Imagine that.  Blindsided at age 84 on a summer outing in coastal Maine.  All it took was one glimpse of that accursed symbol.

Standing beside some other spectators at the Owl’s Head Transportation Museum’s annual “Wings and Wheels” aerial exhibition, I heard the engines of the World War II fighter planes fire up behind us and begin taxiing into view.  I was anticipating the Mustangs, Spitfires, P-38s.  But the first one to appear was a Japanese “Zero” fighter plane, with that big red circle emblazoned on its fuselage. 

And I instantly felt that twinge of hate.

All during World War II, I was steeped in hatred for the “Japs” and the “Krauts”.  How steeped?  By first grade, I could recite the precise specifications of every aircraft that fought in the skies.  My parents smoked “Wings” cigarettes, a popular brand that included a card in every package bearing a photo of a fighter plane on one side and all the information about it on the other—size, horsepower, speed, service ceiling, agility, armaments, munitions.  I collected them.  I memorized them.

In the airshow, a thunderous P-51 Mustang swooped low right over us.  The young couple standing next to me wondered aloud how fast it could go.  I surmised, “About 450, I think.”  Not satisfied with my guesstimate, I then Googled it on the spot.  The answer is 437.  Seventy-nine years later, off by 13MPH. 

How is it possible that seventy-nine years later, I could also still be jolted by a five-year-old’s hatred.  Little Eliot wanted to see the enemy planes burst into flames and crash, killing the pilot.  Sometimes at a Saturday movie, the wartime “newsreel” would gratify me with films of just such a sight.  And after I learned that Bobby, the teenage boy next door who bought me ice cream cones, had been killed in the war, my glee at such carnage knew no bounds.

We’ve long known that early impressions last forever, to some degree or another.  I shudder when seeing very young children taken by their parents to aggressive political protests and rallies, irrespective of party and position.  And nothing will ever equal those parents who, in a spasm of misguided quasi-religious zeal, used their young children to carry homophobic posters at Fred Rogers’ memorial service. 

My hope, my plea, today is that we might all become ever more aware of the unintended consequences of infecting young children with antagonistic feelings toward any other human beings. Let us be hyper-vigilant about how we express ourselves, in word and action.  We do have positive models we can lift up for them. 

Teach the young about our post-World War II reconstruction of our enemies’ lands and economies.  Question the endless hours they spend slaughtering bad guys on video games.  Call attention to the touching embraces between victorious and vanquished athletes at the recently concluded Olympics, and other daily sporting events.  Our celebrating feelings and images of fellowship may inspire today’s children to live out the love for which everyone yearns. 

And if you need further encouragement, consider the cautionary wisdom of Rodgers and Hammerstein in these lyrics from “South Pacific”:

You’ve got to be taught

To hate and fear,

You’ve got to be taught

From year to year.

It’s got to be drummed

In your dear little ear.

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught

To be afraid

Of people whose eyes

Are oddly made

And people whose skin

Is a different shade.

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught

Before it’s too late,

Before you are six

Or seven or eight,

To hate all the people

Your relatives hate.

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

“Before you are six or seven or eight…”  Yes.  I was five.

You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught lyrics © Williamson Music

The post Being Taught to Hate Works Well appeared first on The Daley Almanac.

Today I’m particularly thinking about how folks love to lambaste the people running our COVID-threatened schools–those who have to decide whether to open or close a school, whether to require vaccinations or masks or distancing, whether to reconfigure schoolroom spacing or not, whether to furlough those who don’t conform, whether to purchase more laptops for distance learning, whether to evaluate students and faculty on pre-COVID criteria or not, whether to invest in upgraded air-handling systems, whether to “mandate” anything at all, whether to…

Wait! What educator ever signed up for those kinds of decisions? Heck, until COVID the toughest call was whether to declare a snow day or not. Frantically check the forecast at 4AM while the media wait for your verdict. And what if the forecast is wrong? The kids would love a day of sledding, but the parents would go nuts rearranging work schedules and child care. Stay open and invite car wrecks. Close down and see the mistaken forecast evaporate. Snow day? A guaranteed no-win situation. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. But whichever way it went, day after tomorrow it’d all be over with.

Not today. The COVID variables are nearly infinite, the mistaken decisions potentially lethal, and a bulletproof consensus of wisdom and truth is laughable. A school official’s decision will live on to dissatisfy almost everybody indefinitely and figure in their contract renewal as well. In the upscale district where my niece teaches, 41 faculty tested positive in the first three days of school opening last week. The news reported yesterday that a quarter of a million schoolchildren tested positive somewhere at some point recently. Didn’t say how many were tested. Were those kids who tested positive a tiny fraction or a large portion of the sample?

We both know that I could write a thousand more words about how impossible a situation these school authorities find themselves in. (Or a million words about the no-win decisions any President has to make every day. That’s why you almost never hear a former President criticize a sitting one, as they alone understand the impossibly conflicted alternatives.) But there’s no need for more examples. All that is needed is for us to give ’em a break. And maybe practice another old American axiom: unless we have walked a mile in another person’s moccasins, exercising a little empathy wouldn’t hurt.

The post Gimme a break! appeared first on The Daley Almanac.

The Khasi live on the Himalayas and “enjoy” 500 inches of rain every year, Their home is the wettest place on earth. Worse, those forty feet of rain fall mostly in a six-month monsoon deluge that turns every indentation of the earth into a raging torrent of flood water. The creases and canyons that were riven into those hillsides by evolution get scoured ever deeper by the annual clawing of the waters, to the point that they are utterly impassable for half the year. So, how to keep in touch with neighbors and foodstuffs and medical support across those chasms?

Big sturdy bridges would be nice. But rainforests don’t produce huge timbers, and getting concrete or steel into such remote and roadless locales would be nearly impossible even if anyone could afford to purchase them.

So for centuries the Khasi have demonstrated the wisdom of partnering with Mother Nature. If she gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or, in their case, if she gives you trees like the ficus elastica whose roots can actually flourish in the super-humid air of their rainforest, use those roots to make bridges. The Khasi locate ficus elastica on the banks of these chasms and, over many years, tease some of their tender roots across to the other side and braid them into corresponding roots of ficus elastica located over there.

Then wait.

In ten or fifteen years, more roots can be gradually added onto the growing cable of living strands clasping each other from side to side of the chasm. After another twenty or so years–as the builders’ grandchildren are reaching adulthood–perhaps it will bear the weight of a single jockey-sized person who can delicately lay down one or two stalks of bamboo atop the roots for them to entwine and adopt as a structural partner.

Give it all another few more years and eventually the entire mass will be capable of supporting the weight of an adult. After a while, hey, the grandchildren and great grandchildren of the Khasi who wove the first two roots together can use it to get together any time they want during the monsoon.

Dazzled as I am by the cleverness and patience the Khasi employ in creating these living bridges in partnership with the natural endowments of their homeland, I am completely humbled by the foresight that inspires their work. As I write today, Khasi adults are out weaving yet another ficus elastica bridge. It’s a good bet that none of them will ever set foot upon it. It’s all for their descendants. I remember Fred Rogers once saying, “One of the greatest dignities of humankind is that each successive generation is invested in the welfare of each new generation.”

I’m pretty sure there’s something I might be doing today for the benefit of my own great grandchildren. For it to be worthy of the inspired model set for me by the Khasi grownups weaving bridges today for their great grandchildren to use, it really must reflect their embrace of symbiotic harmony with Mother Nature.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

The post Done anything for your great grandchildren lately? appeared first on The Daley Almanac.