority will respond to his abject submission to the government’s will by giving him a lighter sentence, or whether he will nonetheless be symbolically burned at the stake by being locked away in Leavenworth for the rest of his life. Either alternative is possible.
~ from Salem on the Potomac by Dave Lindorff ~

Back in the 90s, I was a staff member of Oregon PeaceWorks. We had an young intern -- she later became a staff member too -- who I sort of mentored. I say "sort of" because I learned a lot more about about dedication and courage from her than she learned from me!

She went down to Fort Benning, Georgia two years in a row to protest against the School of the Americas. The first year she crossed the line unto military property and received a letter from the government that said, if she did it again within a year or two, she would face imprisonment. Undeterred, she crossed the line the very next year and was summarily arrested.

Though initially released on bail and allowed to come home, she had to fly back for court. She was looking at the strong possibility of 6 months at a federal penitentiary. My 18 year old friend -- who had never lived on her own -- was staring at the possibility of her first experience away from home being spent in a jail cell.

When it came time for her to address the judge, she could have thrown herself on the mercy of the court and said that she had felt pressured by the group to violate the order against her. But that is NOT what Chani did. She delivered an eloquent speech about the human rights abuses that have been borne by the School of the Americas all throughout its history. She said that, as a person of conscience, she willfully defied the order against her and she wasn't about to plead for mercy. She spoke out for the thousands of people brutalized by the students of the School of the Americas -- people who had neither standing nor a voice.

Not surprisingly, she was sentenced to 6 months.

How I wish Bradley Manning had made the same kind of statement! But I am not here to criticize him. It's easy for me to say he should have said this or that. I'm not facing life in prison! Who knows what any of us would do in his circumstances. I might like to think -- owing to my unique personality -- that I would have delivered a scathing critique on the federal government's immoral and unethical behavior, but I understand that is nothing more than fanciful thinking.

Down and Dirty Beyond Belief

Trey Smith

In the wake of the wildland tragedy that took the lives of 19 firefighters in Arizona, common questions have arisen.

"You ask yourself: Why are these people willing to put their lives on the line? For people they don't even know?" retired teacher Sharon Owsley asked last week as she stood on the courthouse square in this town north of Phoenix. "Why do they even do this kind of work that's so highly dangerous? Every day it might not be. But then there's that one day that you may not come home."

I will answer this question based on my one year of experience as a member of something akin to today's hotshot crews.

First and foremost, though so many news organizations have labeled these crews as "elite," I think a lot of people are getting the wrong idea. Elite tends to mean crème de la crème (best of the best). While I'm confident that hotshot crew standards have changed since 1979 (when I served), I still believe that ANYBODY can apply. You don't have to have much or any direct experience. What you do have to do is pass an arduous physical stamina test and, if selected, you go through what we use to call Fire School, 80 hours of training and education.

If truth be known, I didn't pass the arduous physical stamina test and I only completed a little less than one-half of Fire School. I didn't pass the stamina test because I never took it! During the first week of Fire School, I broke my big toe in two places plus a bone in my right foot playing pickup basketball during "break time". I was sent home in a lot of pain and ordered to keep my foot elevated for the next two weeks, at minimum. Since I was a recent college graduate, I was given a free pass on the stamina test (which makes no sense) and provided with reading material so I could pass the Fire School final exam.

I ended up going back to work before my doctors wanted and I didn't miss one fire that my crew was assigned to. In fact, the first major fire we were sent to entailed hiking up a mountain several miles with 80 pound packs. I accomplished this -- far slower that the rest of my crew -- on a partially healed broken foot!

Being a wildland firefighter has a romantic tinge to it, but let me tell you, it is little more than slightly glorified grunt work. Fire pay isn't half bad -- currently $25/hour -- but the work itself is mainly drudgery. More often than not, you're working to put out a small fire with little or no water. This entails digging up the fire and burying it beneath the soil hundreds and thousands of times over. Really. You turn the soil for hour upon hour, sometimes day after day.

"It's the worst yard work you've ever done, all day, times a thousand," said Neitzel. "They sleep outside on the line sometimes. No showers for weeks, very little change of clothes. ... You've got dirt in your nails, dirt in your ears, down your shirt, down your neck."

"Hottest, deepest, nastiest," said Moore, who's been with the Pleasant Valley crew 16 years. "That's where we go."

These two firefighting veterans are not overstating it a bit! You sometimes get so dirty that it can take 4 or 5 showers just to remove the top layer of dirt, soot and smoke. It is the kind of job in which you breath, eat, piss and sleep dirt and, after a while, you don't even think about it because it is what it is.  If you happen to be a clean freak, you will be driven mad in short order.

The big question to be answered is: Why do people put their lives on the line like this? In my experience, for the most part, the members of my crew didn't view the situation in this manner at all. Yes, we knew it could be a dangerous job and that a few people through the years had lost their lives, but we were young and full of ourselves. It couldn't happen to us. We had received good training (not me so much) and we had an experienced crew boss. Besides, most of the fires we worked on were small and, while we understood ANY small fire can blow up, we weren't going to let that happen. Therefore, the danger was minimal.

A lot of people do this job for two reasons: 1) It can be an adrenal rush, at times and 2) The money's not half bad.

I got into it for the latter reason. I didn't have a job lined up after college and, when my dad called to say he could get me a job working with the US Forest Service out west, I jumped at the opportunity. I thought it would be great to work in the great outdoors before embarking on my career as a social worker. Of course, if I had known that I was signing up for semi-glorified grunt work, I would have stayed put in Arkansas!

While the work itself tended to be monotonous and arduous, the camaraderie and money WERE enticing. The moment the fire call goes out for your crew, you immediately shift to hazard pay which is substantially more than your base pay. You receive hazard pay in route and it doesn't stop until you return to your compound. In other words, you receive the big bucks while traveling, eating AND sleeping (though you don't get much of the latter). Some weeks I pulled down nearly $1000 and remember that this was back in 1979! I bet, in 2013, some of these crew members can pocket up to $2500 or more in a week!

Another bonus of being a male firefighter is that it seems to make some (not odd me, of course) a babe magnet. Some of my crewmates were never wanting for a date. All they had to say is "I'm a firefighter" and the gals crowded around and swooned. During our off hours, most of my mates hit the bar and party scene heavily. Me? I spent a good deal of my down time at the public library.

A Sinking Feeling

Trey Smith

So, there you are. You're driving down the street in your local community and, before you know it, the earth swallows you up! That's what happened to a women on Thursday in Toledo, Ohio. An 8 foot deep sinkhole opened in front of her and her car plunged it. Fortunately, the woman was uninjured.

A similar thing happened to me, though it was far less dramatic.

I was staying with my mother in the early 90s as she battled cancer, a battle she lost in August 1992. One summer evening around 9:00 p.m., she had asked me to go to the local Safeway to get her a few items. Being the good son that I was, I trooped up to Safeway with my small shopping list. The approximately 1 mile drive was completely uneventful.

After I finished shopping, I loaded the two small bags of groceries into my car and began to head back to my mom's house. I didn't get very far. After pulling out of the parking lot, I only made it about 50 feet down the street before I heard an awful BANG. Not only did I hear a loud noise, but suddenly my little car wasn't handling well.

I wasn't sure at all what had just happened, but I did notice a wheel rolling down the street in front of my car! Odd, I thought. I quickly stopped the car and jumped out. The front of my car was was missing its left front wheel. Crap, I thought, that's MY wheel rolling down the street!

I looked around to try to figure out if I had hit someone or something. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Just then, another car was coming down the street and BANG! This vehicle came to an immediate stop and its front end had dropped into something. I ran back to see if the driver was okay -- she was -- and then saw that the front end of her car had dropped into a 2 foot sinkhole -- the same sinkhole I had hit, but somehow didn't fall into.

The other driver phoned the police, while I had to walk 2 blocks to retrieve my left front wheel. In a short while, an officer from the Hot Springs (AR) Police and a supervisor from the city Street Department arrived. They looked over the situation and, to my surprise, the city agreed to have our two disabled cars towed AND fixed. Since the other driver lived across town, the police officer gave her a ride home. Me? I had to walk home in the dark with my groceries in tow.

When I finally got back to my mom's house -- about 2 hours after I had left for a quick jaunt to the store -- I told her what had happened and then presented her with the crucial item on her shopping list: a completely melted half gallon of orange sherbet!

Running Out of Air

Trey Smith

In my 9:45 a.m. post, I talked about the time I thought I might become a fatality of a forest fire. The only two other times I thought I might die suddenly -- not counting my numerous panic attacks -- concerns not fire but water. In both instances, I thought I would drown.

I don't personally remember the first instance at all. It happened when I was 4 or 5. I was at a swimming pool with my parents and, though I hadn't learned to swim at this point, the water looked cool and inviting. In fact, it looked so inviting that little Trey jumped into the deep end...and sank like a rock! My mother -- an expert swimmer who to this day still holds a swimming record at the University of Missouri* -- fished me out of the water. Once she was sure that I was okay, she yelled at me like there was no tomorrow. Can't say that I blame her!

I do remember the other incident and I occasionally have nightmares about it. For some insane reason, teenaged Trey decided that he wanted to touch the lake bottom underneath the floating dock at his maternal grandparent's home in Hot Springs, Arkansas. It was estimated by one of his uncles that the dock floated approximately 10 -12 feet above the bottom of Lake Hamilton.

Meh, 10 - 12 feet doesn't sound that far! So, numbskull Trey set about to jump high off the dock to see if he could reach the lake bottom. In his disorganized teenaged mind, he thought he had developed a winning strategy. Jump into the water straight as a stick and, when the lake bottom was reached, use his powerful legs to push off the earth to propel himself quickly to the surface.

Unfortunately, Trey didn't factor in two critical variables. The first of these is that, unlike the bottom of a concrete swimming pool, lake bottom is not smooth and it can be quite slippery. When Trey went to push off of the bottom, he wasn't able to generate as much force as he thought he would because he was pushing off of mud. This meant he had to exert far more energy than originally calculated because he had to swim hard for the surface.

Variable #1 ran smack dab into variable #2: air. Frantically trying to make it back to the surface without the intake of air into the lungs ain't so damn easy. Several feet from the surface, Trey had expended all the air he was holding in. He desperately needed to breathe, but he was still underwater. It seemed like an eternity before I got to the surface and, for a long moment, I didn't think I would make it. Yes, I truly thought I was a goner.

But the will to live is strong and I somehow forced my way to the surface just in the nick of time. Had it taken another second or two, I would have drowned because, in another bonehead move, I was swimming alone. There was no one there to rescue me.

I pulled my quivering body up the swim ladder onto the dock. I sat there shaking for quite a long time because I realized that I was damn lucky to be sitting there at all. Because of my teenage bravado, I had done something incredibly ill-advised and had come within the blink of an eye of killing myself unintentionally. Even worse, no one would have known for several hours or longer.

My grandparents, parents and brother would have gone looking for me and probably not have found a trace. Either my lifeless body would have washed ashore somewhere on the lake or the dive team eventually would have retrieved it. My reckless actions would have caused untold suffering and sorrow for my loved ones.

Yes, I had reached my goal of touching the lake bottom off of the dock, but I wasn't in a celebratory mood. I realized that it wasn't worth the potential cost. Unsurprisingly, I never tried to replicate the feat again.

*Note: The reason my mother still holds a swimming record at Mizzou is that they discontinued the event a year or two after she graduated in the mid 50s.

Fire and Smoke

Trey Smith

Something happened last Sunday that every person who has ever served as a forest or wildland firefighter fears. A hotshot crew was overtaken by a rapidly spreading fire about 80 miles north of Phoenix, Arizona and all 19 members of the crew present perished.

I was a member of a US Forest Service initial attack firefighting crew (the Interagency Hotshot crews were formed a year or two later) during the summer of 1979.  I had just graduated from college -- I was the only member of my crew with a college degree -- and that's why my nickname became "The Professor."  Our crew often had to hike several miles in the backcountry of Northeastern Oregon to reach remote fires and we fought quite a few of them with little or no water.

To be honest, there weren't many occasions in which I experienced any fear of being burned alive.  Most of the fires we were dispatched to were small ones, less than an acre or two.  Naturally, our job was to keep the fires small and to put them out before they could blow up into raging infernos.  I am proud to say that not one of the small fires we were sent to put out ever became a large fire.

There were two occasions, however, when I WAS scared.  Most of the fires we fought were in forests, but one particular fire was in grassland near Phillips Lake outside of the tiny town of Sumpter.  We kept putting down fire lines and, because of high winds, the flames kept jumping them.  Several of us were pinned in by the racing fire with no escape route.  Before we knew it, the fire overtook us.

For a few moments, I was in full panic mode...until I realized that the grass itself wasn't all that high.  So, when the line of fire got to me, I simply jumped over the flames.  I was wearing your typical fire resistant pants and, with the exception of some singing of my leather boots, I came away unscathed.  In fact, once the fire passed us, my comrades and I shared some nervous laughter. 

Moments later, a forest service plane did a suppression dump on the fire and we spent the next hour or so mopping it up. 

The other occasion was a lot more terrifying.  Our crew was sent to the scene of a major fire near La Grande.  Thousands of acres of forests were burning and there were literally hundreds of firefighters working long shifts battling the blaze.  I was one of our crew's designated drivers and so I spent a lot of time ferrying people and supplies throughout the labyrinth of roads in the forests.

I was coming back from one such run -- navigating my way slowly down a rutted dirt road -- when several trees to my right began exploding.  What I mean by this is that the fire was rushing through the canopy level and it looked sort of like roman candles on the 4th of July.  

All of a sudden, a burning tree fell across the roadway ahead of me.  Shit!, I thought.  I couldn't find a suitable place to turn around which meant that I would need to back out several miles down the rutted road.  The fire was close enough that I could feel the searing heat and the smoke was so thick that I thought I would cough a lung up.  

I just sat there in my rig gagging and gasping for air and wondering if my number was up.  Little by little it dawned on me that I would become a fatality if I didn't get my ass in gear.  So, once the initial panic subsided, I did the only thing I could do: I slowly made my way in reverse down the rutted road.

I made an effort not to look at the raging fire.  No, I tried to concentrate solely on driving.  But I would be lying if I didn't admit that I snuck a few peeks here and there.  Each time I did, I would momentarily panic all over again because it seemed like the fire and smoke were closing in all around me.  

Needless to say, I was successful in backing down the road and chose a different route to meet up again with my crew.  That night I didn't sleep much because I kept replaying my harrowing experience in my mind.  It still makes me shudder a bit, even to this day.

When I heard about the deaths of the 19 in the hotshot crew, I instantaneously understood the horror they must have faced.   Fire can be beautiful and awe-inspiring, but it can also be an opponent that there is no escape from. 

Mr. Ray IV (Revisited)

Scott Bradley
Original post date: December 5, 2010

My faith had long been at risk and it was not my time at the House of the Dying Destitute that led to its demise. But it was the final pull of the trigger that put an end to that particular misery. My day of liberation from the bonds of at least one belief was nigh at hand. The long journey through the dark tunnel of disbelief toward primal trust and thankfulness was about to begin. I began to reel. I staggered in a wilderness of doubt and despair. My commitment had been total. My fall complete.

Mother Theresa. A saint. God’s best effort. A scour woman mopping up the foul leavings of the devil’s revelries. No. Theism no longer bore the ring of truth or the consent of conscience. Nietzsche opined that every great religion outgrows itself. And though there are none that have not, their bonds endure.

The Temple of Kali lay close at hand and I joined the pilgrims passing by her ghastly image. There was no face to be seen, but three huge eyes and a long, lolling tongue of gold. Yes, and a golden ring where might have been a nose. Four arms she had. In one hand was a sword and in another a severed head. This is the Sword of Divine Knowledge, scholars tell us, and the head the human ego which must be slain before moksha, liberation, can be had. I know not. I know nothing. Only I was struck by the symmetry between these two temples dedicated to Mothers proclaiming the divine, one bringing compassion and the other a sword. Yet the suffering went on indifferent to both.

It has been said that there is a divine light that sometimes shines in Nirmal Hriday. And indeed, I have seen such a light. But there are well placed skylights high above which shed a peculiar ephemeral light that ever seeks unsuccessfully to penetrate the brooding gloom.

Long have I pondered Camus’ Stranger, awaiting the dawn and the sure guillotine. He peers through the bars at the fast fading stars and for the very first time bares his heart to the ‘benign indifference of the universe’ and finds there a brother. Empty of purpose. Empty of meaning. Empty of caring. Empty of virtue. Empty of belief. Empty of self. Zen masters tell us it is ever right before us, Reality. And so it is — if only we have eyes to see. If there is liberation from our universal bondage, it comes not through the pursuit of purpose or meaning, the attainment of saintliness, or the exercise of virtue , but through the realization of the hollowness of all things and every human endeavor.

Thankfulness arises, from an empty heart.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Mr. Ray III (Revisited)

Scott Bradley
Original post date: December 4, 2010

Is compassion nothing more than the cultivation of virtue at the expense of another? Does the saint use the suffering poor as monks might imprison thousands of chickens to fund their spiritual quest, or another raise cattle for the flesh on their bones?

He had one last thing to tell me as his mind steadily dimmed throughout the day, but I did not hear him clearly and fear that I did. “I raped my sister,” I thought I heard.

It was Durga Puja, ten days in which straw effigies of the mother goddess of Calcutta are carried and worshiped in long processions throughout the city. I jumped a trolley and slowly swayed back to the Brothers’ House through crowds of pilgrims coming to pay homage to Kali, goddess of time and change, and alter-aspect of the selfsame Durga, the Divine Mother as Warrior. Yes, there were other Mothers in Kalighat.

The next day was Saturday and I went on an errand to the old factory. Sunday was mass for the Brothers and a day off for me. Thus it was on Monday that my eyes immediately fell on the empty pallet. He was gone and I hadn’t said good-bye. I would find him behind the cistern. This was an experience I could have done without. Many things in Calcutta came to a halt during Durga Puja and the collecting of the dead was one of them. I did not expect to find a full house. Nor one so befouled by the stench of rotting human flesh. But I entered just the same.

I remember saying good-bye and sorry to Mr. Ray, but in honesty I don’t remember his face. It is the image of twin stillborns that fills that place. One hopes they were stillborn. In any case they, like many before them, were left on the doorstep of Nirmal Hriday, “Pure Heart”, because the mother could not afford the wood to cremate them.

“Well, he got his wish — he left,” said Sister Luke when she saw me leave the morgue.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Mr. Ray II (Revisited)

Scott Bradley
Original post date: December 3, 2010

There was a boy still in his teens terribly afflicted by cerebral palsy who was doing well. He had been here several times before — a recidivism ordained by the gods. He graduated to the old factory where the recovering were received. But he was soon back and after great suffering his body went behind the cistern.

There was a man seemingly strong save for the grey-green puddle of gangrene that was his thigh. The French doctor, a volunteer with Medicins sans Frontiers, said he could still be saved and so we took him to the College Hospital in hopes of a speedy amputation. He died of dehydration a few days later, forgotten and without water in some corner of the ward. I remembered how thirsty he always was.

And then there was Mr. Ray. I felt that I got to know Mr. Ray. The Fasting Buddha was a dilettante compared to his fleshless body. He could not eat. He would not eat. “Please, let me starve,” he would plead when threatened with an IV. Yes, he spoke in perfect English; how I don’t know. And he was well read. How so? I asked. “I got old books from the paper collectors,” he told me. And his occupation? He rolled bidis. Now a bidi is a uniquely Indian cigarette. It is a tiny bit of tobacco hand-rolled in a tendu leaf, is in the shape of an elongated cone, and costs about one tenth of a cent. There are more lowly occupations, but they were done by the untouchable and unnoticed.

Mr. Ray made a point of telling me that he was soon to die. And he was. You saw it in his eyes, a distinct, but distant glow, like a light disappearing into the night on a mission I could not know. And as we talked he began to confide in me, his last witness. “Do not tell the Sisters,” he told me, “but I am a Christian and gave them the name Ray so they would leave me alone.” Now “Ray” is a venerable Hindu name in the State of West Bengal. “I don’t want their meddling and I don’t want a Christian burial.”

“Please, I need one favor, please,” said Mr. Ray on his last day save one. “Please take me back to the street where they found me. I did not ask to come here. Here, they rob me of my dignity. They profit from my suffering. It is what makes them holy. They are using me. Why should I not die as I have lived? I just want to die like a dog, as they found me.”

Was it cowardice or wise discretion? I don’t know, but I failed him. I did go to Sister Luke, the indomitable boss, and related his request without the commentary. I knew it would do him no good.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Mr. Ray I (Revisited)

Scott Bradley
Original post date: December 2, 2010

My train, the Rajdhani Express from Delhi, pulled into Calcutta’s Howrah Station in the dark, early morning. It had been a two day journey and I was glad it was over. I rolled up my sleeping bag and secured it to my backpack. And then I saw that my leather satchel was not where I had just set it. Gone. Camera. How many Greek drachmas? Traveler’s checks. Passport!!

So began my sojourn in Calcutta. Less than a year before I had graduated from seminary. I had been accepted into a doctoral program in philosophical theology at GTU in Berkeley. I wanted to study liberation theology and somehow apply it in the world. But first, I told myself, I should go back to India and touch again what had become for me emblemic of all poverty.

I don’t remember how I found my way to Nirmal Hriday, but the path changed my life. This was Mother Theresa’s “First Work”, a former pilgrims’ hospice attached to and donated by the Kalighat Temple of Kali. And here the “Dying and Destitute” were brought when found just so in the streets of Calcutta. Here it was intended that they should die in dignity. I soon found myself housed on the roof of the Brothers of Charity domicile and daily working the morning shift in care of the wards.

There were as many as thirty in the men’s section; I never saw the women’s. Need I describe these men? Yes, I guess I do. All were indeed destitute; most were indeed dying. I dispensed medicines for tuberculosis, leprosy, parasites and I don’t know what else. I applied lotion to their wasted bodies to fight the scabies. I washed their bodies and helped to carry the same when lifeless to the tiny morgue behind the water cistern.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Out From Under the Big Top

Trey Smith

One of my favorite memories of childhood is going to one or more circuses per year. Though the crowds of people made me more than a little bit nervous, I loved the clowns and the animal acts. Since I grew up in a somewhat large metropolitan city -- Kansas City, Missouri -- the circuses that came to town were the big outfits with the three rings: Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus and the Shriners Circus.

Next Monday a much smaller outfit -- one ring -- will be here in South Bend for two performances. Since I loved going to the circus as a child, it would be natural to think that I will go to the one here for no other reason than to bask in the nostalgia. But that won't be happening for two important reasons.

As many readers know by now, my social phobia has grown worse as I've aged. Just the idea of sitting under a packed Big Top is enough to make me queasy. So, the anticipated local crowds are enough to keep me away.

That is not the ONLY reason I will not attend. The more important reason is that I now am an opponent of circuses that feature "wild" animals. To me, no matter how humanely personnel try to treat their animals, it isn't humane enough!

As a child, I didn't take the time to consider the circus atmosphere from an animal's point of view. I simply went to the circus and was entertained. By the middle of my teen years, I realized that my entertainment wasn't worth removing animals from their habitats and social relationships. While I might marvel at an elephant balancing on a ball or a tiger jumping through a ring of fire, these were not the natural actions of these creatures. Circuses force these poor animals to go against their internal natures to become novelties for humans to ooh and aah at.

And so, the circus will come to town and I will stay far away from it. I don't wish to play ANY role in the exploitation of these animals.

Public Anonymity

Trey Smith

A lot of people are surprised to learn -- when they learn it all -- that my given name is not Trey. That name does not appear on my birth certificate. If you came to the town I live in, grabbed a local phone phone and looked up the name, "Trey" Smith, you won't find any. I AM listed in the local phone book, but under the first name I was christened with. It has been this way in almost every city or town I have lived in during my adult life and, at times, has caused a bit of confusion for people I am associated with.

Trey is my nickname. It is a nickname sometimes given to the third male who shares a first or, in my case, a first and middle name with two relatives before me. I share the same first and middle names with my father and my paternal grandfather. And though I have been very candid and frank in this medium, I will not be sharing with you those two given names.

For the sake of example, let's pretend those given names are "Roscoe Tanner". My grandfather was "Roscoe Tanner" Smith, Sr. My father is "Roscoe Tanner" Smith, Jr. and that would make me "Roscoe Tanner" Smith III. Understandably, my father was called Junior for a good deal of his life. What surprises people who know is that I was not called Trey growing up. I went by my given name. I didn't become Trey until the late 1980s.

When Della and I were dating, she knew me as "Roscoe." In fact, when we first moved in together, that was the name she called me...until one day, to her utter shock, I had been transformed into Trey. It took her more than one year to get the hang of my new moniker -- as it did the rest of my family -- but today even my father and brother call me Trey without thinking about it.

So, how did I go from "Roscoe" to Trey overnight?

Trey was a nickname infrequently used by my paternal grandfather throughout my youth. (He also used to refer to me as Rafer a lot.) When I started a new job as a social worker in a small Missouri town, I was asked by the lead secretary on my first day if I went by "Roscoe" or some other name. Though I had not planned to become Trey, that is the name I blurted out. Everybody calls me Trey, I told her. And from that singular moment forward, almost everyone I have come in contact with since has just assumed that Trey is my given name!

The funny thing about this story is that I forgot to tell my live-in girlfriend (now my wife), Della. So, a few days AFTER I became Trey, she called the office where I worked. "I'd like to speak to Roscoe, please." The junior secretary who fielded the call told Della that no one who worked there was named Roscoe. Perplexed, Della described my physical appearance. "Oh," the secretary said, "you mean Trey!" Confused, Della said she would like to speak to this "Trey" fellow.

My office phone buzzed and I answered, "Trey Smith. How can I help you?" There was a long pregnant pause. "T-r-e-y, this is your girlfriend, Della. Is there something you need to tell me?" It was then that I realized I hadn't shared this development with her. It's something we still laugh about to this day.

Utter Futility

Trey Smith

In something you don't see every day, a mid-major college basketball team -- Northern Illinois University -- scored a total of 4 points in the first half and a whopping 25 points for the whole game. They made only 1 field goal in 31 attempts in that disastrous first half. Talk about utter futility!

Their leading scorer for the game registered 7 points. That's almost unheard of!

But I can relate. When I was a freshman in college, I played intramural basketball for one of the worst teams in the history of intramural basketball. In our 10-game season, our record was 0 wins and 10 losses. We never came anywhere close to winning a game.

At one point in our ill-fated season, we played the team that eventually won the league title. I was our team's leading scorer with 6 points. Actually, that's not completely accurate. The truth of the matter is that for that game I was my team's ONLY scorer. We lost by a score of something like 65-6.

We couldn't shoot. We couldn't pass. We couldn't rebound and we couldn't dribble. We were as terrible as terrible gets. But, you know what? We didn't care. We KNEW that we weren't athletes. We KNEW we would be hard-pressed to win ANY game we played.

We did it for the fun and the camaraderie. After each game, we would laugh and laugh at our own futility. We would razz each other about all the bone-headed plays we had messed up.

Mind you, we weren't trying to lose -- we played to win. It's just that we really had no hope of winning.

For me, it served as a great life lesson. Whether a person has any hope of winning or succeeding in any given situation in life isn't all that important. Regardless of the situation, you put your best foot forward. If you win or succeed, great. If not, you smile about it and keep moving forward.

Imaginary Lover

Trey Smith

There has been a bizarre story this week involving college football player Manti Te'o of the University of Notre Dame. Teo, who finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting, supposedly triumphed this football season after his grandmother and girlfriend died on the same day in September. The story itself took on mythic proportions and, like most myths, part of it turns out not to be true.

While his grandmother did die as reported, his girlfriend never existed in the first place!! As of right now, it appears that the girlfriend was a hoax perpetrated by people other than Manti Te'o.

This last part sounds weird. If it's a hoax, how could Teo not be part of it? And this is where the story gets really strange and it certainly illustrates a divide between generations. Teo considered this woman his girlfriend despite the fact he had never met "her" in person! His only contact with "her" was via text messages, emails and phone calls.

When I was in college in the late 70s, I engaged in a long distance relationship. My girlfriend, Maryse, attended Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, and I attended Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. We were separated by more than 500 miles. We communicated by letter and phone.

But there is a BIG difference between the relationship of Maryse and me and Teo and his "girlfriend". Maryse and I had kissed before! We spent our Christmas and Spring Breaks together. And we had begun our relationship IN PERSON the summer before school.

Teo had never gazed into this "girl's" eyes or held "her" hand. He had never been in the same room with "her". Heck, they had never been in the same zip code together!

In all honesty, I simply don't understand how someone could consider someone else the "love of his life" IF he had never actually met her! It sounds to me more like this imaginary lover was a myth objectified in Teo's mind. When you don't interact in an intimate way with another person, it is easy to make them anything you want them to be. The person becomes an idealized caricature of a bona fide human being.

That being said, I realize that my ideas on this subject are shaped, in large part, from my standing in the older generation. Maybe the times have changed and I just don't get it. Maybe so, but it is hard for me to imagine that this elaborate hoax could have been perpetrated to the extent that it was IF Teo had met this person face-to-face and had spent considerable time WITH "her".

Natural Born Fighter

Trey Smith

In one of the boxes I sifted through last night, I discovered all the press clippings and legal documents from my two year fight with the Student Government Association (SGA) at Pittsburg State University. In reading over the material one last time, it dawned on me how naive I was back in the early 90s.

You see, I have always been a stickler for rules. It is not that I believe that all rules are right and just, it's more that, if an organization, company or society makes rules, then they should follow them! If you don't want to follow them, then get rid of them! In my mind's eye, it is asinine to craft rules that you intend to violate at will.

And this is where my naivety comes in. At the time I enrolled in grad school, I already understood that justice in America is a two-tiered system. Universal rules are applied to the vast majority, but those in the ruling class don't have to follow them. What I didn't realize is this same general scheme applies to most groups and organizations. General members are expected to follow the stated rules and, if they don't, they can expect to suffer consequences. The higher ups in any group or organization, on the other hand, ignore the rules whenever it is convenient and yet they somehow are able to evade the consequences.

This was the beef I had with our university's SGA. The officers constantly violated the organization's bylaws and no one in the university -- not even the school's administration -- seemed willing to challenge OR overrule them...until I arrived on the scene.

Over the course of 3 semesters, I filed over 20 challenges before the student judicial court. In most of these cases, I won and yet, as in real life, these victories were hollow ones. While the student judicial court ruled on issue after issue that the SGA had violated its own rules and procedures, the illegal actions themselves were allowed to stand. The court promised that changes would be instituted in the future to curb SGA's illegal and unethical conduct.

Sound familiar? It should. That's exactly the way the federal government has dealt with all the misdeeds of Wall Street!

Remembering The Defining Moment of Shared Angst

Trey Smith

For the current US generation, the defining moment for many is 9/11. People remember where they were and what they were doing when they first learned of the events that day. (For Iraqis, their defining moment probably is when we started bombing them back to the Stone Age -- on false pretenses!) For some a tad bit older, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster has the same feel.

For those my age and older, the defining moment was thrust upon us on November 22, 1963. That was the day President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was felled by a sniper's bullet in Dallas, Texas.

On the day it occurred, I was about halfway through my first semester in Mrs. Thrall's 1st grade class at Hale Cook Elementary School in Kansas City, MO. As I recall, our class had just finished lunch and a few minutes on the playground. As we returned to the classroom, I noticed that Mrs. Thralls was dabbing her eyes. I knew something was up, but I wasn't prepared for what came next.

Once we were all seated at our desks, our teacher told us that something terrible had happened. She was trying to control her emotions, but she was having great difficulty doing so. Finally, after some hemming and hawing, she said almost in a whisper that President Kennedy had been shot. With the words out of her mouth, she began crying.

Many of us were crying too. Though very young in age, we knew the president was the leader of our nation. If he had been shot, maybe the world would come to an end. I can't speak for my classmates, but this news terrified me. If someone could shoot the president, how safe was a little boy like me?

A few minutes later, the school's principle came into the classroom and took Mrs. Thralls aside. She whispered something in her ear and Mrs. Thralls gasped, "Oh my god!" It was then that we learned that the president was not merely shot; he was dead.

They let school out early that day. I still can recall the feeling of horror that gripped me as I rode home on the school bus. It must have gripped the other kids too because we were quiet as church mice. Hardly a word was spoken.

Once home, I spent the better part of three days watching the TV coverage of the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath. Actually, I didn't have much of a choice. If I wanted to watch television, nothing much else was on. I watched the funeral. I watched his children trying to come to grips with their father's sudden death.

My world changed dramatically that day. I lost a lot of my innocence. I became more fearful and it was a long time before things seemed to get back to normal.

In many ways, it was a bad decade to grow up in. Just when I was starting to feel somewhat safe again, Martin was shot and then Bobby. After that, whatever innocence remained was gone forever.  I came to understand that the world can be an ugly place.