An Extraordinary Life

My grandfather, Malvin Caldwell, died on Sunday, August 15, 2010 a mere two weeks from his 97th birthday. My grandfather was a simple man, but his ancestry was noble. The Caldwell line originated in Wales and migrated to Ireland where the ruins of Castle Caldwell still stand. James Caldwell migrated to the United States and found something special. He loved this land so much that he fought for it in the Revolutionary War from beginning to end. At the end of the war he settled his family in Pennsylvania and farmed.

My grandfather’s grandfather was a blacksmith and fought to preserve the Union during the Civil War. He fought at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville and was captured soon after and imprisoned at the notorious Andersonville prison. He survived the conditions at Andersonville and was repatriated to the North at the end of the war. Grandpa told me that he did not often speak of his war experiences and never of Andersonville, save that he was a prisoner there.

As a boy in Clearfield, he would come home from school and see to it that his mother, who was very ill, got something to eat and something to drink before going to his maternal grandparent’s home to take care of them. At the age of nine, his mother passed away and his father remarried. He was a typical youth in Clearfield and he also found his fair share of trouble from drinking wine with immigrant Italian children to the occasional fight, but he also found his lifelong love of horses in his hometown.

There was a National Guard cavalry unit located in Clearfield and his grandfather continued blacksmithing after the war and would take care of the horses. He got to know the officers and men of the unit and they allowed him to groom their mounts and to ride the horses to exercise them. He told me that they wouldn’t let him use the soldier’s saddles because the men had polished them and kept them nice for inspection, but that didn’t matter to him. The joy of riding is what kept his interest and bareback was just fine by him.

There were hard times as well. The first depression in the early twenties hit his family hard and he found himself standing in line waiting to receive food for his family. He told me that he was so ashamed to be in that line, but that he had to stay there so that his family would have something to eat. Such things may be a necessity, but they do nothing for a man’s pride. While hard times may have pressed my grandfather into unpleasant things, his family stayed close.

My grandfather would tell me about how he and his brothers would listen to their father reading Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan Stories and other tales to them after supper. He never said so, but I believe that is where his love of reading came from. He also told me about the Christmases the family shared. If you were lucky you would get a new pair of boots or perhaps a shirt or a pair of trousers, but you always got a good surprise in the stocking such as an orange or other piece of fruit or perhaps some candy. Families back then did not take as much joy in the giving of gifts as much as they did in the company of their loved ones. Life was hard and spare time rare and you seldom got to spend much time with your family unless you were working with them.

When grandpa graduated from High School he had already enlisted in the National Guard so that he could get his own horse and serve his country. The great depression caused him to transfer to the active army and he was stationed at Fort Shafter in Honolulu, Hawaii. He shipped out of New York and headed by steamer to his new home via the Panama Canal. He didn’t say much about his experience traveling the canal, but he did say that the women there were bold. As for Hawaii, he said that he didn’t much care for it. He told me of its exotic beauty, but that it was too different from home and that he didn’t feel like he belonged there. While on KP duty, he was called out by the sergeant for how thin he peeled the potatoes. The sergeant took one of his peelings and held it up to the light and you could see light coming through the peel. The sergeant told him, “The army has money Caldwell and don’t have to peel the potatoes so thin.” However, grandpa’s frugality would be his trademark his whole life.

He returned to the United States and was stationed at Fort Belvoir in Fairfax, Virginia to await separation from the service. While there, he participated in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration parade. I asked him if he participated in the action against the bonus army protestors, but he never answered me. While I cannot prove that he was involved in that action, his lack of answer to my question may have been because he was not proud of what he had to do. Having come from a poor background and seeing men, woman, and children living in shanty towns in the Capitol would have hit close to home for him and I do not believe that he would have been enthusiastic in carrying out his duty. Upon his discharge, he traveled to Richmond, Virginia and took a job as an upholsterer in a furniture manufacturing company.

He told me that he did not know if he was doing well or not with the pay and so he kept a sharp eye out for other opportunities. When he saw that the Richmond police were recruiting he applied. He was mildly surprised when he landed the position because there had been so many that had applied for the limited jobs. He reported for duty and was measured for his uniforms and placed in training. In those days, there was no academy or formal training for recruits. Grandpa went with officers from different divisions within the department for a few days at a time. He would spend a few days with the detectives, a few days in the evidence room, etc. His training with the revolver was even more informal.

He told me that in police headquarters, on the third floor, there was a makeshift range in between two open windows. He was told to be careful not to allow the bullets to be shot out of the windows. This was because the police headquarters was downtown and there were buildings and civilians surrounding the headquarters. Not how we would do it today, but things were different in the 1930’s. Nearly a month to the day, grandpa’s uniforms arrived and he was told to report in uniform the next day and he would receive his beat assignment.

Grandpa told me that he felt like a new penny when he put on his uniform for the first time. He walked to work, as he usually did, and he was puffed up like a peacock. As he passed people they would say, “Good morning officer” and he felt a great deal of pride in being an officer of the law. When he arrived at headquarters, he was assigned a beat in the Carytown section of the city and he took a streetcar to his new beat.

His reception by the public was much as it had been while on his way to work that morning, but when he stopped at a street corner he began to feel uneasy. He began wondering how he would know what was against the law and what wasn’t. He had never been taught anything about the law. What would he do if someone came to him and told him that a bank was being robbed? Then he began to fear the consequences of a bad judgment made in ignorance. “Somebody could sue me and take everything I have,” he told me. That was when he decided to call his sergeant and tell him that he was quitting.

As soon as he had made that decision, he felt a tug on his pant leg. He looked down and saw a boy of about six or seven. Consumed with his concerns, he patted the child on his head and began looking for a callbox. He felt another pull on his pant leg. He looked down at the child and then it occurred to him that the child might need some sort of help. “What can I do for you Son?’ The child looked up at him and asked if he really wanted to know and my grandfather said yes.

The child said that he just wanted to be friends. My grandfather smiled at him and told him that he would be glad to be his friend. He stood up and stopped looking for the callbox. It was at that moment when the fear left him. He told me that he realized that not every problem he would face as a policeman would be earth shattering and that most people would just want something well within his abilities and he could certainly handle that. He then wondered where the child came from on the crowded street, but by then the child had gone and he told me that he never saw the child again. Without knowing it, that child’s actions had preserved the career of a policeman and eased the fears of a troubled man.

He met my grandmother some time later on a blind date. He had a friend that he lived with that was dating a friend of my grandmother’s and she wanted my grandmother to get out of the boarding house. My grandfather’s friend suggested a double date and said that he had just the man for the job. I will not say that there were stars and music when they met, but they got along well enough to continue dating and fell in love. They were married soon after and then war came to American shores once more with the attack on Pearl Harbor.

While most Americans had no idea where Pearl Harbor was, my grandfather did. He had served in Hawaii and the news of December 7, 1941 had a deep resonance for him. Although he tried to re-enlist, the army would not take him because he was a policeman and order had to be maintained at home. While he was disappointed, my grandmother was not. Grandpa continued to serve through the war as he had done before, but now as a mounted officer. His experience in the cavalry had made him a natural for the mounted division and he continued to ride until his promotion to sergeant.

He would go on to become a police lieutenant and witness many changes during the course of the years, but a day came in 1965 that made another great impression on him. My grandmother had called him home because the oil furnace under the house had gone out and the house was growing cold. I was about three years old and was in the house with my mother. My grandfather came home from work in his squad car and changed clothes in his bedroom and went under the house in order to relight the furnace.

In his hurry to solve the problem and return to work, my grandfather left his duty belt on the bed and my mother not knowing this had let me wander the house. I wandered into his bedroom and found his duty belt and the gun. I had no idea the danger that I was in, but I was elated to have found such a toy. I drew the weapon from its holster and pointed the gun at the wall and then I pulled the trigger. The noise of the shot and the recoil of the revolver terrified me and I dropped the weapon and ran to my mother.

My grandfather, working under the house, heard the shot and knew his own terror. He scrambled out from under the house and ran for the backdoor. Entering the house, my grandmother who had also heard the shot, thought that something had gone wrong under the house and that my grandfather was hurt. He ignored her urgent queries and ran for the bedroom and expected to see me dead on the floor. He found the gun, but I was nowhere to be found until he saw my mother with me, alive and well, in her arms. Grandpa berated himself for weeks after the incident. After his death, I found a revolver locked in a wooden box on the highest shelf in his bedroom, with a trigger lock on the weapon. That was how my grandfather stored his firearms after that day, when they were not in his possession.

A couple years later, my father left my brothers and I and my mother turned us over to my grandparents because she could no longer care for us. My grandfather never complained about having to take on this burden and he loved my brothers and me as if we were his own children. We ate as a family, played as a family, and we were always loved and felt safe. That is why we loved him so much. He did not raise us as his grandchildren, but as his sons.

It was his example that taught me how to be a man and how to conduct my life. He gave me the same values that he lived his life by and he taught me to love and revere God. I know that he knew that we absorbed our lessons well. Because one day when we boys were playing football out in the field, a kick sent the ball into a neighbor’s second floor window and broke the storm window. I went to the neighbor’s house and rang the bell and told him what I had done with my brothers in tow. He thanked me for telling him and that he would discuss it with my grandfather later. I never heard a single word from my grandfather about the incident. I asked my mother about the incident years later as an adult, and she told me that he wasn’t happy about paying to repair the window, but he was proud that we did the right thing.

As much as I know about my grandfather, there is so much more that I will never know. In his later years, I had the opportunity to care for him as he once cared for me. In the end, life was bitter for him. He missed my grandmother terribly. He could no longer read the stories that fired his imagination and the house was empty of the sounds of children. His brothers and sister had passed on as had all of his friends. Even the TV was of no use to him because he was blind and nearly deaf. I know that he had a grand reunion with all of those whom he had loved over the years and I hope that he will not miss us overmuch.

While I miss him, I know that I will see both he and my grandmother again. Death does not sunder the bonds of family. It merely separates us for a time. The tears that we shed for them are only because of the changes that their absence imposes on us in this life and the irrevocable fact that we must do so until we see them again in the afterlife.

Goodbye grandpa, I remember your love and your deeds and I will see you again when we meet in the future.

Living on Anesthesia

Human beings tend to go through life on anesthesia, unaware of life’s complexities and never knowing real feelings. Sure, we sometimes get a glance into pain, anger, love, and hatred, but we no longer pay any attention to the values born of these emotions. We live superficially, that is to say we really do not live, but exist. Occupying space while we pass through time, oblivious to the setting of the sun or the touch of a lover or appreciating the joy of a child’s laughter, it wasn't always this way.

Modern man has never really taken the time to examine his world or his own place in it. We drift. We go from one thing to another by rote with occasional pleasures in between. This is not living; it is existence in space and time. If we would only take the time to appreciate our lives and the people in them we would be far happier. Rather than be grateful for a kind word, we wish for more and it is that desire that chains us to our melancholy. I know of no one who met death and said, “If I only had a Play Station 3", or "more money in the bank", or "if I only had a larger house", or "spent more time at the office.” These people, when the Grim Reaper finally arrives, usually wish that they had spent more time with the people that they loved.

While it is true, that an event such as the September 11^th attacks can bring the examined life back into focus for most people, the lesson wears off quickly and we return to old habits. We anesthetize ourselves and return to the daily grind, just as we always have. We focus on what Paris Hilton is doing, or what Lindsey Lohan has done, the death of Heath Ledger and we fail to take notice that these lives are not fit for emulation or notice. It does not have to be this way.

Man can take control of his own destiny and we can live our lives as we choose. That is the product of free will. We can choose to live a life aware of our surroundings and blessings and be grateful for what we do have, while we ignore what we don’t. As long as the necessities of life are taken care of and we enjoy basic human dignities, we do not need the fluff of modern gadgets to be happy. We don’t need better cars, homes, or expensive clothing. What we need is a strong connection to those we love and care about. We need to parent our offspring and we need to strengthen our communities and neighborhoods. Finally, we need to recognize that introspection is not a bad thing because it helps us to evaluate ourselves and determine what we need to do to improve as people. Socrates said that the unexamined life was not worth living. What he meant was that life under perpetual anesthesia was not worth living. I agree.

The Watchman

Distance

If there is one thing that man must inevitably fall victim to, it is distance. What I mean by that is that man establishes a principal or ideal and then slowly moves away from it. Take Christianity for example, ever since the religion was established man has shed those parts he no longer cares for and incorporates others that he is happy with at the time until enough time has passed that the Christianity is no longer a religion, but a club. The same thing has happened to Judaism and to a limited extent, Islam. Even Buddhism, Taoism, and Shinto have suffered similar fates, but on a lesser scale. This is primarily due to the supporting culture.

However, where the supporting culture is non-existent or highly fluid the tendency for man to distance himself from his ideals is far stronger. The American culture, now mostly destroyed, has very little impact on the ideals or values of man. Americans tend to seek the culture of the other while rejecting the tatters of their own as valueless. To a large extent, our fascination with the electronic gadgets and must haves of the day encourages us to abandon our morals and ethics in favor of self. Our attitudes, even toward survival, have greatly moved toward a “live and let die” stance, where once we would have objected and even fought to preserve life. We think that it is a good thing is millions of people are put to the sword rather than to risk our own bodies in their defense. Modern man tends to believe that when it comes to deadly violence, better thee than me.

I remember how the politicians and people who liberated the Nazi death camps said, “Never again.” They had tears in their eyes when they said it. However, since that day 101,000,000 would be butchered for political reasons. That is a hard number to wrap your mind around, but suffice to say that if that number were your bank account balance, you would never have to work again nor would your descendants. The genocide in Rwanda was a perfect example of this trend. The murderers told their victims what they were going to do and when the time was right, 800,000 people lost their lives. Men, women, children, all were slain. Who came to their defense? Nobody, the world simply allowed them to perish. The United States of America stood by and watched, Europe stood by and watched and allowed it to happen while they wrung their hands.

I believe that man distances himself from his values and morals and beliefs because he is weak. Weak of mind, of character, of soul, if something requires effort man will abandon it. He will place distance between himself and what makes him work or think or feel. It is the one historical constant of man’s nature. What has changed is that we have abandoned the warrior ethos in favor of the feminine.

While the modern western man reviles the warrior and weeps for the woes of the world while doing nothing, but adding fuel to the fire, he truly does not understand what he has rejected or that he now makes himself a willing victim for aggression. While we wonder if our pants make our asses look too big and how we can convince the fox that the rabbit does not want to be eaten, we continue to abandon the ideals of justice, self sacrifice, valor, truth, et al. If you don’t want to be the victim of aggression, then it is time to diminish the distance from the warrior and embrace fundamental values. Regardless, the choice is yours.

The Watchman

A Letter to Death

As I sit here writing, I feel the weight of centuries upon me and I believe that I am an old soul. Other times, I gaze upon the world with new eyes and see the wonders of creation and I believe myself to be a new soul. Is it wisdom that causes us to feel this way or is it simply fatigue from walking the years of your life? Today, I have as many years before me as I have behind me and I wonder what the future will bring my way.

I look back upon my life and I see the numerous storms that have blown through my life and I am still here. Physical and emotional abuse as a child, the betrayal of a lover, the betrayal of friends, the loss of family and friends to the grim reaper and last, but not least is the ruination of my life brought about by what I thought was to be the love of my life, but I survived it all. I have accomplishments as well, but our culture dismisses these and asks us what we have to show for today. On the other hand, Frankl tells us that we have granaries full of the fruits of our lives and that we should rest when we reach old age secure in our achievements. I suppose that it is this dichotomy that unsettles us as we approach our elder years.

When you reach your senior years will you be forgotten by the world you once trod upon in your youth? Will you be thought of as a useless, old, bore that only annoys with repetitive stories? Will your children consign you to an old folk’s home and then forget your existence until Christmas? I have seen the generational wreckage in these institutions and it is not a pleasant sight. I have no wish to end as human detritus in one of these homes, forgotten in the waste bin of time to rot until death sees fit to grant me a merciful release from such an existence. It is not fear that causes me to write thus, but pride. Pride in what I have overcome, pride in my achievements, and pride that I have never swerved from the true course of just actions. To end such a way, would be poor reward.

Others say have faith in youth, that they will insure that we receive our due, but I harbor no delusions. Children have no use for the old. They even seem to have no use for their own community. Too many times have I heard the youth ask what they owe to their nation and community, saying instead that it is they who are owed something merely for their presence. What will such people do for those of us who live to senior status? Nothing I fear and judging by what I have seen at nursing homes, I believe that I am correct in my assessment. Perhaps I was wrong in my earlier assessment; I believe that I do have some fear regarding such an ignoble end.

While man can be cruel, life is more the cruel tyrant than ever a man could be. I fear growing old and feeble and having to live in a home where the stench of urine permeates the facility. A prisoner in my own flesh waiting for the angel of death to claim me, screw that fate. I would rather die long before that happens. As Socrates said long ago, death is either a long sleep or there is an afterlife, either way I win. I agree with him.

The Watchman

Autumnal Melancholy

It has come early this year. In years past, the sense of change did not come until the first brisk wind of fall and the change of the leaves. For me, autumn triggers unpleasant memories of my past and brings about apprehension, as if I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. Perhaps it has come early this year because of the death of my grandmother in January of this year. My grandmother was a strong and unique woman and she had a powerful impact upon my brothers and me.

I was raised by my grandparents you see, which explains the impact. In essence, I was the last generation to have been raised as if it were 1942. On the one hand I have solid values and morals, but on the other I am out of sync with my generation. I hate to think what would have become of me and my brothers if it had not been for my grandparents, but I digress. My grandmother was born in Bumpass, Virginia in 1918 at the end of the Great War.

Her mother was only sixteen years old and her father was the son of a farmer and a moon shiner. Tragedy struck her family early when her father was struck by a motor vehicle and killed as he walked down a lonely country lane when she was eight years old. After his death, she and her sisters were sent to other members of the family because her mother could no longer support them without the aid of her late husband. When my grandmother turned ten, she ran away from her aunt’s home and headed to Richmond where she worked odd jobs and slept in alleys until she could afford a boarding house room.

Eventually, she succeeded in obtaining a job with the Medical College of Virginia as a Nurse. At the tender age of about twenty-two, she had at last found a measure of security. She met my grandfather on a blind date and married him about a year later. My grandfather once told me a story about the early years of their marriage. When she had given birth to my mother, she demanded that my grandfather give her twenty dollars. My grandfather was surprised by the request and asked her what she needed that much money for and she replied that her children were going to have medicine if they needed it.

During those days, if you could not pay and were sick and needed medicine you went without. There were no programs or charities that would help you. She intended to make sure that her children would be cared for and so she kept the money in a drawer until sometime in the 1960’s when she finally relented and put the money in the bank. That was the kind of woman she was, she thought about her children first and foremost and if they were cared for then all was right with the world.

While my grandmother was a kind and gentle woman, she was fierce when angered and feared no man. When I was a boy, there was an argument between her and my former step-father. The argument became very heated and he drew back as if to strike her. My grandmother did not back down an inch. In fact she dared him to strike her and warned him that if he did she would kill him. I believed her and so did he apparently for he dropped his fist and stormed out of the house, whereupon my grandmother closed and locked the front door.

She never forgave him after that incident. Forgiveness was for her family only and that meant blood. Where my grandmother was concerned, blood was everything. You could marry into the family, but you had better watch your Ps and Qs until my grandmother adopted you and if there was ever a dispute between you and your spouse, my grandmother always sided with blood regardless of who was right. That was just who she was and she didn’t give a damn if you liked it or not.

When I think of my grandmother I can picture her in the kitchen fixing dinner and singing old Hank Williams songs as she cooked. The smells that exited the kitchen were heavenly, particularly on Sunday when she pulled out all of the stops. Eventually, reality shatters happiness and you are forcibly reminded that people grow old and die. The hell of it is that death does not have to take you quickly. My grandmother suffered a stroke on January 2^nd of this year. There was nothing that the doctors could do to help her recover and we were forced to make a hard decision. Either we sentence her to a slow and prolonged death over a period of months or decide to withhold food and water until she passed. My grandfather chose the second option and we concurred. That decision broke my grandfather because she lasted for nineteen days and each day laid a heavier burden upon our hearts because we felt like we were killing her. Each of us took a turn by her bedside staying all night until my grandfather returned in the morning.

When death finally came for her on the nineteenth day it was as much a blessing as a curse, a blessing that her long suffering was finally over and a curse in that we had to commingle grief with guilt about causing her to die in a manner that she did not deserve. To have come from such hard and painful beginnings only to leave in the same way was a bitter pill to swallow. I sorely miss my grandmother and I fear that I will be ashamed to face her when I die for contributing to her death because it was my advice in concert with the physicians that brought about her end. It is in the aftermath of such an event that one begins to question what you have done. I know my grandfather questions himself as well, but he will not speak of it. Perhaps if the end would have come more quickly there would not be the doubts and second guessing.

I keep telling myself that there was no other option and that she would not have wished to be placed on life support for months or years on end without hope for recovery. Sometimes the rationalizing works, sometimes not. The fact that she made it so long speaks to a tremendous desire to live and I don’t know how much of her mind was intact after the stroke and because of the neurological damage it was impossible to accurately assess. Regardless, a woman that I dearly loved is gone and that will not change. I do remember the good times and the small things that made her special to me, but I also have another bitter memory to add to my growing collection.

I don’t know what it is about the fall, but I always grow melancholy. This year, that time has come much sooner than expected. Perhaps next year it will return to normal.

The Watchman

Delusions

Self delusion is an inherently human trait. This is because it takes reasoning ability in order to delude one’s self effectively. Man has done this since time immemorial and that is an indisputable fact, unless you are deluding yourself that I am mistaken. In every facet of our lives we seek to fool ourselves into some ridiculous notions about reality. Rosie O’Donnell deludes herself everyday and publicly to boot, regarding some shady conspiracy to destroy the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon. Religious leaders manipulate the belief and faith of their followers to achieve their ends. Politicians ignore common sense and reality in order to put their spin on your mind. The news agencies also use the spin cycle in order to push their agenda. Even the weather man seeks to annex a part of your mind to his cause of global warming.

Most sentients are able to filter out much of the mud that would turn the clear waters of the mind hazy, but there are still many who cannot. The vast majority of these we tend to call “activists”. Such people seek to sully your mind because misery, or in this case sickness, loves company. We used to have guideposts along the paths of the mind in order not to lose ourselves in the daily spin of world events, but that is no longer the case. The minds of today that meander through the maze of thought have no guidance and risk losing themselves in delusion.

These guideposts of thought were once called morals and values, but those who were lost in the maze of delusion desired that others join with them and they diligently eradicated these markers in order to snare the unwary. That is why you have the likes of Paris Hilton, Rosie O’Donnell, and Brittany Spears being held up as examples for your children to emulate while strongly rebuking your children for judging for themselves what is perverse. In doing so, the perverse has become the norm and the mind cannot find its way back to normalcy.

We have seen this disease spread to every facet of human interaction. Take race relations for example. The NAACP, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson are the most famous spin doctors in regard to race relations. While the NAACP seeks to distort your mind in order to survive as a relevant organization, Sharpton and Jackson are only trying to accumulate wealth. Hence they all play the race card in order to make themselves more important in the daily lives of Americans. What has the NAACP done to better America lately? Other than to propose to honor Michael Vick despite his alleged criminal activity and animal cruelty, they have achieved nothing.

This is true of most organizations. Once they have achieved their purpose they nevertheless continue on as shambling corpses in order to attempt to maintain their relevance to society. Why? Because their members have deluded themselves into believing that they continue to be relevant despite the organization living past its usefulness. Challenge the delusion and you will be met by anger, resentment, and derision. The levels of which are directly proportional to the level of delusion. In this way, we have become a sick society.

Worse, our societal delusions threaten our existence as a society. As we have destroyed morals and virtue, now we have begun dismantling our culture by deluding ourselves that foreign cultures are better. In reality, foreign culture is no better or worse than our own; they are simply different because the social groups are different. By highlighting multiculturalism and diversity, we are in effect emphasizing the differences between people and then pigeonholing them into predefined categories. This is the same evil that multiculturalism and diversity was supposed to defeat, but instead it has propagated it and there is no end in sight because we have deluded ourselves into believing that it works.

The end result has been societal factionalizing, unfair policies both in government and in employment and the fraying of the national will. Yet, the proponents of these efforts will not desist because they sense that they still have the deluded minds of their followers firmly in their control. This is why public school systems have begun to court Islam by facilitating school prayer and installing foot washing stations at taxpayer expense while they vigorously seek to root out Christianity and Judaism in order to destroy them in their institutions. While some may say that this is madness, it is in truth self delusion.

Beware of self delusions, they are far more powerful than they seem and in the end, they will destroy you.

The Watchman

Courting the Devil

There are curtains in this world. Some separate the world of the living from that of death, others good from evil, and still others keep the distance between ignorance and truth. While many of the veils of the world can be penetrated, others can only be shoved aside when it is time for them to allow passage. Perhaps that is why man is notoriously shortsighted, only rarely looking past his own nose. That his shortsightedness has cost him dearly almost goes without saying. Yet we still use human lives to see if we need to place a traffic control signal at an intersection rather than spare the families of would be fatalities an unnecessary death.

The curtain between good and evil has rent and darkness is once again rushing forward to trouble the world. That such things occur is really nothing to worry about if you catch them early, but if left too long unattended, the results can be catastrophic and I mean that in the full sense of the word. It is difficult to imagine rivers of blood, but even without that darkness man is fully capable of spilling copious amounts of blood. During the last century, over 114 million people were butchered for political reasons. Far fewer were killed at the D day landing and the surf was sanguine for hours, 114 million would make an inland sea of blood. Worse, the great evil of the Nazis only accounted for slightly over six million slaughtered while the lesser evils of man butchered an additional 109 million souls.

That is the true price of great evil, initially it causes great suffering and death, but the lesser evils it hides are far more terrible. If one examines history you can see this pattern repeating over and over again. While a perpetual motion machine is impossible, a perpetual cycle of human behavior is inevitable unless the underlying causes are changed. We must forgo the apathy and shortsightedness of human nature so that we can challenge evil early and stop it before an even greater harm comes to pass. Unfortunately, when one recognizes evil, you either accept responsibility for opposing it or become its silent ally. That the darkness is coming is undeniable. So how will you decide?

The Watchman