Of Things to Come

It's been two weeks since The Election, and I've been thinking about the outcome and its implications.

To my friends and readers who supported Mr. Obama, may we all have joy in your choice. For will-we or nil-we, you have dragged a large number of the population along with you. May none of us have cause to rue it.

For those of us who would have preferred the results to have been otherwise, I present, with some amendments, this list of resolutions I made late on Election Night, November 4th:

With the help of God . . .

1. I will not succumb to Obama-derangement syndrome the next four years, as so many Democrats have wilfully and luxuriously subjected themselves to Bush-derangement syndrome the past eight;

2. I will remain involved in Republican party politics, and resist the temptation to feel like It’s No Use. I will do what I can at my grassroots level to steer the party away from the Democrat-lite thinking and policies that landed us with such a lackluster presidential candidate in the first place;

3. When I supply a pulpit, I will pray for Barack Obama as president, as I have previously prayed for Bill Clinton and George Bush, according to the command of St. Paul in 1 Timothy 2:2;

4. I will resist the temptation to hope that Mr. Obama proves himself to be as harmfully radical and socialistic as his own mouth and associations have declared him to be, and I will support his policies whenever they seem to lead to good for our country;

5. I will exercise my rights as a citizen under the coming administration, affirming Barack Obama as my legally-elected president;

6. I will resist the temptation to feel that it’s pointless for me to keep working on my house, stymied by my fears that under an Obama administration I’ll probably lose it anyway;

7. I will resist the temptation to feel that I will never get a fulltime job given the likely business climate under an Obama administration, or let that give me the excuse to throw up my hands on looking for one;

8. I will not allow myself to believe that everything would be wonderful in this world, if only Mr. Obama had not been elected president;

9. I will not confuse the kingdom (nation) of the United States of America with the kingdom of God, and I will not let any awareness of decline or error in my earthly country cause me to lose hope in my heavenly city.

I do not resolve, however, to refrain from an occasional quiet but ironic laugh over how "Change!" currently seems to mean bringing back everyone and his dog from the Clinton administration . . .

Looking at Liberty

I'm back in my home town of Kansas City, Missouri, for this year's mass choir call for the North American Welsh Choir. Final rehearsals for our Saturday night concert begin tomorrow morning, most choristers having arrived this afternoon. I came a little earlier, to allow me to see people and places I hadn't since I moved east four years ago.

Some of these places didn't actually exist four years ago.

One such is the new Liberty Memorial Museum. Oh, it was in the planning stages in 2003. And the fundraising stages. And the arguing stages, with those who thought it was a desecration of the 1926 design of the building to build a large-scale exhibit space under the deck of the nation's officially-designated World War I memorial. And the preconstruction stages, when it came to the rough structure and the entry doors.

But the museum was not officially opened until last December 2nd. And today was my first opportunity to see it.

Architecturally, it's impressive. You approach down a great ramped walkway past grassy terraces and an oval reflecting pool and enter through monumental bronze doors. The entry to the exhibit space is across a glass-floored bridge, one storey beneath which are 900 field poppies, suspended in a clear medium; each poppy represents 1,000 people killed in the course of the war.

The exhibits take you through the background and causes of the Great War, its mode of fighting, its armaments, equipment, and artifacts. But especially they seek to make the visitor understand what it was like for the average soldier, slogging away in the trenches for months on end, enduring the mud, disease, and vermin that were in their way worse than the firefights that punctuated the seemingly endless stalemate. This is shown especially in the trench exhibit.

I remember when the trench exhibit was proposed. There were complaints because, some said, it would glorify war. They must have been out of their minds. How can a representati0n of a dank, fetid hellhole glorify anything?

My only complaint is that the exhibit designers chose to have these tableaux viewed either through openings about a foot square or through three inch diameter holes, both punched in a wall about what? Nine to twelve inches thick? Wouldn't be a problem, if the openings were splayed on the inside. But they're angled, so you don't get a straight shot in. And often, what you can't see is exactly what you most want to make out. I found my digital camera (set to 'natural light') was an indispensible tool. That's the only way I was able to see what was really going on inside. This needs to be rethought. Not just because it doesn't communicate fully, but more because it commits the artistic crime of making the viewer step outside his experience of the work of art and say, "Why on earth did the artist do that??" And the World War I presentation at the Liberty Memorial is a work of art.
As to the artifacts, there are wonderful things, most of them donated by WWI participants or their survivors as far back as 1919. I especially liked the long German pipes with their ornamented ceramic bowls. Then there are the ominous pieces, like the torpedo you can touch, that so like the ones that sunk so many civilian vessels, including the Lusitania itself.

In many cases, seeing various objects was like greeting old friends who've come up in the world. I remembered many of them from when they were on display in the overcrowded little Museum built in the the original 1926 campaign.I don't know what's in the old Museum space now. I had a ticket to it, and also to Memorial Hall (be prepared to weep, especially as you consider the Gold Star Mothers of then and now). But the new Liberty Memorial Museum needs at least three hours to visit by itself, and I only had an hour and a half to give.

Three hours for that, another hour at least for the old Museum and Memorial Hall, half an hour at least to go up the tower, then another half hour to take in the limestone composition of the Memorial as a whole-- you could spend the best part of a day there and not exhaust what the complex has to offer.
And you come away with a salutary sense of the continuing impact of the Great War and a deep appreciation of the sacrifice of those who fought to stop old tyrannies and bring in new hope.

No, it wasn't the War to End All Wars. It was the war of its time. These battles have to be fought again and again, literally and figuratively. And it's good to count the cost-- and give the credit, for then and for now.

Anyway, I recommend that any visitor to Kansas City make time to go. It's more than worth the $8 adult admission.

"And the home of the brave!"

A photo or two before and after our successful rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Pirates' game this afternoon. The acoustics were actually pretty resonant there around home plate of PNC Park. And happily, the stands blocked the wind. Pretty chilly for the 1st of May.

This was a grand experience, but it raised a question that's been bothering me for quite awhile: Why doesn't the crowd at sports events or at patriotic observances ever get to sing the National Anthem any more? It really isn't that hard to sing. If you can't hit the high notes, don't hit the high notes. The tune started out as a drinking song, for goshsakes. Let the citizenry jump in and have a go at it, like we used to in dim ages past-- oh, around five years ago.

It's as if we expect some professional artist or special group to be patriotic on our behalf. Kind of like sending the troops over to do our fighting for us. Yes, they are specially-trained, and we can't honor their dedication and sacrifice too highly. But it doesn't take the rest of us off the hook. It doesn't make us into spectators. It doesn't mean we can sit back and watch as if their fight has no claim on us. If--(God forbid) when-- the terrorists strike on our shores again, we're all combatants. That's how we need to think of ourselves, even if we never strike a physical blow in freedom's cause. Even if we only respond with courage and determination and resourcefulness in the face of atrocity. But how are we going to get ourselves into that mindset if we can't or won't even sing our own National Anthem for ourselves? That is not a job that should be left to the pros!