Honor

A few years ago a friend asked if I could define honor.  I gave it a good deal of thought then, and address the topic again here after a bit more consideration…

It’s easy to start with a basic definition—“personal integrity”—from one dictionary or another.  It isn’t easy, however, to then define integrity.  With my students I tackle these abstract notions with a T-chart and a discussion of what honor or integrity would look or sound like. It makes it more concrete:  What does honor look like?  What does it sound like?  Applications are always fun.

A classic definition of honor would come from the chivalric codes of the Middle Ages.  That being said, only those who were from the upper classes were expected to have honor or even be able to attain it.  This is why some of the characters from the tales of Robin Hood, for example, (and the stories themselves) were so popular with common people, but still the hero is of noble birth—Robin of Locksley was the son of a Saxon lord in most stories.  With the advent of the American democracy, however, and our quest to establish the rights and responsibilities of the individual, comes the idea that all men/people are not only created equal but that they should also be honorable.

It is difficult to define a notion such as this when it is so easy to pick out examples of what is dishonorable among even the "best" people.  When our national leaders—political, religious, sports and entertainment stars—are found to be the foulest of criminals and lechers, most people, young people in particular, are apt to say that there is no honor in this country or in humanity.  Trying to define it is one thing, and instilling a sense of it in high school or college age people is daunting!

But the definition. . . mine, at least:

Honor is of the individual.  It can not be a group virtue.  A group of honorable people is a wonderful and powerful thing, but history has always shown these groups to be only as strong as the individual honor of its members.   Honor is honesty, bravery, trustworthiness—recite the Boy Scout oath.  An honorable person has a conscience and understands the many different manifestations of Good and Evil and chooses always to be a champion of the Good, a model of what is Right, even when no one but he/she knows of his/her choice.  It's as simple as driving the speed limit or waiting on a traffic light to turn green at four in the morning in a town with only one light.  The hard tests are easier to understand:  Refusing to "help" a buddy on a test.  Telling the underage friend that he/she will have to settle for a Coke when the keg is sitting right there.  Giving your life for a Good cause, whatever it might be.  These are in the “what does it look like?” category.

I think it might be easier for parents to understand the essence of the definition by just thinking of their children.  What kind of men and women do we want them to be?  What kind of models do we hope we have been for them?  At the same time, for us parens, it is also easier to go the other direction: are we the kind of people our parents hoped we would be?

It’s popular to sport bumper stickers asking, "What would ___________ do?"  Insert Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc.  To apply this to the definition of honor, think about what makes those people role models.  What makes them honorable?

The kicker: if you model your life after an honorable person, “so what?”  What difference will this make.  Look how most of them ended up.

That’s the personal aspect of true honor again, though.  I don’t think an honorable person is honorable or does honorable things to impress others.  They do these things simply because it is honorable to do them.

It will be interesting to see (if I’m around that long) who among our current famous folk will be considered to have been models of integrity.  My guess is that most people will look closer to home for their role models…somewhere among the average people who steadfastly go about their daily lives, not thinking about impacting a state or nation or world but simply seeing that those they care about are safe and loved, doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do.  Imagine what a nation of people like that could be for the world….

Out of the Country

We moved to the city about eleven years ago (apologies to my friends in LA and New York) so we could take advantage of all of the things we kept coming here to enjoy.  I don’t think we’ll ever completely work the country out of our souls, however.  Living almost fifty years in small towns makes it hard to “erase” those conditionings.

Don’t get me wrong.  We were ready for a change.  The boys were both out of high school.  I needed to change jobs.  We were looking to the future (retirement looked like it would be possible much earlier then).  It seemed like we headed to Omaha every weekend anyway for shopping or the theatre or a concert or something.  I thought I’d be in heaven with all the golf courses from which to choose!

It is nice to have friends and relatives come and “vacation” with us now and then.  We’ve been in the right place as emergencies have arisen and family members have ended up in the hospitals here.  Both boys are here, and now we have two grandsons, as well.  It’s nice to be close.  We do get to the movies once in a while and enjoy the opportunities and variety for shopping.  Everything we think we need is nearby.  We typically go out to hear live music at least once a week, especially with son Matthew making a name for himself with his songwriting and solid band.

Some things aren’t quite what we had hoped, though.  All of these golf courses cost quite a bit more than the annual membership I was paying for Shenandoah’s great 18-hole course.  All of our friends are back there, too, and although we see them fairly often, there aren’t the drop-in visits or spur-of-the-moment get-togethers that were so much fun (especially on football Saturdays!).

One of the things that I’ve been noticing more and more lately is the noise.  I miss the “quiet” of small towns and countrysides.  Sitting on my deck now I hear the emergency sirens of the fire station a couple of blocks away and the roar of tires on West Maple Street…tens of thousands of tires each day—and night.  These are the sounds that have replaced the morning bird songs and coyotes’ midnight yelpings, foxes’ barking, or owls’ hooting.

I don’t know if we can find an in between.  The reasons we came here are still good reasons, and they become moreso the older we are.  I’d hate to be even another half hour away from our grandsons.  We’re already going to T-ball games this summer.  I’ll just have to make more time to visit the many parks in the area and make the reverse trip back to the country now and then…and the Welcome mat is always out for family and friends.  I guess I’ll go feed the birds and sit on the deck.  Come join me.

“Lest We Forget”

The following is a sort of memoir I wrote some time back.  I've been to DC many times and always make it a point to visit the VietNam Memorial.  This is a combination of thoughts and experiences from those many visits.  I decided Memorial Day was a good time to share it with you.

"Lest We Forget"

The black wall draws me each time.  Despite the fullness of emotion that inevitably brings tears to my eyes, I cannot stay away.  Too much of me—my generation, my country, and its future—carved in the growing rows of names demands the same silent recognition, pride, and frustration that I see in those, like me, who come to stand and weep.  I have tried to honor those who served and died and not be overcome, but I always fail.  The depth of that scar in the earth and the nation’s soul is too much for me; I shiver in despair at the loss it represents.  Whether late at night, in the brightest summer afternoon, or in cold rain or snow, the shining glory of unselfish sacrifices listed there demand of me a pride and strength of will that keep me coming back.

I first visited the Vietnam Memorial one sunny spring morning.  Cherry blossoms bloomed; the city showed off its best look.  The country was in the midst of economic boom, and everyone enjoyed life. I had taken the afternoon off from meetings to do some sight seeing.  After a quick look at the Lincoln Memorial, I started down the walk, following a crowd of other noisy tourists.  We jostled and joked and enjoyed ourselves.

The closer we drew to the edge of that ebony stone, the quieter we became.  Soon voices were nothing more than part of the quiet murmurs of the wind in nearby trees and the background noise of city traffic.  I walked farther, watching different people gather there under the spell of reverence for the growing expanse of the Wall.

A wide-eyed little girl in cornrows and pigtails held her mother’s hand. “Nanna, is that Grandpa’s name?”  The sobbing woman knelt before the Wall.  Three grieving women, young and old, offered sorrow and a handful of flowers.  The air was heavy with the scent of lilies, roses, lilac, and cherry blossoms already placed against the Wall that morning.

Nearby, a graying veteran in old fatigues wept audibly.  From his wheelchair, he drew himself erect to salute his fallen comrades.  A silent file of onlookers passed, their sympathy a physical presence.

School-uniformed teenagers under the sad, watchful eyes of their teacher, made pencil rubbings of names.  One boy whispered to a nearby friend, “Dad says I’m just like Uncle Mike.  I never knew him, but he was only three years older than I am when he died . . . his second tour.”

I gazed at the countless tributes.  Families, small groups of friends, individuals— hundreds passed by the Wall and left behind flowers, Teddy bears, notes, cards, letters, photographs, medals, rings . . . memories . . . innocence, and, most of all, tears.  The Wall is a place for personal grief.

Black granite panels rise out of the ground on the east and west and meet in the center at a height of more than ten feet: an alphabetical listing of 58,235 fathers and sons and brothers, and eight mothers and daughters and sisters—an entire generation —lost.  The first names in the center honor Major Dale R. Buis and Master Sergeant Chester M. Ovnand, U.S. servicemen killed in the 1959 attack at Bienhoa.  They were originally recognized as the first to die.  Then in 1983, a year after the Wall was dedicated, Army Captain Harry C. Cramer was added.  Captain Cramer died on October 21, 1957, in a training action.  Also in the center is the last panel, where the list of names continues to grow.  Veterans succumb thirty and forty years later to the war’s silent killers.

The long list from 1968 includes those who graduated from high school when I did, and in the last years of the war, those who might have been my friends from college.  PFC Douglas Beckman, my sister-in-law’s cousin, was turning around a troubled life, but stepped on a mine in Quang Tri and lost his chance.  Captain Wayne McConkey, a reservist from Shenandoah, Iowa, where we raised our sons, died when his helicopter was shot down and didn’t get to see his daughter become a person who would make him proud.  Captain Mary Klinker enlisted to help the children and died when her transport plane went down while evacuating orphans from Saigon following the truce.

I’ve been back to the Wall many times since then.  I can’t stay away when I’m in the capital.  If I don’t have time to visit anywhere else, I make time to go there.  I feel as if I’m living their lives as well as mine, and do the best I can to remember the debt I owe.  Each time I visit, each step along that 493-foot headstone is painful.  When I see the names and think of the loss, when I see the others who come, I remember . . . and let the tears fall.

Call of the Wild

I like wolves. They’re sophisticated pack animals with a complex society. They take care of one another—the old are respected and supplied with their needs when they can no longer hunt for themselves. The old teach the young the survival skills they will need and, when the pack has overextended its range, they help the young find new territories and establish themselves. Occasionally the old pack and the new run into one another. Their late night songfests fill the forests with ancient music—the call of the wild.


I like to think that my affinity for canis lupus goes even further and I share an animistic association with this ubiquitous, worldly predator. I would love to have that kind of connection to the natural world. It’s probably a reason I like some science fantasy and shamanistic religions. I’m not a fan of lycanthropy, however. The contortions of the werewolf are different from the more spiritual transformations, which are not cruel shape-changing but a sharing of essence, a sort of higher order connection with the natural world. Of course, that is an example of the human egoism that places the human “animal” on a higher plane than the other beasts. Animism also assumes a spiritual consciousness in the non-human animals. It’s all a complicated philosophy. If you don’t think about it too much as a religious practice, though, and merely a blending of spirits, what fantastic mental meanderings can occupy a fertile imagination!

I used to sit for hours in the woods of the river bluffs around my home and look out over the river valleys. I would imagine myself loping easily along in an effortless gait, aware of everything around me. I hear the red tail hawk floating high above as he adjusts each feather in the wind. A vole is digging furtively just beneath the surface, making his blind way through the roots of the tall grasses. My belly is full, so I don’t stop at the spasmodic hammering of the rabbit’s heart as he cowers in the brush nearby. The sun is warm. The world is mine, and I am the world’s. With involuntary joy I lift my head and sing.

It’s imagining a better world, too. The wolf’s territory is never more than can sustain the pack, and the size of the pack is adjusted to the territory and what it can sustain, changing with the foibles of nature: weather, disease, age, available game. There is no waste. Or war. Or wantonness. Even the struggle for life is peace. Some people don’t understand or have a real appreciation for the world of tooth and claw. It’s egoism again, I think. We feel more sophisticated than my shadowy gray friends because we don’t pull down our enemies with our jaws fastened around their throats. On the other hand, wolves and the other animals don’t have enemies—there is only hunter and prey—except for man.

Philosophy again. This old wolf would rather just keep it simple. Breathe deep. Listen closely. Feel the warm hope of the sun, or the life in the rain, or the cold peace of wind and snow, and the comfort of home and the “pack”…and sometimes, when the moon is full, just step outside and howl!

Six Pomegranate Seeds

I’m always excited by snowfall.  By the first of October I’m straining at the window like a little kid to see the first flake fall.  The science of snow is amazing to me, but watching it fall and cover the earth, changing the landscape, creating new designs in nature…that’s thrilling.  I tell people that I was born in a snowstorm on the first day of winter.  Actually, that’s true.  The result of that auspicious beginning, according to my story, is that I love snow; my favorite environment is 27° and snowing.  I’ve been out in all types of snowfall, from the soft, large flakes that look like pieces of cloud floating gently to earth, to the crystal “throwing stars” that seem when driven by 45 mph winds to slice with ease through an LLBean parka, wind-guard vest, wool sweater, flannel shirt, and both layers of thermal and polypropylene underwear.  If I’m ready for it, I like every extreme.

One of the reasons that I appreciate this miracle is that it doesn’t really happen very often.  We don’t get many white Christmases no matter how many times we sing the song.  I’ve been “in school” for 54 years, so snow days are precious to me and always seem as rare as white buffalo.  After so many years, it’s a toss-up whether I like snowy days because I enjoy being out in the elements, or that one of my favorite things is sitting by the fire with a cup of coffee and a good book while the snow falls outside my window.

Years ago I developed a love for Greek mythology.  Some of the explanations for why things occur as they do in Nature are pretty funny, some are too far-fetched even for myth, yet others strike a chord in me with their complexity and beauty of theme.  Naturally, I was drawn to the story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone.  These two are like the middle of a spider web with filaments of attachment to other stories going in all directions.  Central for me, of course, was Persephone’s kidnapping by Hades and Demeter’s resulting rage.  I think the myth explains more than why we have six months of winter.  That first cold spell described by the story must surely be an explanation for the Ice Age.  No one knows for sure why it started or why it ended.  Someone stealing my child would make me want to freeze the buds off the olive trees, too.

This year I’ve been thinking often of Demeter and Persephone and Hades and the gang as I’ve watched the snow pile up over and over since the first week of December.  The October storm was a surprise…the kind I like.  I thought of Demeter pining for Persephone.  Her only child was gone, dragged into the Underworld by the ruler of the dead.  Awful!

The three days of vacation before Christmas were quite welcome.  I could hear Zeus pleading with Demeter to thaw things out.  The whole world was frozen over.  Nothing was growing as the Earth Mother pined for her daughter.

Then came the three days at Christmas that kept us from getting together with the whole family.  Persephone was sitting there, ignoring Hades and refusing to eat.  We had so much turkey and dressing left over that I’d love to have shared it with her since our sons barely made it and my brothers and their wives were snowed in miles and miles away.

Then we got three days that kept us from ending first semester on time.  She was getting hungry; Demeter was listening to Zeus, but she still refused to budge.  What’s her problem?  She can go visit.  I’ve got work to do!

Then I think we had a couple more days that kept us from starting second semester on time.  Zeus brokered a deal and made his offer to Hades.  If Persephone had eaten anything, she had to stay in the Underworld.  Are you kidding?  She’s a goddess!  Why should she need to eat anything, let alone pomegranate seeds!

The combination of all those days off caused us to lose two planned vacation days and add 20 minutes to the school day.

All I could think by then was, SPIT OUT THE DAMNED SEEDS!!

I still like snow, but I’ve had enough for now.

Young Woman

I see you standing there at the counter. You’re obviously bored since you’re with your brother. Out for a drive, killing time, seeing what Fate has in store for you.

I can’t take my eyes off of you. Everything about you shines. Your laugh echoes off the marble floor and high ceilings and makes even the ghosts dance behind the cobwebs in the corner. Outside new snowfall reflects a late January sun; your smile blinds me to everything else in the room and takes my breath away.

My future seems to radiate from you. You haven’t seen me yet, so I sit and smile to myself, feeling the reality of my dreaming. I memorize the pattern of the braid in your hair and the line of your jaw and the strength of your will. Why do I remember your kisses so many years from now?

I see you standing there and eavesdrop on your conversation. You’re not sure. Maybe. Why return? What is here for you?

Me. And you smile when I say your name and you recognize me, an old friend, a diversion for now, but there is something else there. I can see it in your eyes that you see it, too, and you reach out, as I do, and our fingers seem to touch tomorrow, and I hug you and it feels like I’m holding everything I ever thought I could be and I ache for your approval.

And then you’re gone, for now, but you promise to return and I don’t breathe for waiting, my life on hold just to see you again….

I see you standing there at the counter. Your laugh is the music that makes my heart dance. And there—in the love of your smile—our grandsons grow.

Do Overs

When we were kids, one of the best things about the games we played with Mom and Dad was the “Do Over.”  Baseball never had only three strikes.  Your move in checkers wasn’t over when you lifted your hand off the checker.  Realizing you had just played the wrong card meant you could pick it up and try again.  We were learning the rules even as Mom and Dad ignored them for us.  We still lost games and learned to deal with our mistakes and our failures.  The older we became, the more we played by the rules, but it always seemed like games with our parents were more fun and we won more often than they did.  Eventually the “Do Over” became more important in real life than it was in our games.  Still, we could count on Mom and Dad for that second or third (or fourth or fifth) chance.

Some of those Do Overs were pretty expensive: a crushed fender on the car (or a total loss!), a speeding ticket, dropping a class, a changed major (or college), out-of-hand credit card charges, bounced checks….  Late night calls home brought calm and reassurance and the encouragement that the next time—the Do Over—was a sure thing.

It was even easier to change major life decisions with help from Home. Who was there with the best advice when your heart was broken (again)?  Who listened to your plans and tried to help the dreams become realities, and then understood when it seemed the whole castle came crashing down or you decided once more to go in another direction?

When I become a parent and crossed over to the other side of that Do Over equation, I gained not only a much different perspective but a much greater appreciation for what I put my parents through, and how much I owe them!  I can only hope that I have been as much help to my sons as my mom and dad were for me.

One of the things about those Do Overs that I came to fully understand as a parent: home was the one place I could count on for unconditional love…no matter what I did.  Oh, I was often reminded that I was in the wrong or had done something really stupid, but that never meant my parents didn’t love me.  I was always sure of that.

If my sons know anything for sure, I hope it is that—as long as I live—they will always be loved and always have a place to call home.  With Mom and Dad, there is always a Do Over.

Speaking of Do Overs:  Happy New Year!