The Greater Cause

As we wind down the last of the work week prior to the 4th of July weekend, I would like to remind you, through a wonderful piece written by Ben Stein on August 9, 2004, there's something greater out there. Enjoy the time you spend with your family and friends this weekend at picnics, concerts, firework displays and remember; there are many serving a greater cause that will not get those same opportunities this weekend. My challenge for you to discover what is your duty? Your highest and best use as a human being? I hope this article will inspire you as it did me. And, THANK YOU to those already serving that greater cause!

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means Iput a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "FINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end. It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it.

On a small scale, Morton's [famous restaurant which was often frequented by Hollywood stars], while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a manor woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives ininsane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.

A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject SaddamHussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world. A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him. A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with apiece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists. We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but standon guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject. There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament....the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive. The orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery, the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children, the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards. Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse.

Now you have my idea of a real hero. We are not responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a fiction, and when we turn over our lives to Him, he takes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves. In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin--or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman, or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them. But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis, into a coma, and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Jane's Addiction

It's one of those that sneaks up on you. You're minding your own business and there it is tapping you on the shoulder. The good thing about this addiction is that I love it! I love my addiction. At least this one isn't bad for me, won't contribute to bad health or make me lose my friends. My addiction (at least for this entry) is shoes. I actually just spent the last few minutes taking pictures of my new shoes to share with you. That's how much I love them!

I hate it when you love the shoes in the store and you get them home and say, what the hell was I thinking? But not these. These are the "pizza toe" variety of shoe as my friend Stacey likes to call them. The ones that you could actually injure someone with. The kind you can squash bugs in a corner with. Or just look totally fabulous with! Just when our feet regained conciousness from back in the 80's with the pointy toed shoes, they're back again!

You may see my shoe addiction as wasteful, frivolous, ridiculous, or stupid. And, that's o.k. because you only know half the story. I have 37 pairs of sneakers, sandles, flip flops etc. hanging on my shoe rack at the moment. And, that's just the summer shoes. Can I tell you how scary it is when the shoe rack finally snaps in the middle of the night? Very! It's very scary!

Doesn't it just make you feel better to go out and buy something for yourself? And don't you feel just a little bit better about yourself the day you wear the new item? I say spend it if you've got it...and if you haven't got it well, that's what charge cards are for!

For your viewing pleasure:

Hi and welcome to the premier edition of Graven Images. The purpose to this blog is to display my photographs which is still under construction. My photographic interests are pretty diverse but I have developed a series of cemetery photographs from the U.S. and France, thus the name. But I will explain more on that once it is developed. So, for now, I will take this time to bore you with some details.

I'm a part-time student at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, PA. My major is Art-History. My day job is doing mainly occupational training for a health insurance company. I have two cats; Lester (the guy with the stripes on the right below) and Miss Adeline (the black girl on the left below...in my sink).
I enjoy among the other items listed on my profile: sun, water, biking, tennis, and porch drinking, which is an entire entry unto itself.

As my profile says, I love music...just about any kind. I guess you could say, "I'm a little bit country, and I'm a little bit rock n' roll." And, if you understand that, well, you probably grew up on Donnie and Marie like I did.

Speaking of music, last night I saw Mark Knopfler at the Mann Music Center, Philadelphia, PA. This is a great venue located within Fairmount Park. The show was really good. The man can certainly play guitar! He's one of those that has an extremely talented band an his guitar playing is completely effortless.

I love concerts and will pretty much go to any show. The history of shows I've seen in the last few months are: James Taylor, The Outlaws, Psychedelic Furs, Morrissey, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and kd Lang. Because of where I live in PA, I have easy access to Baltimore, Philadelphia, NYC and everywhere in between.

I guess that's a wrap for now. Check back as I get things updated, thanks for stopping by!