Currents

Richard Cohen today writes:

He's my person of the year -- a fleetingly sane man in the maw of a thoroughly insane system.

That's my Post. (for now)

Categorically: Hey! Wait Just A Minute Here!

Maybe nobody noticed, but the Chinese guy writing in TIMEasia (see my earlier post today) basically says they kicked our asses in Korea at the Yalu River. This is completely tangential to my blog but I wonder if anybody out there happens to have heard a different perspective on that particular battle? Comments are greatly welcomed. By my calculation that was exactly 56 years ago November. Some of the guys are still alive and kicking. Any "old crows" out there with a story? Clint, we need a movie about that one soon!

Confessions of A Prison Epiphany

Some of you may still be wondering who I am. A law school education was not enough for me so I went to prison. Now that was an education! Before I went to law school I had been ready to save the world. After law school for some reason I felt I had been liberated from the need to deal with fundamental questions of life or death, and liberty, in a supreme irony that proved itself to be quite wrong. I was one of those “innocents” in prison and I am certain that I too will be vindicated. Oprah are you there? And I assure those of you who may be wondering about this also that there is life after prison. As the great American satirist (Mark Twain) once stated, "the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

I then, after graduating from law school, declined to sell my soul to law enforcement (admittedly my "dream job" as super-cowboy growing up) and I set out to learn what I could about making money just being "a lawyer." I had a new baby at home, can you blame me? Now, apre- prison, I have re-assimilated that which I once thought I had learned by being allowed to read copiously, growing up in a professor's home (my father was also a Korean War vet who was there, up close and in person when the Chinese crossed the Yalu River--so I‘ve heard on the grapevine because he never talked about it--that experience changed him forever, of that I am certain). The link at the Yalu River I provided (TIMEasia dot com, 1999) takes you to a Chinese memoir of these events. Perhaps because of that, I too, became a vet. I was unfortunately unable to learn from the mistakes of others. This is my confession. There is still hope that you, the youthful, and you who will be shaping America‘s future, might.

There are fundamental questions, and they are fundamental because they invade every man and woman's life in one form and fashion or another. They cannot be passed over or ignored. Mankind does so at her peril. These questions bite and everybody has a dog in the hunt. Just sometimes there are no other dogs, and sometimes the hunt is over. When will the hunt be over for you?