One Word: Liberty

Blogger's Note: One nice thing about stealing your dad's blog posts is that chances are he will forgive you and even less that he'll sue. 

Once again in the mad rush of mid-life and a 24-news cycle covered with diminishing resources, I have struggled to find the time to contemplate something worth saying on Independence Day, this despite my intense interest in that period of history.

The calendar is an unforgiving mistress and I despaired of coming across something, or thinking of something, before the fateful day.

Then, as he did on Memorial Day, my dad came through. 

My oft-used blog photo of my dad.

I suppose I could just link to his blog, "Completely Out of My Mind," which I just have on the left. I would suggest, in a completely biased and subjective way, that you should read his other posts. He is a wonderful writer and offers a perspective I haven't often come across in Pottstown.


But it's a holiday. You have a parade to watch, meat to grill and fireworks to see, so I've made it easy for you (and, admittedly, for me) by just pasting his post here for easy viewing.


It's one of life's ironies that those who appreciate liberty the most, are often those who have struggled in its pursuit, more so than those born beneath its blessings. 

Think about Ivan the next time your knee jerks and you view immigration policy as a black and white issue.


June 30, 2012:

We were in Budapest, the last stop on our trip down the Danube, and we went to a small museum there devoted to the art of Southeast Asia. The collection had been put together by a Hungarian diplomat who had spent a large part of his life representing his country in Asia and had slowly accumulated pieces of mostly Buddhist and Hindu art, extraordinary pieces, many of them solid gold or silver, beautifully wrought, very powerful, and, with the Buddhist art, very serene. He had then given them to his country, to the world, by establishing this small museum, the size of a house, putting his name on it--Istvan Zelnick--and opening it seven days a week. It brought to mind many questions, but one prevailed: what is it like to look calmly on the wrack of the world, its tragedies, its messiness, its beauty, and not be touched by desire? Because that is the Buddhist ideal.

I wish I knew the answer; but wishing is useless. Truth is, I don't want much any more. Things, even books, don't interest me as much as they used to. All I really want is time--time to finish my work, or what I see as my work; time to write, to garden, to publish a few more poems, one or two more books of my own. Time, of course, is running out. But I am not even close to the Buddhist version of enlightenment.

István Zelnik Southeast Asian Gold Museum. Bupadpest

We were almost alone in the museum; only one other couple was there. They were, I thought, a German couple. I overheard the man, who was elderly, speaking German to his wife. After we had finished looking at the exhibits we went outside to the tea garden in the back, ordered some iced tea--it turned out to be bottled, and made in America--Arizona tea--and sat by a waterfall. We took some pitcures. Then the husband of the other couple approached us and asked in English if we would like him to take our picture together. We would, he took it, and we got to talking. He was not German at all, but his wife was German--thus the overheard conversation. He was in fact Hungarian, they were in Hungary visiting relatives, but he was otherwise an American citizen and lived in Boston. Here is his story.

A statue of Stalin, toppled during the Hungarian uprising.

His name is Ivan and in 1956 he was a college student, three months away from getting his degree in engineering. Then came the Hungarian uprising, brutally crushed by the Soviets, but not before 160,000 people managed to escape the country. He was one of them. People fled to the Austrian border, bribed the Austrian border guards, and at night the Austrians lit bonfires in the woods so that the Hungarian refugees would run in the right direction, and not mistake it and wind up back in Hungary. Once in Austria he spent time in one of the refugee camps and from there applied to various countries to be taken in as an engineering student. Only Germany, he said, guaranteed him a scholarship; so he went to school again there, learned German (that took two years), married his German wife, and finally got his degree. By this time it was 1962.

Fateful year. That was the year of the Cuban missile crisis, brinksmanship taken to the extreme, when all the world trembled on the verge of nuclear holocaust. In Europe, so used to warfare, to being fought over, it looked worse perhaps than it did in the United States, where we thought we were invulnerable. But to Ivan, who had lived under fascism, then under communism, whose life had been dominated by the Cold War, the prospect of yet more warfare was too much. He could not bear the idea of living under communist rule again. "And if I was going to die," he told us, "I wanted to die in America." He had a cousin in America willing to sponsor him and he told his wife, we'll give it a year. If we don't like it I promise you we'll come back.

Once again, then, he had to start over--learn English, particularly the technical English that engineers speak; find a job; try to make a new life for himself and his wife. His first job was as a draughtsman, inking in the drawings of other designers. After that he moved to Pitney-Bowes, designing postage meters. He had never heard of postage meters, he said, but he learned how, he became good at it, and he moved up and on to other, better jobs--in Connecticut, in Ohio, wherever fortune took him. Finally he wound up in Boston, working for himself, as a design consultant, and that's where he lives now. He's 80 years old.

But there was something about him that went beyond this man's successes. Another kind of serenity besides the Buddhist, and the most impressive thing about him. He had achieved that level of simplicity that marks people who know what the important things really are, people who have had to make terrible, fearful choices, who have risked their lives for those things, and struggled to achieve them. People like we Americans used to be, but no longer are.

At the end of his story he looked at us and named the thing he had given up so much to acquire. "I came to America," he said, "for one word: liberty."

We are celebrating July 4 here in Sag Harbor with fireworks tonight, celebrating life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I'll be thinking about Ivan, and what he sacrificed to achieve these things. He didn't come here for money. He came for liberty, to be a free man. I would suggest that he knows better than most what that means, and what it costs.

Memorial Day and Election Day, Both Are Days for Patriots

Photo by Tom Kelly III

This year's Memorial Day services at the Revolutionary
War cemetery at Ellis Woods in East Coventry.

Blogger's Note: So apparently my father and I are of like mind on a number of things, including our tendency to attend Memorial Day parades. 

I was contemplating a blog post on the subject after attending Pottstown's (we have a saxophonist who marched), and then I read what follows. 

"Well, can't improve on that" I thought. 

Anthony S. Brandt

So, in the ultimate act of parental plagiarism, I share it with you here knowing that people don't always follow links, and in the hopes that you'll appreciate it as much as I do. If you would like to read more of his blog posts, his blog, called "Completely Out of My Mind," can be found by clicking here. It's always a good read.

My dad's town is located on the north shore of the
South Fork of the east end of Long Island.

MEMORIAL DAY

May 28, 2012: I've just come from Sag Harbor's annual Memorial Day parade, with its veterans, a few still remaining from World War II, its firemen, the high school band, an honor guard firing blanks (don't bring your dog, folks), and even its celebrity observer, Matt Lauer, who has a weekend home nearby. It's nice to see him there, but it's also nice that Sag Harbor is in New York, and in New York people leave celebrities alone. I generally tear up when taps is played, but I didn't this year. At the end the parade gathers at Marine Park and people give speeches. I don't stay for the speeches, either, or the playing of patriotic songs.

But I am a patriot, and I was thinking about patriotism as I walked home. Saturday night Lorraine and I went to a dinner party where a friend of ours told us that his 26-year-old daughter just couldn't work up any enthusiasm about the election this year. She had been among the millions of young people whose enthusiasm for Barack Obama in 2008 put him in office, but now--well, she wasn't going to volunteer, she might not even vote. The man was such a disappointment. What happened to all the promise, the hope, the return to democratic principles and Democratic policies? Why were the rich still getting off tax free; why didn't the wars come to an end right away, how could he allow off-shore oil drilling, and now, drilling in the Arctic Ocean?! Where was the Obama of the speeches, of his two books? 2008 had been so exciting, such heady stuff. But his actual Presidency was more than a bit of a bust. So why get involved?

The founders knew republics depend on
an active (and informed) citizenry.

It is times like these that one despairs of one's country. When one remembers all the republics that have gone the way of the ancient Roman Republic: Florence, Venice, the Weimar Republic, the Republic of Czechoslovakia, numerous South American republics. The list is long and tragic.

There's nothing about a republic that is immortal. The Founders knew that very well indeed; they understood how fragile they were, that the very idea of a republic required the active participation of educated citizens who understood the issues, because issues are immortal, who debated, campaigned, and who voted. In a republic active participation is not only a right, it is a duty. You have an obligation to get involved. It's not something you do only when a candidate gets you excited and enthusiastic. Citizenship is not a feeling, a high you get out of participating in a great event like the election of the first African-American President. It's the work you do, that you absolutely have to do, if you take your patriotism seriously, if you actually do care about the United States of America and what it stands for. What it stands for in fact is precisely the most basic of the immortal issues that underlie American politics, a fact that is peculiarly germane to American history because it was the first self-made country, the inspiration for so much of the revolution in rights that subsequently transformed the world. For the first time a country announced, at its very formation, that its whole reason for being was to guarantee these rights. Human rights. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and more. If you don't actually fight for your idea of what it stands for you have only yourself--ONLY YOURSELF--to blame if other peoples' views prevail and it turns out to stand for something else entirely.

The bridge over Otter Pond inlet is very historic.

Many years ago, just a few years after we settled into Sag Harbor, the man who owned the house we were renting was trying to decide whether to run for Mayor, and he came to us to ask our advice, and would we help. The issue on that occasion was a bridge over the culvert that connects Otter Pond, at the entrance to the village, to the open bays beyond. The man who was mayor then wanted to rebuild it, and he wanted NYState money to do it with, which meant that it would have to be rebuilt to state standards, and thereby be widened and straightened. It would have made the entrance to the village look like an Interstate ramp. The village was upset over this idea. Sag Harbor is quite beautiful. The entrance to the village sets the tone for the whole place. The election turned out to hinge on the issue of that culvert. Lorraine and I went to strategy meetings, helped form a slate, wrote publicity, started letter-writing campaigns. I did all the radio announcements. And our man won; he took two-thirds of the vote. The culvert was rebuilt in a much more modest way, the road wasn't straightened, the entrance to the village wasn't changed. It's still beautiful.

This is the downtown municipal building, my
dad and step-mother, Lorraine Dusky, helped
to save.

Subsequently we formed a Board of Historic Preservation and Architectural Review, I was its first Chairman, and I served for four years. Lorraine went on the Zoning Board and ultimately became its Chairwoman. I went up against the Mayor when he wanted to sell the Municipal Building, and build a new one on the outskirts of the village next to the new firehouse. We formed a second committe, an ad hoc committee to look into the feasibility of this. We met for six months, every other week. We called in some of the best historic preservation people in the country. I had a lot of help from architects who had homes in the village. They were also good citizens. Turns out the old Municipal Building, built in the 1840s, was a really interesting example of period construction and was basically fine, but it did need some work so we floated a bond issue to get the work done. I wrote copy for that, too, and we won again.

I'm not bragging. You don't brag about doing your duty. But I am proud of that work. It was citizenship; it was a moral obligation. It was also thankless. People questioned our motives, attacked us in print. These were not paid positions. But that's politics. There's always opposition; it's always messy and often dirty. It's even more so on the national level. A president gets elected on the strength of his rhetorical skills and then his enthusiasts, who have drunk the Kool-Aid, are disappointed when the realities of American politics and the viciousness of the fight over what the country stands for sinks in, and he turns out not to be what they thought he was, but a centrist who, bless his level of intelligence, understands that the country is far more complicated than the Left wants to believe and has far more constituencies and interest groups than one can easily imagine. He has not had an easy time. It is not an easy job, and he may not be the perfect man for it.

But he's infinitely preferable to the alternative.

Be a patriot. Get involved in your republic. And vote.

So use your brains, children (because children you are). Twelve years ago a similar attitude--oh who cares? both parties are corrupt, both have sold out to big business--put, what was it, thirty, forty thousand votes, in Florida in the Ralph Nader camp and gave the nation George W. Bush, two wars, one of them built completely of lies, both unfunded, a tripling of the national debt, and 6,000 more soldiers to mourn on Memorial Day. Not to mention the national embarrassment of having an idiot in the White House.

Or don't use your brains, don't get involved, don't campaign, don't care, don't even vote. And what happens next will be YOUR FAULT, and the historians of the future will place the blame on YOU, the shallow generation, for abandoning YOUR republic to its ignoble fate.

Posted by Anthony Brandt, 5/28/12 at 11:01 AM