Lost and Found

Every now and then we meet people who are destined to be friends, even though we may not recognize them as such when we first meet them.

JB was a college buddy. And after college, I went off to Germany to learn German. Returning eight months later, I returned to Chicago, where I reconnected with Jeremy and we resumed our friendship.

A year later, I was back off to Germany, this time to go to medical school. He moved. I lost his parents number. I was burning bridges at the time. I was making a break with my past, trying to establish a future in Berlin. It worked.

I was a Berliner. It was my city. In a way, it still is.

JB was forgotten. Chicago was a distant memory.

One sunny summer afternoon the telephone rang in my apartment in Prenzlauer Berg.

"Guten Tag," said a vaguely familiar American voice "haben Sie ein Gehirn aus Wackelpudding?"

It was JB.

I was delighted to hear his voice, but how did he find me?

AD worked as a substitute teacher and waited tables at Tre Kroener in his "free time" (obviously not exactly free) to make ends meet.

Tre Kroener is a Swedish restaurant, and if there's one thing JB loves, it's bland Northern European food. As Fate should see fit, he decided to take his wife to breakfast one morning when AD was waiting tables. They made frequent eye contact. They knew each other, but weren't sure from where. Where was the connection? Then, the coin fell.

"Excuse me, weren't you AK's roommate?"
"Yeah, yeah, you're one of his friends from college."

Numbers were exchanged. The phone in Berlin rang.

I couldn't believe he was married. We talked for a long time. I promised to swing by his apartment and meet his wife next time I was in Chicago.

She's great. They had a child. I moved back to Chicago. Now, we play video games in his basement. Just like in college.

Is this what Nietzsche spoke of with the "Eternal Recurrence?"

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Dick Cheney shot his hunting buddy by accident, provoking an array of humorous political cartoons and commentary. This is what the Vice President had to say in his press conference:

"It was not Harry's fault," Cheney said Wednesday in the interview. "You can't blame anybody else. I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend. And I say that is something I'll never forget."

Cheney described the horror of the incident in the interview.

"The image of him falling is something I'll never be able to get out of my mind," he said. "I fired, and there's Harry falling. And it was, I'd have to say, one of the worst days of my life, at that moment."

Listen to him owning up to actually pulling the trigger and shooting his friend. How honest. I guess he and his friend will just shake hands, have a good laugh, and move on. But will he? He says he'll "never be able to get [shooting Harry] out of my mind."

Traumatic episodes such as this can scar the psyche, interfering with sleep and concentration. They can also affect one's ability to enjoy life, and can drive people to suicide. "Shellshock" is what they used to call it. Now it has a more technical term, "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder." Untold veterans of our wars have come back suffering from PTSD; a lucky minority has received counseling and treatment for it.

If accidentally shooting his friend has traumatized Mr. Cheney that badly, imagine if an IED had gone off, showering Mr. Cheney with bits of his friend. This is, of course, what thousands of brave American soldiers have experienced in the current Iraq conflict.

The current administration has seen fit to place American soldiers in harm's way. Many of these courageous men and women will come back with wounds: both mental and physical. In 2005, the administration admitted to a billion dollar deficit for funding of the VA medical institutions. At a time when our veterans who defended our freedom by fighting in Europe, the Pacific, Korea and Vietnam are aging and requiring more help, a new group of fresh wounded are going to need the services of the VAMC. It seems shameful to cut funding for the VA at such a time. Of course, this administration seems to want to cut taxes and pump money into the oil industry rather than take care of veterans.

But what can you expect from an administration full of draft dodgers?

Musing on New Orleans

So, I listen to NPR and there have been a couple of interesting ideas/stories concerning New Orleans and their recent natural disaster.

The first was simply to let free market forces decide what the former inhabitants of the city do. The editor proposed to simply divide the earmarked money for rebuilding New Orleans into shares and distribute them to the displaced people and let them decide what to do with it: stay and rebuild or rebuild elsewhere. I mean, why not? If they can find a better life somewhere else, but will need a bit of start up money, to buy a house or place a deposit on an apartment and buy furniture, clothes, etc, then the government could do them a great favor by giving them the means to do so. Of course, they might blow it all on lottery tickets...

The second proposal was to rebuild New Orleans as a "green" city, employing all of the current methods of generating renewable energy and investing into hurricane-resistant, energy efficient dwellings. It was a rather ambitious idea, but had the flare of seizing the future and seeing an opportunity to create beauty out of the rubble, to rise up again, stronger and better than before.

I can't wait to see what actually happens! Perhaps all the money will go towards building a new colossus of George in the bay to guide ships to New Orleans. Perhaps there will be giant telescopes in the eyes of the statue so as to keep an eye on Hugo Chaves. Perhaps patriotic music will issue forth from giant speakers in the colossus' mouth! Ah, the future will be truly exciting.