What's Write with Mike?

In 2016 I submitted a song I wrote to the New Song Showcase contest that is a small part of the Walnut Valley Music Festival. My song, “I Dreamed Terry Gross Came To Interview Me,” was selected as an alternate in the “Songs for a Better World” category, one of ten song categories in the contest. The winner was unable to appear at the festival, so I was invited to perform my song. I was a little nervous as I stumbled over the words early on, and wasn’t exactly on pitch in a few places.

I’ve entered songs in subsequent years but didn’t win again until 2021, when my song, “That Brick House North of Colfax,” won in the same category of “Songs for a Better World.”

The song is about what I’ve witnessed in northwest Denver since moving there in early 2011, and specifically in the area bordered by Colfax Avenue on the south, 20th Avenue on the north, Federal Avenue on the east, and Lowell Avenue on the west. In 2011 this neighborhood consisted mostly of modest single family homes, duplexes, and a few row apartments that were built shortly after World War II and as of 2011 were rented out to working class families. In truth, there were also some very run-down properties and the neighborhood had issues with crime and drugs, so it was a mix. When property values began escalating, landlords, rather than pay for upkeep and collect rent, found they were being offered hundreds of thousands of dollars to sell their properties to developers. Developers, in turn, evicted the tenants, scraped the old dwellings from the lots, and put up multiple-unit condominiums that sold for $500,000 to $600,000 each for 2-bedroom units. The previous renters were unable to find other places to live in the area, and some, although steadily employed, ended up homeless. The neighborhood has been transformed from one that provided affordable housing to working class families to one of single young adults enjoying the proximity to trendy bars and restaurants in downtown Denver, and who somehow are able to pay for the rapidly escalating property values.

I hope the song speaks for itself. As our economy presents opportunities for some, and many in America are now enjoying unprecedented wealth, the real estate boom has created victims, and we have a growing underclass suffering in our country. Every person living without shelter in America has a different, unique story, and I wanted to counter the stereotype of the homeless man as a lazy, drug-addicted or alcoholic criminal. I don’t know all the causes of homelessness, and I certainly don’t have a solution, but we can’t dismiss our fellow Americans who are suffering by simply saying they choose to live that way.

Here is a video of my performance, which I did along with my friend Ruth Price, at the 2021 Walnut Valley Music Festival. I wasn’t nervous this time, but I wish the mix would have included a little more of my guitar.

David Hakan, a DJ with KC Cafe Radio in Kansas City, operates Gypsy Wagon Studios, and invites song contest winners at the Walnut Valley Festival to give interviews and perform their songs in his mobile studio on the festival grounds, which he then records. Here is the recording he made for us.

I have a lot of friends who are better song writers than I am. I encourage each and every one to submit songs to the New Song Showcase for 2022. Their ten songwriting categories are 1) Songs about Winfield, 2) Sweet memories, 3) Songs suitable for children, 4) Love songs, 5) Songs of religion or spirit, 6) Songs about feeling blue, 7) Instrumental, 8) Songs for a better world, 9) Humorous songs, and 10) None of the above. And if you are a bluegrass and/or Americana fan, think about going to Winfield, KS for next year’s Walnut Valley Music Festival for the great lineup of entertainers that appear there. In years past the following have appeared: Lester Flatt; Doc & Merle Watson; Mark O’Connor; Alison Krauss; Byron Berline; Dan Crary; Norman Blake; John Hartford; Tom Chapin; David Grisman; Merle Travis; Hot Rize; Tim O’Brien, New Grass Revival; Nickel Creek, and Billy Strings. Two of my favorites that have become regulars are The Steel Wheels and John McCutcheon. Walnut Valley has four stages going simultaneously from 8 am until late into the night, as well as national championships in guitar flat picking, finger-style guitar, bluegrass banjo, mandolin, hammer dulcimer, mountain dulcimer, autoharp, and old-time fiddle.

I can’t close without mentioning the Carp Camp. A huge proportion of those who attend Walnut Valley camp in the area adjacent to the fairgrounds where the festival is held. The campground area is known as Walnut Grove. Within Walnut Grove, different groups of musicians gather nightly to sip tea, imbibe in other preferred indulgences, and engage in jams of various degrees of structure. Carp Camp is one that is more highly structured, and has been ongoing since 1985. It is most enjoyed by those who access and download their homework material prior to joining the group live.

The more we innovate, the more we harm ourselves and our environment.

There’s a lot being written against the use of leaf blowers currently.

Maybe I’ve just become a grumpy old man, complaining about every little thing, but I don’t believe that applying technology to every work effort is good, especially if that technology involves fossil fuels and noise. But if they advertise it, we will buy, common sense be damned!

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The darkness had been absolute. Complete silence remained undisturbed. Nothing approached thought, sensation, emotion, or awareness. But it wasn’t eternal. And when conception suspended the void a spectrum of memories from previous disturbances rushed in on the noise and light to fill the individual consciousness unit. At that moment the unit became aware of the other units, also thrust from the void by some conception of some creature somewhere on Earth in some random period, awaiting its eventual delivery. So the cycle goes. Some would be lucky, spared the burden of material existence and returned to the luxury of the void by virtue of a miscarriage or abortion, but most were now awaiting a brief sentence of life on Earth not knowing what balance of pain and pleasure to anticipate.

The units had not existed in the void. They had been nothing. But at the moment of conception each entered a state of more than nothingness but less than life, and could remember a few of their previous material excursions before their most recent respite to the void. And during this waiting period between conception and delivery, and only during this period, each consciousness unit could share thoughts and memories with the others.

“Oh, here we go again,” unit one spoke. “Where to this time?”

“Welcome to the waiting room,” unit two greeted unit one. “Just a quick hello, as I think I’m about to be delivered. It’s only a guess, but I think I’m a bird this time. It’s not at all the feeling I had when I was sentenced before as a sea urchin.”

“Dream on,” unit three teased. “Try an earthworm.”

“Don’t knock it til you’ve tried it,” unit four said. “I don’t know how far back it was, but of all the sentences I can recall, an earthworm was the best. I never even knew humans existed in that round. It only lasted a few years, and it was as close to the void without actually being the void as any sentence I can remember. I never heard a sound, never saw light, couldn’t think, and was hardly different materially from the medium that supported me. It only could have been better if some bird had eaten me right away.”

Unit two laughed. “Not that much different than my sentence as a sea urchin.”

“Please, please, don’t let me be any kind of sea creature this time,” unit three said. “Oil slicks, sonar, nets, constant search for cooler waters. No thanks.”

“I’m not sure a bird will be much better,” unit two chimed in. “Flying through clouds of wildfire smoke, passing over expanding cities looking for suitable nesting sites. Even if you’re not arboreal, if you’re a waterfowl your habitat’s all desert now. If you’re a land bird your nesting grounds are all flooded and under water. And it doesn’t matter what you eat – seeds, insects, berries, other birds – humans have poisoned them all.”

Unit four thought for a moment. “Maybe vultures are going to have it pretty good for a while. Of course, you’re all talking about a sentence during the human era. We don’t know where in time we’ll be placed. If it’s before humans, then the waters and skies are still pure. And after humans, well, if the planet’s had enough time . . .”

“Isn’t this the worst?” unit one shouted. “Being thrown from the void. Why? Why? I know that every sentence has its mix of pain and pleasure, but I’ll take absolute nothing over even the greatest pleasure any day. Why isn’t nothing forever?”

Unit five spoke up. “Not all conceptions result in delivery, you know. A unit can get lucky. Sometimes humans even choose to make sure a conception doesn’t result in delivery.”

“I should be so fortunate,” unit one said. “Right back into the peace and quiet of not quite eternal nothingness.”

“I’ve not been sentenced as a human recently enough to be sure that I ever even have been one,” unit two offered, “but I was something close – a gorilla or a chimpanzee or a bonobo or maybe a baboon. OK, maybe I was a chimp, and the chimps could be pretty nasty, but it wasn’t bad. From what I understand, the arrogance of humans has them thinking that they evolved into a higher form of life from the great apes. But it looks to me, from all my sentences as other creatures, that humans are the least suited for life on Earth. They can’t survive on the planet as it is. They have to build shelters, wear clothes, adulterate their food sources, eliminate other species that compete with them for habitat, and turn the planet inside out to entertain their greedy brains. My understanding of evolution is that individual creatures of a particular species randomly change in tiny ways, and the changes that help them better survive among conditions on Earth stay with them, becoming qualities common to the entire species. Maybe the great apes once were humans who evolved to be better suited for life on Earth than their hairless, poorly adapted large-skulled upright cousins.”

Unit six had been listening to the conversation and finally offered this. “My most recent sentence was as a human. It was the worst of all the sentences I can remember. The arrogance, the greed, the violence, the constant arguing among different factions, the dependence on superstition and tradition rather than on reason and evidence. They all claim to worship life but every word, every action, every belief seems to confirm their commitment to emptiness. They are bent on self destruction, and are taking all the other species with them. Worst of all, they seem to think that their lives are just a trial to see if they qualify for some kind of reward after death, but that reward can only be earned if they proclaim their belief in that reward. It makes no sense.” Unit six thought for a little longer. “Oh, and when I was a human, they were overpopulating the Earth, destroying the habitat of other species, crowding each other out, and killing each other off with communicable diseases that they knew how to control but refused to. And they knew how to control their population growth, too, but also refused to do so. They are truly bent on self destruction.”

Now unit seven spoke up, breaking his silence up until this point. “By far my best sentence was as a human, so unlike what you describe. I was among humans eager to learn about themselves and the world they inhabited. They were respectful and protective of the other living things on the planet. Of all the creatures whose forms I’ve taken, they’re the only ones capable of self awareness, of accumulating knowledge and passing it down from generation to generation, of building communities and helping each other survive through compassion, sympathy, and understanding. Where they saw ignorance they taught each other, where they saw disease they healed each other, where they saw hunger they fed each other, where they saw confusion they sought understanding but were wise enough to reject superficial answers. Where they saw contempt they offered love.”

The other units looked at each other skeptically. “All my sentences have been confined to creatures on Earth,” said unit one. “Maybe you were delivered onto a different planet?”

“Or some time period that I’ve never seen,” another said.

“I’ve never heard a human sentence described that way,” added unit two.

“Yes, the void is better than any life sentence,” declared unit one, “but especially preferable to a human sentence.” All the consciousness units except unit seven voiced their agreement.

Consciousness unit eight waited to have the final word. “I can recall nearly half a dozen human sentences. Each was different. Most were torture, much like that described by unit six. But humans have lived on Earth a long time, in many places, under many circumstances. Rarely have they lived up to their potential, but unit seven and I have both seen glimpses of it, so we must not despair. And remember, the void always awaits to provide respite from each and every life sentence, regardless of whether that sentence be to a form that is bacterial, reptilian, ichthyic, avian, canine, bovine, feline, primate, or whatever. Why the peace of nothingness is not eternal is a mystery, but it seems we must accept these intermittent conceptions and thrusts from emptiness. And may we wish upon each other sentences with species other than humans as often as possible, but where not possible, let us hope for times and places closer to those experienced by unit seven than by unit six.”

Consciousness unit two was about to speak but suddenly vanished, presumably to be born into the form of a bird. Or perhaps the egg from which the bird was to be hatched was used for an omelette, or eaten by a nest-raiding predator, or blown from a tree by the wind, thereby carrying unit two gently back into non existence. Or perhaps unit two was not destined to be a bird, but rather a human, and was delivered into one of many societies or cultures that comprise human existence on Earth. Or perhaps conscious unit two was due to be born from a fetus that was aborted and returned to that perfect state of nothingness, only to eventually be thrust from the void again until some future sentence in the form of some future unknown incarnate.

Disease, Medical Technology, Earth, God

I heard this quote on an episode of “Tooning Out The News,” a show available on CBS All Access that parodies top news stories and also interviews real-world guests. Most evangelical Christians have strong beliefs that are contradictory and mutually exclusive. For example, they claim that everything that happens on Earth is God’s will, and that God is all loving and merciful. If God is all loving and merciful, why are there natural disasters and pandemics? Why do children die and people around the world suffer for lack of food and shelter? When confronted with these disparities fundamentalists often claim bad events are the work of the devil, not God. Doesn’t this contradict the assertion that everything that happens on Earth is God’s will? While the woman who is quoted above believes that God protects her, she also said she had a weakened immune system and that over the past year she had suffered two of the worst colds in her life. Why had God allowed her immune system to become weakened, and how had the cold viruses that infected her slipped God’s attention? In spite of God being all loving and merciful, evangelicals believe he insists that we believe in such things as the immaculate conception, the resurrection, Jesus’ ability to turn water into wine, Jesus’ ability to feed a crowd of 5,000 people with only five loaves of bread and two fish, Jesus’ ability to raise the dead, and Jesus’ ability to walk on water before he will grant any favors to us. He will punish and eternally condemn those who do not flatter him by believe these things.

But let’s suppose just for a moment that those who oppose vaccinations on religious grounds are correct, and that events that happen on Earth (at least with regard to pandemics, natural disasters and other occurrences that are not the result of human behavior) are God’s will. If we then assume that vaccines contradict God’s will, we should also assume that all medical interventions to treat disease contradict God’s will, since, like the pandemic, these diseases are of his design and part of his grand plan. Would this logic also not hold for applying any scientific knowledge toward technological advances in the interest of making life for humans on Earth more comfortable, and more survivable?

One way of describing science might be to say it is the slowly improving process of looking around at the ways things are and making guesses as to what we see, and then testing whether those guesses are right. One way of describing technology might be to say that it is taking what we know about the way things are and using it to try to make life better. With regard to vaccines, our greatest minds have taken past knowledge and current information about viruses and the human immune system to develop chemical compounds that protect the human body from infection. This is modern technology. If, according to evangelicals, this is wrong today because we are supposed to allow Jesus to be our lord and savior when it comes to disease, has it always been this way? Have we always been going against God’s will when we’ve applied any form of technology in the interest of public health? For that matter, have we always been going against God’s will when we’ve applied any form of technology in the interest of convenience, comfort, or efficiency?

I would not argue that all applied technology is good. Those who have made millions and billions of dollars by extracting and burning fossil fuels still argue, whether they truly believe it or not, that the benefits continue to outweigh the environmental harms. They manage to keep half of the U.S. population believing the same through advertising, political lobbying, and control of funding to develop alternative sources of energy. Yet anyone who keeps an eye on air quality alerts, rising global temperatures, and associated changing climate and weather patterns must be concerned about the harm this technology is causing. Our petroleum-based lifestyle could not be possible without science, so it is true that the application of scientific discovery to technology, despite its benefits, has dangerous unintended consequences, and throughout history the application of medical technology, by improving health, survival, and longevity, has allowed humanity to thrive to the point where we dominate all other life forms on Earth and we have subsequently changed the environment in disastrous and deadly ways. We’ve wiped out many species and many more are on the brink of extinction, and some argue that climate change is on an irreversible course to wipe out modern human civilization.

Science and its application to medical technology has provided us with the tools to voluntarily control our runaway population and our destructive consumption of fossil fuels, but just as with vaccines, we have as of yet ignorantly failed to reach a consensus on the practicality of birth control, wind power, solar power, bicycles as popular forms of transportation, and other innovations. But I wonder if evangelicals who believe that God’s will controls events on Earth might consider pandemics and natural disasters as God’s attempt to undue the environmental damage humans have done to their planet through the misapplication of technology? What it we let COVID-19 run its course without masks or vaccines? What if we didn’t heed the advice of epidemiologists and public health experts? What if developing a vaccine and effective treatments had not been top priorities of scientists since early 2020? How much of the world population would we have lost by now, and how many more would be dying still? Does God want us to return to our pre-civilization state, where we survive on a hunting and gathering economy? Consistent logic on the part of evangelical thinking would say yes.

If science had never taught us that certain substances were poisonous, that unclean water made us sick, that we could build shelters to hold in heat, that we could lift and transport heavy objects with the aid of a lever and a wheel, that certain diseases were communicable and stricken people needed to be isolated, that infections could be cured with topical treatments and later with antibiotics, and that we could teach our immune systems to resist diseases, civilizations could never have developed and lasted. Were all these advances against God’s will in the eyes of anti-vaxers? If so, do they think we were never supposed to advance into thriving communities in the first place? Again, consistent logic on the part of evangelical thinking would say yes, but I doubt there are any evangelicals who would agree.

We are at a critical point in history where the application of science to energy and medical technology has created a planet overrun with humans and fouled with toxic air and water. I believe God, however it is defined, is indifferent to life of Earth, but science can help humans reverse our polluting ways, stabilize our population, and enable humans to live healthy, educated, productive, aesthetic, loving lives. Ironically, by ignoring the applications of science, and/or by continuing to apply them the wrong way, we will revert to a state much more like hunters and gatherers than creatures who have landed vehicles on Mars. But by pretending to be overseen by a vain, vindictive god who requires passive submission we run the risk of forsaking all the beauty, knowledge, and understanding that history has bestowed upon us.

I signed up for the MS 150 about six weeks ago. The MS 150 is a fundraising bicycling event for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. I received a notice that I was supposed to pick up my packet which contains my rider number, among other things, at a designated time and location. For the past 15 months my social calendar has been a little sparse so I’ve been able to rely on my memory for appointment dates and locations. I’ve been logging things to my Outlook and Google calendars (annoying that they don’t seem to sync) but often don’t look at them, instead relying on my youthful cognitive powers to get me where I need to be when I need to be there.

Yesterday I walked into the building at 600 South Broadway for my 2:30 pm appointment to pick up my materials and the receptionist had no idea what I was talking about. When I mentioned the Multiple Sclerosis Society she looked it up and told me it was located at 900 South Broadway, about .6 miles down the street. I felt foolish but off I trudged, thinking I would prefer a brisk walk in the 85-degree heat over going back to my car and finding another parking place. Fifteen minutes later I entered a spacious, empty lobby save for a resting security guard who failed to acknowledge my presence. I walked past him to the the elevators and saw the the MS Society was on the second floor. I pressed the button labeled ‘2’ several times with no response. I got out and walked up the stairs to the second floor only to find the door locked. When I got back to the lobby I had to disturb the security guard from his rest to ask if he knew where I could pick up my packet for the MS 150 and after he asked me to repeat myself several times he told me that he was a Vietnam vet, was deaf and crazy, and could not hear me through my COVID-19 mask.

I removed my mask and shouted the purpose of my visit at him once again. He told me that the entire building had been off limits to visitors since the beginning of the pandemic. He made a couple of phone calls, reaching only voicemail boxes, while I checked my information and discovered that I was a day early. My packet pickup was scheduled for Saturday. This was Friday. If I had felt foolish 20 minutes earlier I now knew what complete self humiliation was all about.

During the course of our interaction he for some reason mentioned that he had grown up in rural Pennsylvania. “What part of Pennsylvania?” I asked. “I lived there until I was fifteen.”

“Just outside of Norristown.”

“My father grew up in Norristown,” I told him.

“I went to Norristown High School. Graduated in 1963 and enlisted in the Marines. They sent me to Camp Lejeune.”

“My father graduated in, I would guess, 1940 or so. He started college but enlisted in the Marines when World War II broke out and was stationed on a cruiser in the Pacific.”

“How about that,” he said. “No college for me. I joined the Marines right away. Did two tours. I came back after the first one and thought I’d surprise my girlfriend. I surprised her alright. Caught her in bed with two guys. I went right back to the recruiter and said send me over there again. I gotta kill someone and it’d be a lot better if it was a Commie than her. He surprised me, though. He sad, ‘I don’t care about what rank you had before, you’re going right back into ground combat.’ I might have surprised her, but he surprised the hell out of me. But I loved it. I had the time of my life over there. Got to do all kind of shit I never would have gotten away with back here. Hell, they’d have locked me up here for what we did there. You can’t blow up bridges here. We exploded the shit out of bridges. You can’t burn down houses here. We burned down houses everywhere. You can’t kill people here. ” He began firing an imaginary rifle around the lobby.

“I had a student deferment,” I said, “and then got a high lottery number.”

“Well, like I said, no college for me. I’m just a deaf, crazy Vietnam vet. This here’s the perfect job for me. Been doing it for six years, but I’m 75 now, gonna retire in a few months. The past year I’ve just been sitting here in an empty building.” I wondered what he did before taking on this job, but didn’t ask.

“Well I guess I’ll see you tomorrow when I come back on the right day,” I said.

“I don’t work on weekends,” he replied. “You have a good one.”

I walked fifteen minutes back to my car, thinking about the different paths our lives had taken, in spite of our somewhat similar roots and fairly close ages. While I was playing guitar, listening to the Beach Boys and Beatles, learning to surf along Southern California beaches, cruising the streets in my friend’s ’55 Chevy and learning to unhook my girlfriend’s bra strap with one hand, he was witnessing and executing unimaginable horrors and having to convince himself they were being done in the service of some greater good. And now, more than 50 years later, he was still talking about it to perfect strangers, and discussing it as though it was fun. I didn’t believe him for a second when he said it was the time of his life. My guess is those memories have been haunting him his entire adult life.

As individuals we all live with memories that haunt us. Most can be dismissed or repressed sufficiently that we can lead normal lives, but some people have some memories that are too great and too horrible to allow them to function normally. When I think of the United States as a country, and our history of atrocities and massacres weighed against our heroic efforts in both World Wars, I don’t know where the balance lies. It is difficult after a conversation like the one I had with the security guard to not think about the dark side of American history, starting with the treatment by European settlers of Native Americans, the kidnapping and enslavement of Africans by the British, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese, the Civil War, the treatment of immigrants, the oppression of working class people by mining and industrial bosses, the Vietnam War (and others), the continued discrimination of non-whites, and continuing through the injustices that prevail today. Given our history, it’s a wonder we’ve been able to delude ourselves into ever believing we really were the ‘United’ States. But I believe most people in this country hope for and work toward uniting us, and their efforts will succeed.

Freedom is a word I rarely use without thinking . . . of the time . . . when I’ve been loved. (Donovan Leitch)

He’s the universal soldier and he really is to blame, his orders come from far away no more. (Buffy Saint Marie)

Dozens of times over the past several days I’ve been reminded on social media, the radio, and TV news to take a moment to honor our fallen heroes who have sacrificed their lives to protect our freedom. None of us wants to ever forget the loved ones we’ve lost, especially those taken at a young age, and especially those who have given their lives answering what they believed, and is generally accepted to be a higher calling to serve the greater good. My father enlisted in the Marines at the start of World War II and came back to the United States as a hero in the eyes of virtually every one in this country. Few would disagree that Nazi Germany and the Axis powers it formed with Italy and Japan needed to be defeated, and the greatest strategic minds at the time could come up with no better way to do so than through war. Although my father did not like talking about his WWII experience, and I’m sure he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy as a result of injuries he sustained, I was proud to show my friends his pictures in uniform, and he was most assuredly pleased that he had served. We are all exceedingly grateful that Hitler was defeated and that the world is mostly rid of Fascism and Nazism.

The freedom that was protected and ultimately preserved through the Allied victory in World War II was clearly understood. Today the word “freedom” is tossed about as though everyone in America knows what it is and agrees as to its meaning. In reality, I think there is little consensus around its definition anymore. Many people are able to maintain their sense of freedom only by keeping others less free. Powerful people use the term to manipulate those they control to carry out their will toward an end that only serves the interests of the powerful. The freedom our young men and women have sacrificed to protect through military service since 1945 has become increasingly vague.

I don’t know much about the Korean War, but I was of draft age during the height of the Vietnam War. Initially I had a student deferment, but when my college credits dropped below the minimum requirement I was called for a physical. Because I’d had knee surgery two years earlier and was in need or a second surgery I received a temporary medical deferment. This was a little confusing to me since I was able to surf, hike, ride a bike, and do most other things without difficulty. But my knee did click when I bent it and it was unstable at times. By the time my deferment was up the lottery had been instituted and I received a high enough number that I was never called up. Even today when I talk to friends and acquaintances who were drafted I feel a little guilty for not having served, although I was firmly convinced the war was immoral and I don’t know what I would have done if I had actually been drafted. Many friends at the time who were facing the draft enlisted in either the Air Force or the Navy because they thought their chances of being forced into direct combat would be lower. This was such a contrast to World War II, where, as I have been led to believe, every able young man was eager to put on a uniform, grab a gun, and join the cause.

Sadly, Vietnam veterans returning to the United States after serving did not receive the hero’s welcome that greeted returning WWII vets. The anger and resentment toward the government for the perpetuation and escalation of a war that much of the public saw as unjustified to begin with was mistakenly directed at the returning soldiers. News accounts of events such as the My Lai Massacre and the indiscriminate napalm bombing of civilian villages helped to vilify soldiers in the public eye, but in reality, if the Vietnam war was unjust, then teenaged boys forced to fight that war were victims, just as were the citizens of North and South Vietnam. I’m told soldiers who did not carry out orders in the field could be executed on the spot. The war was hugely unpopular and divided our country along political lines, largely due to how well (and accurately, I believe) it was covered by the media. Every night we saw what was going on, and unlike Hitler, there was no clear cut enemy, only a remote, poorly understood country loosely divided over differing economic, political, and religious views.

Since Vietnam the United States has engaged in the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the War in Afghanistan. The Gulf War lasted barely more than a month, and ended when a coalition of US, Saudi, Egyptian, and British troops decisively expelled invading Iraqi troops from Kuwait. The Iraq War was initiated in March, 2003 after George W. Bush was misled (by his Secretary of State Dick Cheney, among others) into believing that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and the false belief that Iraq was harboring and supporting Al Qaeda, the group responsible for the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. In May of 2003 George W. Bush, perhaps a bit arrogant over the easy accomplishment of military objectives in the Gulf War, declared mission accomplished in the Iraq War, but in reality, after no weapons of mass destruction were found, after Saddam Hussein was executed, and after chaos erupted in Iraq, the war dragged on with primary United States involvement until Barack Obama completed a troop withdrawal eight years later in December of 2011. The War in Afghanistan began in 2001, predating the Iraq War, and continues today. It began as a United States-led effort to drive the Taliban, who were believed to be providing Al Qaeda a safe base of operations, from Afghanistan. Since then American troops have supported the Afghan Armed Forces and their allies in holding Taliban insurgents at bay.

We praise soldiers, and especially fallen soldiers, for sacrificing to defend our freedom. This was clearly true in World War II. They were not only defending our freedom but England and France had been invaded and millions of Jews across Europe were persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. We don’t need to look very far to see an unambiguous definition of freedom. Since then things have gotten a little more cloudy. I have become fond of repeating the cliche, “One person’s freedom is another’s oppression.” I don’t know where I first heard it, but I can think of many examples where it is true. Southern plantation owners were free to enjoy a life of wealth and leisure because of slavery. Corporate executives receive salaries in the top 1/10 of the top 1% because they support politicians who enact legislation against unions and won’t increase the minimum wage. Those who own shares in medical insurance companies see their investments continue to rise because the people covered under the plans they own part of have to pay out of pocket for treatments and procedures that would be benefits under a single payer system. People lucky enough to own investment properties benefit from being able to collect rent from those not wealthy enough to own their own homes. The right to own firearms for sport and protection on the one hand leads to preventable murders and mass shootings on the other. These are only a few examples.

I was told as an elementary school student that communism was evil because the Soviet Union did not respect freedom of religion (they were Godless) and there was only one source of news which was controlled by the government, and it was called propaganda. There was no freedom of the press. So growing up I believed that freedom meant knowing that news sources were honest and independent, and I could believe and practice my own beliefs, and the the government would not be associated with or interfere with the public’s diverse beliefs. We needed to fight communism to defend freedom of religion and freedom of the press. Of course, free enterprise went without saying, since a communistic government controlled the means of production and distribution, preventing ambitious and imaginative people from starting their own businesses or making money in ways they devised for themselves.

I think there is evidence now that the freedom our government wants our young women and men to defend is the freedom to drive fossil fuel powered cars as cheaply as possible. Lurking behind the cultural and religious conflicts in the middle east is a struggle for control of petroleum resources. The fact that Muslims control the greatest petroleum deposits in the world makes it easy to bring religion into the conflict, and the fact that Jerusalem is a sacred site to evangelicals, and Jerusalem sits in Israel, which is in conflict with the Arab world, makes it convenient for clever right wing United States political leaders to manipulate evangelicals to support their economic interests, leading them to think that it is a righteous predestined Biblical calling. Bringing in a sophisticated misinformation network that understands this relationship to feed the beliefs of the evangelicals while discrediting the legitimate, independent, reputable news sources creates a perfect triumvirate of greed, superstition, and deception within my own United States of America that replicates all that I was warned about regarding the Soviet Union when I was in elementary school. Add the fact that free enterprise has been suppressed by a handful of giant monopolies in the United States and the result is that the freedoms of religion, the press, and open markets that we enjoyed in the 1950s and 1960s are severely threatened today.

So, I want to offer a deep and heart-felt thank you to all the veterans who have served to protect my, your, and their freedom, no matter how each of us might define it. And just as as my heart breaks every day for those I have loved and lost, my heart goes out to all who have lost loved ones in service to our country, recognizing that we all serve our country in one way or another. But just as important as military service is, we must always think about what freedom really means. If we use that word without understanding it, then we are using it in vain. And if we are serving our country without peace being our ultimate goal, then we are not defending anybody’s freedom. We are all heroes when we work to ensure that all Americans have the right to vote, the right to be free from religion as well as the right to practice the religion of our choice, the right to receive information from a free, honest and open press, and the right to enjoy economic opportunity free from the oppressive influences of giant corporations.

I don’t remember where I first read or heard of this notion, or who deserves credit for it, but with the recent release of government UFO footage, the escalating conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and the political divide in the United States driven partly by the evangelical trend, I thought I would try to paraphrase something I think I came across a long time ago. Maybe it was from an episode of the Twilight Zone, but I’m not sure.

It is almost certain that other forms of intelligent life exist in the universe, and our imaginations are severely limited by our own dull minds when it comes to describing intelligence. Perhaps the Earth has been under surveillance by creatures from other galaxies for as long as humans have walked this planet, but we haven’t noticed them because they carry on in a different dimension of time. Yet they can observe us. To them, our 10,000 years pass in what seems to them to be a year. They have no interest in being worshipped or intervening in the daily lives of humans. They do not administer justice, punish evil, reward good, or otherwise pass judgment on the behaviors of we inferior human creatures on Earth. But they do act in one godlike way.

Just like ten year olds who keep pet lizards in glass cages as pets and feed them crickets while making observations of their actions, when these extraterrestrials came upon Earth and found it inhabited by lower forms of life, they thought they could amuse themselves by conducting a short (in their timeframe) experiment, and watch for a year or so (10,000 years or so in Earth time) to see what happened. Using their superior powers, they decided to invent religion, and came up with several dozen slight variations to be introduced discretely in different regions to different peoples around the globe. They thought it would be fun to hang out hovering above the planet as the human population grew, and as people with different religious views came into contact with each other to watch how they dealt with their religious differences. The extraterrestrials intentionally designed all the religious variations with a common core but for each had twists on the mythical stories of how the Earth began, the number and names of deities, the details of certain miracles and where they may or may not have taken place, and what the nature of existence after death was. But fundamental to each and every religion was the concept of kindness, generosity, and reason. To the extraterrestrials, the other details were entertaining but ultimately trivial.

From their spacecraft the creatures from another galaxy placed wagers. Some hypothesized that as humans became more civilized and cultures intermingled, they would recognize and celebrate the common core of their different religions, and form bonds around that core. Others bet that humans would become obsessed with and cling to the trivial differences, make them matters of life and death, allow them to divide the planet, and keep them forever in conflict.

From the very start it looked like those betting on disunity were right. But the others argued that humans deserved credit for being able to learn, and it would take time for them to recognize that basically all their religions were founded on the same principles. But the extraterrestrials had other solar systems in other galaxies to explore and many, they hoped, would be populated by wiser, more interesting creatures to observe. How much time should they give these Earthlings? And did they really want to hover around and watch humans destroy each other over these trivial differences?

The extraterrestrials were also becoming concerned with the degradation of the planet, and worried that before they could witness the final outcome of their experiment the planet might not be able to continue to support life. They were also shocked to view the Earth through their megaverdian lenses, which displayed the extreme imbalance of the distribution of resource consumption around the planet. Ultimately those betting that humans would learn to live in unity conceded that, although a final conclusion hadn’t been reached, it did not look good for Earth, and it was time to resign from the wager and move on to more interesting worlds.

We were the offspring of men who belonged to what a television journalist would later call the greatest generation.  But to us they were simply common veterans of their own generational war, just as their fathers had fought in a different war of their own, and we would likely be handed one for our generation.  We did not really understand the place World War II held in history.  And the greatness that is the temporary esteem with which little boys regard their fathers had long since withered.  In 1963, before the presidential assassination, at the beginning of a popular music upheaval, during a rising civil rights movement, and with hints of a sexual revolution yet to come, three best friends were witness to small town scandals and personal trauma brought on by their fathers’ separate behaviors. 

Robert’s father, an art professor, kept a private studio where he spent most of his time when he wasn’t teaching classes or holding office hours at the local, small college.  When the college president found out that the private painting lessons he gave to female students involved sex he lost his job and his wife, and fled our curious little civil war tourist town for his native England.  William’s father was so busy selling insurance to his golfing buddies and chasing their wives that he didn’t ever suspect that his own wife had fallen in love and was discretely sleeping with the celebrity son of a famous politician and World War II hero who had retired to our south-central Pennsylvania community.  My father, highly regarded by most as an adult men’s Sunday school teacher, former coach, mentor to aspiring college graduates, and one to be relied upon in crises and emergencies, had spent the past several summers pursuing a PhD at Columbia University while secretly sharing an apartment and his bed with a female graduate student.

When my mother learned of my father’s NYC affair this, on top of his years of manipulation, physical threats, emotional outbursts, and jealousy toward any male friendships she developed, led her to apply for and subsequently accept a job as a social worker in New Jersey.  She also filed for divorce.  Robert’s mother had decided to send Robert off to boarding school to start ninth grade, and William’s mother was moving with her children to upstate New York to escape the small town gossip and protect the reputation of her (at this point former) celebrity lover.  Knowing that my two best friends would be gone made it easier to accept the idea of beginning ninth grade at a new school.

I was not really surprised when my mother said she was divorcing my father, but I hated her for telling me, nonetheless, and I hated her for indirectly forcing me to admit that they were not happy together.  A year or two earlier, when my mother’s college roommate, Grace, left her husband, my mother asked me if that changed the way I felt about Grace, and if I understood why married couples sometimes got divorced.  A similar conversation took place between us when William’s mother made her decision to leave William’s father public, several months before my mother told me she was leaving Dad.  I remember more than once coming home from school to find my mother weeping and when pressed for an explanation told me, “Oh, Michael, I married the wrong man.”  There were nights in the year or so leading up to that summer when I would lie in bed and hear my parents in the living room discussing something with an elevated intensity.  These discussions often escalated into sobs from my mother and loud profanities from my father.  One night the cries and curses were worse than most, punctuated by the sound of broken glass, followed by a car driving off.  The next morning my father’s forearm was wrapped from wrist to elbow and the sliding glass shower door in the master bathroom was shattered.  My parents would each, months later, relate to me separately the details of that night.

We’d moved into that modern ranch-style house on a small hill three years ago from a modest two-story brick home on the other side of town, perhaps in the hopes that my parents could make a new start.  The old house was one of three that were identical and were the last three houses on the north side of town before development gave way to cornfields, woods, creeks, and rolling hills.  From my earliest memories until the second or third grade my best friend Stevie lived in the last of the three houses, while we lived in the first.  In between were Mr. and Mrs. Trexel.  He was a quiet, gentle man, but all the kids in the neighborhood regarded Mrs. Trexel as mean and evil.  We were not permitted to walk across her lawn, even though it was the most direct route between my house and Stevie’s.  Instead, we had to go the extra twenty or thirty yards out to the sidewalk that bordered the main street to circumnavigate her delicate grass.  Naturally a rule like this was made for five and six-year-old boys to disobey, and Mrs. Trexel must have spent her hours waiting by the window just to catch us in the act so she could run out her front door and scold us.  She always followed up her tongue lashings with a report to our parents, but we got away with the violation often enough that the challenge was worth the risk.

I liked living on the edge of town.  Rock Creek flowed along the northern edge of Stevie’s yard.  In the summer we looked for tadpoles, turtles, minnows, and crayfish in the slowly flowing stream.  In the winter we could pick our way through the exposed rocks on ice skates and work our way east upstream for miles.  The Jacobs family owned a field across the alley behind our back yard.  One summer they planted wheat and when it grew to overhead height we made trails leading to clearings we created and hung out in for hours.  The field served as a baseball diamond when it wasn’t growing crops, and when my father wasn’t in New York he called together any willing parent, along with all the neighborhood kids, for regular after-dinner baseball games that lasted until it got too dark to play.  My father loved to pitch. Mr. Glenny, the State Game Protector who lived just to the south of us, was the regular catcher, and the kids took turns at bat and rotating through all the field positions.  I got a lot of practice hitting against my father when he was pitcher, and I became pretty good.  When I became old enough to play Little League I was used to how fast he pitched, which was a lot faster than kids my age could throw.  This would have been an advantage, except that I knew my father had enough control that he would never hit me with a pitched ball.  When it came to batting against a pitcher my own age, I did not have that confidence.  I developed an irrational fear of being struck by a pitch, and started the habit of “putting my foot in the bucket.”  It’s a habit I never overcame and this disappointed my father.  In fact, I’m sure my father went to his grave regretting that I never met his expectations for me as an athlete.

When my father wasn’t in town during the summer no other father took the reponsibility of organizing these nightly games.  We were left to our own devices to entertain ourselves without adult supervision.  We typically played hide-and-seek after dinner and we liked to run behind the mosquito sprayer when it came around.  We loved the smell of that kersosene and thought it cool that we could hide in the cloud it produced.  Even the adults trusted that something designed to poison insects would not harm humans.

Stevie’s father was a football coach at the local college, where my father had also coached before moving into administration.  Their friendship dated back to their days as college students, and Stevie’s mother and my mother were also best friends.  Stevie’s mother contracted cancer during the time we were neighbors, and when she became sick enough that she couldn’t care for Stevie and his sister they were sent off to live with Stevie’s father’s mother.  When Stevie’s mother died less than a year later, his father moved to a nicer house a few blocks away.  We remained for a few more years in the same house where we were living when my younger sister Beth died from influenza a few years earlier. 

The country suffered an epidemic of the Asian flu in 1957, but Beth died the previous year.  I remember leaving for school in the morning when the doctor was at our house.  The last thing I saw was his lifting the tongue depressor from her mouth as she lay on the living room sofa.  He wiped a long strand of phlegm and mucous off the depressor as it was still attached to her throat.  Later that day, around mid afternoon, my father walked silently into my first grade classroom, came over to my desk, picked me up, and carried me out of the school building, across the playground, into the car, and drove me home without speaking a word.  At home I looked past my weeping mother who was surrounded by consoling friends, trying to spot my little sister.  I asked where she was but got no answer.  Not until my grandparents arrived several hours later did I receive an explanation for what I already knew was true.

I guess my mother hoped moving to a new, nicer home that was not associated with the double tragedies of the other side of town might help her feel closer to my father, too.  I don’t know when or how she learned of my father’s other woman in New York, but he had since stopped his pursuit of a PhD short of a dissertation, been promoted to Dean of Students, and presumably no longer had contact with his NYC lover.  Still, her knowledge of the ongoing affair, summer after summer, could not be forgotten, and his other behaviors continued to push her away.  She spent several unhappy years in the new house listening to Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and Felicia Sanders on her new stereo and discussing literature with English professors from the college.  She took two part-time jobs – one at the college library and one recording passages from text books for a blind student.

I don’t remember my parents spending another night under the same roof after my mother announced they were divorcing.  My father was gone for weeks at a time, sometimes staying with friends in town, sometimes with his parents in eastern Pennsylvania, sometimes visiting old friends in other parts of the country.  He would come back to the house when my mother went to New Jersey to make plans for her move – finding an apartment, meeting with her new employer, making arrangements for my sister and I to get registered for school.  During those periods when I was with my father he started telling me about vague health concerns he had, hinting that he might have to have surgery.  He also began telling me about my mother’s unstable mental condition, a condition that only he and a psychiatrist in Baltimore that he had referred my mother to knew about.  He also told me about confidential conversations he’d had recently with some of my mother’s childhood friends who knew her father when he was the minister/superintendent of an orphanage, and had a reputation for cruelty.  His need to tell me these things, over and over again, and his impatience with me when I became restless after hearing the same information from him hour after hour, started me looking forward to moving to New Jersey.  Knowing that my two best friends would be gone also made the thought easier, as was the desire to avoid having to tell anybody about any change in my family circumstances.

The day before my mother, my sisters and I were set to move to New Jersey the son of a friend of my father’s came by the house on his bicycle and told me he was sent to take me to his house where my father was waiting to talk to me.  When I got there my father handed me a note telling me he needed surgery to removing a growth from his lung and that he and my mother agreed that I was to stay with him for one school semester while he recovered.

I got little in this world, I’ve give honestly, without regret, $100 for that picture. I remember taking a picture . . . (Voices of Old People, Bookends, Simon and Garfunkel, 1968)

I can’t remember when I began noticing, but for months now many national news broadcasts include at least one story that has video preceded with a warning to viewers about the gruesome nature of what is about to be shown. Usually the footage is from police body cameras or citizen cell phones. It is rarely the product of professional journalism. When I hear the warnings I think of both liability and ratings. If a viewer might claim to be traumatized by having seen “disturbing” footage on the news, the disclaimer might offer some legal protection for the networks. I can imagine counsel to NBC, CBS, and ABC requiring the news anchors to make these statements before airing the videos. I suspect advertisers like it too. Can you imagine someone preparing dinner in the kitchen with the TV on, only paying half attention until hearing those words? Most would stop what they were doing to look at the screen. More disturbing videos could lead to more viewers in the end.

There is little doubt in my mind that the proliferation of digital video serves the public interest and the cause of justice. Recently the Peloton corporation recalled its home treadmill after a personal video recorded a child getting caught underneath an active machine while playing on it. Without the video evidence and the resulting publicity it’s doubtful the safety of these machines would have been called to the public’s attention. In 2015 Mother Jones magazine published a list of 13 police killings captured on video in the past year. According the the article, “. . . More such incidents appear to be getting captured on video than ever before, due in part to the ubiquity of cell phone cameras. The footage – not only from cellphones, but also surveillance cameras, dashboard cameras in police cars, and police-worn body cameras – has caused a tectonic shift in public awareness.”

There is no need for me to go into detail about the murder of George Floyd or the countless other instances of police killings that would never have reached public awareness without video evidence, and without the evidence being shown by the broadcast news. Perhaps it has brought us to a point in history where it can no longer be denied that systemic hostility, cruelty, brutality, and injustice exists in the way police regard and treat the black community and black men in particular, and we might finally be starting to deal with it appropriately. But we should also be concerned about a potential backlash, similar to the right wing reaction to the election of Joe Biden, and their attempt to restrict voting rights in Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, the Carolinas, and practically every other Republican-controlled state in the country. Will we see legislation introduced to ban police dashboard cameras and body cameras, and intimidate citizens from recording police behavior? Will legislators attempt to restrict the use of recorded evidence in the courtroom?

Today digital footage is demonstrating to white, middle-class Americans what urban, poor, black Americans face on their streets and in their neighborhoods. In a similar way, television brought foreign war into the living rooms of comfortable Americans in the 1960s, when we saw nightly footage of the horrors of the Vietnam War. We saw actual wounded and dead soldiers. We saw blood and bandages and missing limbs. We saw burning jungles, crashing helicopters, screaming mothers and children running from pursuing armed men in uniforms. We heard first-hand accounts from our brothers, cousins, neighbors and classmates (those of us not over there ourselves) that there was no clear distinction between ally and enemy. We came to learn that what we were told by our leaders at home was going on over there, and what was actually happening were in direct contradiction, based on first-hand accounts from those witnessing and recording the truth.

The war in Afghanistan is the longest running war in American history by ten years. It has been argued that this war has persisted in part due to its taking place far from the consciousness of the American public. We don’t see nightly news stories or videos, we don’t hear much from reporters who have been sent there to cover the action. Somewhere along the line it must have been determined that the effort was going to take place quietly, with little controversy, banking on America’s contempt for Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. We hear accounts of soldiers reenlisting, and “thank you for your service” is a common refrain repeated whenever we’re in the presence of someone in uniform. But we also hear many stories of men and women coming back with PTSD, of widespread sexual assault among our troops, and of questionable success in a remote country that most Americans could not pinpoint on a map. Now that President Biden has announced his plan to end the U.S. involvement in the war, there will be much controversy, second guessing, and conflicting information on what has taken place there since 2001. How would things have been different if we’d had the media coverage of that war that we had in Vietnam, or if the troops wore body cameras?

Simon and Garfunkel recorded and released “Bookends” in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam war, and at a time when the country was sharply divided over our involvement in that war. The album contained a two minute and seven second track called “Voices of Old People” that started with an elderly man remembering an old photo that he would pay a lot of money to have in his possession again. Listening to that voice more than fifty years after it was recorded makes me think about how abundant digital images are today and how casually we use our phones to take snapshots that we will never look at again. On the other hand, for every photograph that man had of a loved one who might have died, I probably have 200 or 300 digital images of a person I loved and lost to cancer, and each once is priceless to me. Likewise, in considering the George Floyd case, there is no way to place a monetary amount on the way those dashboard camera, body camera, and cell phone videos are helping us understand the value of a human life.

The rules of Flitzyball allowed Rick to rest his left forearm against the trunk of an aspen tree to steady his right hand as he aimed the soft rubber pistol, loaded with a single ping pong ball, at the bird house with the three-inch round opening, suspended from an a-frame five feet away. If his next squeeze of the pistol accelerated the ball directly into the standard cedar bird house, after fourteen days of intense competition in this rugged Colorado forest, he would be the next international Flitzyball champion. The long trailing shadows cast by the trees betrayed the late hour. He moved his head to the side to use a tree trunk to shade his eyes from the sinking western sun as he assessed the speed and direction of the breeze. Par for each Flitzyball bird house was determined not only by distance from perch to house, but also by wind speed and direction. Scoring was extremely complicated and involved an official’s employing an anemometer with each shot. Two competitors on the same bird house could potentially be assigned different pars as conditions might change by the second.

Commentators from the major networks whispered into their microphones while throngs of fans stood among the forest trees, swaying to line up views between the obstructing aspens, firs, and pines. Rick’s mother, father, and younger sister held their hands to their mouths nervously. The official assigned to Rick lifted the anemometer just as a gust of wind appeared and Rick lowered his right hand. The air calmed and he took aim again. An encouraging shout arose from the crowd and Rick appeared to lose his composure. He stepped away in seeming irritation, then reassumed his pose against the aspen tree. The competitors who had already completed the course waited in front of him. Those who had yet to finish waited behind him. Now all were silent. Rick quickly and forcefully squeezed the soft rubber gun and the ping pong ball burst forth with a satisfying pop and in an instant rattled inside the cedar bird house which constituted the 18th and final target of the fourteenth and final day of this year’s international Flitzyball championship. Rick could not be caught. He would be crowned this year’s champion.

Dozens of competitors were yet to finish, with second and third place yet to be determined, but all the attention was now focused on Rick as he walked toward the trailhead parking lot which served as the tournament headquarters. His family rushed to his side and reached him just as the ESPN commentator placed her microphone in front of him.

“Rick, can you tell the world what this victory means to you.”

“Oh, it means everything,” he said. “For as long as I can remember I’ve thought about nothing else but this day.” He spread his arms wide and opened his palms to the sky. “Nothing has mattered to me since my first steps, since my first words, than to become the Flitzyball champion of the world. It is literally the fulfillment of a lifetime goal. My family has sacrificed everything to get me here.”

“Well, speaking of your family,” the reporter said, “since we have them here, let’s find out how they feel. Rick’s parents, what’s going through your minds right now?”

“We were afraid this day would never come,” Rick’s mother replied. “We’ve waited, we’ve hoped, we’ve begged for our dream to come true.” She looked first to her husband, then to her son. “We were given a promise, and the older Rick became, the more we began to worry that after all we gave up we were not going to be requited. He’s almost thirty, you know. But here we are.”

“Yes,” Rick’s father added as he stepped in front of his wife. “we’re just grateful to the powers that be for allowing this to happen.”

The reporter turned to Rick. “Tell me more about how you have devoted your life to reaching this moment, and the sacrifices you’ve made. I think the American people would like to know what it takes to become an international champion.”

“It was really my parents, I guess.” They decided when I was born this is what they wanted and that they would give up everything for it – friends, school, fun, vacation, I mean everything, trusting that I would be given this day before I reached my thirtieth birthday.”

“So,” the commentator said, “it sounds like they are people of deep faith. They must be very thankful to the Lord for your success.”

“On the day Rick was born,” Rick’s mother offered, “it seems we sold his soul to the Devil on the promise that the Devil would deliver this moment. And here we are. And now Rick, and Rick’s father, and Rick’s sister, and all of us are grateful to the Devil for making good on his word.” She cleared her throat, took a step forward, clasped her hands behind her back, lifted her head, and said, “But I want to tell America now that our bargain with the Devil has been fulfilled.”

The woman from ESPN stepped back and with hesitation said, “Well this must be a first for our viewing audience. I’ve done hundreds of interviews with champions who thank God, or Jesus, or Allah for victory, but no one has ever given the Devil credit for winning before. I can’t imagine what it must be like to sell your son’s soul to Satan.”

Rick’s father addressed his wife. “You know we agreed we weren’t going to go into this, but since you brought it up . . .” He turned to the commentator. “To be honest, it happens all the time. We’re just admitting it, that’s all. And you really just have to let it happen, that’s all. The offer is always there. We all accept it, all of us, unless we actively refuse it.”

“Now you’ve got me confused,” the woman from ESPN said. “You can’t tell me that the great athletes I see praying for victory are actually bargaining with the Devil before each game.”

“It’s not like that,” Rick’s mother said. “But we’ve all made a bargain with the Devil by default unless we resist it. When we make our life’s ambition to achieve meaningless goals that serve no other purpose than self glorification, when we believe superstitions and hoard wealth and luxury while denying others of the basic necessities of life, when we speak so loudly and so often that we don’t hear what others are saying, when we are so busy chasing our material interests that we miss out on the simple pleasures of life, we are complicit in the Devil’s bargain.”

“Wait,” Rick said. “I’m the one whose soul was sold. Now I’m the international Flitzyball champion. I’m not sure my mother knows what she’s talking about. But I think I’m smarter than the Devil. I won the tournament. You can’t take that away from me, and I don’t know what the Devil has done with my soul, but my heart belongs to me, so I’m going to give it to Jesus from this day forward. Yes, I’ll accept Jesus into my heart. My parents sold my soul to the Devil when I was born, but now I’ll be born again with Jesus in my heart. And I’m the Flitzyball champion of the world.”

“How would that change anything?” the commentator asked.

“What would change is that I’d be choosing Jesus over the Devil. I’d be a Christian, born again in Jesus’ name. I’d still be champion. I wouldn’t have to change anything. It’s what you say you have in your heart that matters.”

Rick’s family all looked at each other and shook their heads in sorrow. “It’s taken us to this point to understand the many years that have been wasted,” his sister said. “The dream for my parents was once to experience the satisfaction of seeing their son win a world championship. But for years they have secretly longed for his victory to come so they could be freed from the binds of this meaningless obligation. Now our family is divided, but my parents shall be free. I think my brother Rick is more deeply trapped than ever.”

Other competitors continued to take their shots at the final bird house as Rick furthered his walk up to the tournament headquarters amidst the cheers of the admiring crowd. He stopped to provide blood samples to confirm he had not taken any performance enhancing drugs and that his DNA and gender identity were in agreement. He signed his score card while being witnessed by two tournament officials, and granted interviews to five more broadcast professionals while declaring his newfound faith in Jesus Christ. He was approached by nearly a dozen representatives of corporations with products for which he was asked to offer endorsements in exchange for lucrative contracts. As the sky darkened at the end of the day storm clouds gathered over the mountain ridge to the west, and thunder could be heard in the distance.

In the weeks that followed both Rick and his parents made appearances on talk shows, but never together. Their comments became the subject of blogs and podcasts, inspiring arguments over the role of religion in sports, the existence of the Devil, the struggle between good and evil, whether salvation depended simply on belief and faith or whether good deeds were required to get one into Heaven, and whether a life devoted to sport was a life of virtue to begin with. Still others did not condemn a life devoted to sport in general, but did deride Flitzyball in particular. More sophisticated moderators asked Rick’s parents if they hadn’t meant the notion of selling Rick’s soul figuratively to begin with, while Evangelicals took and related every detail of Rick’s narrative literally and celebrated its revelation. Some sports fans and competitors held that his title was tainted having been won through cheating due to evil influences. Others believed any claim to divine or evil intervention in athletic competition was nonsense, and that Rick was delusional.

Rick went on to become an evangelical spokesperson, endorsing religious products on radio and television and lending support to conservative political candidates. Otherwise his behavior post victory was unchanged from that before renouncing the Devil. He continued to make Flitzyball his life’s purpose, while taking advantage of his victory and subsequent notoriety to enrich himself. He held fast to his belief that behavioral change was not required for eternal life in Heaven; it was that which was in his heart that mattered. Although he continued to compete he never placed above tenth in another tournament. After his international victory rumors surfaced that his soft rubber gun had been equipped with an illegal gas accelerant, but the gun was never found and inspected. He never publicly addressed the accusations.

Rick’s parents always maintained that they were proud of their son’s athletic ability and his accomplishments in Flitzyball, but their advice to other parents was to not encourage their children to pursue a career in professional sports if it meant neglecting friends, education, recreation, and service to others. After Rick’s championship they, along with their physician daughter and their daughter’s physician husband, moved to a Caribbean island where they devoted their lives to fighting disease and poverty.