William Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice

Portia:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.


William Shakespeare, 1564–1616
publ. 1596



SUPPLEMENTAL NOTES

 

from SparkNotes -

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/merchant/quotes.html#explanation4

 

Even as she follows the standard procedure of asking Shylock for mercy, Portia reveals her skills by appealing to his methodical mind. Her argument draws on a careful process of reasoning rather than emotion. She states first that the gift of forgiving the bond would benefit Shylock, and second, that it would elevate Shylock to a godlike status. Lastly, Portia warns Shylock that his quest for justice without mercy may result in his own damnation. Although well-measured and well-reasoned, Portia’s speech nonetheless casts mercy as a polarizing issue between Judaism and Christianity. Her frequent references to the divine are appeals to a clearly Christian God, and mercy emerges as a marker of Christianity. Although it seems as if Portia is offering an appeal, in retrospect her speech becomes an ultimatum, a final chance for Shylock to save himself before Portia crushes his legal arguments.

 

See also - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant_of_Venice

 

from Bardweb -

http://www.bardweb.net/content/readings/merchant/lines.html

 

...When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew - From this point on, note how Portia keeps hammering at the words "justice" and "mercy" to make her point. Seasons (from the Middle English sesounen, deriving from the Anglo-French seisoné, meaning "brought to a desired state") is used in its archaic sense "to temper; to soften." Here's an interesting bit of trivia, by the way, since Portia is invoking God in this speech. The word "mercy" has 276 occurrences in the King James Bible, according to concordances; the word "justice" occurs 28 times. Ironically, the two have only one line in common: Psalm 89, verse 14 ("Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face").

 

 

 

Daisy Turner - The Boy We Loved So Well

Matthew Brady photo of Union and Confederate dead at Antietam in the Civil War

Battle dead at Antietam

Dear Madam,

I am a soldier, and my speech is rough and plain.

I'm not much used to writing, and I hate to give you pain,
But I promised I would do it, and he thought it might be so
If it came from one that loved him, perhaps it would ease the blow.

By this time, you must surely guess the truth I feign would hide,
And you'll pardon me for rough soldier words, while I tell you how he died.

It was in the maw of battle. Fast rained the shot and shell.
I was standing close beside him, and I saw him when he fell.
So I took him in my arms, and laid him on the grass.
It was going against orders, but I think they let it pass.

'Twas a minne ball that struck him. It entered at his side.
But we didn't think it fatal 'til this morning, when he died.

"Last night, I wanted so to live. I seemed so young to go.
Last week I passed my birthday. I was just 19, you know.
When I thought of all I planned to do, it seemed so hard to die.
But now I pray to God for Grace, and all my cares gone by."

And here his voice grew weaker, as he paused and raised his head.
And whispered, "Goodbye, Mother." And your soldier boy was dead.

I carved him out a headboard, as skillful as I could
And if you wish to find it, I can tell you where it stood.
I send you back his hymnbook, the cap he used to wear,
The lock I cut the night before, of his bright, curly hair.

I send you back his bible; The night before he died,
I turned its leaves together, and read it by his side.

I keep the belt he was wearing; He told me so to do.
It has a hole upon the side, just where the ball went through.
So now I've done his bidding. I've nothing more to tell.
But I shall always mourn with you the boy we loved so well.


Daisy Turner, Storyteller and Poet,
September 26, 1990

Daisy Turner (June 21, 1883 - February 8, 1988) was the 104-year-old daughter of a former escaped slave, Alexander Turner, turned soldier for the Union. In Ken Burns series, The Civil War, she recites this romantic poem in all of its brutal truths and exquisite sadness that has come to be as ageless as the pain it first bore when conceived and read.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

More on Daisy Turner from the Vermont Encyclopedia - http://books.google.com/books?id=uTBCXqOou0YC&pg=PA291&lpg=PA291&dq=video+daisy+turner+ken+burns&source=bl&ots=AKNI5iiBYT&sig=fiDdUcmNTDVAvDQ7YdiPk_kspqU&hl=en&ei=FHWhTc_GF-i40QGws_CBBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=video%20daisy%20turner%20ken%20burns&f=false

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Turner

PBS documentary, The Civil War, by Ken Burns - http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/

Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-B171-0277 DLC

Dead Confederate soldier in the 'Devil's Den' - Gettysburg. July, 1863.

Casualties for both the Union and Confederates after three days of

fighting were greater than 50,000. 

Gettysburg, Pa. Bodies of Federal soldiers, killed on July 1,
near the McPherson woods

Gettysburg and Stories of Valor

Narrated by Keith Carradine

Too Soon Old

What do you see nurses? . . . . . What do you see?
What are you thinking . . . . . when you're looking at me?
A crabby old man . . . . . not very wise,
Uncertain of habit . . . . . with faraway eyes?

Who dribbles his food . . . . . and makes no reply.
When you say in a loud voice . . . . . 'I do wish you'd try!'
Who seems not to notice . . . . . the things that you do.
And forever is losing . . . . . A sock or shoe?

Who, resisting or not . . . . . lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding . . . . . The long day to fill?
Is that what you're thinking? . . . . . Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse . . . . . you're not looking at me.

I'll tell you who I am. . . . . . As I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding, . . . . . as I eat at your will.
I'm a small child of Ten . . . . . with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters . . . . . who love one another.

A young boy of Sixteen . . . . with wings on his feet.
Dreaming that soon now . . . . . a lover he'll meet.
A groom soon at Twenty . . . . . my heart gives a leap.
Remembering, the vows . . . . . that I promised to keep.

At Twenty-Five, now . . . . . I have young of my own.
Who need me to guide . . . . . And a secure happy home.
A man of Thirty . . . . . My young now grown fast,
Bound to each other . . . . . With ties that should last.

At Forty, my young sons . . . . . have grown and are gone,
But my woman's beside me . . . . . to see I don't mourn.
At Fifty, once more, babies play 'round my knee,
Again, we know children . . . . . My loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me . . . . . my wife is now dead.
I look at the future . . . . . shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing . . . . . young of their own.
And I think of the years . . . . . and the love that I've known.

I'm now an old man . . . . . and nature is cruel.
Tis jest to make old age . . . . . look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles . . . . . grace and vigor, depart.
There is now a stone . . . . where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass . . . . . a young guy still dwells,
And now and again . . . . . my battered heart swells.
I remember the joys . . . . . I remember the pain.
And I'm loving and living . . . . . life over again.

I think of the years, all too few . . . . . gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact . . . . that nothing can last.
So open your eyes, people . . . . . open and see.
Not a crabby old man . . . Look closer . . . see ME!!

Dave Griffith, Ft. Worth, Texas

Written as a simple poem reflecting on a full life lived from the early days of high school football, to enlistment with the Marines, then marriage, and into old age with its ravages and disabilities.

RE Slater - Proposal for Educational Reform, Part 2

In January or February of 2011 U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan expressed the very ideas I had been discussing with my school district over the last several years regarding the replacement of our academic college prep programs with occupational curricula degree programs that would vary from 2-3-4 years in length while allowing for early graduation and/or cross-over studies. These programs would be found in the major areas listed below, among others:

• Sciences (Medical, Environmental, etc)
• Engineering and Technology (including Architecture, etc)
• Arts and Literature
• Music and Drama
• Social Sciences
• Business

With the creation of these degree programs we would do so in cooperation with area businesses, industries and social agencies seeking to train their local human resources. As such, these occupational courses should be open-ended to allow a young person to rejoin his educational interests should he or she need to graduate early and work. They should also create a strong linkage to the local community college's educational core curricula supported within that district's area of operation.

Why provide early educational graduations? To alleviate schools from the burden of housing students who either can't be in school or don’t want to be in school thus saving already restricted tax monies now being re-allocated elsewhere; to give kids a way to become economically independent and responsible; to create a younger employment force that could add to a district's already strained tax base; thus creating more monies for school districts from a larger tax base; and finally, to reduce youth crime through early employment responsibility.

Too, major state universities have economically hurt America by restricting middle-class scholarships and forcing higher tuition rates (probably since the 1980s). These rates have become unsustainable by middle income families and have caused middle class youths to migrate to regional or community colleges seeking lower tuition costs  while leaving the very wealthy to attend America's landmark universities. As a result America's middle class is quickly disappearing and we are finding a more pronounced class stratification more than ever as the rich have become richer and the poor have become poorer. America's backbone has been broken and we see this with the loss of jobs, entrepreneurships, and successful ventures across middle America.

Further, state universities have expanded degree program requirements rather than concentrating them as they necessarily push remedial education onto every entering freshman who have come unprepared for college study. Undergraduates are now graduating between 22-26 years of age because of the several factors involving poor educational preparation, the increased costs of college and the lack of economically viable jobs for lesser trained individuals.

And so, instead of having our nation's youth effectively (or efficiently) competing on global levels in the world-at-large by the ages of 16-19, we as a nation have created a half-life for our nation’s kids now entering into the workforce after a third of their life has passed cradled within our nation's school systems. The sheer talent of energy and brainpower has been lost between those intervening 10 years of educational study and purposeful postponement of talented laborers confined by our educational systems. America must reform its educational regiments and it must be holistic, rigorous and complete for as it stands now we've boxed ourselves in by too many degrees, longer core studies and fewer workplace opportunities.

When China and India are graduating 300 engineers to every 1 of ours it doesn’t take many smarts to realize that we’re on the losing end of a global competition. And while we both under-train and over-qualify our kids we are losing out. And by pushing our future tax bases into their late-20's we’re restricting the flow of necessary funds that would come sooner with a younger, more productive youth force.

About the only good that can be said about America's current educational system is that their community college programs have stepped up to the consumer plate and are offering shorter-term degrees and apprenticeship solutions for early entry highschoolers, needy urban youths, and economically-minded families and youths unwilling to go further into debt for a nebulous university degree with no concrete job prospects and outrageous school loan repayment plans.

In summary, middle schools should be teaching first and second year high school basics; high schools should be implementing occupational degree programs; and universities should stop teaching high school courses and get on with a variety of shorter-term, highly concentrated degree programs that integrate with business and industrial apprenticeship programs resulting in more certain job placements after college graduation. As such, American business and industry would not need to add yet another year or three of specialized training to the entering college student’s agendas thus pushing our aging youth further from their productive years of contribution and resource building.

And this is how I would describe national educational deficiencies and degrading economic metrics for our nation's educational systems. In hindsight, it's amazing we’ve gotten this far by our outmoded 20th-century style of mass-producing literate students known as "public education!" It is time for radical change - one that makes sense for our kids and for our communities so that America can globally compete with a rising world seeking to integrate its literate societies with other viable, literate societies in a stealthy web of cooperation and competition.


by R.E. Slater, March 2011

Wilfred Owen - Strange Meeting

Wilfred Owen, 1917



It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;

And by his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;

Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,

And no guns thumped, or down the fluies made moan.

"Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."

"None," said the other, "Save the undone years,

The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,

Was my life also; I went hunting wild

After the wildest beauty in the world,

Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,

But mocks the steady running of the hour,

And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.

For by my glee might many men have laughed,

And of my weeping something has been left,

Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,

The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

Now men will go content with what we spoiled.

Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.

They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,

None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.

Courage was mine, and I had mystery;

Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;

To miss the march of this retreating world

Into vain citadels that are not walled.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels

I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,

Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.

I would have poured my spirit without stint

But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now…

RE Slater - Proposal for Educational Reform, Part 1

A new national educational reform must take place allowing our local schools to compete on a global stage beginning with the replacement of our traditional system of mass learning with schools orientated towards occupational curriculas, local internships, self-paced programs, and earlier graduation programs beginning in the 2nd to the 4th year of high school study. It must give the desperate assistance required to the poorest and least empowered of our nation while at the same time recover our languishing middle classes slipping into the waysides of our society and becoming a mere labor force rather than an entrepreneurial workforce that is aggressive and business-minded.

It must be flexible enough to allow for the greatest expansion and the greatest opportunity for that youthful segment of our society that is most desirous of innovation and success, most impacted by our decisions, and most willing to hope great hopes of aspiration. Anything less than this is to watch our schools slide into oblivion, and our societies with it, as our educational system drains its peoples and its students of national effectiveness and God-given rights to become a trained, literate, impassioned, responsive work force and a highly functioning, interconnected, inter-dependent society of the 21st Century.

I believe we need a new type of national school system. One that will reduce the current high school and college educational programs from 4 to 3 to 2 years, and that is orientated around an occupational curricula that allows for core expansion and crossover studies. One that would allow for shortened learning cycles so that those students requiring immediate employment may find those opportunities within a school's job/career training center which may meet their more immediate personal and family needs. That schools would make available to young people a variety of occupational apprenticeships so that they may become sufficiently qualified to compete for jobs with the confidence that comes from effective training and study. It is critical that the public school system orientate itself towards an occupational curricula and remove the general academic curricula now in place. To intentionally present an earlier level of skill sets that a young person both desires and needs. To abandon its current standards of No Child Left Behind and MEAP Testing with the more practical standards of training and apprenticeship that could sit alongside that of the more academic traditional form of study.

And with the successful placement of a young person into the work force a community will soon discover improving returns both fiscally and relationally. Not only is the job market satisfied but so too will be a district's need for finances and resources. A larger tax base is being nurtured and with that comes monies to operate our schools. As it is now, the costs of educational training well into the college years and beyond is placing the nation's student population further and further from effective employment. Public education has become too expensive and the vast majority of students within our public schools and colleges are overwhelming our resources with higher tuition fees, newer taxes, and dwindling employment returns.

Statedly, America’s costs of education have become too high and its process of education has become too lengthy for the value that our nation needs at this critical time to compete against the larger, more skilled work forces being produced in countries like India and China. By restructuring academic degree programs (as well as related costs) America can produce a more efficiently trained workforce for lesser jobs not requiring the traditional path of high school and college training currently underway. Too, it will free up educational resources to concentrate upon more intensive training required by other skill sets that an individual may wish to pursue requiring longer graduation times. Not everyone requires competent knowledge in algebra 3 or organic chemistry, but this is not to say that this education should not be offered. Yet in the world of pragmatic metrics and Internet resources the job market is requiring more and more specific skill sets and less and less broad-based general educational knowledge that our traditional schools have been in the business of providing.

It is not too honest to say that the public education system, primarily the middle school and high school systems, have become outmoded and impractical. And while our community colleges have offered the highest response to occupational training I would fault major universities with creating unnecessary and time-consuming core curriculums for their 4-year degree programs. Especially in the area of post-high school remedial education in the freshman and sophomore years as they re-teach basic reading, writing, maths and sciences earlier received in a student's teen years. For some perhaps this is necessary but for many it delays graduation and ages our nation's dwindling workforce.

Not only does this system withhold America’s youth from acquiring an earlier apprenticeship but it presents a degree-competency turn-around that is imprudent. Beyond the industrial revolution’s requirements for “reading, writing and arithmetic” has now come the outcry for a more specific knowledge and skill subsets that is not readily available for job outsourcing. Today’s current four year high school programs and “college prep” curriculas are not producing the needs that our global societies are requesting. Jobs are being lost to global manufacturing and whole cities are displacing their brain trust and work forces in employment relocation efforts across America. As a nation we have lost our entrepreneurial edge in industry and it is being reflected all too well within our non-entrepreneurial educational systems.

allow occupational apprenticeships within its curricula it retards the former question at the expense of the latter's need to broadly train competent, motivated, talented individuals. It is bankrupting our educational system on many levels from support to personnel to facility/asset resources. But by acquiescing, and providing trained apprenticeships more directly into the workforce it will create a more effective community of workers who can support their school system through infrastructural supports like expanded resources (both fiscal and human), experientially and pragmatically. This would then prevent a community's network-of-neighborhoods from urban blight and regional job displacement as high schools meet the demand for specific job training and placement that capital consumerism necessarily demands.

Thus, it is important to streamline our educational system to better reflect its regional needs while balancing its global needs to compete and succeed in less understood and under-commercialized projects. To train for the frontiers of knowledge import while not neglecting to support the current markets being effectively applied. Not everyone can or should be involved in the frontiers of market creation, but it is important to keep a community fiscally solvent enough so that it can determine its own destiny through work placement and market support.

To this I would begin an educational list that would summarize these initiatives:

1  Create high school (and college) degree programs of 2, 3, and 4 years, as pertaining to the subject area of expertise required while removing any graduation requirement barriers thusly.

1b Allow for a mixture of curricular degree programs of choice (cross-over majors) as well as a mixture of curricular and academic programs should future college training be sought.

2  Remove all state core requirements and infuse "elective majors" beginning in 7th, 8th, and 9th grades with concentrations in:

• Engineering and Technology
• Medical Sciences and Services
• Business and Finance
• Specific Trades School (Design, Construction, Aircraft Maintenance, etc)
• The Arts and Humanities (Music, Theatre, Dance)

3  Provide earlier apprenticeship programs in middle school and high school and remove unnecessary core competency requirements.

3b Expect to place youth into the workforce more rapidly while recognizing that not all students have the same interests, talents or abilities. And that some may require more training than others regarding their elective choices and talents.

4  Elevate middle school requirements to incorporate the basic academic curricula of the early high school years (place 9th/10th grade basics into the 6th through 8th grades).

5  Reduce college term lengths from 4 to 3 to 2 years by removing unnecessary/repetitive class and remedial educational requirements that major universities currently undertake in the freshman and sophomore years.

6  Provide for more pervasive online instruction but not so as to displace the traditional teacher role with simply “teacher-mentors”. Personal instruction is still invaluable to the overall success of any student's mentoring process.

7  Do not neglect to give early instruction and appreciation for differing cultures and faiths that successful global communications will require in business and networking.

8  Privatize public schools for better community management and development (as versus the slower, less effective, less nimble, state and federal educational systems now in place).

9  Virtualize school boundaries with a pay-in system for non-district students through Internet resourcing.

Concluding Observations

The public education of the 1930's that offered assembly-line models of mass learning is effectively broken and must re-engage its consumer base. A nationalized education system retards effective entrepreneurial market development, is slower to respond, and more costly to retain than a regionally-driven educational model.

America must be able to compete in the 21st Century and cannot with its outmoded, ineffective and obsolete public school educational system. Teens need viable job choices by 16 and 17 years of age and it is in the best economic interests of the US to graduate their kids within occupational program studies.

By not capitalizing on differentiating a study program's majors until a kid's sophomore or junior college term we are creating enormous costs on our school systems and on our society at-large. Nor can we compete against India and China’s educational mills with their larger population resources. We must train earlier and more efficiently than ever before and cannot be satisfied in placing our students into the workforce at 22-25 years of age. We have to lower that age group beginning with 16-17 years of age and more effectively train those who decide to remain within it.

In the most sublime sense, it is time and money that we compete most against. Not against other nations or their economies. For it is time that equates to opportunity and money that equates to the seizure of those opportunities. To demand that the national student population be equally competent with one another is to drive down all our students to the most basic, minimal level of education. And to restrict early graduation is to prevent the help and assistance that a younger apprenticeship work force could lend to their supporting community.

One could go on and on with this type of reasoning but it is enough to say that our public schools must radically reform and essentially disappear as ineffective and outmoded operations. The time is now for clear, decisive, chaotic reform to begin.

R.E. Slater, February 2011

R.E. Slater - Retelling the Story of Young Men and Fire (a short story and poems)

Retelling the Story

of Young Men and Fire

by R.E. Slater

Now we enter into a different kind of world, a world of slow time that accompanies grief and personal sorrow upon an inaccessible mountain marked by concrete stations of the cross. It is all that remains from the many erosions of wintry rains, snowy melts, and the slippery slides that have washed away the lonely ashes of Mann Gulch’s fiery deaths on a late summer's afternoon 0n August 5, 1949. What dramatic, devastating forces coincided to make the best of our young men as solitary, ashy bodies, burnt beyond recognition to be left unexplained in the mysteries of grief and pain? What memories ran through these young men as they raced for their lives against a fast-moving wall of heat leaving only loved ones behind to explain their catastrophe - how it came to be, the fatal choices they would make, and how it led them to their untimely deaths? How do we, as outside witnesses, transform this catastrophe into the measured grains of consolation so that we are no longer left with sorrow's tragedy? For too many times have we been held silent in our witness to death's unhallowed canvas that would prevent us from voicing our anger. Our disappointments. Or not permitted to voice out loud by a friend's mere presence or society's standards. Leaving us only with the feelings of emptiness, bereavement, deep loss, and sorrowing pain.

Dare we write this tragic story knowing that it is possible there may be no ending that can offer us consolation or absolution? That those connected with this ending may wish it lost forever in the strands of time? Lost from public inspection. Lost from scrutiny. Lost even to failing memory? But perhaps there may be an ending that can be told based upon a storyteller’s faith in seeking its truth, and in the seeking uncover its dramatic ending, so that it could be filled with a story that honors the dead. That might atone for their sufferings while adding to our own understanding at the plight these poor unfortunates found themselves cast upon on a fateful day as they raced for a hilltop that never would come. A day that when it comes would teach us immeasurable lessons through personal lost and horror.

For it was on the Missouri River, in the harshest wildlands of western Montana, that we enter into a survey of the universe’s most basic elements at work. To there discover the heavy winds of a stormy sky flowing unimpeded across the length of a mighty river’s wend till met by undaunted rocky ridges uplifted against shearing mountain cliffs. Cliffs that would cleave those winds into a dozen different down drafts flung off from the white-capped river waters far below to race headlong into unfamiliar gullies and mingling canyons, wild and alone. And there, churn into the deadly gases of hot furnace winds and towering walls of fire that would meet innocent boys intent on controlling its building rage. And though the element of water could not be used high up on those lost ridges, nor would the roiling skies above allow but one drop from its depleted rainstorms, it was here we find the willowy ranks of young men cast between the ages of 17 and 24 who would begin the hard work of flanking their relentless opponent. Who willingly shouldered their heavy iron shovels, the two-man whiplash of buck-toothed timber saws, and the fireman's resourceful Pulaski, that would soon be used to scour the earth to create the hard-won fire lines and many numerous fire breaks necessary to control a fire's rage hungry for the fuel of scrub and fallen limbs.

Bringing us to see yet another element in play here - that of the human spirit - adventurous, iron-willed, courageous, hopeful, as ever can be found in the youthful ranks of young men come of age as smokejumpers, themselves fearless and alone. Whose very lives would very soon be measured in mere minutes and seconds. Not in the days and weeks that they had once come to expect as a spreading wildfire danced through timber-dry conditions upon heavy, cleaving winds towards young men caught unawares of the seething, boiling firestorm brewing on the far slopes down below. A blowup that would shortly race through the hot, simmering canyonland, eating through its scrub and hillock as if its very walls had been set to act as a flinty chimney flue formed eons before to release its rage. Here then will we find the conflagration of five of the most basic elements of the universe - earth, wind, fire, water, and spirit - all combined in one intent and to one end.... That of the death and destruction, and imperiled will and survival, of fifteen brave young men caught unawares in a race only noble hearts may run and lose.

And so it is the task of the storyteller to search for a story that may at times not take on the form of a written work of art when remembering those spare remnant moments of life left to some tragic few. And yet it is left to him or her to uncover what a life may mean when measured out in the short arcs of pathos and struggle as it marches steady onwards towards certain death against a springtime of limericks and lyrics that would make up most of who we are, and what we have, and would have been. Is it too much to ask then of a past depleted life when inspecting his or her earlier moments lived, that it give back to us some sense of life’s final shape and design? Perhaps as proof that we inhabit a world of sublime truth fraught within a chaotic order seemingly found everywhere around and burgeoning with its insanities, sufferings and pains? That within this dark disorder we may come to find lives other-than-our-own that once sought for singular artistic expression that would draw on a mightier canvas when coloured in by life's deeper brush strokes of meanings and shades of intent? That could perhaps give significance to our meager lives when asking - or answering - the questions of “Who we are." "What we are." And the all-important, "Why we are?"

And if there is such a story it will take something of a storyteller to find it, to imagine it, to hear what impulses drove these young men to fight a raging fire that would very shortly turn into their own personal stories of travesty blown up with unimagined ferocity and astonishing quickness. And there perhaps find, within this tragedy, its further end-story that has lied within the bones of their ashes silently uncomposed and decomposing. He should probably be an old storyteller... at least one who is old enough to know that the problem of identity is always a problem and not just a problem of youth. And even old enough to know that the nearest anyone can ever come to finding himself at any given age is to find a story that somehow tells him about himself. What drives him. What keeps him in place. What moves his inmost being towards truth and unseen hidden beauty. For it is in the world of slow-time, beset by death and grief, that truth and art may be found as one element in the most ancient expressions of mankind's corporeal humanity. Of the what, and the why, and the who, that we are. And to which we owe our breath and existence to as we each one move in our own slow-time and steady beat towards life's finality and completion. This then is the art and the craft of the storyteller forever bound with his few salient readers in somber journey's discovery of life's ancient rhymes and prismatic mysteries considered all-the-more divine when wrapped in humanities greatest of struggles... that of fearlessness, desperation and survival.

- Adapted by R.E. Slater

December 23, 2010
rev. April 6, 2012

from Norman Maclean’s (c. 1902-1990) story,

"Young Men & Fire," Chicago Press, 1992 (pp 142-146)

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

One of thirteen Stations of the Cross

A rescue ridge too far

Two unlikely survivors who were the youngest and most inexperienced, who had raced from behind

their fellow firefighters in a maddening dash for life itself. One of the two leads the rescue team out

from Mann Gulch while the other gazes back upon the fire's horrific ravages from 12 hours before

when caught in a massive conflagration uniting all fires into one deadly cauldron.

Smokejumpers parachuting down upon a forest fire

Mann Gulch boiling in the summer airs

After reading Norman Maclean's studied tragedy of a fated crew of Smokejumpers stationed in Missoula, Montana, I knew that I must write a poem about the very thing of fire itself - but not simply of fire, but of the God of fire that speaks through holy flames to so fragile a creation formed from the bowels of mother earth in the sublimest of terms. And when I had completed this task I knew immediately that I must then write a second, much longer poem about the Mann Gulch tragedy itself so that my earlier poem could be better understood when framed in the blood, sweat, and tears of a hallowed firefighter crew's misfortune. My reasoning went along the lines of how does one write of the God of creation and expect readers to understand this God of whom you write unless it be through the flared nostrils and terrified breaths of those who have come close to the hand of God and suffered terrible tragedy? Then, and then only, did I feel that my initial poem could better reflect the inspiration that had so fully overwhelmed me when first connecting the two subject matters together as one. And in the process I had hoped to provide a final ending to those unfortunates lives that might live on with us today in some sense of poetic reflection. That reminds us of the many men and women who dedicate themselves each fire season protecting lives and properties, woods and streams, parklands and wildlife. Who have committed themselves to so deadly an occupation against the whims of so fickled a foe.

And so, when in the process of completing this secondary poem I found that I had to stop and lay down my pen for a time overcome by this horrific topic's brutish subject. I wanted to approach these young lives with a deftness of sympathy and heroism that it required as an ode to their human spirit of perseverance.  Moreover, a holistic ending needed to be found that was unlike its parts, but born from its parts, that might provide an adequate capstone of homage and requiem. Since then I have stayed away for nearly a year having not thought too much about this subject matter, allowing it to rest unresolved in my mind and heart like the furrowed gravesites that lie deeply silent in the tawny bunchgrass on a faraway hillside in Western Montana as I searched for answers that may not come. Amongst markers gathered in their solitary clusters keeping nightly watch beneath the starry heavens looking down from their evening wonders to behold the untold ruins of brave men resting as undaunted testaments to mankind's brave will forged within the hot kilns of creation's holy flames and pungent altars. Altars that no more rest than do our searching hearts, seeking acceptable sacrifices that only time eternal may someday provide as we cannot, bowed before our heavy offerings, made by human hands, broken and tearfully clasped. For no other offerings are so dear as those who are taken from us, whom we are helpless to aide in their suffering, except to give homage in lasting memorial to future generations of firefighters better equipped and trained through remembrance of the hard lessons of those who have gone on before. Courageous lives. Full lives. Lives ended too soon. That lead the way for those who survive that follow after behind their fire lines, and smoky trails, hearing upon our ear last calls echoing to one another against a tangled wilderness distantly crying "All's well."

- R.E. Slater

February 1, 2012
rev. April 6, 2012

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

The winged statue of victory stands in front of smoke from fires in the village of ancient Olympia,

near the birthplace of the Olympic games, in south-west Greece. A huge effort by firefighters,

water-dropping aircraft, and fire trucks, succeeded in keeping a raging blaze away from the

2,800-year-old site - the holiest sanctuary in ancient Greece.

An Unfinished Poem

Excerpt: Opening Lines

by R.E. Slater

Pray thee dark fire angels burning bright

Didst thou enter into redemption’s night
When glimpsing too soon creation’s fires
Then fell from earth in fervent rejoice?

At seeing the black heavens hotly ablaze
Roaring in ancient flames of heat and haze
Seething fiery whirls of immortal breath
Alit the turbulent winds of righteousness?

And didst the hot flames lure thy fearing tred
Overwhelming thy heart by jealous desire
Whilst racing to see stunning glories dred
Shaking the foundations in furious might?

And was it thy glad heart that joyfully leapt
Blazing hot from within thy bursting soul
Beholding Almighty’s hidden glories wept
Bowing rocks and hills in terrible flames?

Whose burning presence measures breath
Bringing all mortal works to ashes and ruin
Swirling His fires of destruction upon mortal sin
Destroying the days and nights of all living flesh?

.
.
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- R.E. Slater

January 2011

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved