Category: Published Articles

        TOSSIN’ THE COIN: A FATHER’S PRESENCE                                       

by Jeemes Akersd

“While there’s currently great turmoil, there is even greater opportunity for US to work together to transform our community. Far too many of our children are fatherless, far too many of our mothers are standing in the prison waiting rooms and far too many of our young people feel hopeless.”

                                                                                                   T.I.

“The Christian life is to live all of your life in the presence of God.”  

                                                                                                   R.C. Sproul

         One of the many casualties of my father’s recent physical and mental decline is the trips we used to take on a frequent basis.

Just the two of us.

I miss being in my father’s presence.

Our trips were never planned in advance. During academic breaks in my teaching years at Alice Lloyd College, I would make the pilgrimage to the hamlet of Springboro, Ohio (where my parents still live), drop Imogene and Kimberly off to spend some time with my mom, and dad and I would hit the road. We would hop in his white pick-up truck and just take off.

The first seven or eight major decisions of our trip were decided by the flip of a coin.

Heads left, tails right.

We just let the rest of the trip spontaneously happen.

What adventures we had!

One trip took us down to visit the Shiloh Civil War battlefield (still my favorite Civil War site), then down the Natchez Trace and ending up at the battlefield sites in New Orleans. Other trips, in part, took us to the St. Louis Arch, or down into Texas, or to Fort Necessity, or Niagra Falls, or tracing Route 23 all the way down to Atlanta.

On one particular trip up into Canada over Christmas break we got stuck in the ice and snow in the middle of nowhere. And I mean nowhere! It was before cellphones. We hadn’t passed a car for hours. Suddenly, a man drives up with just the right equipment and pulls us out of our predicament. Then, as abruptly as he appeared, he drove off; like, as in vanishing. My dad remains convinced it was an angel sent to bail two Akers’ knuckleheads out of a fix.

My dad is a very introspective individual. He shuns crowds and—unlike my mom—is very awkward around people he doesn’t know. I mention this only to say that during out trips there would be hours on end that he wouldn’t say a word. Or when he would speak it was usually, “man, I wonder what this country looked like when the Indians (native Americans) lived here?”

The silence was okay: being in his presence is what counted.

We both knew without saying it that these excursions couldn’t last forever.

Sigh.

If I engaged dad in conversation at all, it generally had to be about sports. (Many of you know that dad was a tremendous athlete in his own right: he played football for a short time at the University of Dayton after his WWII service with the Marines—alongside legendary Pittsburg Steelers coach Chuck Noll—and for years was a stalwart inside scorer in the Dayton, Ohio industrial basketball leagues, including a couple seasons paired with Kentucky’s high school legend “King” Kelly Coleman.) Dad was actively playing basketball into his 80s: as some of you know, even as a gray-haired senior, dad would take you under the boards and beat you to death with his elbows, fake and short jump shot.

In your face.

As a youngster, I begged dad to take me with him to watch him play. He would work all day and then play ball in the evenings. Many times, I would have to punch him in the arm to keep him from falling asleep at the wheel.

One of the saddest days in my life was when I beat dad in a pick-up basketball game on the outside court in the park behind the house. Did he finally let me win? Not on your life. Dad is the most competitive person I know (that tradition carries on during our family card game wars at the kitchen table).

Back to our road trips. Being in dad’s presence came at a bit of a cost. He had this habit of waiting until the gas hand was below empty before he would seriously start looking for gas stations. To make matters worse, he was convinced—for some reason—that Shell gasoline made the truck run better, so with the gas hand hovering dangerously below empty, he would pass Exxons, Mobils or anything else.

I think you get the picture.

Dad also is like a camel. In those days he could eat prodigious amounts of food at an all-you-can-eat breakfast and go the rest of the day without food. So, these road trips presented quite the challenge for my preferred 12-meal-a-day plan.

Dad liked to pull over and read every historical marker along the roadside. And read, and read—and absorb—every single word! If any of you have made the trip down the Natchez Trace Parkway, you know there are historical markers (such as the last passenger pigeon flock sighted near here) all the way down the road. It took us all day to get fifty miles! At one battlefield site, I had walked the complete park and studied the progress of the battle only to return and find dad stalled at the first cluster of battlefield markers denoting the opening volley!

But dad loved it and—because of his presence—so did I.

I thought of those road trips with dad last week when I heard an on-line sermon by Grace Larson Brumley. During that message she noted that we—as Christians—need to “desperately seek” the presence of Father God. Her message was based on the scriptural account found in Genesis 33:14-17. Here, the Israelites are wandering in the desert and while Moses left them to commune with God on the mountain, the people melted their gold belongings from Egypt and created a golden calf. Moses began pleading with God not to destroy the people: “And he (Moses) said unto Him, ‘If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.’” In other words, if Moses could not count on God’s presence being with him, he would rather stay there in the wilderness than advance toward the Promised Land.

That is a powerful truth. Without the constant presence of God, we will turn to idols in our lives. I am so grateful that my earthly father William Lee Akers—despite his many flaws (many of which he was unselfish enough to pass on to me)—taught me the value of being in the presence of my Father. I have come to realize, after all these years, that engaging myself in the quest to dwell, worship and rest in the Father’s presence is the most valuable of life’s undertakings.

 

Several years ago, I attended a session near Capitol Hill provided for a number of Christian ministers and pastors (I was invited by a former pastor of mine from the Kentucky years). I will never forget one presentation. The speaker was talking about a convocation address he gave at a large high school in the inner city of Los Angeles. Everything was fine until he used a personal illustration to emphasize a point: all of a sudden, it was like a blanket of non-receptiveness fell over the audience. Later, he asked the principal what happened. The principal told him that when he used the illustration of his close relationship with his father as an example, he lost them. The speaker then recalled that just after he mentioned that during his talk, many of the students in the audience, particularly the young men, looked down at their feet. “Do you know,” the principal said,” that over 70% of these young people come from fatherless homes.”

That number is higher now.

Call me crazy if you like. But I sincerely believe the answers to the restlessness and violence of our youth will not be solved by expanded government welfare programs, but rather well-reasoned (and well-prayed over) community efforts to address the plague of fatherlessness in our culture.

Kids of every color, socio-economic background and blossoming political ideology need to spend time in the presence of loving fathers. It is that simple. And those fathers, in turn, need to reach out with nurturing, non-threatening arms.

I know it is a tall order—and a bold prayer.

Finally, if your own time with your earthly father has been distorted—and you have the psychological scars to prove it—invite Jesus Christ to fill the void.

 

We simply do not hear enough about the trauma of the Hong Kong people, says author, former CIA analyst, and accomplished Chinese linguist. Mr. Akers brings us up to date on Xi’s repression of what was a vibrant, free city attracting visitors and businesses from over the world. No more, folks. No more.

                                      

HONG KONG:  SUBJUGATING ONE OF ASIA’S LAST DEMOCRATIC BASTIONS  

 by Jeemes Aker

“When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there.”  

                                                                                               Paul Theroux 

 

“He [Stephen Wilson] took a quick shower and walked down to the pier where he boarded one of the famous green-and-white Star Ferries, the Celestial Star, for the eight-minute ride across the bay to the Kowloon side. Stephen paid a bit more for the topside seat with its beautiful view of the harbor that teemed with ships of every shape and size. An armada of launches, hydrofoils, sampans, police boats, and garbage scows weaved their way among the larger freighters, leaving a crisscrossing maze of white-crested wakes. Stephen squeezed his way to the rail, through the pressing throng of Chinese workers, to enjoy the salt breeze and incredible beauty of the busy port. It was an exhilarating experience.”  

                                                                                                Jeemes Aker in Prawnocous Rising 

  

I feel sorry for those of you who never enjoyed the opportunity of visiting the Hong Kong that was … because the Hong Kong that is has become a case-study in how a totalitarian oppressor state—Xi’s China—can gradually strangle the life out of one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. Hong Kong’s fate, in my view, should also serve as an important object lesson for us in this country about how quickly the most basic freedoms can be lost. 

Have you read much about the tragic fate of Hong Kong today? Of course not. The mainstream U.S. media is more concerned about other things: the latest COVID vaccine stories, the Derek Chauvin trial, the expanding “woke” culture, climate change and, of course, President Biden’s dogs.  

Sigh. 

During my last stint as visiting professor at the College of the Ozarks, I had my students discuss—in every class at least once during the semester—the five global “hotspots” that could affect their futures: Israel and the Middle East (at present there is an ongoing “shadow war” between Israel and Iran);1 Russia and the EU (today over 100,000 Russian troops are massed along its border with the Ukraine and a British naval flotilla is steaming toward the Black Sea, ostensibly to be joined by a US warship); North Korea (new missile threats are emerging from Pyongyang on almost a daily basis); the India-Pakistan border (relatively quiet at the moment as Delhi attempts to cope with new surges of COVID-19); and, finally, China-U.S. geopolitical tensions regarding Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea and a potential future invasion of Taiwan.  

Have you been reading any in-depth analysis on any of these topics in today’s media or heard any meaningful discussion on television news broadcasts?   

Of course not. 

Can I mention just a couple recent tidbits that may have slipped by you? This week, one of America’s top-ranking generals warned we need to be prepared for a nuclear war. What? Who in the media is talking about that? 

Do you know where the nearest fallout shelter is to your location? Have you been given any information on how to survive a nuclear or EMP attack? Of course not. The high-tech titans have their emergency underground facilities as do the Washington political elites. They have made contingency plans for their survival. You and I have been left to fend for ourselves. We are expendable. Think about it. (In Russia, for example, they hold regular drills in urban cities in anticipation of a future nuclear exchange).  

Sigh. 

Today, momentous changes are happening in Asia. In many locations there, democracy is in retreat or under pressure. In Myanmar, for example, the China-backed junta is cracking down on pro-democracy activists of all stripes. (For those of you interested in the topic, I suggest reading my missive entitled “Sweatin’ at Shwedagon” from earlier this year – Democracy Lost in Military Coup in Myanmar) In Thailand, a military government remains firmly in control.  

But most concerning, at least in my view, is Beijing’s recent sabre rattling over Taiwan, a flourishing democracy and global tech hub. China’s Communist Party considers the island of Taiwan to be a province and part of PRC (People’s Republic of China) territory under its Constitution. Taiwan, meanwhile, calls itself the Republic of China and considers itself to be a separate self-governing entity. Biden’s administration appears content to continue the long-standing US policy of “strategic ambiguity” with the U.S. signaling that it’s prepared to defend Taiwan without explicitly pledging to do so.2 In recent days, Chinese aircraft have repeatedly crossed into Taiwanese airspace, prompting the Biden administration to dispatch three former senior officials to Taiwan, a move Beijing described as “playing with fire.”3 The administration also is reportedly ready to sell weapons to Taiwan (self-propelled artillery), which will further exacerbate bilateral tensions. Earlier this week, Japanese foreign policy officials said they were not obligated to respond with troops if China invades Taiwan.  

So, why are we not reading headlines about these developments? 

China seems, for the moment at least, to be clearly holding the upper hand. 

What is the connection between Taiwan and Hong Kong? 

When the United Kingdom transferred sovereignty for Hong Kong to China in July 1997 (according to the terms of the Basic Law),4 China’s promise to respect the democratic rights and privileges of Hong Kong’s citizens for 50 years was widely seen as a litmus test for the way it would treat the Taiwanese in the event of a future peaceful unification.  

Bottom line: today’s crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong is being watched closely in Taiwan.  

They have to sense that their turn is coming next. 

My how quickly things can change.    

It is hard to imagine that a mere fifteen to twenty months ago, Beijing’s leaders were under pressure on all sides. In 2019, Hong Kong’s democracy movement took the form of student and street protests that shook the city and “presented China’s Communist Party rulers with the most serious popular challenge since the Tiananmen uprising in 1989.”5 As I wrote in a missive entitled “The Winner of the 2020 Global Sweepstakes” THE WINNER OF THE 2020 GLOBAL SWEEPSTAKES IS…: “By any stretch of the imagination, it has been an amazing couple years for Xi Jinping and the Chinese leadership. They entered into this period of time with several problems: a slumping domestic economy; an increasingly hostile Trump administration in Washington actively moving against Chinese technological companies, U.S. Navy maritime maneuvers in the South China Sea, and new diplomatic overtures to Taiwan; international pressure stemming from Beijing’s harsh treatment of China’s Muslim Uighur population; and, massive student-led demonstrations in Hong Kong.”  

What happened? Three words: the Wuhan pandemic. 

In my aforementioned piece, I described it this way: “either by a stroke of incredibly good fortune or design, a worldwide pandemic began.” 

The pandemic completely reversed Beijing’s desperate economic and political plight. 

In Hong Kong, for example, fears of COVID-19 (SARS-Cov-2) chased protestors from the street. Massive street protests against Hong Kong Basic Law Article 236 ended abruptly. Beijing’s leaders took advantage of the pandemic-forced interlude to impose a tough new security law on Hong Kong in June 2020, creating broadly worded crimes that can land people in jail for playing a song or uttering a slogan. It has already driven out thousands of people and led some companies, including the New York Times, to move employees elsewhere.7  

But there is a deafening media silence about what is happening in Hong Kong. (Only on April 20, 2021, did The Washington Post finally publish a story, “The ‘brainwashing’ of Hong Kong begins,” featuring a picture of goose-stepping Hong Kong police units, that was critical of Beijing’s heavy-handed tactics).8   

Otherwise, crickets. 

What is happening today? Less than a week ago (April 15), Hong Kong held a “National Security Education Day” which—according to Mahtani’s article—“was the most visible display of Hong Kong’s fall from a relatively free, boisterous territory to an Orwellian place that resembles the repressive mainland.”9 The day’s activities were directed primarily at children and demonstrates how authorities are enforcing a single narrative of the protests—meddlesome foreign forces stirring up trouble—and how “no expense will be spared to fully integrate the financial center into China’s authoritarian system.”10 Today, school students are being prodded to sing the Chinese national anthem, write “wish cards” pledging support for the new law, and watch pro-Party cartoons. All to celebrate the tough new security law and kowtow to Beijing’s party elites. “Now, the security law is being portrayed to youngsters as something universal and observant of human rights.”11 

At the same time, opposition leaders are now being marched off to jail and the memories of the 2019 protests are being erased, leaving only a narrative of violent rioters deceived by foreign forces amidst new laws designed to eradicate them. Using the new security law, 47 pro-democracy activists have been arraigned on charges of conspiracy to commit subversion; only 11 have been granted bail. The defendants’ ordeal is unusual in Hong Kong, according to retired jurists: “The city long took pride in the independence of its British-style judicial system. Now … the bail proceedings—herding opposition figures into a single courtroom for days, and depriving them of sleep and other basic rights—have marked a dramatic departure from the common law tradition of Hong Kong, developed over 156 years of British rule.”12 Or, as a friend of journalist Mahtani recently observed: “this place is now unrecognizable.”13    

Journalists and media outlets critical of Beijing’s crackdown are also in the crosshairs. This week, Bao Choy Yuk-ling, a 37-year-old investigative journalist was found guilty of making a false statement while searching a public vehicle database as part of an investigation. She was looking into a violent gang attack in July 2019, when a pro-Beijing mob of armed thugs beat protestors and commuters at a suburban train station. No assailants have been found guilty and the police are attempting to rewrite the narrative concerning the incident.14 One prominent media outlet critical of the mainland’s policies, Jimmy Lai’s Apple Daily, is now considering selling out and is changing wording to mollify Beijing’s masters: “For example, as a major force in slandering the mainland, the expression ‘Wuhan pneumonia’ has been changed to COVID-19 recently.”15 Many people and media—including Ta Kung Pao, a major Hong Kong newspaper—have started calling for the Apple Daily to be banned.16  

It wasn’t always that way.  

My only visit to Hong Kong (before the Brits handed it over in 1997) was magical. And unforgettable. I loved the vibrancy of the people, the sights, sounds and smells of the colony’s endless streets and shops, the amazing vista from Mount Victoria, the eclectic cacophony and exotic mix of cultures, and the frenzy of the port. Indeed, from the initial exhilarating final approach into old Kai Tak Airport—banking sharply to descend between the high-rise tenement buildings with laundry hanging outside and the pilot standing on the brakes after touchdown to avoid toppling into the bay—I was fully enchanted by my time in Hong Kong (literally “Fragrant Harbor.”) 

Like Theroux, I determined to include scenes from Hong Kong in my future novels. The city truly casts a spell over all its visitors. Include me among those so captivated.  

At one time, there was no place like it on earth.  

I had assumed Hong Kong would retain its British heritage and colonial charm, with a raucous Chinese overlay, for at least a couple decades into the future. I had created several chapters in my novel based on that assumption.  

Now, I may have to revise some of the narrative. 

Simply put, Beijing’s overlords have trampled on the agreement they made in 1997 and now appear determined to bend the will of the people and rebrand the former British colony in its own authoritarian image. 

No one seems willing, or able, to stop them. 

As a result, the Hong Kong I love so dearly is likely to be changed forever.  

 

And I can’t help but wonder, now that the inmates are running the asylum (my view), could the same thing happen here? 

 

Link to captioned photo: Hong Kong police learn Chinese goose stepping

  

 

 

                                    TESSA’S TRIBUTE

 

“I’ve been wondering if in fact ideal platonic love isn’t just an intensely concentrated form of what inspires the best teachers.”

                                                                                              Edmund Marlowe

 

         My sister Vicki Sue sent me an e-mail last week saying that Dr. Tessa Nelson-Humphries recently fell and fractured her hip shortly before her 97^th birthday. She is in skilled nursing care in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I sent her a get-well card with this handwritten note:

 

“Tessa—

Best wishes …

To the greatest teacher a young boy could have …

Thanks for believing in me …

Get well soon.”

 

Jeemes Akers

 

However, the card falls far short of expressing my true feelings for one of the most wonderful teachers in my life—at any level. Dr. June Buchanan, our beloved “Miss June” at Alice Lloyd College, used to say: “A great teacher is one who takes her students to the moon and back every day.”

Tessa, an English literature teacher at Cumberland College, did that and more. If I close my eyes, I can still see her in front of the classroom: always dressed immaculately, her black hair pulled back tightly in a bun, a colorful scarf around her neck below a fashion model’s face, looking down at me over the top of her reading glasses. Typically, I would be sitting there in blue jeans, gym shoes, a faded cheap shirt, oily hair and pimples.

The distance between her polished mannerisms, grace and regal-like bearing and my shy backwardness and lack of self-confidence was the space between opposite poles of the universe.

But Tessa saw something in me I didn’t even see in myself.

She challenged me—at every class session—to stretch my mind.

To think critically about every passage of literary prose or poetry: to read between the lines and ferret out the author’s true meaning and feelings.

I admired everything about Tessa: her beautiful British accent (Vicki reminded me that she would talk exclusively during the first class session so we “could get used to her accent”), the way she smelled, and the intricate way her mind worked (she was a Mensa member). I came to covet every compliment she would direct my way. Indeed, as a young boy (I never really thought of myself as a young man even during the college years) I fell in love with Tessa in the deepest, most-platonic sense.

I still am.

That isn’t to say that Tessa couldn’t be straight-forward and tough. She had a low threshold of tolerance for fools. In the very first day of our English Literature class another student slouched in a desk chair two rows across from me. He had his feet on the chair in front of him. You could tell by his demeanor that he wasn’t all that thrilled to be there. Tessa walked in the classroom, immediately locked her eyes on him and said in her sternest voice: “young man, I can tell you right now you will not pass this course and so you might as well leave now.”

He got up, shot her an angry glance and huffed out of the room.

I never saw him again.

I can’t speak for any other students enrolled in the class, but that got my attention in a hurry.

In my mind, Tessa was also a lady of mystery. There was always the element of the unknown about her. Rumors floated around on campus about a dashing young husband in Argentina: a life of adventure, intrigue and a Camelot-type existence cut short by the young man’s tragic death by malaria. All this followed by the death of a baby. Others were certain she had won a beauty title in Britain before her marriage. I don’t know if any of that is true. In our collective dormitory wisdom, only such a personal disaster could explain her presence in the remote mountains of eastern Kentucky and her marriage to a rather stodgy local biology professor named Cecil Unthank.

We all knew her as Dr. Tessa Nelson-Unthank in those years.

I loved to see her smile: but I sensed she was never really happy in rural Kentucky. In her Kentucky solitude, she devoted herself to three loves: teaching her students, writing romantic novels, and her dogs.

Oh, how she loved her dogs!

I have one very close and personal Tessa dog story. Many years after the Cumberland College experience—after Chinese language school, my flying crew member time in Vietnam, graduate studies at TCU and my initial days at Alice Lloyd College—I returned to Williamsburg to visit Tessa. Imogene accompanied me. I wanted her to meet Tessa, the teacher whom I bragged endlessly about since we met. At that time, Tessa lived in a modest house with a long, blacktop lane guarded at one end by a heavy cattle-type steel gate. When we pulled up in the car, I heard Tessa’s dogs—one golden retriever and one German shepherd—galloping up the lane, barking loudly. Ima has a mortal fear of dogs so she stayed in the car. She yelled at me: “don’t get too close to the gate.”

I thought to myself, it’s a metal gate, the dogs are just barking to be protective. Like dogs are supposed to be.

I leaned against the gate, waiting for Tessa to come out of the house.

And call off the dogs.

Instead, the dogs got closer.

I thought to myself, these dogs better slow down or they are going to ram into the gate. I inched back slightly from the gate.

To me it was basic physics: strong, immovable metal gate versus yapping dog flesh.

Gate wins every time.

But dogs know nothing about physics.

About three feet from the gate, the German shepherd launched himself airborne, twisting his head so as to penetrate the space between the bars of the gate and—in the process—ripped away a large hunk of my leg flesh and destroyed my best pair of pants with one ferocious bite.

Fortunately for me, he let go.

Perhaps my scream of pain scared him.

My slacks turned crimson red.

Tessa called the dogs back, walked to the gate and apologized profusely.

“They’ve both had their rabies shots,” she assured me in her calmest and most convincing British brogue.

Needless to say, we cut short the visit and I spent the next several hours in the Corbin Hospital waiting for multiple stitches while doing my best job to  convince the emergency room doctors that there was no need for me begin a series of rabies injections.

But most painful of all, I had to listen to Ima’s “I told you so” all the way to the hospital and back to the hotel.

Later, much wiser for the experience, we had a delightful tea and “biscuits” with Tessa at her charming house.

Ah yes, the memories.

I’d like to see Tessa one more time (with or without dogs) and tell her that everything I have accomplished—modest though it may be—I owe to her. In my years in the classroom, I tried to pattern my teaching after her and her insistence that I apply myself to critical and analytical thinking became a part of my mental DNA.

In an age where education has largely abandoned any notion of critical thinking, and when hi-tech titans, government parasites and leftist loonies seek to relegate my grandchildren to passive, mindless sheep, we need more teachers like Tessa than ever.

 

These days, my sister Vicki Sue (the oldest of my four younger sisters) does a much better job of keeping in touch with Tessa. Sis and I overlapped at Cumberland College and she also had Tessa in class. Tessa changed my sister’s life as well.

I haven’t mentioned much about Vicki Sue in these missives. She is musically talented (plays clarinet for a local band and the organ at her church), very artistic (she sewed a RC-135 “hog-nose” aircraft on a sweatshirt for me—one of my prized possessions), patriotic, a giving and loving aunt, a fearsome adversary in the kitchen hand-and-foot card wars, and helps take care of mom and dad. Sis makes the pilgrimage to Disney World on a yearly basis. They say a goldfish never gets bored in a fishbowl because each lap around the bowl is a new experience. The same can be said for Vicki Sue: she does exactly the same things at the theme park every year, and never gets tired of it.

I have tried to paint a positive picture of sis as a way to introduce the following story. I know all of you will feel sorry for her. You probably will think a whole lot less of me. But what’s new …

Our family couldn’t afford an extra car so if Vicki Sue and I wanted to return to Ohio from Cumberland College (a four-hour drive) we would help defray gas costs for a fellow student driver to provide us a lift back home. On one such occasion we were in a car with four other guys and sis. It was bitter cold outside and old Route 25 was curvy and hilly (this was before stretches of I-75 were finished). So, we were all huddled together and jostled against each other with every curve in the road.

I noticed that all the guys were on their best behavior because of sis.

For me it was the perfect storm situation: the ideal circumstances for a practical joke utilizing a strategically-placed fart. And I was just ornery enough—as we used to say in Kentucky—to pull it off.

It was a true SBD (silent but deadly). The kind that could peel the paint off walls. Or destroy the outermost nasal membrane.

I knew none of the guys could say anything because it may have been Vicki Sue. Vicki Sue was afraid it was one of the other guys, so she didn’t say anything. Of course, I didn’t say anything. So, we rode in silence as a pungent smell, worse than rotten eggs, filled the car. Nor did anybody dare roll down the window.

Perfect.

Nothing better than a well-timed, anonymous fart.

Vicki Sue—as sisters are inclined to do—suspected me all along.

For some reason she wouldn’t speak to me for days afterward.

One of these days, I may write an entirely fatuous and flatulent missive. I’d start with a quote from my favorite American poet laureate Rodney Dangerfield: “the definition of polite is farting in the bathtub when by yourself and saying ‘excuse me’ as the bubbles pop.”

What does all this have to do with this topic? You may be asking yourself.

Good question.

I think, curiously enough, Tessa would have enjoyed this story.

One of her more endearing and human qualities was to include in her lectures just the right amount—a pinch at the most—of earthy humor, a hint of naughty suggestiveness and subtle sexual innuendo to keep all of us guessing.

She was a master of the craft.

It was never overkill: always tastefully done.

Sigh.

I will always be in Tessa’s debt. The passage of time may take its toll on her physical beauty and mental acumen: but as long as I live (and think) her legacy will continue … and my love for her will endure.

 

Jeemes Aker is a Senior Fellow of Americans for Intelligence Reform and has written several books. A former CIA Senior Analyst, prior to his Agency experience, Mr. Aker worked for more than a decade as college professor and school administrator, practiced law, and managed a congressional election campaign. He served in the U.S. Air Force as a Chinese linguist and was awarded an Air Medal for his participation as crew member in combat sorties during the Vietnam War.

                                                    Ode to Alfie

“James Earl Lakins, age 21, Army SGT (E-5), 101^st Airborne Division, casualty on January 17, 1970, in Thua Thien, South Vietnam, casualty by explosive device, body recovered, Panel 14W Line 40.” 

Alfie’s epitaph (in the Wall’s books)

 

“Only the good die young.”                                                                                   Billy Joel

 

Recently one of my former college students sent me a text message that he was going to be in Washington D.C. and asked if I would meet him downtown. Eli was part of a group of 150 College of the Ozarks students and staff visiting the city as part of a two-day patriotic trip to visit the White House, various Smithsonian Museums, and the National Mall.

Late at night on September 30, 2019, I finally caught up with Eli and the rest of the group gathered on a grassy knoll near the Vietnam Memorial. It was the perfect occasion to pay tribute to the brave men and women of my generation. I was wearing my favorite cap marking me as a Vietnam veteran serving in the U.S. Air Force.

A near drizzle in the cool evening air blocked out the stars from those of us in attendance. Behind the gathering was the alabaster white and shining obelisk of the Washington Monument—with the Capitol Dome tucked behind it—and in front the dazzling Lincoln Memorial. Stretched out immediately in front of the students was the snake-like, half-buried Vietnam Memorial Wall with its endless list of names.

The surreal scene where the students gathered was bathed in artificial light so the film cameras could focus on the speaker, Terrence R. Dake, one of CofO’s most famous graduates and retired four-star Marine Corps general. General Dake also serves as CofO’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees. In the misty darkness, the general treated the students to a wonderful geopolitical overview of the Vietnam war: the first television war, the “domino theory,” draft dodgers and Jane Fonda, a country divided, and returning uniformed soldiers being spit on in the airport.

It was a magical tour de force of an era.

The general’s final two clinching points: first, this great country of ours is worth the human sacrifice needed to preserve it and second, the need for politicians to make sure that any future war must be consistent with American values and enjoy widespread popular support. That was the least we can do if we ask our young men and women to put their lives on the line.

The students, sitting cross-legged in the wet grass during the entire presentation, were polite, receptive and appreciative.

Afterwards I greeted and hugged several of my former students and campus co-workers.

 

But as the assembly was dismissed, I wish I could have had five minutes to tell them about Alfie.

Just five minutes.

Alfie’s name is on the Wall.

He was my former college roommate at Cumberland College.

Alfie was the same age as many of those college students gathered there that evening. He stepped on a landmine in the jungles of South Vietnam. His slender body was ripped into so many pieces they couldn’t open the casket.

Alfie was buried in a casket produced by the lowest bidder. Perhaps I would have told the students about the time I returned from the war theater to see my dying grandfather. The Red Cross arranged my emergency leave using the fastest way home. That was in the sling seat of a KC-135 cargo aircraft stacked with caskets, from the floor to the ceiling of the cargo area, carrying the remains of our fallen soldiers from Vietnam.

Just me and the caskets.

Years before, Alfie and his casket had made the same flight.

Alfie couldn’t find Vietnam on a map.

His creativity was spent on practical jokes and playing Rook in the dorm.

He flunked out.

Within a week he received his draft induction papers.

That was our world back then.

Very few people on the Cumberland College campus, besides me, actually knew Alfie’s real name. He looked so much like Alfred E. Neuman—the character who adorned the then-popular MAD Magazine—that everyone called him Alfie. The nickname stuck because he was a dead ringer for the magazine character: large ears protruding from either side of his face, boyish freckles decorating his cheeks, a noticeable pair of buck teeth, a tussled hair-mop, scraggly whiskers on his chin, and a long neck with a large, prominent adam’s apple.

Alfie had a contagious laugh and loved to smoke cigars.

He had a girlfriend and dreams for the future.

But Alfie was no Rhodes scholar.

He didn’t participate in sports or any campus club.

I’m not aware of any picture of him during those years.

There was no fanfare when he was drafted.

There was no massive turnout at this funeral when he returned home.

Alfie served his country rather than going to Canada or using one of the myriad tricks available to those who wanted to fail the pre-induction physical. His family was poor so he couldn’t buy his way out with the local draft board.

Alfie was all-too ordinary.

He was unimportant.

He was unconnected and without leverage.

He was unnoticed by those around him.

He was unspectacular.

He was inconspicuous.

But most of all, Alfie was unlucky.

In short, James E. Lakins was ideal cannon fodder for the political, economic and business elites of this world who launch and perpetuate wars to suit their own agendas.

I wonder how many of the 58,195 names etched on the Wall were just like him.

On that night, as the students filtered away into the darkness of the trees leading to the nearby Korean War and Lincoln Memorials, I made my way alone back to panel 14W on the Wall. The panel glistened with the evening moisture. Only a handful of people gathered nearby. Partially wilted yellow roses decorated the bases of several of the panels, barely visible in the memorial’s muted lights.

I stretched my hand upward to touch Alfie’s name.

Again.

I said a prayer for him and all those who may remember him.

Again.

I felt sorrow about his unrealized dreams.

Again.

I regretted a terribly wasted life.

Again.

I fought back the tears.

Again.

I apologized.

Again.

 

It very easily could have been me …

Perhaps, it should have been me.

 

 

 

 

 

HIDDEN TREASURE: THE LITTLE GREEN BOOK

“… just because one can guess the nature of a tale doesn’t make it any less worth the telling. One might even find a treasure they’ve missed before, or see a glimmer of true things therein …”

Sam Westhoek

Chasing the Dragon

After twenty years, we have decided to sell our house. Imogene is nearing retirement and it just seems the right thing to do, and the right time to do it. The easy part for us was deciding to sell, the hard part is decluttering, sorting through and selectively pitching two decades of accumulated “stuff.”

So many memories that mean so much to us: but so little to anyone else.

Last week, I started cleaning out the drawers of my rolltop desk—purchased with my Vietnam service bonus provided by the state of Ohio—and (as you can imagine) it has been a trip down memory lane: old artwork, pictures of family and friends, assorted gifts and keepsakes, and snippets of writings long forgotten. But in one drawer, hidden underneath handfuls of foreign currency (coins and paper), I discovered a true hidden treasure: a little green notebook with a variety of handwritten entries from 1997.

Nuggets buried for twenty-three years.

Notes written from a time long before my hands started shaking with “family tremors.”

Among those nuggets was a two-page entry under the heading “My ten favorite eating experiences.” Others may keep book on people they meet, places they travel, love won and lost, fortunes earned and squandered; for me, however, most of my memorable life experiences are attached to food—especially steaks. I can still remember as a child my first restaurant T-bone steak during a family outing to Indian Lake, Ohio. I have been looking for a steak as good as that one ever since. So, in 1997, I scribbled down notes about my favorite ten lifetime eating experiences. Since then, I have been on a one-man quest to replace one of the ten listed places with a newer, better “feedbag” experience.

Quite honestly, this list probably says more about me than any other of my topical missives. For many years—and still today—the topic of food, as well as unique shared experiences with others while participating in that activity, forms the very core of my being. Only my personal walk with the Lord Jesus Christ and activities as a husband and father take precedence on my chain of personal priorities. Whenever I take a trip, or recall my experiences travelling abroad, the very first thing that comes to mind are the restaurants (or, in some cases, “dives”)

where I sampled the local food. I almost have a photographic memory when it comes to recalling those places: on every stretch of road, every country visited, there are special food-associated memories that pop into mind (no matter how many years have passed).

It is one of the few true “gifts” God has blessed me with …

So, without further ado, (and not trying to outdo David Letterman) let me present my list of top ten eating experiences (as of 1997).

Let’s start with one of the earliest. During my years at Cumberland College, 1966-1970, (now Cumberland University, then a small Baptist college located in Williamsburg, Kentucky), I had very little money. In fact, the only way I could pay for college was with a work-study grant (I spent two years sweeping every inch of campus sidewalks dressed in threadbare blue jeans and a t-shirt), as well as a generous scholarship from the local Lion’s Club chapter in the town where I was raised. My parents did what they could. My grandma Clara also would slip me a ten-dollar bill every time I came home to help me get by. Sigh. At any rate, there was one local lady who felt sorry for students like me. I’m ashamed to say that I don’t remember her name or how we first stumbled on her restaurant—actually a simple shack that posed as a truck stop along old route 25 on the way to Corbin, Kentucky. She would fix us a huge and delicious T-bone steak with all the “fixins” for a few paltry dollars. I’m sure she lost money on every such meal; she did it out of pure sympathy for me and other hard-pressed college students.

If there is any justice—and there is—she is now helping prepare a feast at the table of the King of Kings in the heavenly realm.

The second eating stop on our journey traces back to my years in Okinawa, Japan, where I was stationed at Kadena AFB for eighteen months during the waning years of the Vietnam War. As an enlisted airman in those days, I didn’t earn much money (you will notice a recurring theme here). So, going out to eat was a really big deal and typically reserved for major occasions; otherwise—if you were single—you ate every meal in the mess hall close to the barracks. I can still remember jumping in my pale green, standard shift, Datsun Bluebird (I had to carry a jug of water in the front seat because of a slow leak in the radiator) to drive down the coast to Naha—the biggest city on the island—for a meal at Sam’s Anchor Inn. The décor of the restaurant was designed to give the customer the impression they were dining inside an eighteenth-century sailing vessel, complete with wooden ribs, antique hanging lights and a huge cauldron as you entered (where you were greeted by the smell of corn chowder). I would blow a large part of my paycheck on the house specialty, Kobe beef cooked on a hibachi grill. The Okinawan cook would mix vegetables, potatoes, and bean sprouts with the meat. Our local Benihana’s prime rib—as much as I enjoy it—cannot hold a candle to my memories of that meal. Just thinking about it is almost making me drool.

My third food-related cluster of memories are associated with my time in graduate school at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, compliments of the G.I. bill. That time was a bittersweet experience for me. Perhaps one of these days I will feel comfortable enough to talk about it in a missive. But not now. Instead, I want to focus on two eating experiences that stand out above the others during that timeframe: the barbeque beef brisket at Angelo’s and early morning eating experiences at the Old South Pancake House.

During those years, it was hard to beat the mesquite-cooked brisket at Angelo’s, located close to the Trinity River. The smell-smoke spilling out of the outside cooker—where the Mexican family cooked huge slabs of beef brisket for hours using nearby piles of mesquite wood—assaulted your sense of smell as you arrived in the parking lot. The smells drifted inside as well, where the first-time customer was greeted with the sights and sounds of a seedy Texan bar-restaurant with a sawdust-covered floor. Customers were greeted at the door by a taxidermist’s dream: a hallway flanked by two menacing, moth-eaten grizzly bears, walls decorated with an assortment of bison heads and multi-pointed deer, mountain goats and elk antlers. Two large refrigerated units teemed with plastic bowls of potato salad and cold slaw, and behind the counter, family members (sporting meat and barbeque sauce splotched bibs) doled out generous portions of brisket for sandwiches or platters. Most ordered large, iced goblets of Lone Star beer to quash down the food. (During my last visit to Angelo’s, the Texas Department of Health had made the owners sweep out the sawdust, get rid of the stuffed animals, and put a fence around the cooker and woodpiles. Inside, the place was larger, the clientele more respectable, and the tables and floors more sterile than they used to be. But at a cost: Angelo’s forfeited much of its rustic charm).

My other food-related memory associated with Fort Worth is the Ol’ South Pancake House. In the old days, the Ol’ South was a small, intimate building located next to the railroad tracks. Many of my most memorable moments from those years took place there between two and three in the morning (when all the nighttime denizens emerge and, for us, after our frequent poker parties ended). At that time of morning, people willingly pour out their raw-nerve life experiences on anyone whom will listen: I’ve heard heartbreaking stories of forlorn love, careers squandered, and disastrous life decisions. Sigh. While I was living in Fort Worth, the Ol’ South moved to a larger, more modern place nearby. I first met Fred Mullinax there for my initial job interview for Alice Lloyd College. We have been friends ever since. (In my missive “The Future of Food” sent out several months ago, I described the wonderful night an Arab belly dancer surprised the Ol’ South’s regular patrons—in case you didn’t receive that particular writing, I’ll be glad to send it to you upon request. It is one of my favorites.)

My time teaching at Alice Lloyd College and as the first director of the June Buchanan School, provides the backdrop for the fourth food-related experience listed in my little green book. The specific outing was an evening at the Cattlemen’s Restaurant in the Stockyard District of Fort Worth, Texas. My good friend Larry Hanger, would be proud of the huge steak I demolished that evening; as Larry is fond of saying: “we didn’t climb our way to the top of the food chain to eat rabbit food.” (Of course, I read on-line in the news today that an Israeli company last week unveiled the first 3-D-printed rib-eye steak.)

On this occasion, I was travelling with Jim Bergman—former ALC Dean of Students—on a fund-raising trip to Texas. Jim was an amazing individual. Reader’s Digest used to have a section entitled “My Most Unforgettable Character,” a category tailor-made for people like Jim Bergman. A true southern gentleman-philosopher, erudite, personable, accomplished in several fields, and grounded in sound Christian doctrine, Jim made the long miles in the car between Kentucky and Texas melt away as we discussed a wide variety of personal, spiritual and geostrategic issues. I miss him and his intellect. I have lost track of the number of times in my travels, when the topic of Alice Lloyd College and Pippa Passes came up during the conversation, the other person would ask me “do you know Jim Bergman?” (It was also during that fundraising trip to Texas with Jim that I first met “Aunt Margaret”—a lady then in her mid-90s—who had carved out and built a ranch with her husband in the hill country near Lake Travis. Her politics were slightly to the right of Attila the Hun and she was as tough as a gnarled piece of mesquite wood. I pay tribute to this remarkable lady by including her as a character in my novel. I miss her dearly).

The fifth entry on my food list occurred during my first government TDY trip to Singapore in the early 90s. Our sister service in the city-state treated us to a fancy meal at a restaurant located near the Straits, the high-traffic waterway separating Singapore from the Indonesian islands. On the menu was delicious garlic and pepper crab and fish dishes of every description. As a “rite-of-passage” experience following the meal, our hosts arranged a table at the far corner of the property for us to try durian—the pungent, prickly fruit that many Asians treat as an aphrodisiac. The smell of ripe durian is so foul, for example, that you are prohibited from taking it on planes. One of my favorite books (Manila Bay) contains a vignette where a “durian terrorist” on a motorcycle drives between cars in the notorious bumper-to-bumper traffic in Manila (before the days of air conditioning) and tosses ripe durian “bombs” into the open windows. You have to smell durian (only once) to appreciate such a scenario. Needless to say, the durian (which tastes just like it smells) when combined with the local Tiger beer, made me a belching and farting volcano for at least two days.

Ah, but what an experience!

The sixth food site on my list was a dilapidated barn-type structure housing a Mexican restaurant located a short drive from Vandenberg AFB in Santa Barbara County, California. I was attending a missile-related course on base and asked the instructor where the best local steak house could be found. He directed me to a nearly deserted village in the middle of nowhere. The restaurant was the only building of note. Once inside, you could pick any size of steak you wanted (that was a first for me). Mine came out the size of a rump roast! I savored every bite.

The seventh entry on my list was the Coliseum Restaurant located in a large room attached to a former British colonial grand hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. At the time, I was travelling throughout Southeast Asia with Tom Andahl (we recently exchanged memories of our eating experience there). We were seated in a dining room featuring the highest ceilings I have ever seen. Both of us immediately noticed several brown-rimmed circles arranged in concentric patterns overhead. A waiter—dressed impeccably in colonial fashion—tied a bib around our necks and asked if we wanted the house steak (the restaurant’s featured dish). We said “yes.” In a few minutes, the waiter returned with a steak worthy of Fred Flintstone and poured a healthy dose of house-specialty gravy on the simmering slab of meat. The result was a plume column of grease-smoke that ascended to the ceiling, adding to the collection above. No matter, the steak was delicious.

My green book’s eighth entry, comes from the amazing city of Bangkok, Thailand. As many of you know, several of my missives—from discussing spirit houses to Buddhist eschatological art—are located in the exotic backdrop of Bangkok, the “City of Angels.” A short cab drive from the western hotels along Wireless Road (or a short walk along the klongs), and the infamous Patpong red-light district, is Neil’s Tavern, a delightful western restaurant with a German-looking décor. The steaks are terrific. It remains my favorite dining experience in Bangkok. If you search for Neil’s on-line, they will tell you the restaurant began in 1969 and was named after American astronaut and moonwalker Neil Armstrong (who lived, coincidentally enough, across the street from my grandma Clara outside Lebanon, Ohio, while his farmhouse was being refurbished.) I like Neil’s so much that I placed one of my novel scenes inside the restaurant.

Over the years, dining experiences in Bangkok have intersected with my life journeys on several occasions. The first of many was during my Vietnam service days. Following a long, noisy, and teeth-rattling C-130 flight from Kadena AFB to U-Tapao, (accompanied by my good friend and co-Chinese linguist Gary Knott), we landed in Thailand for an R&R. We hired a local cab driver for a white-knuckle nighttime dash to Bangkok, including a close call with a water buffalo lumbering on the road. It was an incredible trip, full of good eating stops (read here steaks) and a host of amazing experiences. As a sampler of the trip, a driver took us to a wild nightclub where, after a loud gong sounded, the dance floor was cleared,

ropes for a “ring” set up and a kickboxing match ensued with the club patrons betting like crazy on their favorite fighter. The gong sounded again, the rope ring was disassembled, the music blared anew and the dancing continued. All this only to be interrupted—a couple hours later in the wee hours of morning—by the familiar sound of the gong and a real live cockfighting match. What an extraordinary evening! In those days, the Thais catered to throngs of young, testosterone-driven American GI’s (or rather, the greenbacks in their wallets): by the time of my last visit to Bangkok, however, (a time coinciding with the revolutionary street unrest of pro-Thaksin supporters), Thai business and brothel owners began catering to new Japanese and Chinese overlords (or rather, the yen and yuan in their wallets).

But the excellent taste of the steaks at Neil’s Tavern was exactly as I remembered. It is nice to know that some things never change.

A ninth entry in my little green book refers to a cluster of food-related events in the Philippines. During my first visit to Manila (on that same long TDY with Tom Andahl), we had dinner at a Cuban restaurant when the lights flickered and then went out. During the Ramos years, the Philippines was wracked by a constant string of brownouts, blackouts and electrical power failures. It became a way of life. Our waiter apologized, lit a candle, and the meal continued. (Many years later I was in the Philippines again, visiting the Angeles City area outside old Clark AFB—at one time, before the volcano, the most beautiful airbase in the world which we used as a typhoon evacuation location during my flying days in the Vietnam era—where I encountered an amazing group of American expats. They had purchased a local bar which served as a center for their motorcycle club and trained local mamasans to cook the food just like back home. I enjoyed a meal of southern fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits and green beans that was every bit as good as my grandma’s cooking.)

The final entry in my green book focuses on Australia. In the delightful capital city of Canberra, there is the Kingston Circle Hotel with an adjacent pub and cook-your-own steakhouse. The steak choices are fantastic. Moreover, you can play a game of pool while your steak sizzles. I love that place. In fact, I love the food in Australia period! Whether it is the prime steak and dessert at the Charcoal Grill in downtown Canberra, or the amazing assortment of meats—you can sample snake, gator, or camel—in the rotating restaurant high atop Sydney, or grain-fed kangaroo steaks in Alice Springs, Australia is a true haven for meat lovers.

There you have it! My green book’s big ten. Yet, as I write, I realize that I’ve only scratched the surface of a lifetime of truly wonderful dining experiences. (I can’t believe I’ve omitted the Jaya Pub experience in Jakarta). But, alas, I’ve reached my self-imposed page limit. So, Bon Appetit

THE LOVE TAPE
“The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let them put you in that position.”

Leo Buscaglia

“Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.”
Leo Buscaglia

The process of decluttering our house—ridding ourselves of the accumulated stuff of decades—has proven to be a painful, emotion-laden process. We have taken at least 60 contractor-sized bags to the county landfill, have given away everything we could, and filled several large containers at the nearby Goodwill.
I’m amazed this relatively small house could hold all this stuff!
However, in the process I also have uncovered some gems from the past that I can never part with.
One of these is a time-worn, old-technology cassette tape (many years ago I labeled it the “Love Tape”) by Leo Buscaglia. Felice Leonardo Buscaglia (1924-1998)—also known as “Dr. Love”—was a motivational speaker, author and professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Southern California. At USC, Buscaglia’s class on Love was so popular that incoming freshmen would enroll in the class to reserve a class spot by the end of their senior year.
Last weekend, while sitting in the garage shredding and sorting documents from the past (including all my class notes, lectures, law school study guides and assorted non-classified documents from the Agency years), I attempted to explain the importance of the “Love Tape” to my son-in-law Ryan.
Many years ago, during my teaching years at Alice Lloyd College (ALC), then-president Dr. Jerry Davis asked me to design a college course that would incorporate a history of the Caney Creek Community Center and ALC fused together with the most important concepts we wanted each of our students to be exposed to before they graduated from the institution. The result was a class called Philosophy 300: Issues and Values for Contemporary Decision Making.
I enjoyed teaching that course as much—if not more—than any course over my years in the classroom. The class itself was mostly spontaneous and non-scripted. The primary goal was to encourage students to think critically about topics ranging from politics to philosophical teachings, the influence and challenge of exponentially changing technology to spiritual values. Then, as Director of the June Buchanan college preparatory school co-located on campus, I taught a very similar course for our high school students called Senior Seminar.
But, as I tried to explain to Ryan, the real specialness of the course was that God’s supernatural presence would show up in at least one class session during the semester. He would deal with each and every student on a very personal level.
I never knew when it would happen, only that it always did.
Some of you may be skeptical about that: it’s your problem.
We often had guest speakers—including in the early runnings, Dr. June Buchanan herself (the co-founder of ALC and the beloved campus dowager queen)—and other class sessions that were a potpourri of experiences.
The one constant in every semester—whether in Philosophy 300 or the JBS Senior Seminar—was that I would take a week to play the “Love Tape” and discuss the importance of loving relationships in the respective futures of each student enrolled in the class.
From a pedagogical standpoint, the way I played the “Love Tape” for my students was the worst possible teaching technique. I would bring a cassette player to class, place it on the front desk, insert the cassette, turn it on and allow the magic of Buscaglia’s presentation sweep the students into a world of the reaffirming values of love.
How did I obtain the tape? A special friend gave it to me.
Now the tape sits at the bottom of a plastic tub in storage.
(Do you remember the final scene from Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark? Where an anonymous government worker carts the wooden crate containing the ark to a place somewhere in a huge warehouse containing thousands of other such boxes? That is what our two self-storage cubes now look like).
It would probably take me at least three days of constant digging to find the tub containing the tape.
So, from memory, let me talk about two ideas gleaned from Leo Buscaglia’s “Love Tape”:
First, the notion that love is incubated in a family setting. Buscaglia—from a family with Italian roots—talks about his upbringing in a family of lovers and huggers. He said his family hugged so much that during the cold season they constantly swapped germs, which his grandmother addressed by tying a washrag around his neck with garlic inside. Every evening, at the family dinner table, his father would ask each of the children what they learned in school that day (he and his siblings would gather and say “if you haven’t learned anything, make something up!”) And so young Leo would say, for example, that Cairo is the capital of Egypt. Papa Buscaglia would say “Momma, did you know that? How wonderful!” (as the kids rolled their eyes). “But you know,” Leo said on the tape, “even now, after all these years and no matter how exhausted I am, before I go to sleep I look up at the ceiling and ask myself, Leo what have you learned today?”
One quote in particular from that family section has stayed with me over the years. On the tape, Leo talked about how different his perception of those childhood years differed from those of his siblings. (I’ve noticed the same thing with my own family). Then he said this, “no matter what, your parents did the best they could under the circumstances.” That simple statement has framed my view toward my own parents, and I have used it in quasi-counseling situations with students and friends several times over the years.
It goes without saying then, that if an individual comes from a distorted rather than an affirming family background, one of the primary victims will be a healthy view of love: love itself can be distorted, easily become a pornographic idol, or fractured in multiple ways. In many communities, for example, we are reaping the social effects of generations-long fatherlessness.
The second concept I remember taking away from Leo’s “Love Tape” is the necessity of a healthy, love-based, self-image. Education can be one of the most damaging influences in this regard. Young Leo, in elementary school, was unable to speak English on a level with other students of his age (even though he could speak Italian fluently as well as a basic comprehension of several other European languages), and so he was placed in special education classes.
He said he loved it.
Young Leo particularly enjoyed art class. One day, the art teacher—bedraggled and tired—instructed the students to grab paper and crayons. “Draw me a tree,” she told them. Leo was so excited. He knew all about trees: he had climbed trees, fallen from trees, and had eaten the fruit and bark of trees. So, he grabbed the crayons, and scribbled furiously covering the page with every vibrant color of life: he eagerly splashed the art pad with greens, reds, blues, yellows, purples. He pushed back his seat and motioned the teacher over to his desk. “Oh my God,” she said, “brain damage!” Then she walked to the blackboard, and taking colored chalk, drew a popsicle-like tree, with green leaves and red dots for apples. “Now that is a tree,” she said confidently.
The teacher didn’t really want to see their trees, but rather a version of hers: graphic portrayals conforming to her image of a tree.
I have never forgotten that illustration.
How many times in our culture are we asked to conform our views to those advocated by ruling elites, opinion shapers, self-serving pastors, priests or rabbis, Wall Street “experts,” agenda driven scientists, or self-ingratiating politicians. We are constantly asked to bow down to the idol of the day—a vision and destiny shaped by the teacher’s tree …
I am very careful to respond, for example, when someone asks me what “I really think” about this-or-that topic. In my final military service days, the base commander ordered me to report to his office. I saluted and approached his desk. He wanted me to reenlist (not that it would be better for me as a person but probably so he could fulfill some sort of quota). “Sergeant Akers, are you interested in reenlisting?” he asked.
“No sir,” I replied, “I hope to get an early-out so I can attend graduate school.”
“Okay then Akers,” he responded, “I want to know what you really think about the Air Force and the reasons you are leaving. We have spent lots of money on your education. What you say will not leave this office.”
I took him at his word. I thought he was really interested in my viewpoints. So, I dumped it all out: the good, bad and the ugly.
Mysteriously, less than two weeks later, I was ordered to participate in a team working the worst, dirtiest, and most despised details on base. My comrades were the base perverts, petty criminals, and nonconformists of various stripes.
You see, the base commander wasn’t really interested in what I thought but expected me to tell him what he wanted to hear. That brutally painful experience taught me a valuable lesson. Whenever anybody asks me to share with them what I really think, I ask them if they really want to know or do they expect me to confirm their thinking on the topic.
Sigh.
Leo Buscaglia’s “Love Tape.”
What are we really teaching our kids and students about the most important things? If we equip them to be successful in a purely materialistic world: to have the biggest house on the block, enjoy a CEO salary, take every vaccine that crops up over the next decade, or own a three-car garage and the shiny red Tesla inside. Then the words of Leo Buscaglia become more relevant than ever—“try snuggling up next to the red [Tesla] on a cold winter night” …
As humans we need the positive affirmation of love. (See 1 Corinthians 13).
It is my prayer that some of those concepts of love from that old tape have enriched and permeated the lives of generations of students.

Antifa members from Germany receive military training in Syria

06/09/2020 10:23 PM

Antifa members from Germany and the West take military training in Syria. They gain combat experience and return to their home countries,” asks former CIA Officer Brad Johnson: “What are they up to?” Are there threats of assassination attempts on German politicians?

It is actually no secret that not only IS terrorists, but also Antifa members from Europe and the USA have moved to Syria since 2013 to receive military training. The Antifa members did this under the guise of combating ISIS on the part of the Kurdish militia YPG. They fought under the umbrella organization “International Freedom Battalion”.

Some information can be gathered on a Facebook page of the Antifa battalion in Syria. One picture shows international fighters of the Antifa. They look like IS fighters, but they belong to the Antifa. Below them on a wall it says: “With the blood of the martyrs, our flag turns red”.

The alleged success in the fight against the terrorist militia IS is granted to them, although the US army has actually decimated IS in eastern Syria.

But for the Antifa, not only IS and right-wing extremists, but also “capitalism” and the German authorities are an enemy. Consequently, this article deals only with the internal security of Germany. It is all about the following question: How should Germany deal with left-wing extremists who are trained to use weapons abroad and thus pose an immediate threat to internal security?

“The ‘anti-fascist struggle’ of left-wing extremists is not only directed against actual or supposed right-wing extremists, but also applies to ‘capitalism’, since left-wing extremists see it as the cause of ‘fascism’. Against the background, this struggle is only considered sufficient and productive if it moves the supposed social conditions into focus and attacks: (…) the struggle against fascism is only won when the capitalist system is smashed and a classless society is achieved is. ‘(Homepage, Antifaschistischer Aufbau München’, February 23, 2018) ”, according to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV).

Former CIA officer Brad Johnson points out on Fox News that the anti-fascist returnees from Syria pose a threat to Western societies. “What does the Antifa want with a couple of seasoned combat veterans? Why do you need this to complement your movement? ”

The question of what exactly they are up to needs to be discussed. Many have returned to their home countries. Antifa fighters go to Syria, receive training in machine guns, rocket launchers, bombs and other weapons, and then return to their home countries. A certain structure can be seen. This problem should be viewed in the European and US context.

The security authorities are now taking action against IS cells and right-wing extremist groups in various countries.

But here some important questions need to be asked: Are Antifa returnees from Syria, who have a clearly hostile attitude towards state institutions and German police officers, less dangerous than IS returnees? Are Antifa returnees from Syria really more harmless than a member of a right-wing extremist cell?

The Lübcke case has already shown that extremists can use their weapons skills against German politicians. This country does not need a repetition from the left-wing extremist corner.

The security policy problem for Germany, which arises from the connection between the Antifa and Syria, should be investigated by politicians and the security authorities.

The RAF had already shown how deadly left-wing extremism can be. Germany doesn’t need a new RAF.

Never again!

Link zum Originalartikel: https://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/504599/Antifa-Mitglieder-aus-Deutschland-erhalten-militaerische-Ausbildung-in-Syrien

Jeemes Aker, Senior Fellow at Americans for Intelligence Reform, brings an uplifting story to you. With all the difficult and disturbing news, it’s important we take a pause for the magical moments.

 

                    SINGAPORE MEMORIES: THE SOUND OF MUSIC

“And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well,    and the evil spirit departed from him.”                                                                                                  1 Samuel 16:23    

There is something special about the soothing balm of music.

I love listening to classic rock and roll songs, and many of them can transport me—as if on a magic carpet—to special memories from the past: I again become a part of the place and life circumstances where I heard the song for the first time.

As I mentioned in another recent missive, we now are sorting, pitching and otherwise decluttering our accumulated “stuff” of several decades as we prepare to sell our house. It has been a difficult process: especially when it comes to parting with things that retain some sort of emotional pull over your life.

On the other hand, I have stumbled across some real gems.

One of these appeared in the form of a hard copy of a missive that I had thought was long lost. The piece describes a specific experience from my years in Singapore (I was a First Secretary in the Embassy from 2007-2009), but I have thought about the incident repeatedly ever since. It is among my most treasured memories from that chapter in my life. I hope you enjoy:

“SAXOPHONES OF GRACE”

Revelatory insights of God’s grace arrive unexpectedly and in the strangest places 

On the first Saturday of 2009, I grabbed my favorite art pad and pencil and started out on the ten-minute walk down Holland Road from my apartment complex to Singapore’s beautiful Botanical Gardens. My wife and youngest daughter only recently returned to the States [they had come out for several days during their Christmas break from school]. We enjoyed a delightful holiday together. [I remember feeling a bit down-and-out after their departure]. During their visit, we visited the Botanical Gardens on a handful of occasions. Imogene particularly loved sitting on a lakeside bench, across from the pavilion, where we would enjoy dusk by soaking in nature’s sights of ducks, turtles and birds frolicking amid a small clump of red-stemmed palms and reeds. As darkness hovered closer, we enjoyed a veritable symphony of quacks, clucks, songs and splashes.

On that Saturday morning, Singapore’s equatorial sun chased me from the bench after a few minutes of sketching. I retreated from the growing heat and began my trek back toward my air-conditioned apartment on top of the hill. I chose the side road that borders the garden grounds. The route dumped back into Holland Road after a short distance. Lush, emerald-green tropical vegetation encroached the edges of the road. On one side was marked off a series of parking slots for local cars of garden visitors. As I approached the narrow road—using one of the garden’s many sidewalks—I thought I heard the sounds of a saxophone.

I quickly dismissed the thought because it was so out of place and illogical.

As I left the jungle foliage and entered the road, I noticed a solitary car parked on the roadway’s edge. An Asian man stood beside the car and reached inside. He fumbled for something in the front seat.

He was dressed casually—like most Singaporeans on a weekend—sporting a non-descript tee shirt, flowered swimming trunks and flip-flops. He wore a Bluetooth earpiece and so I guessed he was, as most Singaporeans, technologically savvy. As I walked closer, I observed him climb into the car where he grabbed a silver saxophone out of its case (my sister, an avid saxophonist in her own right, told me later it was probably an alto sax). He ignored me as I walked past the car.

When I passed the end of the car and the trunk, I noticed a beautiful gold saxophone perched atop its own stand. Nearby was a simple metal music stand on top of which was spread out handwritten notes of a musical score.

The saxophone and the music stand were situated so they directly faced the jungle foliage along the edge of the road.

Perhaps this is a good time to note that God recently has been dealing with me on the matter of grace. [He still is!] By grace I mean the notion that we as believers enjoy the unmerited favor and blessing of Father God as a result of the perfect, one-time sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ on the cross.[1] The result has been an amazing time of spiritual insight for me. In the process, I have learned to pay particular attention to unusual events that cross my path, as God will often use these types of circumstances to convey a spiritual truth.

Back to the Singaporean with the saxophone. I had not walked more than twenty paces down the road from the car when I heard the most beautiful, lilting and melodious saxophone notes. The music was so powerful that it was obvious to me that the man I had just passed was a professional. I stopped, turned around and stood frozen on the road, looking on and listening with a sense of awe at the scene unfolding before my eyes and ears. Outside of the tropical vegetation, I was an audience of one. The music [so incredibly beautiful that I still remember it] cast a captivating spell but it was (apparently) arranged for my ears alone. What an unexpected and soul-healing blessing. The incongruity of the setting further enhanced the specialness of the melody. I didn’t recognize the song—it was truly beautiful—and I haven’t ruled out the thought that the musician composed the musical score himself.

I stood there spellbound, absolutely motionless as I listened to the jungle concert for several minutes. I didn’t want that special moment to end. If the saxophone player was aware of my presence, he didn’t acknowledge it.

Standing there in that window of time, I realized that God’s Holy Spirit had orchestrated the entire event—unlikely as it was—on an otherwise ordinary Saturday morning in Singapore.

You see my blessed friends, God the master composer has created each of us to be a special workmanship, with our lives uniquely scripted and purposed—original musical scores if you like—where notes of grace form our life’s songs. All within the larger beautiful harmony of God’s infinite mercy and favor.

The end purpose of our respective life’s song (indeed the sole purpose for all the music in the created universe) is to glorify and honor Jesus Christ. God will get glory even if the trees—or lush tropical plants and vines—have to clap their hands.

I am seeing more clearly than ever that unless our life’s musical score is focused on Christ, the music will become lost in a random assortment of notes: noise without melody. Likewise, in some inexplicable way, for those following Christ the agency of the Holy Spirit softly and graciously intervenes to facilitate the nexus between our conscious thinking processes and the talent of the master musician to make our life’s song a sweet savor and savor to the very throne of God, as well as pleasant sounds to listening ears around us.

However, the sweetest musical refrains are useless unless appreciated by a listener. I am so thankful that God hears each of our life’s songs. This reciprocal dynamic generates purposeful existence—abundant life—in the spiritual realm. My friends, please make grateful, receiving ears available to hear God’s unique musical chords in your life and in those of others around you during this year of 2009 [and 2021]. Just as that Saturday morning encounter with the saxophonist in Singapore, God the Father wants to saturate us by pouring His unique composition of grace into our lives that we may bless others.”

[1] [I have told this story many times to my friends over the years. When I first arrived in Singapore for this assignment, I promised my mother I would attend the service of a Singapore preacher she had watched on television. To honor her—the very first sleepy Sunday morning in the city-state—I took a taxi to the mall location where the services were held. I barely got a seat in the fourth overflow location, a theater holding at least 2,000 people. Throughout my time in Singapore, I attended Joseph Prince’s New Covenant Church almost every Sunday. To get a seat in the primary service location, the “Rock,” you had to show up hours before the service, which entitled you to a ticket to stand in a group that rushed, into into the auditorium, Oklahoma land rush style. The church held four packed services every Sunday. Most times, I was one of only a handful of Caucasians in attendance. I often wondered during those years , how many people in the United States were hungry enough to hear God’s word that they would show up an hour early on Sunday morning to get a ticket to stand in line to attend a church service.]

About the author:

Jeemes L. Akers retired as a senior analyst from the Central Intelligence Agency in September 2013, with over fifteen years’ experience analyzing a broad array of Southeast Asian and Middle East security, terrorism, cyber and weapons’ proliferation issues. He has traveled extensively in Asia, Europe and Oceania, including deployments to several stations abroad, and has prepared analytical reports, briefings and in-depth studies for high-level Intelligence Community and White House policy makers and foreign partners on a variety of security-related issues.

Prior to his Agency experience, Mr. Akers worked for more than a decade as college professor and school administrator, practiced law, and managed a congressional election campaign. He served in the U.S. Air Force as a Chinese linguist and was awarded an Air Medal for his participation as crew member in combat sorties during the Vietnam War.

More recently, Mr. Akers spent several years as a visiting professor at the College of the Ozarks teaching courses including Terrorism and Criminal Justice, History of the Modern Middle East, History of Modern China, History of Modern Russia, History of Modern Germany, and a Legal History of the United States. When not teaching at CofO, Mr. Akers is continuing work on a three-novel series and his artwork.

MYANMAR REVISITED, by Jeems Akers, Senior Fellow, Americans for Intelligence Reform

“Myanmar urgently needs vaccines and an equitable economic recovery (not a coup).”

Thant Myint-U

This weekend, the military took control of Myanmar (Burma).
Again.
75-year-old Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi (whose political party won a landslide election in November) has been detained along with other democratically elected leaders. The army’s (Tatmadaw) TV station says power has been handed over to commander-in-chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. No major violence has been reported (the suffering populace has seen this movie several times before), soldiers are blocking roads in the capital (Nay Pyi Taw) and the major city (Yangon, formerly Rangoon). Internet and phone services have been disrupted, and international and domestic TV channels were forced off the air. A one-year state of emergency has been declared.
The event barely caused a ripple in western media outlets. More important things dominate our news: President Biden’s avalanche of new executive orders, vaccine-related stories, a major winter storm crawling across the U.S., Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum’s raid on silver and GameStop shares, and local efforts to oust the Trumps from Mar-a-Lago.
Catastrophic occurrences on the other side of the world will continue to be largely ignored as long as we remain wrapped around the axle of our domestic political obsessions.
Whenever I see a news report about Myanmar, I think of my young student guide at the Shwedagon Pagoda practicing his English language skills on a strange American visitor. I wonder where he is today, and whether he has given up on his dreams of freedom.
In this vein, and as a tribute of sorts to this unnamed young man, I am resending a piece to a handful of friends from earlier this summer which I titled “Sweatin’ At Shwedagon.”

“Then, a golden mystery upheaved itself on the horizon, a beautiful winking wonder that blazed in the sun …”
Rudyard Kipling

Here on the East Coast it is hot.
I mean really hot.
Hotter than a Jalapeno pepper stand in Death Valley.
Hotter than a gold leaf on Shwedagon’s lofty spire.
The heat has turned my grass brown and is suffocating my plants.
This intense heat reminds me of my brief visit to Burma (now called Myanmar by the junta) and the city of Rangoon (now called Yangon) several years ago. I was convinced, at the time, that it was the hottest place on earth.
In 1889, the great British writer Rudyard Kipling visited Burma for three days.
It changed his life forever.
Burma has that effect on people.
Amidst the heat, and with Ima and I self-quarantining because of the pandemic (the U.S. casualty count—if the figures are to be believed—now tops 150,000), [NOTE: today a new projection from the University of Washington predicts that the COVID-19 death toll will reach 619,000 by May, with troubling reports that a new strain arriving from South Africa may be resistant to the new vaccines. ] I have been spending part of my time reading. One of my favorite authors is Christopher G. Moore. In my view, Moore understands the cultural dynamics of Southeast Asia better than any other fiction writer out there today.
I asked my daughter to order his four most recent books for me from Amazon.
The first book I read was Missing In Rangoon.
Moore’s protagonist is a rough-and-tumble private investigator living in Bangkok, Thailand—originally from New York—named Vincent Calvino. His best friend and protector is a saxophone-playing, Shakespeare-quoting, Thai senior police official Colonel Pratt. The books always revolve around the cultural interplay between the two, one Western (a farang) and one Eastern. I thoroughly enjoy that dynamic.
A word of caution. Moore’s works are not for the faint of heart. They are set in the ugly and seamy underbelly of Bangkok—replete with the denizens that inhabit and work in bars in the red-light sex districts like Patpong and Soi Cowboy, sleezy bureaucrats, corrupt police officers, grisly murders and disillusioned ex-pats.
Moore paints a word-canvas that flows with a heady concoction of characters, always framed in cultural shades of gray.
Some of you who regularly read my missives are probably asking about now: is there anything spiritually redeeming about Moore’s books?
To which I must confess, nothing whatsoever!
In Missing In Rangoon, Calvino—hired to find a missing person—and Pratt travel to the Burmese city. During one early scene in the book, Calvino gazes from his hotel room balcony on the silhouette of the Shwedagon Pagoda on the city’s skyline. I instantly was swept back to my own journey to steamy Rangoon and to the shrine, one of the holiest sites in Theravada Buddhism. I still cherish the experience: it was a trip to a different world.
What is the Shwedagon Pagoda?
If you check Wikipedia or countless travel guides, you’ll learn that the Shwedagon Pagoda—officially Shwedagon Zedi Daw (literally the “Golden Dagon Pagoda”)—is a gilded stupa, with its main spire standing over 367 feet high at the center of a sprawling religious complex that overlooks and dominates the Rangoon skyline. City regulations dictate that no building in Rangoon can be can be as tall as the stupa (much as here in Washington, no building in the District of Columbia can be taller than the Washington monument). Travel guides also will tell you the pagoda was constructed over 2,600 years ago—making it, arguably, the oldest stupa in the world—and the most sacred Buddhist site in Burma (Myanmar). Much more certain, since the 16th century, the Shwedagon Pagoda has been the most famous Buddhist pilgrimage site in Burma. The site’s golden stupa—a mound-like structure containing relics that make it a place of meditation—is believed to contain relics of the four previous Buddhas of the present kalpa: the staff of Kakusandra, the water filter of Konagamana, a piece of Kassapa’s robe, and most importantly, eight strands of hair from the head of Gautama himself.
As a Christian believer in Jesus Christ as the sole way, truth and life, I always am fascinated with the religions of other cultures—what they believe and why they believe what they do.
So, not knowing exactly what to expect, I had a taxi drop me off at the pagoda. The taxi itself was a dent-ridden relic of the British colonial era, coughing and sputtering incessantly like the worst patient in a pneumonia ward; I was never fully convinced it would successfully make the ascent to the pagoda. The red-eyed Burman behind the wheel looked he had just finished a work shift somewhere else (you would know the look if you’ve observed the cooks at a Waffle House at 3:00 in the morning).
From the pagoda mount, I could see the first shimmering rays of sunlight—it was already hot—trying to break through the smothering fog-layer over Rangoon stretched below. So much for my strategy of getting an early start to beat the heat. After paying the entry fee (less than ten dollars) and taking off my shoes (it took a full two weeks to get the bottom of my feet clean), I walked through one of the complex’s four gates, guarded by highly stylized leogryphs (lion-like creatures). Inside, I was met by a college-age, brown-skinned young man wearing a thick set of spectacles and a scruffy beard, who—for a fee—offered to guide me around the pagoda’s grounds. He appeared likeable enough, his English was certainly adequate, and after negotiating a price, we set off to explore several noteworthy sites within the huge religious compound. I’m sure that he narrowed down the hundreds of possibilities for my benefit. At each stop, I could almost hear the inner mental workings: “Is this the type of display that would interest a foreign visitor?”
A farang?
There are no words sufficient to explain the initial impressions of the Shwedagon Pagoda on a first-time Western visitor. The pagoda grounds resembled a cross between Disneyland on spiritual steroids and a Buddhist burial ground: a dizzying array of statues, images of Buddha, colorful prayer flags, and animal idols of every size and description were omnipresent with no particular order (at least from my Western perspective); the sounds of beating drums; omnipresent candles and burning incense sticks; a tall golden stupa encrusted with over 5,000 diamonds and over 2,000 rubies, sapphires and other precious gems, all topped by a 76-carat diamond; and there were hundreds of smaller burial stupas everywhere. As we walked we dodged saffron-robed monks, observed supplicants placing flowers and food while water-rinsing idols of all shapes and sizes, entered gateways protected by huge, fierce-looking supernatural guardians, watched scores of faithful buying gold leaf strips for merit, and—everywhere—bent and wrinkled betel-nut chewing old women seeking protection from the hot morning sun under their umbrellas.
I tried to engage my guide in the type of small talk designed to get to know him better and satisfy myself that he was not a planted stooge of the junta. To get into Myanmar, I had taken advantage of a brief “charm offensive” mounted by one of the Burmese military’s hand-picked Prime Ministers (Khin Nyunt), designed to open the country to outsiders in a bid to ease the Western trade embargo. I was a beneficiary of that temporary window of time: the opening would slam shut again in the months ahead. Rangoon was what I envisioned Havana to look like back in the early 60s: a city frozen in time; the streets clogged by old vintage cars and buses held together by duct tape, wire and various assortments of Bonzo glue and plastic adhesives (my former brother-in-law and part-time mechanic Doyle Thomas would have been proud of their ingenuity); dated storefronts and houses in desperate need of repair; and food and goods vendors of all descriptions.
The city was dirty and the people were impoverished. Of course, as in all authoritarian societies, thewealthy monied and power elites—as well as the top tier of military generals—lived in plush lakeside walled communities on the city’s outskirts.

But back to the pagoda.
Although my visit was long ago—and I have forgotten many of the amazing things I witnessed at the pagoda—three stops of that tour made an impression that has stayed with me.
First, following our initial conversations, my guide led me to a special memorial. A marker there commemorated the students who had gathered on the pagoda grounds in 1920 to protest a New University Act which, they believed, would perpetuate British colonial rule. Indeed, over the years, the pagoda grounds have hosted a variety of student, labor and monk uprisings. Near the site where we stood, for example, in 1946, General Aung San addressed a crowd demanding independence from the British and over forty years later, his Nobel-prize winning daughter Aung San Suu Kyi addressed a crowd of over 500,000 demanding democracy from the military regime.
When I mentioned her name to my guide—she was then under house arrest—he put his finger to his lips and furtively glanced to his left and right. “They have eyes and ears everywhere,” he whispered fearfully. In late September 2007, long after I had left the country, the pagoda was closed by the authorities in the midst of the so-called “Saffron Revolution” led by monks and students demanding more democracy. Violent clashes between the authorities and the monks near the pagoda resulted in several deaths.
I have often wondered if my mild-mannered guide was among those protestors.
Regardless, I have never forgotten that look of fear and those words. He was living in a junta-controlled country controlled by a secret police apparatus. But the technical abilities of the generals were limited. [Now, with Chinese assistance, the Tatmadaw’s abilities to surveil and monitor the populace has increased exponentially.]
Meanwhile, in our country we are slipping steadily toward an elite-driven technological surveillance state. I can’t help but wonder what kind of freedoms my grandchildren will enjoy.
The second memorable stop at the pagoda came as a complete surprise. My guide took me to a statue of an English wizard located in the pagoda’s Hall of Wizards. There were several chairs under the pavilion with several persons—young and old alike—kneeling nearby. Fragrant flowers had been scattered around the statue.
In the West, our contemporary knowledge of wizards, witches and the like are shaped by movies, the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter series of books by J.K. Rowling, and a growing number of television shows. In Buddhism, the belief in weikzas (wizard saints who act as the embodiment of the spiritual world) is far more serious than fantasy literature and entertainment. At the wizard’s shrine, I watched several aspiring wizards deep in meditation and praying for magical help.
My guide asked me if I was interested in joining them.
“I only worship the Lord Jesus Christ,” I replied.
“I see,” he said, and hustled me to our third stop in a remote section of the pagoda grounds where I stood before an intricate wooden carving of a woman encased in a large glass display case.
“What do you see?” my guide asked.
As we stood there, a crowd of people started to gather around us.
I started to feel uneasy. “Am I supposed to see something special?”
“Some Christians see the carving crying. Do you see any tears?”
I tried my hardest to see anything in the wood grain that looked like tears.
There was nothing.
Those around me studied my face and then started to slowly drift away.
They expected a white-skinned farang would bring them a confirmation of a miracle.
Little did they know that I have been looking for miracles all my life.

Back in Bangkok, I returned to one of my favorite spots.
The eye-popping lobby of the Erewan—one of the “City of Angels” grandest hotels—features at the far end a majestic staircase guarded by two huge, carved stone, black elephant sentinels. The impressive marble stairwell leads to elaborately decorated floors above.
Hovering, almost lifelike, over the staircase’s first landing is a gigantic painting. I mean the type of artwork that takes your breath away. Vibrant colors—especially the reds and golds—depict a variety of Asian landscapes populated by scores of humans and supernatural creatures. But what attracts me, every time, is the artist’s rendition of a giant spiritual “zipper” separating, at various junctures, the physical world from the world beyond our perception.
That piece of artwork best captures, in my mind, the essence of the mysteries of Buddhism. It sums up, in one larger-than-life canvas, the incredible visual and spiritual experiences of places like the Shwedagon Pagoda.
The artwork is magnificent.
And unforgettable.
I always leave the place wanting to capture—with my own artistic rendition—the separation of this world and the glorious vision of New Jerusalem and the Kingdom to come.
Sigh.

As a final note, when I finally returned to Washington, I gushed about the beauty, splendor and exoticness of the Shwedagon Pagoda to my Thai language instructor.
I thought she would be impressed.
“Jeemes, you know of course that none of that gold is from Burma. They stole it from the Thais …”
Sigh.

 

[1] Min Aung Hlaing, now 64, took control of Myanmar’s military in 2011. He was placed under U.S. sanctions in 2019, based on a U.N. investigation finding the military’s operation against a Muslim ethnic group, the Rohingya’s, had “genocidal intent.” He is also banned by Facebook and Twitter. His extended term as commander ends in July 2021, with some analysts believing he will become the top civilian leader. See, Adam Taylor, “FAQ: What is going on in Myanmar aafter coup removes Aung San Suu Kyi,” The Washington Post, Feb. 1, 2021.

[2] “Myanmar coup: Aung San Suu Kyi detained as military seizes control,” BBC News, Feb. 1, 2021.

[3] Yoni Heisler, “Study makes horrible new coronavirus prediction that has so many people worried,” BGR, Feb. 1, 2021.