Brookfield Basics

I wrote of Lake Michigan last month and am only now getting back to the topic.

In my first blog (http://blogs.brookfieldnow.com/brookfieldbasics/archive/2007/10/18/the-coming-battle-over-miss-ken.aspx) I wrote of my feelings for "Missi-Ken".  I acknowledge my lack of objectivity on the subject, for she is one of the great loves of my life.  But the general issue of water is more clinical.

In America today we use and treat water as if it is an inexhaustible resource - it is not.  The average Brookfielder uses more clean water in a day than millions use in a week; wasting water is almost a cultural hallmark of Americans.  This will not continue without consequence.

A town in Tennessee recently ran out of water - literally.  Their spigots simply ran dry, the result of extended drought and a water-wasting citizenry.  Large portions of the southeast are grappling with the same combination of drought and water use.  

As for public policy, has anyone noticed that amidst our politically driven jihad to ethanol-ize every drop of fuel we produce, that the production of this fuel requires four gallons of water for every one gallon of gasoline yielded?  There have been few more misguided legislative efforts in recent years than the ethanol craze.  It has spawned enormous inflation in our food prices, more expensive and less efficient fuel, greater overall consuption of fuel, and a big one that Madison did not consider - a new and significant strain on our already stressed Midwestern water tables. 

And what is our political solution to all of this?  A thirsty nation turns its predatory eyes to the Great Lakes and claims, "they belong to us".  Well - the Great Lakes "belong" to America no more so than does the oil beneath the plains of West Texas, Oklahoma, and Alaska.  Water in general, and Lake Michigan in particular are ENORMOUS issues relative to the economic well being of this State and this region. It's time to become more conscious of this issue and its importance.  And it is long past time to begin some reasonable, self-imposed measures relative to conservation. 

Let's let our use of water reflect its value.  The market will eventually force us to do that, but it would be nice if we could get there on our own, before it imposes more draconian measures.  

The Holiday we know as Thanksgiving has two foundations in our nation's history.

The first lies in the autumn of 1621.  The people we know as the Pilgrims gathered to give thanks for having survived their first winter in North America, and for the liberties they enjoyed upon coming to this continent. 

The second lies in the year 1863, as our country was locked in the crucible of the Civil War and mourned the 55,000 casualties of Gettysburg.  Just a few months after that battle, President Abraham Lincoln issued a Proclamation which served to establish this day as a National Holiday.

Here is a brief look back on both events.  From the Journal of Nathaniel Morton of Plymouth Colony we read:

"Being now passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before them in expectations, they had now no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses or towns to repair unto to seek help.  And for the season it was winter, and they that know of the winters of this country know them to be sharp and violent".

And in November of 1863, reflecting on two and a half years of horrific conflict, Abraham Lincoln penned this closing stanza to his Thanksgiving Proclamation:

"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no nation has ever grown.  Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to claim this necessity of reclaiming and preserving grace.  It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole of the American people.  I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, to set apart and observe the last Thursday in November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father".

It was the Pilgrims whose magnificent courage and modest conventions established the traditions that we now know as Thanksgiving.  Two hundred and forty two years later, it was Lincoln who institutionalized this Holiday, and wove it into the fabric of our national life and consciousness.

Amongst many other things this Thursday, I will give thanks for the heritage these people left.  I wish you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving.

**The title of this piece was taken from a Sergio Leone movie of the same name.

I always think of four names on November 11: Bud, Andy, Cornel, and Eugene, my father, father-in-law, and two uncles respectively.  They all fought in World War Two, and thankfully, they all came back.  Three of them are gone now, heroes to our country and certainly to me.  My father-in-law's uniform from Patton's Third Army hangs in our closet.  We take it out on days like this to remember him, reflect on what his generation did, and to talk with our kids of these things. 

After them I recall the stunning images in the opening scenes of the movie Saving Private Ryan.  Spielberg's craft is at its height with the panoramic sweep of the American cemetery at Normandy.  The enormous, over-arching American flags lofting in the Channel fed breezes and keeping vigil over her sons, silently express a level of human emotion for which even Skakespeare might have been inadequate.

We celebrate Veterans Day on November 11 because that was the date of the Armistice which ended World War One in 1918.  This day was known as Armistice Day until 1954, when President Dwight Eisenhower and Congress, wishing to more specifically recognize the millions of World War Two and Korean Veterans, changed its name to Veterans Day.

World War One was the first "modern" war and its carnage was unprecedented.  In London and Paris, trains unloaded the wounded at night to keep the horrific scenes from the pubilc.  Siegfried Sassoon, a decorated British infantry officer wrote of a generation of young men who, "shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side, slowly trudged away from life's broad wealds of light".   At the War's end France was pulverized, England was bankrupt, and Russia was Communist.  Germany was little more than a cinder, a land of darkness and starvation.   And as silence fell over the apocolyptic ruin, an Austrian Corporal named Adolf Hitler lay wounded in a field hospital, psychosis already creeping into his fevered mind.

In the immortal words of Winston Churchill, silence fell "on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month".  A towering statesman whose vision was measured in decades, he rejoiced in the end of the bloodshed, but was deeply troubled.  His journal entry that night reflected his fear:

"As Big Ben tolled I looked out my window and saw the drizzle of Empires falling through the air.  Scarcely anything I had been taught to believe had lasted.  And everything I thought to be impossible had happened".

He went on from there and predicted the great political and cultural vacuum that would ensue.  Into the vacuum would step that Austrian Corporal, and just twenty-one years after that first Armistice Day, Hitler would plunge civilization into World War Two.  And Churchill would be there to meet him.  Armed with nothing more than his indomitable courage and soaring prose, the great statesman would rally the free world to resist and ultimately defeat the Nazi Fuhrer.

And for standing up to Hitler and his ilk, I say "thank you" to Bud, Andy, Cornel and Gene.  I say "thank you" to all who have served.  And I say "thank you" to those who serve today.

To paraphrase Isaiah - as for me and my house, we will shall not forget you.   

Did he repeat to himself as he broke huddle for that last play, what he had told us so long ago at the press conference called to announce his entry into a rehab. program - "don't bet against me".

We are a nation whose obsession with sports is embarassing.  But at its best, and when played by its best, sports are a microcosm of life, and can often encourage the best that is within us, as well as things we may lament.

Professional athletes astound us with their physical skill, courage and toughness.  But from the ranks of the great emerge those chosen few who transcend their sport, and become part of our social fabric.  Brett Favre is one of those, and such performers leave us with images that are burned into the eye of our collective consciousness.  As I watched him Monday night, I recalled a few of those images from my lifetime:

The red and white boot tassles of Muhammad Ali, bouncing and jangling as he danced hs way around the Madison Square Garden ring in the first of his three epic battles with "Smokin Joe" Frazier.  He came of age at the height of the Civil Rights movement.  The greatest boxer in history, he was as polarizing a figure as he was gifted.

Jack Nicklaus striding purposefully up the rise of the 18th fairway at Augusta National, the late afternoon sun glinting off of his steel-shafted clubs and "Golden Bear" mane.  Has any champion ever worn the mantle of success, wealth and fame more graciously than he?  And as great as he was, his finest legacy is that of father and husband.

Barry Sanders, my pick for greatest running back of all time, and a reminder to Packer fans of "what might have been" - a backfield with both he AND Brett Favre in it.   Every so often I pop in a tape and watch in slack-jawed wonder as Sanders left the greatest athletes in the NFL in his wake, groping the empty air where they THOUGHT he would be.  A Lion ON the field - a gentleman and a lamb off of it.

Wayne Gretzky rushing over the ice like the wind, his hair flowing out behind his # 99 Edmonton Oilers jersey, and his befuddled opponents gasping as he danced past them.  "The Great One" was the most dominant performer in the history of team sports; his statistics stagger the imagination.  He remains a beloved national icon in Canada, and like Nicklaus, a better family man than he was an athlete.

Magic Johnson's smile.  His size at the point-position changed the game, and his uninhibted glee and charisma lifted an entire sport.  His cross-country rival Larry Joe Bird, who along with Magic, saved the NBA.  I see him holding the ball with one hand, and pointing to the spot on the floor he would go to take the winning shot.  Then doing it, and walking off the court with the comfortable self-assurance reserved to those who can accomplish such things, his vanquished opponents staring in stunned disbelief.

And of course our beloved #4 - a champion, and the sport's only three time MVP.  So many images of Brett come to mind, but surely the lasting one will be his unfetterd joy as he races downfield to embrace his teammates, often shouldering the astonished receiver for an unabashed romp on the sidelines.  One imagines he did the exact same thing in the fifth grade.

But as great as he has been on the field, he has been larger still off it, as we watched him overcome multiple personal tragedies and a drug addiction.  And we have seen him maintain focus on his greatest prizes: Deanna and his daughters.

More than any one thing Brett Favre is an American original, and has remained  true to his nickname "Country" after nearly twenty years in the white-hot crucible of wealth, fame and adoration.       

With Brett Favre we have been doubly fortunate -to watch him, and to watch him play for our team.