War is hell, then you come home-Review of Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger

My review from the July, 2016 Sturbridge Times Magazine.

You may have heard the statistic that 22 veterans kill themselves a day.  From that stat, one may get the idea of a national crisis and the depth of the problem, or maybe not.  It turns out that the majority of that number are Vietnam vets.  As a qualifier, that changes the discussion from an immediate problem for recent servicemen and women to something that could have other reasons.

Still, a number around ten is a problem here and now.  Is anyone noticing?  Sebastian Junger is.  Junger is a well known author of many books on various subjects from his most famous The Perfect Storm, to modern warfare and other subjects.  He has been embedded many times with military forces and is a man of adventure.  His personal encounter with horror led him to publish Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging.

Junger found himself not immune to the stress of life following a stint as a combat reporter.  Almost a year before 911, he suffered a panic attack in the New York Subway.  Junger had been in Afghanistan covering battle between the Taliban, of whom you have heard of by now, and the Northern Alliance of Ahmad Shah Massoud.  It was a a brutal war well before we became involved.

Yet here back home, in maybe not the world's most pleasant venue, but still not a war zone, he fell apart.  Sebastian has been thinking about it, to say the least.  As bad as the momentary event was, he recovered.  Junger had had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD, which is in the news lately so you might have heard about it.  His occurrence was short-term (acute) and he had several over time and then they stopped.

The author did not know what it was and did not connect it to his time in a combat environment.  It was in a conversation with a psychotherapist at a picnic that he realized what had happened.

PTSD is part of the evolutionary tool kit.  Heightened awareness in an emergency situation is just what one needs.  On the subway, though, it might not be as helpful.

The author also found out a lot facts about combat and PTSD.  Some of them are surprising.  Only about 20% suffer it long term and chronically.  Something else he discovered, American troops take a third as many casualties as in Vietnam, but now claim three times the number of disabilities.  He has other stats about the problem, but also many insights.

If you go through battle and end up with the chronic form of the disorder, you probably had problems before combat.  In fact, combatants are no more likely than vets who have not been under fire to kill themselves.  So what is it all about?  Why would we go to pieces after coming home?

Junger explores a “civilization and its discontents theme.”  We who live in a so-called civilized society would seem to have it better than the “savages.”  Not all felt the same.

The author cites the writings of Ben Franklin on the subject.  According to Dr. Franklin, as quoted by Junger, “”White captives who were liberated from the Indians were almost impossible to keep at home : “Tho' ransomed by their friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a short time they become disgusted with our manner of life...and take the first good opportunity of escaping again into the woods.””

In case you are wondering, the operative word here is the  title of the book.  The aboriginal inhabitants of the continent lived in tribes and Junger wants to make a point.  Men in wars live and fight with comrades in cohesive groups, depending on each other for survival.  He does not call them tribes exactly in that situation, but why not?

They come home to “Thank you for your service” and some rah rah stuff, but little else.  That unit esprit is gone and they are on their own.  Many lose it.  Junger has seen it elsewhere.  The Siege of Sarajevo saw solidarity amongst the besieged.  That camaraderie evaporated with peace and is mourned.

The author cites Israel as a place with little diagnosed PTSD.  That most of that nation are at some time in the army and have a greater fellow feeling has something to do with it.  Men and women are both subject to service.  Somehow it does not seem that universal conscription is going to happen here.

That would be a solution to PTSD in the military.  After all, if all the kids of the rich and powerful and the politicians were drafted and had to learn to low crawl through the mud with the sons and daughters of trailer park denizens, our wars would end before Ivanka or Chelsea lost a nail.

Feeling the bern for Sanders' Education plan - My column in the April 2016 Sturbridge Times Magazine

He shows some promise

“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

The words of H.L. Mencken must resonate with anyone paying attention this election season. Whether it's the open ended promise to “Make America Great Again” or the laundry list of Bernie Sanders.

At least Senator Sanders has also provided the electorate with a method of payment for his promises. His litany of programs each has a tax, tax increase or closed loophole that will do the trick. That is if, as the song goes, “the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars.”

Still, one should not get too excited about what is proffered during campaign season. If you've been around a bit, there is the perennial favorite, “middle class tax cut.” If everyone who made that pledge had fulfilled it, we would by now have negative tax rates.

The man from Vermont also wants to give the American worker a $15 an hour minimum wage. On the surface, that sounds like a winner. It does beg the question, why is $15 the magic number? Why not $20 or $50? I'll let the candidate's fans handle that one.

There is one of the Senator's proposals that does almost warm my heart. I say almost as I used to have a dog in the fight, but no longer. Several years ago, the looming tuition that was staring us in the face would have meant an eager embrace of one of the signature features of the man's campaign.

Bernie Sanders has proposed that public colleges and universities be tuition free. His rationale appears reasonable.

This is not a radical idea. Last year, Germany eliminated tuition because they believed that charging students $1,300 per year was discouraging Germans from going to college. Next year, Chile will do the same. Finland, Norway, Sweden and many other countries around the world also offer free college to all of their citizens. If other countries can take this action, so can the United States of America.

Well, if the Europe can do it, why not us? After all, does not public education benefit everyone?

So can it work? To look at the problem, we again turn to our official think tank, the Long Hill Institute of Educational Policy or LHIoEP for short. After their usual dillettantish investigation they were able to forthrightly come to the conclusion, maybe.

The countries that the Senator cites do have free tuition. How do they do it? In the case of Norway, there is a simple answer. Like most Scandinavian nations, there is a belief in equality so everyone can attain a post-secondary degree if they want it. It works maybe because not everyone wants it.

In spite of the near costless education, if your parents didn't attend college, you probably won't either. So why wouldn't people take advantage of it? One reason from an Hechinger Report article of last June notes that blue collar jobs pay well enough that everyone is more or less middle class. Kind of like when this country had no dearth of such work.

So if the whole country does not go, it is affordable. Of course, the Sanders plan claims that his system of paying for it will allow everyone to attend. His plan should appeal to all.

Whether or not the American people were saved by the bailout in 2008 is arguable. There was however one class that was, the bankers. The candidate wants to levy a fraction of a percent tax on “Wall Street speculators who nearly destroyed the economy seven years ago.” Certainly, we all want to see them pay, but if periodically we have to bail them out, we may have to figure something else out.

There is another problem. In theory if you tax something you get less of it and if you subsidize it, you get more. Some young people might have done a cost benefit analysis and decided that the debt made it not worth it. They might not come to that conclusion if it is near free. Some may go through school and come out with a career and a life. Many will major in fields lacking rigor and prospects. It will have been a pleasant four years at winter camp, but for naught.

That this is already happening is evident from the lampooning of grads who can't get jobs in their field as is heard on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion. His retinue will occasionally do a sketch about The Professional Organization of English Majors or P.O.E. M. The words, “Do you want fries with that” have been uttered.

Another consequence is the non-public colleges that will go out of business because competing with free is too much of a disadvantage. Places like Harvard, which is a hedge fund with courses, need not worry. Some small yet solid institutions may go to the wall.

Norway like the other Scandinavian countries is not huge. Even with its North Sea oil, it has to adjust means to ends realistically. In this country, reality rarely rears its ugly head in primary season.

the Long Hill Institute of Educational Policy has pinpointed one group that is passionately supporting Bernie 's plan. College administrators are audibly salivating.

My review of Harvey Silverglate's Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent

Below is my review of Three Felonies A Day that appeared in the Sturbridge Times April 2016 issue.

Big Brother Is Watching and Ready to Pounce

Book Review by Richard Morchoe

When you get up this morning, you're in trouble. You don’t realize It, but you are a criminal. Yes my fellow average American, it may be true. By the time sleep comes over us, thrice we will have transgressed Federal Law.

That is the contention of Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent by Attorney Harvey Silverglate. Is it more than hyperbole?

Attorney Silverglate is not without qualifications. With a Harvard Law degree, he has been an advocate for civil liberties for over four decades. More recently, he has been concerned with free speech issues on campus. Along with Professor Alan Kors he authored The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses. Both men are in no sense conservatives so their critique of the tyranny of political correctness, as it holds sway in college, carries some weight.

The two men co-founded the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Attorney Silverglate is Chairman of the Board of Directors.

The book's argument is maybe best illustrated by two cases, that of Theodore Anzalone and that of Bradford Councilman. Though almost two decades apart, they bookend the descent of the American legal system in its willingness to ruin lives for little purpose.

In the early eighties, Theodore Anzalone was a fundraiser for Boston mayor Kevin White. The then U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, William Weld, wanted to take down White and the way to do it would be to get someone to testify against him. Getting something on Anzalone and making a deal for his testimony was the plan.

The Feds got a conviction on Anzalone for splitting up deposits and making them for under $10,000 so that the bank would not have to report them. Legal at the time, the judge decided on his own that it was still a crime and the jury agreed.

The appeals court saw through Weld's gimmicky prosecution and the judge's bad instructions and reversed the verdict. They did the right thing, but would they always?

Almost two decades later, the same court, but with a different makeup, did not. Bradford Councilman was Vice President of a company that provided an online listing service for rare and out of print books. His company also supplied email addresses and served in that capacity as an ISP or internet service provider.

Councilman was accused of backing up client messages in order to get an unfair advantage in pricing and violating the federal wiretap statute. The accused claimed he never read the messages, Was storing them a crime?

The appeals court went back and forth and finally under intense pressure reversed the district court judge's dismissal. We have come from the Anzalone case where the tribunal refused to see a crime where one wasn't to what is now the opposite. The judiciary increasingly is all too willing to cooperate almost as part of the prosecution.

Silverglate notes the result of this is many ruined lives and shattered civil relationships when things that should not be crimes are so interpreted. This is not to say there are not real criminals in the world doing evil, but the prosecutors need not seek to find everything a crime.

Can anything be done?

Alan Dershowitz, in his foreword, suggested that the attorney general should not be the appointee of the president and thus not political. The author does not think that would do much and it is hard to disagree.

Attorney Silverglate seems to suggest everybody behave better and who would not want that? Defenders should see themselves in this climate as civil liberties lawyers and the press should be far more skeptical. Good ideas but hardly enough.

The author notes that there are many vague laws that can be stretched to catch the citizen for crimes he was unaware of. Maybe we need to reduce the number of statutes and their size. As Cicero noted, “A corrupt state has many laws.” One should expect a long wait for that.

Silverglate has laid out a compelling case concerning prosecutorial overreach. Do we, out here in the exurbs, have to worry about three indictments du jour? Probably not for most of us if only because we are too low for the radar. That hardly means it is not a problem. It could happen even if it doesn't.

You might say, at least no one gets killed. Well, not exactly.

Last year Harvey Silverglate would be a featured speaker at a rally in memory of Aaron Swartz. Swartz had been involved in what could be called a case of electronic trespass and theft. The state had seemed to come to the conclusion that it had been much ado about not too much and were ending their involvement. At this point, Carmen Ortiz, US Attorney for Massachusetts grabbed it. According to Silverglate, "Tragedy intervened when Ortiz’s office took over the case to 'send a message'."

The squeeze on Swartz did send a message and Swartz, an internet freedom activist, would commit suicide.

That message was not just for Aaron.

The boys who brought us the Cold War

Below is the review of The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer as submitted to the editor of the Sturbridge Times Magazine.  It ran in the March, 2016 issue.

The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Their Secret World War

By Stephen Kinzer

St. Martin's Griffin; Reprint edition, 2014

Paperback, 416 pages

Book review by Richard Morchoe

Stephen Kinzer begins his book, the The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War, with the funeral of John Foster Dulles. Having died in office, the author avers that “a bereft nation mourned more intensely than it had sense the death of Franklin Roosevelt fourteen years before.”

Kinzer was right. I was nine years old and remember it on television, ending with the widow being presented the flag. It was the most moving civic ceremony I had witnessed up until that time. The funeral of President Kennedy would be more memorable, but that could not be otherwise.

My mother explained to me who the man was and what it was that made him so important. He had been a great man and had well served the nation's foreign policy. No controversy there.

As time went on, more would be revealed to me about world politics and our nations interactions with states that were not part of what we called the “Free World.” Mostly we were competing with them in a “Cold War.” We did not fight directly, but there was an ongoing struggle.

Less than two years after Dulles' death, our policy went a bit off the rails. An armed group landed on Cuba with the intent of overthrowing the regime. The little invasion was a horrible botch and the men, who were considered “Freedom Fighters,” captured. The American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been responsible for the planning and execution of the debacle and its leader lost his job. That man was the Late Secretary of State's brother, Allen Dulles.

Not long after that, our war would be a lot less cold in Viet Nam and we would leave with nothing to show for it.

We were shy of major effort after South East Asia until Bush père fought Gulf War I and the Soviet Union imploded. After that and 911, we thought we could run the table. In this the last year of the Obama continuation of the younger Bush's foreign policy, it's not working.

This is why reading a book by veteran journalist Stephen Kinzer is not a bad idea. I became aware of the man while reading a column of his from the December 15, 2015 Boston Globe. The article was a well reasoned analysis of a”conservative” foreign policy that George McGovern could have lived with. With the rise of Sanders and Trump, a public might be open to it as well.

His tome about the Dulles team does a wonderful job of describing their domination of intel and foreign policy during the Eisenhower administration.

The brothers were descended from Scotch-Irish calvinists and that ancestry would not be without influence in how they viewed the world. Each would express it differently. Though not a family of plutocrats on the level of a Morgan or Rockefeller, they were well connected and influential people who went to the right schools and knew and were related to the right people.

John Foster was the older of the two and was always referred to as Foster. He was steady and paid attention to detail. That made him an excellent functionary and he would become the head of what was arguably the nation's most influential law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell.

Allen, had more of a fun personality and probably thought himself as a bit of a swashbuckler. He was never going to be the office drudge, but he would make his mark as well.

Foster, through a family connection would serve as US legal counsel at the Versailles Peace Conference after World War I. He would also act ably on the War Reparations Committee and as ably expanded his contacts that would be of use when he returned to Sullivan & Cromwell.

Allen pursued a diplomatic career. In 1917, upon being assigned to Bern, Switzerland at the beginning of American involvement in war, he was called on to take charge of intelligence. It was a task he took to with gusto.

The brothers would continue on a trajectory of power and influence. Allen would have essentially the same role in World War II, but on a grander scale. Though always active, Foster was not a direct participant in the war. He did end as a major foreign policy figure in the Republican party.

In the Eisenhower administration, they would rise to the top of their respective fields. Allen would become the head of the CIA and Foster would helm State. The 50s looked to become their decade.

They had a couple of major successes. The CIA would remove the secular prime minister in Iran to further national interest, or at least Big Oil's. In Guatemala, the elected president was toppled as a suspected communist not necessarily to the detriment of the US held United Fruit Company.

Then there were the non-successes, most glaringly the abovementioned Bay of Pigs invasion that ended in complete failure for the agency and triumph for Castro. This happened after Foster's passing, but on Allen's watch and made his directorship untenable. The 50s were over and so was the Dulles era.

The legacy of the successes did not even last. That Iranian coup left a bad taste and when the Ayatollahs arrived, we were out and so was secularism.

Foster and Allen were intelligent men who had studied with great minds but at the end of the day, the record is tarnished. They were sure they were in a death struggle with the forces of evil and that if the war of good and evil were not won, all would be lost.

After a short respite with the end of the Soviet Union, that low temp war is back and threatening to warm up in Syria. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt were part of engineering a coup to remove an elected government in Ukraine. Not much has been learned.

A lot of folks at Foggy Bottom need to read Mr. Kinzer's book.

Celebrating Black History Month on Long Hill

Below is my column, as submitted to the editor, that appeared in the February 2016 Sturbridge Times Magazine.

Long Hill Road celebrates Black History Month

by Richard Morchoe

It is February and time again for Black History Month. We have decided to observe it up on Long Hill, but not in the usual manner. All the civil rights pioneers and cultural icons are feted, most now post mortem, again and again. Who has not been honored in the second month celebration?

Up here on our hill, we consider ourselves an outpost of high culture. In consideration of that, we have decided to profile three men who were not merely artists, but exemplars of European civilization. Yet all three, had they been living in the American South at a certain time, would have been subject to Jim Crow laws.

It must also be observed that none of the enforcers of such statutes ever produced anything to compare with our subjects.

The work of the first name is known to everyone, or at least anyone who has gone to the movies. The Three Musketeers has been put on the big screen over 25 times and has had several animated versions. It is a novel that just cried for translation to film.

Set around the first quarter of the 17^th Century, there is little lacking in the portrayal of France and Europe in the era. There are of course, the Musketeers themselves who swashbuckle around the realm constantly crossing swords with all who serve what passed in those days for the Dark Side.

That Dark Side is represented by Cardinal Richelieu. The Cardinal was arguably the most able statesman of the age. He was also a subtle intriguer, and thus a man easy to portray as evil incarnate.

The Musketeers and their protege, d'Artagnan wish to protect the queen against the machinations of the prelate

How did it happen that the grandson of a slave came to write the quintessential French novel?

Alexandre Dumas' father had been born a slave,. The nobleman dad took his slave son to France. Since the Middle Ages, slavery had been abolished on French soil. The minute the young man stepped on Gallic ground he was free.

Dumas' dad had him educated and enlisted in the French Army. He eventually became the highest ranking black general ever in any European military. Thus the son had been born into some privilege. This is not to say he had any love for the Ancien Regime. Dad, after all, had been part of Napoleon's army.

The Three Musketeers is not pro-monarchy.

His other work, about as famous, The Count of Monte Cristo, may not have as many sword fights, but it does not lack for adventure. It begins as Napoleon is about make his last throw of the dice. A young sailor, Edmond Dantes is framed and imprisoned in a French Alcatraz, The Chateau d'If. His escape and adventures lead to fame and fortune. The tone of this novel is also anti-monarchy. No matter the politics, it's a great tale. Few writers have produced anything more French than this descendant of Africa.

When we think of Russia, maybe Putin comes to mind, or Stalin or the Gulag Archipelago. Few Americans learn too much about that nation, and my knowledge is hardly exhaustive.

So it came as a shock when I learned that the man who many consider the greatest poet in that great white north was a black man and also a descendant of slaves.

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was born into the nobility, but his great grandfather, Abram Petrovich Gannibal, had been taken into slavery. If you are going to be in bondage, there are worse fates than being raised as part of the Tsar's household. The young man was well liked by the sovereign who stood as godfather at his baptism.

Alexander was thus, despite ancestry that would be crippling in much of the world, a nobleman.

He was also a literary giant. Pushkin's influence was most recently found in a film that featured beautiful music and a story of intrigue. The movie, Amadeus, was based on his drama Mozart and Salieri.

Pushkin was no stranger to drama in his own life. The last bit of it would be a duel in which he lost his life at the age of 37. His death would lead to more literature as many Russian writers would take up the subject.

Our last personality was not famous as a writer. In fact, he is not too famous at all. Unlike Dumas he did not write about men of action, but was himself a swashbuckler.

Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges  was the son of a rich planter and his slave wife. Brought to France and well educated, he was a prodigy as a swordsman and musician. Le Chevalier conducted orchestras, commanded troops and ran a fencing school.

All these accomplishments pale in comparison to one part of his life. The man is also known as the Black Mozart. He composed operas, concertos and a symphony, all while following other pursuits as well. For the skeptical, his music is available on iTunes, Spotify and YouTube..

Up on Long Hill Road, we hope we have broadened some horizons. There is nothing wrong with putting on an Ellington CD or reciting a poem by Hughes. Still, there can be more to life.

How Sweet It Is - Maple Syrup in the Sturbridge and Quaboag area.

Below is my column as submitted to the editor for the March 1, 2016 issue of the Sturbridge Times Magazine.

by Richard Morchoe

The little boy put a few pancakes on his plate. That task done, he grabbed a jug and, proceeded to drown the flapjacks. After a short while, the syrup being absorbed, he added more. At this point, his father, no longer able to contain himself said to the lad, “Do you think you might have a little pancake with the maple syrup?”

I remember well my dad's gentle teasing as he observed the gargantuan appetite.

Maple syrup is a pleasure of life. Unfortunately, another region has done what it could to capture the brand. The Green Mountain State wants the world to believe the brown juice should not be mentioned without the word Vermont prefixed.

Don't be fooled. The syrup most associated with our northern neighbor is fraudulent. Vermont Maid Syrup is glutted with high fructose corn syrup and contains only maple flavor of natural and artificial provenance.

Fortunately, you don't have to leave town and go north for the real thing. You can head out to the back yard and produce it yourself. We are coming into the season.

Granted, it's not without some hard work. That said, the basic method is fairly simple. You may have seen those homey pictures of men emptying buckets in winter. Well most of it is like that, heavy routine labor.

The first thing you must do is make sure you have the trees. We caution you right away that, sans les arbres, the degree of difficulty reaches a level that can only be described as insurmountable. Once you are certain that you own or have permission to tap and you are sure they are sugar maples, proceed.

Next, you need taps, at least one for each tree. They are available at farm stores and some hardware shops. Make sure your drill is working and you have a 7/16” bit. A clean plastic gallon milk jug with a hole made off to the side at the top can be used to catch sap.

For storing fresh sap, clean is the word. Depending on volume, it could be galvanized or plastic cans or pails. A deep metal pan that can hold five gallons should do for an evaporator.

Your going to be boiling on a wood fire outside so set that up and gather dry fast burning wood. You want to do it out of doors or there will be problems, but not for the gas or electric company as they will clean up, and so will you, differently.

Locate a candy thermometer to test when the syrup is done. You will need clean glass or metal jars for storing. Did we mention clean?

Ready, drill the hole and bang in the spout, but not so hard you split the tree. Hang your jug or container on the hook of the spout. Be sure to cover to keep out rain, snow and foreign material.

That fireplace you set up should be ready. When the jugs have enough sap, fill the pan, and start the fire. Don't fill your pan to the top as it will boil over. As the water boils away keep adding more sap to the pan. Do not have less than an inch in the pan or it may burn down. Keep pouring the rest of the sap in to the boiling liquid. It will take a lot of boiling to get it to syrup as about ten gallons of sap make one quart.

Sap is finished when it is seven degrees warmer than boiling temperature at your elevation. That's what the candy thermometer is for. Pour the hot syrup through a syrup filter or a double layer of outing flannel. Store in sterile canning jars in a cool place. A freezer is ideal.

So that is the basic process. Full disclosure, we did it once. It is work and maybe you were born to do it. Most of us, however, would be satisfied with just the finished product. You probably have a neighbor or at least someone in the vicinity who boils. If you don't know anyone, read the list of local producers below.

In Sturbridge, KE Farms is on Leadmine Road. They have a website at http://www.maplesugarhouse.com/index.html with everything you want to know about their operation.

Maple Ledge Farm is in Holland on Vinton Road. Best to connect with them through Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/maple.ledge/.

On Little Alum Road in Brimfield is the stand of Freeman Farm. To contact Jane or John call (413) 436-7621.

On the south side of West Brookfield, Amy and Jeff and their son Nick, boil sap this time of year. If you are interested the email is jeffrobbins@charter.net or (508) 867-5428.

Same town on Long Hill Road is the Meade's Bucket List Farm. Call (508) 637-1297 or email at thomas.meade53@yahoo.com.

Head a little south on that street and you come to a farm operated by Abraham and his family and they have a website at http://browniefarms.com/maple-syrup/.

Up in North Brookfield, the Warren Farm and Sugarhouse has been around forever. They are on the web at http://www.thewarrenfarm.com.

The Harms Family Farm operates in Brookfield and way out in Colrain. Their web address is http://www.harmsfarm.com/.

East Brookfield has Triple Oaks Farm Sugarhouse owned by Lori And William Gregoire. They can be reached at (508) 294-5990.

If you still are bound and determined with that unquenchable do it yourself spirit, a better set of instructions is provided at the Massachusetts Maple Producers website www.massmaple.org/make.php. They can also help if you decide to turn pro.

We'll be thinking of you as we pour warm syrup on hot pancakes.