It is amazing

The wick on my green candle has a bulbous piece of carbon on the top of it. This seems strange. I have yet to figure out exactly how the wick of a candle operates. Any technical or scientific description would be most appreciated.

I actually got to start doing some ‘real’ work today. My phone was finally installed and I started calling. My job entails calling people that have diseases allegedly related to asbestos and finding out exactly when, where and how they were exposed. The few people I spoke with foreshadowed the boredom and sadness that seems sure to follow. First call: voicemail, “Hi this is R__ B___ with W__ and L___. This message is for X regarding your asbestos claim that our firm is handling for you. At your convenience, if you could call me back at 800—so I might speak with you regarding you job history it would be greatly appreciated.” Second call: actually spoke to this woman in AR who is convinced that asbestos was all around her when she put cameras together. I am somewhat suspect of her claim—she is a spot sick but she also has smoke 2.5 packs of GPC’s for the last 30 years.

The third call relates more to the sadness I think that I might actually encounter. It was a guy who has never smoked, who was 83 years old. An aside: if you smoke and are exposed to asbestos, you have a 90% greater chance of getting some type of cancer or serious illness than people who don’t. Avoid asbestos people. Back to the old man; his wife answers the phone and asks me a million questions, when she finally understands who I am and why I’m calling, she lets me talk to him only because I’m with the firm. He gets on the phone and strikes me as a kind, old, blue collar gentleman. We chat, he has a great memory, remembers job sites and products he used by name—smart guy. He starts telling me how he is getting worse, his lungs only operate at 13% capacity—and then somewhat ashamedly tells me that its not to make me feel bad, “cause [he’ll] be OK” but rather so I can document it. We keep talking about how he became a carpenter at 16 and then was a firefighter for 30 years—the whole time doing construction on the side. Eventually he started building houses on his own. We have to ask if the client was ever in the military, part of the questions you see, since the armed forces were where a ton of these people were exposed. So I ask. His response was intriguing, “sadly, I never joined.” Those four words told me a lot about who he was, what he stood for and what he believed. Moreover, it encapsulated something I already understood. My generation is completely different than those twice removed from me. Not better, not worse, but different.

The thing that struck me was how quietly he uttered the phrase, as if it was something to be ashamed of. Who knows what this man’s politics are or what he feels about whatever is going on domestically or abroad, but one thing for sure, is that part of his identity is tied up in the fact that he didn’t serve for his country and thus he didn’t do something he should have—somehow you could sense that he felt less a man. I could tell him he was wrong, but was an argument I could never win. His sense of duty and honor is completely different than my own. Or is it?

Duty and honor must be somewhat situational, they must be somewhat determined by outside factors and attitudes of the day. Additionally, they are tied up in one’s upbringing, one’s education and one’s individual world view.

If the world today was as his world was then, there’s a good chance I might feel the same way.

But I don’t. The world is different, geopolitics is different, yet, there are still very real lessons to learn from long ago and not so long ago. While I will never join the military and will never feel bad for not doing so, neither my decision nor anyone who makes the same decision should be questioned on matters of patriotism or love for one’s country.

Almost universally it is agreed that WWII was a right and just cause to get involved in. Through the purview of history, society can understand that the world is a better place for standing up to tyranny and the insatiable desire for power and possession. This world is not the same place. The insatiability of leaders of nations, of man has been replaced, no—augmented, by the insatiability of corporate greed. It is not just the greed of the few that dictates the irrational now; it is the greed of the many. The many, though, have a variety of faces, colors and even nationalities. This is what now dictates the world and decisions of leaders of humankind. Yet, even as blame is placed where it is most deserved, is this not somewhat hypocritical? Don’t you and I everyday partake and reap the benefits of this greed in some small sense? What is the solution, has the western world become too big, too populous, and too accustomed to its way of living to solve the problem on its own? Is it even a problem that can be solved? These questions transcend politics and live in the realm of humanity. They are not weighted on one side or the other. They are neither painted red nor blue, and they do not bear the emblem of an ass or an elephant.

There is a new documentary I want to see—maybe I’ll go this weekend and catch a matinee, NYC style ($10.25)

Also, Remember.