by Meg Langford
 
 
                                   “Full fathom five thy father lies
                                    Of his bones are coral made
                                    Those are pearls that were his eyes
                                    Nothing of him that doth fade,
                                    But doth suffer a sea-change
                                    Into something rich and strange.”
                                                                                   --The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
 
 
Those three sailors. . . I wrote a play about it once.  It felt like theatre.  Not a novel, not a screenplay.  But something you need to sit in the dark and experience with other people. . .with strangers.  One day, I will go to the island and drop three pearls in the water, where they rest. . .
                                                                                               
Before I write this blog, I think I should tell you why I am writing it.  Normally, that is a thing I would never do.  A good writer never needs to explain such a thing.  The reason, the cause, should be in the writing itself.   For the most part, a writer who needs to preambulate by explaining to you why they are going to write what they write is akin to meeting a person who boisterously announces that they are a funny person.  “I’m really a pretty funny guy”, many a gent announced to me during my dating days, and that was precisely the point at which I knew that there would be no humor whatsoever transpiring between us that night. Never in the history of civilization or of comedy has some assclown leaned back in his chair, or grabbed your hand for a power shake, barked “I’m really a pretty funny guy”, and then said or done anything remotely witty, humorous, or amusing.  Trust me, no genuinely funny person has ever announced it as a part of their opening salvo.  Really funny people just start right off doing stuff and saying stuff to make you laugh.  But, “I’m really a pretty funny guy…?”    Be afraid.   Be very afraid.   (Usually at this point, I would fake an attack of the Shingles or something, and ask them to take me home.)   

And that is how I usually feel about people who explain why they are bestowing this particular blogpost of theirs on poor you.  (“I’m superexcited about my blog for today, ‘cause HERE’S WHY…”    …“Here’s Ten Reasons why you really, really need to read todays blog!!!!!”) 

AAAUUUGGHHHHHH!

So here I am, breaking my own rules.   I am telling you why I am writing this blog because this blog is very sad, and yet today is Christmas.  That seems oxymoronic to me.   One should write about joyful things on Christmas.   But at the end of all this grim remembrance, it does for me the one thing that Christmas should be about:  it makes me feel reborn. 
 

                                                    THE BEGINNING PROPER

The Study of History has a sweet spot.   Study it too much, and you have virtually no choice but to become a cynic, a depressive, a person bereft of hope:   joy and charity and selflessness and philanthropy rarely make the headlines, and they are not chapters in history books.  Read history, and you will despair.  Sooner or later, any joie de vivre you were born with dies, tromped under the boots of armies, mobs, despots, weirdoes, and the oh just generally apathetic.  But not studying history is equally dangerous:  you wallow around in the mall and on social media, living in a dopey cloud of unfounded optimism until the Other hauls you away and sticks you behind barbed wire because You differ from Them.

But, the Sweet Spot.  Ah!  For me, the sweet spot is that magical moment where I have learned just enough to make me incredibly grateful that I am who I am.  And I’m betting this applies to you, too:  only the ugly, stinky process of sticking your nose right into the cracks of history can remind you, as no other methodology can, how fabulous it is that you were born WHEN you were born, WHERE you were born, TO WHOM you were born, etcetera, etcetera, as the king would say.   

These following Christmas stories make me grateful.  They make me feel reborn.
 
FIRST:  You have to go back.  Not back a long way, just to December 7th of this year.  Try to remember generally what you were doing, what was going on, on this day three weeks ago.  Or three weeks from last Christmas, if you are reading this in 2016.   It was a Monday, if that helps.  Now, go even further back.  To a date that will live in infamy.   To December 7th, 1941.  Slowly, get into a meditative place, and imagine what it was like.  It is early on a Sunday, not quite eight a.m.   The sky is suddenly thick with planes.   The famous call to action, “THIS IS NOT A DRILL” blasts over loudspeakers.   There is no need, right now, to walk you through the entirety of that terrifying day, but do let yourself bask in some of the very true stories, the anecdotes and nightmares, that came out of that bright morning: 

A girl dressed for church, daughter of a general, a vision in pastels and proper hat and her spotless white church gloves, remembers a kind of zombie army of men from the ships, wounded and covered in black oil, climbing up the hill from the harbor—she remembered the whites of their eyes, and those blue, green, brown eyes all registering terror, and this is the only way should could even tell that these were human beings.  She writes of men dying in her arms, and she could do nothing for them.  She remembers black oil on white gloves.

A woman recounts a marital fight to end all fights with her gambling addicted husband:  if he spent one more Saturday night gambling with those bastard sailors on the Arizona, only to pass out from whiskey and crawl home Sunday morning, she would take the baby and leave.  He took her seriously.  And lived to tell tales of Pearl Harbor.

There is the urban legend that is based on truth:  a man of the cloth who said “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.”  It was Chaplain Howell Forgy, aboard the USS New Orleans, trying to encourage men as they passed ammo up to the gun turret.  (It got turned into a fabulous song, for what it’s worth:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJfJPxLntZU)

Fascinatingly, there is the story of the first prisoner of war taken by U.S. troops, the entire incident a tribute to military discipline (very important part of my legacy—I got a dad buried in Arlington), if ever there was one.  You would think that the impulse of any normal G.I. Joe on Pearl that tragic morning would be to beat the crap out of this poor unlucky Japanese soldier, until he was a dead bloody pulp, but no—he was taken prisoner.   Kazuo Sakamaki had been one of those little guys assigned to the mini subs that did recon in the waters around the island.  Being of Japanese—read Samurai—ideology, he begged for permission to commit suicide, but we wouldn’t let him.  Japanese did remove all evidence that he had ever existed from their records, though.  In the end, Kazuo not only survived, but got us back for Hiroshima and Nagasaki:  he became a big cheese at Toyota, helping to build the car that would do serious damage to the United States automotive industry.

And of course, there was a Redskins game, being played a world away.  It was Redskins-Eagles.  A Redskin win and a Brooklyn Dodger loss would mean the two teams were tied for first in the East.  Imagine the tension as an already tense American crowd heard one high ranking military name after another was called over the loudspeaker to report for emergency duty.  And then the reporters and photographers were summoned. . .The World was at War.  And suddenly, football didn’t seem as important anymore.
 
BUT WHAT- you may be wondering, does all this have to do with Christmas?  Just this.  And I must ask you to picture one more thing:  the attack is raging; it is hell on earth.  The ships are sinking, and taking with them many trapped men.  Oh, the cruel irony, drowning so close to shore.  Some of them will be rescued, but even in the attempt to rescue them, there will be carnage:  Trying to use cutting torches makes sparks that ignite fuel oil, and even more men are killed in the ensuing explosions.  
But the largely untold story that pulls at the heart strings?  The three men aboard the U.S.S. West Virginia:

                    Louis "Buddy" Costin, 21.   Clifford Olds, 20.   Ronald Endicoott, 18.

…Who lasted, who lived, from the horrific attack on December 7th … all the way until Christmas.   Trapped, deep in the USS West Virginia.  We know this because they marked the time on a makeshift calendar, as was learned when the ship was brought up in the spring of ‘42.   The searchers were horrified at what they found.  You see, they had grown inured—for their own survival and sanity—to the body parts, bits of clothing, the muck and goo that was some ghastly mix of ship’s oil and dead human beings.  But these three men were, for lack of a better word, intact.  They were real.  They were sailors, and in just looking at them, it was all too easy to remember the carefree bliss of being stationed in Hawaii and being out on a Saturday night—partying on December 6th.  

A unique agony of war was experienced by the men who had to stand sentry duty next to the West Virginia, from the time of the attack until Christmas Day.  The tapping—Morse Code--begging for rescue, wanting to know when they would be getting out, asking was the world at war, begging please we are running out of food and water.   That was another horrible detail that became apparent in the spring when the ship was raised:  flashlights and batteries littered the floor, ration cans were opened, empty, licked clean.  A store of water had been opened and every drop drunk. . .

They were just guys, you know?  Cliff Olds kept three dollars a month out of his check, sent the other eighteen bucks home to his family.  And 18 year old Ronald Endicott?  His girlfriend was only 14 when he first swept her off her feet, but even as an old lady, she kept a torch.  She is reminiscent of the old lady in Titanic:  she went on to have a full rich life, but never forgot her first love—or the Charlie Chaplin movie they saw the night before he got on the bus to go off to another World War.  The third sailor, Louis Costin, was a guy who was ready for Christmas, even before the attack.  When the salvage crews searched his locker, they found a watch he'd already bought his mom for Christmas.  It was broken and waterlogged.  But the Navy sent it to Effie Costin anyway.  She had it repaired and wore it until she died in December 1985.  She was 92 years old.

I wrote a play about this once. . .

I have a friend who was in the Navy, and he told me that the worst thing, probably, would not have been the hunger or the thirst, but the utter lack of even a glimmer of light  Even with the most careful rationing of emergency lights, all light would have been gone within a few days.   Complete darkness.  You can’t imagine that kind of utter blackness, I was told, and it can drive you quite mad.

So.  Before you return to the ritual and merriment, the tolerating and the celebrating, the eating and drinking and playing and praying, the spiritual and the secular, I would ask you to look back on the full, rich, busy, crazed life you have led from the 7th of December up until Christmas Eve.  Take a moment, please, and think of a few dozen things that have filled your last couple of weeks before Christmas:  the shopping, the parties, the annual movies and TV shows, the crisis, the crisis solved, the calls, the skyping, the baking, the caroling, the cursing, the irritations, the visitations, the decorations, the gift wrapping, the gift unwrapping, the feasting, and all the—through this all, through all this, those boys were sitting there in the dark, waiting, hoping, and praying.  They gave their lives for their country, so that you might have this holiday, to enjoy—and to make sacrosanct—in the way you see fit.


Well.  It appears I am done, here.   I was going to add a second wartime Christmas story, but I am so depressed now that I must self-medicate; I self-medicate by eating, and now, God help me, even this fruitcake is looking good.  And I am fairly sure that this is last year’s fruitcake. . .
​
Besides, the second story is one that can also apply to the New Year, so look for it later this week, if you are so inclined.

But I promised you a feeling of being reborn, not sadness.   And while you may say I am reaching, here it is:  When I think of stories like the one about the three sailors, I am naturally prompted to think of the other soldiers who have had grim Christmases, and other people in general who have suffered at Christmas, both then and now, and, well … well, I know it doesn’t appear that I am doing this very well.

But we are getting to the Sweet Spot.
 
Remembering all of this makes me grateful.  Humble.   It makes me feel … “Reborn”.   Overwhelmingly aware of how blessed I am … and of how few problems I actually have.  And of how great of an obligation—and a privilege—it is for me to try to figure out some way to give back.  To ease somebody’s pain, somewhere.   To contribute.  To show my gratitude.   As our friend Tom says in “Saving Private Ryan,” to “Earn This … Earn It.” 
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv-67DFlOsM)
 
Oh, and it’s worth noting:  I was not exactly accurate.  They did not die on Christmas day, our three boys lived until December 23rd, their scratched calendar marks on the wall told us, so my faith tells me they were in a far better place by Christmas.   With my best friend Michelle, perhaps.  My friend Michelle was killed by a drunk driver on Christmas Day, so I have dedicated my quirky little miniature museum to her. 

So as you go through this Christmas day, and through this holiday season, just let it all roll off of you.   That jerk in the parking lot.  That huge shopping heartbreak.  That issue at work that almost ruined that other thing.  That dopey rude relative who you always argue politics with over dinner, ruining the Christmas feast?  Smile and nod, tell them you can see their point of view.  You don’t agree, but you can understand how a person gets there.  Let that be your present to them.  And when somebody gives you a stupid Christmas sweater with the big reindeer face on it, wear it proudly.  Own it.  Be thankful.  There are children in third world countries who would love to have that sweater.  (Well.  Maybe not.  Even poverty and suffering have their limits.)   But you get the idea.  Let go of irritations, and come December 26th, be nice to the lady in the Customer Service returns line. Trust me, her life is far worse than yours.   Show some kindness.


You are fine.  You are showered with blessings.  Your life is a benediction.  You have so much to be grateful for, most of you probably would have a hard time knowing when to start, or how to end. You are not shivering or starving.

You have food (too much food) surrounding you.  You have laughter and gaiety.  You have warmth.  You have water, cider, wine.   You have Christmas lights.

You are not sitting alone in the utter blackness.  And with enough belief—if your faith is strong enough-- you will never find yourself, all by yourself, in the darkness.   Never again.

You have everything to be happy about, because it really is a wonderful life.   Be happy.  Seize it.   Go hug someone, so hard they nearly break.   Let something move you to actually you shed a tear, today.  Today.  Today, my friend, along with the Christ Child, you too are born.   Welcome to the Human Race.
 
 POST SCRIPT:  Oh, and whatever you are having, hoist one for the boys.  Here are their photographs, so you can picture them.  (We don’t know what young Ronald Endicott looked like.)
http://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/uss-west-virginia-sank-in-pearl-harbor-attack-with-trapped-sailors/

 REDUX:  … Remembering all of this makes me beholden.  Humble.   It makes me feel … “Reborn”.   Overwhelmingly aware of how blessed I am … and of how few problems I actually have.  And of how great of an obligation—and a privilege—it is for me to try to figure out some way to give back.  To ease somebody’s pain, somewhere.   To contribute.  To show my gratitude.   As our friend Tom says in Saving Private Ryan, to “Earn This … Earn It.” 
​

By Meg Langford
 
What to do, what to do, what to do—when you are at that annual, obligatory holiday gathering, surrounded by family, friends, and neighbors who are devout Republicans, and you hear them talking about the racist shenanigans that have been ravaging the year of 2015.  (And oh, sorry to be posting this so late into the holiday season, but I had to experience a couple such soirees myself, before I could formulate this answer.)
 
…So you’re mingling, and you overhear a gaggle of folks screeching about unruly Negroes.
 
REPUBLICAN:  …and why do they need to get so uppity, anyway?   What do they expect from all this marching in the streets, smashing windows, and looting, and setting things on fire?  So destructive!
 
AND YOU SAY:  Oh goodie, we’re talking about the American Revolution!  I just love history!
 
REPUBLICAN:  What are you yammering about?  We’re talking about that crap that came down in Ferguson and Baltimore this year, not something that happened a quarter of a millennium ago, for Pete’s Sake.  Pay attention; keep up!
 
AND YOU SAY:  Oh.  I’m confused, because it sure sounded like you were talking about the American Revolution.   I was just thinking about the colonists setting fire to stamps in response to the Stamp Act, and burning government figures in effigy.  And of course they set the HMS Gaspee on fire for no reason, other than the ship was holding men whose job it was to enforce the law.  And what excuse did the colonists give?  The commander, Lieutenant William Dudingston, would order his men to storm ships and search them without a warrant.  Hmph.  No measly warrant. .And then, of course, the colonists looted private homes like the one belonging to Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson, to say nothing of all the Native American tribes whose corn stores and wigwams that the colonists also looted.  But they only did that because they had to survive, right?  And don’t forget the Boston Massacre, dozens of Sons of Liberty assaulting a handful of British soldiers, sixty against nine, the colonists hurling bricks and jagged glass, all in the name of freedom.  And those same colonists also tarred and feathered other government officials, tax collectors, who were just doing their jobs, and some of those poor folks died an agonizing death.   That’s all pretty destructive, wouldn’t you say?  And that is the noble history of the founding of our glorious nation.
 
REPUBLICAN:  Well, that was different!  Those government officials were the enemy.  They were violating the Magna Carta!  We needed to throw off the yoke of an oppressive government.  And the militia and their leaders were corrupt bullies—just look at what they did to colonists in prisons.  Beating them and torturing them.  What we are talking about has nothing to do with history.  We’re talking about today’s headlines, dammit.   All those disruptive thugs burning and looting things, trying to stop traffic and commerce, and shut down government, disrespecting the authorities, all to no good end.
           
AND YOU SAY:  I’m sorry.  An armed militia enforcing the law by breaking it, abusing their power?  Rioting in the streets and assaults on innocent people and destruction of property?  I’m still baffled.  That sure sounds like the Boston Tea Party to me.
 
 
         THOUGHT FOR THE DAY.  YEAR.  MILLENIUM.
 
When white men dump the tea into Boston harbor and protest and riot against a cruel and unjust militia, and against a government that has betrayed them, we call them “Patriots”.  We call them “Founding Fathers”.
 
     When black men protest a black man’s death at the hands of police, from the inner city to Baltimore Harbor, and when those riots spread from sea to shining sea, we call them “THUGS”.  We call them “NIGGERS”.

I am having a rough morning.  I really, really want to show people how much I really, really, really care about all those shooting victims in San Bernadino.  I want so much to make a real difference in the world, so I have looked up the appropriate flag so I can cyberpaste it over my Facebook Face and everything, but it is not working out.  So many questions.

Here’s the thing.   I feel awful about what happened, really pitsy, you know, but I am still so very, very sad about that thing that happened in Paris too, so I face a conundrum.  It is a conundrum of great magnitude:  it is social, historical, aesthetic.  It involves geopolitics and Photoshop.  And it even speaks just a wee jot about the extent to which Facebook rules my life.

Let’s slog through it together, shall we, because I bet you are having the same problem: 
OK, we’ve established that we are super upset and grief stricken about the dead folks in San Bernadino.   And but we also still truly feel deeply a lot about the gens mort in Paris.  But as people who almost care even more than I do have pointed out, many people died around the same time as the victims in Paris, and so what about remembering them too?   Now, fixing the Facebook problem of the suicide bomber in Beirut who killed 43 people and wounded more than 240 is a pretty easy solution, because, happily for aesthetics, the Lebanese flag is basically white and red stripes.  Everyone’s happy, right?  You just slap a couple more red and white stripes alongside the French blue, white and red flag, and you are good to go.  Conscience appeased.  Dead memorialized.   Easy Peasy.

But wait.  Crap.  Now we have this San Bernadino thing to deal with, and here’s where it gets thorny.  The San Bernadino County flag is a dog’s breakfast of wackadoodle pictures; there’s mountains and fields with crops and a bunch of grapes, and a gigantic scale for weighing in, and a wagon train and a locomotive running over some citrus that was obviously thriving before the train ran over it, and there’s creatures, some holding weapons, and all of this enclosed within an arrow head.  (A really big arrow head, I’m guessing.)  Cripes, it’s a busy little flag.  It reminds me of one of those giant ugly mosaics made by a brigade of sixth graders, you know, the ones that they have at fancy rest stops right near state borders, depicting cities and events and famous pioneers, all reminding you of which state is really the best of the adjoining states and where you should spend all those tourist dollars.

But the good news is that the actual major colors of the flag of San Bernadino (county) consists only of a white field with a couple of blue stripes and a couple of aqua stripes, not really an aqua, more of a rich azure, the same thrilling tint as Anderson Cooper’s eyes when he flashes that twinkle, or offers that endearing chuckle, like when he talked about Gerard Depardieu urinating publicly on a flight from Paris to Dublin, after he’d had all that wine and was then told he could not use the inflight toilet.  (Gerard Depardieu, not Anderson Cooper.)   Now, both Paris and Dublin are big drinking meccas, so you’d think fellow travelers would understand.  But the story tickled Cooper into a flurry of puns.  Yes, Anderson Cooper’s eyes, that’s the color in the San Bernadino flag.  We are talking California, after all. 

So, taking the San Bernadino flag, with its white, blue and azure, and incorporating that into our Facebook Face Gauze of blue, white, red, then more white and red, then some azure, is actually both pretty and promising.

But not so fast.  The San Bernadino attack took place within the city, which has a different flag, where the symbols of farms and locomotives and wagon trains are very prominent.  And since the closer you are to a tragedy, the more you care about it—for example, last week, your car not starting or that horrific slight that happened to you when you were doing your Black Friday shopping impacted you a hell of a lot more than the recent tragic and untimely death of Kitanoumi  Toshimitsu, The 55th Yokozuna, am I right?—anyway, where was I, ah yes, so given my logic that the city of San Bernadino was really the heart of the tragedy (plus the seal is prominent on the county flag as well), I feel we need to address those images contained therein.

But if you are going to put those images as well as the colors onto your Facebook Face Gauze (the French flag conveniently didn’t have any images, the French being a more of a “moins est plus” kind of people), then we have to go back to the suicide bomber in Lebanon, and put in that big green tree that they have on their nation’s flag.  It’s actually a Lebanon Cedar, but happily, it goes pretty well with the themes in the San Bernadino flag, cedars being fairly popular in the Golden State, especially when it comes to building closets in the Pacific Northwest, where moths are quite a problem.  So the cedar tree fits just fine.

So I have my Facebook Face Gauze, which is now blue, white, red, red and white some more, Anderson Cooper azure, plus it is festooned with a mountain, wagon trains, fields of crops, a scale for weighing things, a locomotive, and a cedar tree.  But it is to be embedded on a very small patch of computer screen space, as we all know, so it looks for all the world like the locomotive has just come out of that mountain tunnel and crashed into the cedar tree, blinded by the sudden bright light, or perhaps distracted by people waving from the wagon train.  And people will think that the cause I am actually mourning is all of the train accidents that happen, because we need to be sad about those dead people too.  And then I flash on an image from my past.  I watched, one day in 2008, from my home in Canoga Park, as an Apocalypse Now of helicopters, along with a fleet of ambulances, made their way to a horrific train accident that happened in Chatsworth, California, about a mile from my house.  The engineer was texting when it happened.   Twenty-five people died; do we not care about them as much as those who died in acts of terrorism?  Would you be less upset if your child or dearest friend or husband or wife died because some stupid driver was texting, than you would be if an act of Jihad wiped their sweet life off the face of the earth?  So yes, I tell myself, let the illusion that the train has crashed into a tree symbolize all the mass transit accident victims that we mourn.  (Cue The Folksmen from “A Mighty Wind” singing “Blood on the Coal”.)  And, ooh, plus, the wagon train on both San Bernadino flags can symbolize all the fine people we lost settling this great country of ours.   And the mountains on the SB flag?  That can be where the Indians that we are going to slaughter are attempting to hide; we must also remember them while we are Manifesting our Destiny.  And the fields of unpicked produce can represent the plight of illegal undocumented alien immigrants who are overworked and underpaid.

But wait.  My friends who care just about as much as I do, but not quite as deeply, remind me that Paris, Beirut, and San Bernadino weren’t the only places where there have very recently been massive waves of death and destruction.  You can’t bring up Middle East turmoil without thinking of Syria.  A lot of death in Syria.  A lot of lives to mourn.  And, my friends dryly inform me, (and damn if there isn’t a tinge of amusement on their face) that Syria actually has two, yes TWO flags, WHAT?!, which apparently has to do with some kind of petty infighting going on there.  (And by the way why does nobody’s flag say “Can’t We All Just Get Along”, what would that be in Latin?)  Anyway, something about “de jure” governments, which I thought was a menu item, but continuing on, the two flags of Syria are black, white, and red, and black, white, and green—and, excuse me, I thought these were the colors of the Italian flag, that the Italians had dibs—but the Syrian flagS have additions, one with some red stars, and one with some green stars, which is stupid to me, since stars are supposed to be white, or maybe yellow, and twinkle.  (Note to self:  create Old Glory with LED flashing star lights, sell on eBay next Fourth of July, big buck$$$.)  

Where was I?  Ah yes.  So if I add these colors to the blue, white, red, red some more, white some more, more blue, more white, azure, and yellow (the background of the San Bernadino city flag), now I add not only more red, but green and black.  Shew.  It’s not only ugly, it looks for all the world like those test bars they used to use when there was a big crisis, and then the Emergency Broadcast System would come on, but some stations used to leave the test bars on their channel all night after my bedtime as a child, back when TV had occasional end points or pauses.  So now, I worry, people will see all these stripes on my Facebook page and think I AM THE ONE having a tragic emergency, or EVEN WORSE (gasp!) that my Facebook page is going off the air. 

On the more interesting column, though, is the fact that the flag of Beirut, the city where that actual horrible suicide bombing which took 43 souls actually took place, has a ship floating on the water, on its flag.  And I’m guessing that if Zuckerberg weren’t busy changing diapers right now, he’d be addressing this entire imbroglio with more thoroughness than he has, and allow us the option to put the flag of the city where a tragedy took place, instead of whole countries, which have many parts, and people caring in varying greater and lesser degrees.  So I take the flag of Beirut, and I add the sailing ship and images of what appear to be rather choppy seas, grab your Dramamine … and Huzzah!, what is eerie is that if you look at the flag of Paris, IT ALSO has a ship on even choppier waters, Normans or something, I am told, which is stupid because Paris is landlocked, but whatever—I would have chosen a baguette crossed with a paintbrush, or something.  But it’s rude to criticize when people are in mourning.

So I put the boats with the choppy water on my Facebook Face Gauze, and they are bumping up around the train tracks and the wagon train, which was supposed to be going through the desert, but now there are waves around the locomotive.  So instantly, you get this image—ocean levels rising.  Climate change.  BANG!   I got that covered.  This is good.  This is fabulous!  Now people know I care about the planet, on top of all my other causes.  I really, really care.

“But what about the Egyptians” my friends who are almost as worried about the world as I am ask. “Well, what about Egypt” I say, thinking about the pyramids and crystal and energies and spiritual things.   And then they explain about a coup d'état and terrorism and something about detaining journalists—but I wasn’t really listening, I was looking at the eagle on the Egyptian flag.  Pretty bird.  Good on my Gauze. 

But here’s the weird thing:  just when my friends interrupted me with that stuff about Egypt, I was thinking about how the flag used in the Paris attacks was actually the flag of France, so maybe I should use the flag of the state of California for the San Bernadino thing, California being pretty close to an actual country, I figure.   And that flag, of course, features a big bear on it.  And bears, as people who care about things such as myself know, are endangered.  Bears. Endangered.   Eagle, endangered.  I post them on my Facebook Face Gauze, the bear on the mountain (with the invisible endangered Indians) and the Eagle in the sky, on that azure blue that is the color of Anderson Cooper’s eyes. 

I am feeling pretty damn good about myself, if I may say so.   Climate Change.  Species on the Verge of Extinction.   Violence All Over the World.  (Hey, the Persian flag has a lion on it, so if I add that, I got Cecil covered.)  Endangered CNN Hosts.  If I knew of a flag that had a tent on it, I would throw that on there, for the homeless.  Maybe if I look at flags of third world countries.  Or maybe the Jungle, that refugee camp at Calais, the one with the disco and bicycle repair shop and a theater, will get around to hoisting an official flag with a pup tent and a griffon or something, then people can know I care about that too. 

For a fleeting moment, I think of my Buddhist friend, Chris.  Every time you tell him about some tragedy in the world, a plane crash or a terrorist attack, he just smiles patronizingly and reminds you that millions are suffering every day, all over the world, dying of starvation and dysentery and bug bites, and then he gives a lengthy speech about how all pain comes from attachment, and ends with how none of us should eat meat or wear leather.  Not even fun fur or Pleather, lest it seem like tacit approval.  Chris doesn’t get invited places very much.  But his point is well taken.   And for another fleeting moment (I admit, I haven’t much of an attention span these days), I think of the behind-the-scenes drama at the Academy Awards, the annual dilemma that rages about what ribbon-pin one ought to wear this particular year:  Yellow for troops?  Pink for breast cancer?  Rainbow for gays?  Denzel wore purple one time, for urban violence.  And some stars actually ask this vaguely reasonable, just, and fair question:  if I don’t wear all the ribbons, does this mean I don’t care about all the causes?  And if I wear no ribbons, does this mean I am an apathetic, self-absorbed turd?  This whole matter irks me a great deal, in regards to my big morning project, because I care deeply, for example, about breast cancer, but as far as my very politically correct Facebook Face Gauze goes, I don’t believe that there is a national flag with tits on it.

​ASIDE:  In regards to San Bernadino, I could just plow forth and do what I did to honor the victims of the Paris attacks: I examined my life, listened to the spirits of the dead, and did what they told me to do … fixed something in my corner of the world.  I started working on a broken relationship with a loved one, and asked to have my Christmas gifts be given to charity in my name.  (Specifically, I think an African family will be getting a goat.)
But “As Facebook Goes, So Goes the World” (“Sicut Vadit Facebookum, Ita Mouetur Mundus”), so I return to finishing my massive project.  I study it.

I got Paris, Beirut, San Bernadino, Syria, Egypt, and since there is pretty much violence all over the Middle East that we can’t seem to do a damn thing about (can you say “Lawrence of Arabia”), I figure I will just throw a camel and an oil derrick and maybe an oasis pond filled with Blackwater in to represent all of those sand dunes filled with squabbling tribes, and call it a day.  Yeah, I know, it’s now an overwhelming little Facebook Face Gauze, a long way from the simple Paris tri-colors.  (By the way, how come nobody has pointed out that this blue white and red Facebook Face Gauze looks a hell of a lot like a Coco Chanel-style hajib?)  Oh, but not my Facebook Face Gauze: as I gaze at it admiringly, I realize that nobody else will have all this, it makes me different and special and unique, like the superior sort of person who would not have just indulged in those repetitive redundant adjectives that make the reader have to absorb the same point over and over and over again.

​Now that my work here is done, I must go have a breakfast of croissant, spread with hummus and avocado, chased down by a half-caf fat-free soy latté Turkish Coffee, avec a Cabernet Sauvignon chaser.  Sounds ghastly I know, but dammit, my heart is filled with love for mankind, what can I do?

POST SCRIPT:  Oh yeah, forgot.  I did promise you Fifteen Things You Can Do to Change the World:
 
Spoiler Alert:   You won’t believe item number 13!!!!!!!
 

1. Volunteer for something.
2. Give to charity.
3. Call or visit your grandmother.  She’s lonely, she misses you, and she’s one fourth of what you are.
4. Today, try to read something that’s more than 140 characters.
5. Now, try to read something that’s more than 140 words.                   Squirrel!
6. Go someplace really amazing, don’t take a Selfie of your big face in the amazing view, vista, landscape, artwork, whatever, and next week, see if you can still remember being there.
7. See if you can prove to your friends that you went there, without the selfie.  Perhaps your description of the wonders will achieve this.
8. Instead of playing Farmville, come the bonnie spring, go out into your own backyard and plant an actual damn plant.  For the love of pete, grow something you can actually put in your piehole.  (Same goes for Cafeville.)
9. Speaking of Cafeville, how about getting off your Slimfast ass and bake an actual pie!
10. Or just shut down the computer and walk around the block and get some goddam fresh air.
11. Volunteer for something else.
12. Give a gift to someone who needs it in a loved one’s name, instead of marching through the mall like a Walking Dead zombie, and buying someone another stupid sweater. 
13. Oh, forget it.  You wouldn’t have believed it anyway.
14. Turn off Facebook for one whole day, and see if the world ends.
15. If the world does end, be glad you didn’t spend your last day on earth surfing Facebook, communicating with all your fake friends who, I assure you, will never show up next Saturday to help you move into your new apartment.

For more of our thoughts please read: "DEAR FRANCE:  THANK YOU FOR THE DISTRACTION OF THE ATTACKS ON PARIS"
Just scroll to the top of this page and click on the category Paris Attacks