Bird Droppings July 22, 2025

Pondering and thinking, wiping away a tear or two

I was outside very early today, doing my laps in the pool as a great horned owl was irritating my dog, keeping him up. It seems it was more than one, as several were calling back and forth in an eerie chorus around me. The hooting had the local dogs going, perhaps it was just the echoing of the owls through the trees, which altered direction and location, and crickets and tree frogs added in made quite a combination. I often joke about my monastic ways. It seems I am alone more than in a group, and I enjoy that. Perhaps trying to mingle is not in my nature, yet I enjoy joking around and sometimes trying to be the focus or center of attention. Perhaps we all do seek attention in our way. A few days back, I went by my old high school to check with one teacher and ended up talking to twenty or so. My fifteen-minute stop ended at three hours. There are times I miss teaching regularly.

“Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast. Oh, but what a shame if all we’ve shared can’t last.  I can change, I swear, oh, oh, see what you can do.  I can make it through, you can make it too.” Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks

Every day, when I go by the including Saturdays and many Sundays, I religiously check my emails, and as I sat down today reading emails, a note I had received in Xanga (is that even a word anymore) a good while back came to mind. My son had posted a note in which he related that he had read the lyrics to a song by Joni Mitchell. Many youngsters will not even know the name Joni Mitchell, one of the great folk singers of the antiwar movement of the late 60s and early 70s Back in my day, the Viet Nam era. Daily, I receive emails from friends or readers of my blog, and I end up getting to the word synchronicity and how words may be for this person or that, and they may be just what was needed for this person now. It has been a few days since I wrote about morality, and an email came back about a ninth-grade class where the discussion went into the morality of gene therapy, and the students were unsure of the concept of morality. They had to discuss morality first.

I am sitting in Georgia, writing to friends around the country and a few overseas, thinking about all that happened yesterday, pondering on what will happen today, and thinking about why my son was drawn to this song so many years ago. I use words from songs quite often in correspondence in counseling, and working with teenagers. Words can be so powerful and so moving, and conversely, words can destroy and conquer. I share these words today, a simple plea from a folk singer with a quiet, powerful voice, Joni Mitchell.  

The fiddle and the Drum

By Joni Mitchell

And so once again

My dear Johnny my dear friend

And so once again you are fightin’ us all

And when I ask you why

You raise your sticks and cry, and I fall

Oh, my friend

How did you come?

To trade the fiddle for the drum

You say I have turned

Like the enemies you’ve earned

But I can remember

All the good things you are

And so I ask you please

Can I help you find the peace and the star?

Oh, my friend

What time is this?

To trade the handshake for the fist

And so once again

Oh, America my friend

And so once again

You are fighting us all

And when we ask you why

You raise your sticks and cry and we fall

Oh, my friend

How did you come?

To trade the fiddle for the drum

You say we have turned

Like the enemies you’ve earned

But we can remember

All the good things you are

And so we ask you please

Can we help you find the peace and the star?

Oh my friend

We have all come

To fear the beating of your drum

© 1969 Siquomb Publishing Corp. (BMI)

As I listened to the words, I was reminded of a dear friend in Pennsylvania that I have known for many years and with whom I correspond regularly through email, the words reminded me of his writings.  He had been researching a drummer boy from West Chester, Pennsylvania.  He was the youngest person killed in the Union forces during the Civil War. My friend, in his way, was obsessed with the story and is writing a book about his findings. After many years of searching, he found the grave of the drummer boy. He had been to that spot numerous times as the drummer boy’s parents were buried there. A poplar tree marked the grave between the parents. A tree was planted as a living memorial to their son, who died in the war.

I thought back to a day when one of my students came upset that her brother had just joined the Marines. She comes from an extended family of eleven kids in several marriages and step dads and moms. It is great at Christmas time and bad at times like this. How do you explain war to a teenager war? The little drummer boy in Pennsylvania was twelve when he died in battle. Recently, I ran into a former teacher who had joined the National Guard he was rejected after going through training and suffering a stress fracture. When it came up, he had been treated for depression, he was upset he could not go and fight. Sadly, this story went on and ended harshly several years later. I recall a good friend in high school, we would play ice hockey at GO Carlson’s pond in the winter, pick-up games, and he and I would talk often as we waited for others to show up. He did not even live in our neighborhood, but would come to play. He played the bassoon in the High School band and was on the soccer team. He and I both flunked out of the same college in our freshman year and were drafted within days of each other. I am epileptic and though I have not had a seizure since childhood, I received a 4Y permanent deferment. He went to Vietnam. Many years later, thinking I would see him at a reunion as I drove to my tenth, I found out he had been killed in Vietnam.

It took several moments to sink in, and immediately, I thought this wasn’t possible, and I sat back and wondered while more names were read. Each moment as I sat, another name was mentioned, another life had passed away in a war, soon to be not a war, soon to be merely history. Only a few years ago, I went with my son to Washington, DC, riding the bus along the way we were told how to find names of relatives and friends in the index books located at the ends of the Vietnam Memorial. I walked down the walkway reluctantly at best to find a name, then two and three and four, and I can no longer look up names as I write, where on the wall they are located on my hand in black ink. A recent email from a friend who lost her husband, who had come back from Vietnam Nam and so many thoughts. I walked down the line, found the spot, and the name. Emotions, tears welled up. I walked hurriedly away as far as I could get and sat on a bench looking down across the wall. A squirrel wandered through my field of vision. It was an hour or so, and my son found me, “Dad, the bus is leaving, we need to go”. I do not remember thinking, just staring at that wall and that squirrel that wandered back and forth, interrupting my thoughts.  There have been a few moments in my life where I have been unable to control my emotions, and sitting here thinking back, tears wander across my cheek again, perhaps for another reason; time will tell.

So many thoughts as I think back, as we continue to fight another war and another war, I, in all the talk of freedom and patriotism and macho soldier talk, I still have a difficult time with the concept of war. Joni Mitchell states so eloquently, “But we can remember all the good things you are, and so we ask you, please, can we help you find the peace and the star, oh my friend, we have all come to fear the beating of your drum.”  Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts, and always give thanks, namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

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