In recent years, my brother

Memorial Day Services at Olympic Memorial Cemetery in Olympia

John Carney, a Vietnam veteran,
has written a new poem for each
Memorial
Day.  Once again,
we have a poem
he has just
penned and
I'd like to share it.

Memorial Day - 2016 - John Carney

On Memorial Day I think especially  

About the War in Vietnam 

At this time I give some reflection 

About a country that gave a damn

It was not fought in silence

The country was in an uproar

Many argued against it

Not believing what it was for

There were marches even riots

Sit-ins and protests everywhere

Mostly conducted by the young

But most everyone had some care

And the so named “Silent Majority”

Who somehow believed it was right 

It was an obligation and many felt

There was a reason we had to fight

Was it truly just a civil war?

Was communism really our threat?

It was argued over dinner tables

In the papers and on the TV set 

And the generals weren’t sure

How quite to fight such a foe

Making it that much harder 

To believe our forces should go

Those who returned could face scorn

From the most ardent voices opposed

There were no parades and few ceremonies

Supportive songs weren’t being composed

Many came back in silence

Very few stories were being told

The feeling in the country

Was confused and sometimes cold  

To this day I still have some doubt

And arguments still abound

Much is now just opinion

Though some information can be found   

Yet what about South Korea?

And the island of Taiwan?

Was that war and our threat of force

Different than aiding Saigon?

Khrushchev said he’d “Bury Us” 

The “Cuban Missile Crisis” was real

Eastern Europe was locked down

The Soviets showed great zeal

So what did it really matter?

Do we know what it really meant?

Now with Iraq and Afghanistan

New forces have been sent

Yet now days our mindset has changed

The country says thank a Vet

For them there is no blame

More a sense of national debt

But this was not written to re-argue

The merit of that war

That left so many of our young

Dead on a foreign shore

But that maybe it would be better

If everyone could be called to fight

The whole country would feel a duty

To be sure our cause was right

Then the nation as a whole

Would remember those we lost

And take a moment of silence

Noting what it really cost

Memorial Day is the time to pay

For those brothers, now sisters too

And the loved ones they leave behind

The respect and honor they are due

ZEN JOURNAL GUIDES

ZEN JOURNAL GUIDES 

ENTERING THE STREAM

is a new journal writing tool for students of Zen Buddhism to accompany meditation practice with help to explore primary questions for spiritual growth either independently or with a teacher.

Paper or eBook

Online or Local Bookstores

ISBN-13: 978-1507540237

ISBN-10: 150754023X

This is a handy notebook size about the same as a composition book, almost 100 pages, with space to reflect on assigned questions. The book opens with some consideration of the problems of discipline and lifestyle and then moves on to three sections called MEDITATE, LISTEN, WRITE. The chapters are short and lead the journal writer into the material of reflection. If you work with a teacher, this is a good tool for staying on track. If you are new to Zen or you are without a teacher, this is also an excellent tool to lead you through a consideration of questions about Zen practice and Buddhism. You don't have to be a great writer to do some soul searching in the privacy of your workbook.   ENTERING THE STREAM  is the first in a series with succeeding ZEN JOURNAL GUIDES coming out in future months.

A Parish Near Ebbets Field

     I wrote this novel a few years before going to Japan. It's a bucket list publication that I still enjoy, and I wanted to honor some of the writing I've done in the past and to swim in the soup of my Brooklyn origins. 

     Just published in January, this is a funny, tender, and heartrending novel of characters in a Catholic parish in the 1950's in the vicinity of Ebbets Field. The Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field were the heart and fabric of the city in the early 50’s; the parish formed a center of identity for the church faithful; and the church clock tower tolled the rhythms of the day uniting everyone in the intrigues and intricacies of human activity. Echoes of Irish mythology reveal characters that live the social and religious movements of the times in and among the Jewish community in the aftermath of World War II. The characters are wise, foolhardy, humorous, and compassionate. A dual love story is threaded through a tale of an old jealousy among friends that gradually unfolds with Irish humor and a baseball team headed toward victory.

Click here

Here are a few comments from the reviews on Amazon:

By the fourth chapter, a particularly fine and lyrical piece of writing, the reader has taken a seat in McNulty's Tavern and waits expectantly with the rest of the crowd for the next riveting installment of the narrative.

I loved the character development and being immediately drawn into a sense of place and time.

A fine tale filled with endearing characters, set in a Brooklyn that readers aren't normally privy to.

SEEDS OF VIRTUE, SEEDS OF CHANGE

Seeds of Virtue, Seeds of Change, A Collection of Zen Teachings, edited by Jikyo Cheryl Wolfer, foreword by Eido Frances Carney.  Temple Ground Press, 2014.

This excellent collection of Dharma essays by Soto Zen women priests is the first of its kind. Twenty-seven women priests present their wisdom teachings on Zen practice at a time in our history when we most need to listen to the heart of compassion.

Available at Amazon of your local bookstore.  Please consider writing a review on the Amazon page when you purchase and read the book.

And They All Went Off To The Beach

Painting The Hora and the surrounding mountains

Go with the flow wherever you are.  It’s wisdom.  When I went down to the bakery this morning for the wonderful fresh bread that comes out of the Greek ovens, Olympias called to me as I was headed back home.  She was on her own at the school yard making strides on the last part of the mural—the Hora.   “Won’t you come and paint with me?” she said, so I went home and changed and returned to the schoolyard.  Now I am getting my first taste of Greek summer heat.  I couldn’t keep up the painting for too long as the heat radiated off the concrete basketball court and the concrete wall and the fluid loss was just too great.  So I had to finish for today.  Off to the beach.  Olympias remembered the film, “Never On Sunday” which ends with Melina Mercouri saying, “And they all went off to the beach.”  So that’s what we did.

A natural face in the rock

Mythic face

The weather is now warm enough for swimming although if you stay in the water for too long you do get chilled.  Five minutes on the sand and you are recovered.  It’s an amazing sea; the water is magical and like silk.  I’m thinking of renting a kayak if I feel motivated enough to put down my book, get off my beach chair, and sweat a little out on the bay.  These next and last days are quite leisurely.  I watch the Aegean Speedlines ferry come in and out of the port and feel some reticence about leaving.  I can stand on the upper deck as the boat pulls out and look back at the bays I’ve visited.  The boat will stop at Milos and Sifnos before continuing to Pireaus where I’ll taxi on to Athens. 

Profile of a man

A natural foot and hand sculpture

Yesterday I spent some time photographing the rocks that form a barrier between the port of Livadi where I live and the Livadakia Bay and beach where I frequent.  I’m taken by the natural sculptures of the stone and the carvings made by the sea and wind.  The stones are like mythic faces of gods and characters from the Odyssey.  Also in antiquity, Serifos was known as the Island of Mute Frogs.  No one can tell me anything about this and I cannot find a record of mute frogs (there is such a species) outside of North America.  But as I photographed and examined the rocks, they seemed like multiple frog sculptures as the wind causes the rocks to be rounded and sometimes form a froglike face.  I wonder if this was the story from antiquity and this is how it got its name.  It may not be, but I like the idea.  The rocks inspired the thought of paintings and certainly sculptures and I’ll be glad to be in a place where I can execute something if the mood touches me.

Transitions

Cafe at Mega Livadi.  Typical to
have such lovely tavernas on the shore.

Just as images of Greece entered my mind before coming, thoughts of Olympia USA are arriving without effort as my stay here comes toward a close.  It’s natural to have this happen.  Here in Serifos the tallest trees are royal palms although the tallest tree I saw, a giant eucalyptus, stood behind the tribute to Constantinos Speras.  The tree looked old enough to have been there when he was alive.  In Olympia, it’s all trees. trees, trees.

My supermarket and a black cat on the road looking
like a he's ready for a shootout in Dodge.

I have not been in Livadi entirely as a tourist.  Every day I have simply lived here in somewhat the way the Greeks live here.  Granted I’m not Greek so it’s presumptuous of me to say this.  But I’ve done my laundry and hung it out to dry, shopped at the local markets with the regulars, cooked food that made sense to me even though it wasn’t truly Greek flavors, cleaned my house with the tools that are used here, endured the wind the same as everyone, walked around, rode the bus, carried away my trash, did everyday life.  So I am feeling a certain connection here that is warm and I’ll take back a sense of relatedness.  At the same time, I have not done much talking, just listening to the world here, taking it all in.  When I did speak with people I generally asked questions.  I was typically not asked questions in response.  I won’t mind being in company again with known friends and taking up another kind of everyday life.

Old door at the Hora.

Yet five and a half days to go on Serifos.  I return to Athens by boat on Friday evening.  On Saturday it will be at the National Archeological Museum.  Sunday morning, June 1, I fly out from Athens to Toronto to Seattle.  There is always more one could do or could have done but I’m not the sort to have to conquer every detail of a place.  I saw a couple at the Hora who were looking at the hiking map of the island with some sense of distress and they were saying, “Oh, we didn’t go on this trail.  Maybe we should do that one.  And we didn’t go on the west trail.  We didn’t see it.”  It seemed as if they had a need to gobble up every inch of the island to say that they had actually seen it. 

Pretty much, having driven around the whole island, it is the same although there are some different spectacular views from one place to another.  Being content with what one has seen and holding it as one’s own experience is quite fine for me.  I don’t have to say that I’ve walked every inch.  I prefer to say that where I walked was realized.  On days when I stayed downtown and helped with the mural, I was entirely content with that adventure.  On days when I battened the shutters against the wind and stayed home, I felt equally content.  Some days I just stayed home, wrote, walked downtown, sat on the patio and looked at the bay.  I’m getting old and simple and a little can go a long way.  But I think what I’ve seen and felt was a lot and I feel enriched for having experienced the antiquities and to have carried the mythic stories to this place.  I can only think that when I watch the Perseid Meteor Shower in August, the constellations of Perseus and Andromeda will offer new meaning and I’ll have the treasure of having stood on this ground where people believe that the real people of Perseus and Andromeda actually walked.

There are eleven cats in this collection
that run around all day pestering for food.
During siesta they will not
move even if I begin work
in my kitchen.
They've obviously just been fed.

And these cats, there are actually eleven of them, will have to find a new source to beg from.

The White Tower and Constantinos Speras

The Hora is that black and grey dot at the upper right.

I thought I had gone as high as I could go on the island with my climb at the Hora, but I went out with Leonardo again who stopped by his home to pick up something on the way to Mega Livadi.  This was the view from his place, looking down on the Hora and the edge of Livadi where I'm staying.  Utter silence and stillness except the far cry of a hawk and a bit of wind.  A breathtaking moment.

We drove then across the island and stopped at the White Tower.  Towers such as these were built  in many parts of Greece but were numerous across the Cycladic islands from the 4th Century BCE in order to protect the resources of the islands against marauders.  This tower appears to be protecting the area of the island that was rich in metals and thus used for mining.  Judging by the artifacts that were found at the site when archeologists began a partial reconstruction, this tower was built in the 4th century BCE and was in use until the 7th century CE.  The massive local white marble is reminiscent of stones at the Acropolis which were commonly used in construction.

The White Tower under reconstruction.

The diameter of the circle is about eight and half meters.  The blocks were skillfully joined and set with no binding agent. It likely had three stories and was twelve meters tall.  This is surmised by the 750 marble blocks that are sitting beside it in a kind of block marble graveyard.  In the early part of the 20th century, when mining was again at its peak, a cemetery was built on the site using some of the marble as headstones, as well as a small church.  Unlike the experience in Athens where guards are everywhere to keep people from touching the marble at the Acropolis, you can walk inside this White Tower and put your hands right onto the marble from these ancient times.

Tribute to Constantinos Speras at Mega Levadi

On we went for lunch at Mega Livadi and a brief history lesson about the mining symbols we are painting on the mural downtown.  I learned about the Mine Strike of 1916 from the people who run the taverna in the square.  When the mine workers on Serifos were desperate for help, they called on Constantinos Speras, a man who had been born in Serifos in 1893 and was working to assist the labor movement in Athens and on another island.  Speras returned and organized The Union of Working Men and Miners of Serifos, and as its president, he defended the rights of the workers, ultimately calling a strike in 1916.  The workers had almost no rights, worked during all light hours, seven days a week, and as was reported by the man who lives at the mines and told this history, the men were not even permitted to take a moment to pee.  When the workers put down their tools, the owners of the mines called in the police.  This escalated into a face off between the two groups and the miners were given five minutes to make their decision to go back to work.  When they refused, violence broke out.  Three miners were killed and one policeman.  In this melee, the wives of the miners and the women of the town came to the assistance of the miners by throwing stones.  A pregnant woman who participated in the fight, took responsibility for the death of the policeman and she went to prison where her daughter was born.  This daughter had a son who now lives on the same mountain today.  Speras was also arrested and put in the jail on the site.  He was not there very long as the miners tore down the door of the jail and released him.  Ultimately, Speras and the workers won and their demand for an eight hour work day was agreed to.  This tribute to Constantinos Speras stands in the little square at the village on the site where the tragedy took place.  The matter of the mines and its history is right now being painted on the mural wall in downtown Livadi, as you've already seen.  The wall is coming along; it's coming toward its magnificent finish.

Mega Levadi almost the same today
as it was then.

Part of the mine railway
and its ruins 

History books record Speras as an anarcho-syndicalist and a pioneer in the working class trade unions in Greece.  A man of great courage and determination, he was arrested, imprisoned, and exiled an impressive 109 times in his lifetime.  He was ultimately assassinated in Athens in 1943.

An example of a contemporary anarcho-syndicalist is Noam Chomsky.  There is plenty of information to find online if you are interested in this political theory.