Banned Book Club – Catch-22

What’s the catch? For Captain John Yossarian and the rest of the characters in Joseph Heller’s classic novel it was Catch-22, a semi-unofficial rule best explained by the author. From chapter five:

Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

This was a hard book to follow. The events portrayed in it aren’t introduced in a chronological order, nor in a flashback format, really. Heller devotes some chapters to Yossarian’s experience of events from his life in general and on the job. The rest are used to relay those events as witnessed, explained or misunderstood by other officers and friends. It all gels in the end, apparently, if you can get that far. Only one in our group did and it wasn’t me. I only skimmed the end chapters without getting too involved with them. I lost interest in the book around chapter 35 but I did consider quitting sooner. It was most enjoyed by the one guy who’s actually experienced life in the American military. I’ll have to refer to the Yossarian write-up on Wikipedia to make sense of it.

Yossarian wants to get the hell out WWII and Pianosa, the remote little island off Italy where he’s stationed. Unfortunately, every time he gets close to completing the required number of bombing runs, his superior officer, Colonel Cathcart, ups the mission number needed to earn the flight home. (It starts at 25 but by the end of the book it’s up to 80.) He’s a liar, a malingerer, a saboteur and a very desperate individual. It’s debatable whether he’s actually crazy, or the only sane man in a crazy situation. Most of what he does is a reaction to the situation he’s been put in and has no other control over.

When a friend and one of his crew, Snowden, gets struck by flak that pierced their plane during a run, Yossarian does what he can to save the man but the injuries are far too severe.

Snowden’s death embodies Yossarian’s desire to evade death; by seeing Snowden’s entrails spilling over the plane, he feels that “Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window and he’ll fall. Set fire to him and he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage.”

The experience on the plane dramatically changes Yossarian’s attitude towards life. He now looks only to protect his own life and, to a lesser extent, the lives of his close friends.

And whatever faith he might have had in the military before that point vanishes in a heartbeat. He can’t save anyone anyway. Most of the people he’d consider friends die in the book, or disappear without a trace.

Some of our meeting focused on other characters that featured in the book. One we talked about was Milo Minderbender who runs the mess hall in a strange yet very efficient way. As the book progresses, we learn that he’s a crafty entrepreneur who nearly always manages to make a profit. (At one point he’s paid by the Germans to bomb his own squadron and gets away with it.) This led to discussion about capitalism in general and satirical points Heller was trying to make about war being a business like anything else.

This is probably a book that does need to be read a few times in order to get a sense of where Heller wanted to go with it. I don’t think I’d try it again though. There were some parts I did laugh out loud over: the absurdities of bureaucracy and the bit where Yossarian bitches about God’s incompetence. Other parts were surprising and truly cringe-worthy, like McWatt’s daredevil behaviour and what ultimately resulted from it. Reading about the finale, I see I missed a lot of critical events. Ah well. If I couldn’t generate enough interest in the story to stick with it to the end… Some books are just like that, and it doesn’t matter if they’re considered classics.

Then again, there could be oil under the Jesus mountain statue…

The story that doesn’t quit.

First:

despite the efforts of Montana’s congressional delegation, the very land the statue stands on is susceptible to future mining, oil and gas drilling, and geothermal development.

Democratic senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester have twice introduced the North Fork Watershed Protection Act, which would bar mining and new oil and gas development on the North Fork watershed of the Flathead River. Although the legislation has garnered broad support from the local community, passage of the bill has not been forthcoming.

Earlier this year, Whitefish Mountain Resort and the city of Whitefish succeeded in expanding the act to include Big Mountain and Haskill Creek, which were originally omitted from the legislation.

Canadians are being asked to Save Jesus:

It makes sense when you consider the $150 million US spent in Montana every year by Canadian tourists, and the location of the threatened statue, at a popular winter tourist destination.

Anyone who’s ever skied Whitefish Mountain Resort at Big Mountain likely knows of the Christ in crisis. That’s a group bound to include plenty of Albertans — a recent survey around Whitefish showed 25% of cars parked in the tourist town had Alberta plates.

Alberta tends to be considered Canada’s bible belt.

That article happens to have a pretty decent picture of the monument:

I don’t know why I didn’t hunt down a picture of the thing earlier. That’s damn tacky looking. A powder blue and purple Jesus wearing heart shaped jewelry? That’s a war memorial? Wow. I’m amazed anyone thinks that’s worth saving or even respectful of any war hero’s memory. Looks like it should be on the shelves of some kitchy bargain basement type trinket store. With dust and spiderwebs all over it because it’s even too tacky for people who’d shop in kitchy bargain basement type trinket stores…

A single complaint is all it took for the FFRF to launch an official action against the Forest Service, which immediately cancelled the half-century lease.

“We got a complaint, so we acted on it — the Forest Service has been breaking its own statute by allowing this statue,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, spokeswoman for the Wisconsin-based no-God group.

“It’s illegal, because it’s a shrine, a Jesus shrine on state land. The business of the federal government at this point is to correct this violation.”

I expect it’s going to remain up there anyway. People are taking this personal now. The Knights of Columbus are trying to push historic significance but also traditionalism which people tend to think of in personal terms. Jesus is near and dear to a lot of hearts so to have Jesus under attack, well, you may as well be threatening to dig out people’s souls while you’re at it.

if the supporters of Jesus want Canadians to defend the ski hill icon, it’s no surprise the atheists are calling on northern tourists to demand the statue be shifted.

“We understand something like 30% of Canadians consider themselves non-religious, and they should speak up too,” said Gaylor.

Better be more than me, though. I’m one voice in the virtual wind here. Who’s out there paying attention to me? I’m not enough.

But one’s better than none: I say figure out a way to save the statue so it can be moved somewhere else and then put up a secular and serious looking monument that really speaks for the wide range of soldiers (Christian and atheist and whatever else) who fought and fell and died for that country so citizens and tourists alike can be free to ski down the majestic slopes in peace and harmony. I don’t see why that’s such a hard concept to wrap heads around.

“That mountain was Jesus-free for all but a few years of its natural history.”

I ran across more about yesterday’s Jesus statue story. Turns out the Freedom From Religion Foundation contacted the U.S. Forest Service regarding the religious-themed statue on government property. Does making a fuss about statues and property make FFRF seem petty, or are issues like this worth bringing to the forefront in order to trigger discussion about the ubiquitous nature of Christianity’s ties to so many aspects of our culture? “Ubiquitous” is not synonymous with “innocuous” after all. Personally, I think they’re right to point out the need to be conscious of just how prevalent this type of thing is and how divisive it can become under some circumstances. There have been enough years of taking it for granted that the nation truly is a “Christian” nation. Add up the minority groups and will Christians still a big majority? Even if the answer is yes, does that fact justify blanketing the country with iconography that only “speaks” to that chunk of the population? I say it does not and I know I’m not alone in that.

news of the statue’s uncertain future prompted enormous outcry from local residents who value its history and say it is part of the ski resort’s heritage. Local veterans of the 10th Mountain Division who served overseas were instrumental in developing the ski area on Big Mountain, and the statue pays homage to them.

Within hours, proponents had launched a “save the statue” Facebook page, and even U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., offered his support, urging Forest Service officials to reconsider in a strongly worded letter.

But Gaylor disputed the notion that the statue memorializes veterans.

“This is a sham designation that insults and excludes the many ‘atheists in foxholes’ and non-Christian veterans who defended our country,” Gaylor stated in a news release.

“Just because a violation is long-lasting does not make it ‘historic’ or right, as defenders claim,” she added. “Would they argue slavery is OK because it was long-lasting throughout U.S. history? That mountain was Jesus-free for all but a few years of its natural history.”

If you want Christian-themed monuments, put them on land owned by churches or other Christian organizations. If you want monuments that honour all those who’ve fought and died for your country, keep them secular so people who never would have counted themselves as Christian won’t be remembered as Christian-by-proxy. I think it dishonours who they were when they were alive and they don’t deserve that. Not after all they went through.

Ask and ye shall receive: more Jesus statue news

Actually, I was just hoping for something vaguely Jesus-looking that I could mock, but this story will do:

MOUNTAIN JESUS IN JEOPARDY!

(It looks more serious when it’s all caps.)

After being denied a permit renewal to keep a memorial statue of Jesus Christ on the Big Mountain, the Knights of Columbus have appealed the Flathead National Forest decision and garnered the support of Montana Congressman Denny Rehberg.

The statue is near the top of Chair 2 on a 25-by-25 foot parcel of land that has been leased from the Forest Service since 1953.

The statue was erected as a memorial to Montana’s returning World II veterans with the support of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division.

The special use permit for the lease required a 10-year renewal, which the Knights of Columbus Kalispell Council applied for last year.

Flathead National Forest Supervisor Chip Weber issued a decision on Aug. 24 declaring the statue as an “inappropriate use” of national forest lands and ordering it to be removed.

On the side of those who won’t renew the permit is the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution which “prohibits the government from promoting or affiliating with any religious doctrine or organization” and a statue of Jesus on government property qualifies. If the war memorial featured secular imagery, there’d be no problem. However, people keep insisting that the only way Americans can honour their fallen is by declaring them all loved by a Christian god. Rehberg doesn’t see a problem with that:

“Using a tiny section of public land for a war memorial with religious themes is not the same as establishing a state religion. That’s true whether it’s a cross or a Star of David on a headstone in the Arlington National Cemetery, an angel on the Montana Vietnam Memorial in Missoula or a statue of Jesus on Big Mountain. The Forest Service is just flat wrong to deny this lease on those grounds, and I’m working hard to get them to do the right thing.”

Why limit monuments to Judeo-Christian iconography if it really isn’t about displaying a state-approved religion?

Why not put up a monument with quotes from the Koran, like:

39:39 Allah takes away men’s souls upon their death, and the souls of the living during their sleep. Those that are doomed He keeps with Him and restores the others for a time ordained. Surely there are signs in this for thinking men.

or the Bhagavad Gita:

“For certain is death for the born And certain is birth for the dead; Therefore over the Thou shouldst not grieve.”

I quite like the second one. It sticks to facts of life, not myth and mysticism.

It’s being suggested in the article that the statue could be kept for viewing if KoC is prepared to move it onto privately owned land.

In appealing the decision, the Knights contend that moving the state is likely to seriously damage or even destroy it, because it is anchored to a concrete base that was poured in 1953.

Bill Glidden, Grand Knight of the Kalispell Council, views the denied renewal as unnecessary.

“This statue represents all the World War II vets that came home to Montana, and we erected it with the support of the Mountain division of the military,” he said. “It’s been up there for 60 years and I’ve never heard someone in this area complain about it. It’s part of our community, not just for religious reasons, but there are also weddings and community gatherings up there.”

How big is the base? Can’t the whole thing be uprooted and secured on a trailer for safe travel somehow? If companies can transfer three-story ancestral houses from farm yards to lake-front property several hours, hills, and trees away, there’s got to be someone around who’d know how to move a statue. And who cares how long it’s been there without complaint? If it’s in violation of a rule, it’s in violation.

the Flathead Forest has until Nov. 11 to respond to the appeal with the regional office in Missoula. After that, the Knights of Columbus have a 20-day period to respond and then Deputy Regional Director Jane Cottrell has 30 days to uphold or reject the appeal.

Hopefully I remember to check back and find out the results.

Make #endrapeinwar a trending topic today

Today is a Day of Action and the Nobel Women’s Initiative is keen to bring this to attention:

Sexual violence takes place in every region of the world and includes rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, mutilation, forced pregnancy and sterilization. Reasons for the use of sexual violence varies from region to region and conflict to conflict. It has been used as a tactic to terrorize communities suspected of supporting guerrilla forces, as a way of forcing populations off their lands and it has been used to punish political activism.

Follow along as we live-tweet a panel discussion on May 26 from 8:30 to 10 am EST from Ottawa, Canada. The panel will feature three Nobel Laureates and prominent activists from Sweden, Kenya and Canada, moderated by journalist Susan Riley of The Ottawa Citizen. We will be live-tweeting using #endrapeinwar at on our Twitter page, and taking questions from online followers.

Might be worth checking out.

Quotable Soldier

From an article entitled Serving in Iraq killed my faith in God:

I asked myself how could there be some guy in the sky watching over this mess? How was there a God who was fine with Luke being killed, fine with the dead, burnt bodies of Iraqis I drove past on my way to Basra? How was he fine with the people who waved crying at us hoping we’d throw some rations and water into their desperate lives?

I went to see the padre. Sitting with this devout Christian in the cradle of civilisation, I had the most honest conversation I had ever had about religion. I’d never had the courage to say these things out loud before, but the Padre made it easy. He listened to my angry words and I knew it was okay for me to not believe. For the rest of the tour I spoke to the lads about it constantly, and as Saddam’s empire came tumbling down so did any belief I had in God.

The only downside of his story hinges on the way it comes across at the start — that part of the reason he decided to drop his faith was because his buddy told him it’d suck to die a virgin on account of it. But, the end is pretty good:

Back from Iraq, I met my first girlfriend at the age of 26 and started living my life. It felt right. I didn’t believe in God and wasn’t scared of admitting it any more. I didn’t need a religion and was at my happiest and most content. It might be a hard thing to hear but my religion held me back for years and only when I had the courage to get rid of it did I really start living my life. My new-found honesty gave me freedom and strength. I had realised that I don’t do God.

Good for him, and good luck to him, I say.

Sounds of Sunday – the Jimi Hendrix experience

More to point, Experience Hendrix, which is a 20 track compilation album from 1997. This is the fifth disc in the collection the Man so graciously loaned me. Like Revolver and Dylan, there aren’t many songs on here I recognize. “All along the Watchtower” and “Foxey Lady” appear to be it. Well, and the American national anthem. That rendition is a classic.

While I like music from the early ’60s quite a bit, I never really found much love for the artists whose songs of protest marked the crossing of a line from hope to helplessness as one of the most saddest wars in the world raged on. Even the fun loving hippie Woodstock stuff is marred by a distinct sense that they were desperate to connect to any kind of joy, even if the only way to get it was through illegal substances.

I really can’t say if it’s a dislike of the harsh sounds of the music with all the whiny guitar stuff, or if it all has to do with the mood of the times and how that was reflected in what people sung about. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that my love of music relies heavily on an emotional connection to it and while I share the anti-war sentiments, the music’s a really big downer – which I guess was the point of recording it in the first place. Like what Joni Mitchell said of Dylan’s work, the time was ripe for popular music to be the voice of the disenfranchised, rather than a jolly radioland filled with “let’s pretend that shit ain’t happenin’” fun time tunes. Here are some of the lyrics for If 6 Was 9

‘cos I got my own world to live through
And I ain’t gonna copy you.

White-collar conservatives flashing down the street
Pointing their plastic finger at me.
They’re hoping soon my kind will drop and die,
But I’m gonna wave my freak flag high . . . HIGH!

Hah, hah
Falling mountains just don’t fall on me
Point on mister Buisnessman, [sic]
You can’t dress like me.
Nobody know what I’m talking about
I’ve got my own life to live
I’m the one that’s gonna have to die
When it’s time for me to die
So let me live my life the way I want to.

For those desperate to dodge the draft in later years, I can see why musicians like Hendrix were vital in unifying them and helping to make their feelings known to the world.

Morality Movie Monday – Mothra vs. Godzilla

Does it seem like a strange choice for round two of my movie series where I write about morals on camera? Once I get into it, you’ll see the answer is no.

Filmed in 1964, Godzilla vs. The Thing (as the amusingly dubbed version is titled) is more than just a tale of two big critters in a battle for dominance. It’s a morality play. I’ll be pulling the plot points from Wikipedia’s entry about the film as a memory aid.

Dalai Lama says technology not on the road to peace

(The title of this post is fixed now but for future reference – if a reader ever catches me with my spelling pants down, I insist you remark upon it. No excuse to spell “technology” wrong with all the spell check tech available these days. None at all…)

By and large, I think I agree with him.

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama told the 2009 Vancouver Peace Summit Sunday that technology may be getting in the way of peace.

Even as he used the technology of a tiny microphone attached to his ear and watched his friend Archbishop Desmond Tutu speak from South Africa via video, the revered spiritual leader expressed concern about how technology may be eliminating compassion.

“I think technology may have some benefits for a smart brain, but no capacity to produce compassion,” he told about 12,000 devoted fans at the opening session of the peace summit.

In a panel discussion about peace, the Dalai Lama said it is that compassion and awareness that will lead to peace.

It’s harder to care about things you’re not dealing with face to face, or people you’ve never met, no matter how often you’ve passed electronic notes back and forth.

And things like the internet make it far easier to be in specialized cliques. Hang out in forums with the people who think like you do, join groups or blogrolls for the same reason, RSS your news and blog feeds so you never have to read about things that don’t interest you, that might not “apply” to you. You can have a thousand friends on Facebook and not give a damn about any of them.

Cars mean people don’t have to stay and shop local and get to know locals. You can go where the best deal is, and not care about the world impact of a supercenter over supporting the little guys.

TV and satellite let us connect with what celebrities are doing so we can cry over their fake lives, laugh and mock their real lives, but we never seem to use that TV time to get to know the neighbours instead. To care as much about our friends or family, let alone the plight of hundred of thousands a hundred and more miles away.

I’d be willing to claim that technology gives us the tacit approval to be self centered and shallow. Not only can insult the world anonymously, but we also can mock people’s very real pain.

Last year, for example, a boy committed suicide by overdose while a slice of the world watched him go by video.

The teenager was pronounced dead Wednesday afternoon in Pembroke Pines, Florida, said Wendy Crane, investigator for the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office.

The cause of death was found to be an overdose of benzodiazepine, an antidepressant, as well as other opiate drugs used to treat depression, Crane said. CNN is not reporting the teenager’s name.

The youth’s body was found in his apartment behind a locked door, which police broke down. Police turned off the webcam and computer, Crane said.

She said he did not take anything on camera, according to footage she reviewed, but he blogged between 3 and 4 a.m. Wednesday that he had taken an overdose of drugs. He also posted a suicide note.

He was seen lying on his bed on the streaming video, posted on the Web site Justin.tv. On the site, a person can stream video from a Web camera while “viewers” chat with each other in a box next to the video, Crane said. The comments and video have since been removed from the Web site.

Crane read the comments posted during the 10 hours the youth could be seen lying on his bed.

As the teenager was lying on his bed, she said, people were typing things like, “Oh, that’s not enough to kill you.” Others, she said, were egging him on, saying things like “Go ahead and do it.” Still others thought it wasn’t real, Crane said.

About 11 a.m. Wednesday, Crane said, some viewers began to get concerned, writing things like, “He’s not moving” and “He’s not breathing.”

One contacted the site’s moderator to get the youth’s contact information, she said, and the police were notified.

One person gave a damn out of how many? Ten hours it took before someone cared enough to call anyone in a position to do something. And I wonder how many of those comment makers missed the news reports and still think he was faking it.

Notice how I haven’t mentioned political/war examples of technology and the so-called peace process. All I think I’ll say about that is this; as it gets easier to kill people, it might also get easier to justify it. To declare there is some moral reason to have that person dead instead of breathing, to bomb the piss out of a country rather than find some measure of compromise with its leaders. But maybe compromise is truly impossible. I don’t know, I’m not into politics. When each side seems to lack the capacity to care about the other, what hope do we as individuals have? If we’re looking to our leaders to really guide us, why don’t they care more about where they’re taking us?

When you gotta go, you gotta go

And when you gotta go to court to prove you have a right to pee during a song at a baseball stadium, you gotta go to court. That’s what Bradford Campeau-Laurion had to do anyway.

“Policy remains as it always has been: Fans are free to move about during the playing of ‘God Bless America,”‘ said Alice McGillion, spokeswoman for the Yankees.

But fans may not always have felt completely unfettered. Ushers used handheld chains to block off some exits while it was played at the Yankees’ old stadium, although chief operating officer Lonn Trost has said they were instructed to let through spectators with emergencies.

In May 2007, Trost told The New York Times that the practice was inspired by complaints of fans who were upset that spectators were not respectful enough during the playing of “God Bless America.”

The song, written by Irving Berlin in 1918, was played at big league ballparks throughout the country when baseball resumed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It was discontinued in some cities the following seasons but remained a fixture at Yankees games.

Campeau-Laurion sued the Yankees and New York City, claiming police had booted him out of the stadium because he dared leave his seat to pee during the playing of Berlin’s classic. In the lawsuit, it was argued:

that he was a victim of political and religious discrimination and that his rights were violated at the August 2008 game.

The city did not admit liability in the settlement, which was finalized Monday. But it will give the Queens resident $10,001 and will pay $12,000 in legal fees to the New York Civil Liberties Union.

For its part, the Yankees will pay nothing but said in settlement papers that fans at the team’s new stadium are allowed to move freely during the song and there are no plans to change that.

I’ve never been to a baseball game, in the States or anywhere else, nor do I watch the game on TV. I didn’t know stadiums had started doing that. It was all about promoting patriotism in the face of heathen enemies who worship the wrong god, right?

It’s not like a national anthem either, although it’s apparently been considered an unofficial one ever since audiences fell in love with it prior to the start of World War II.

I’m glad to see that many stadiums have since quit the practice.