Bird Droppings July 22, 2025

Pondering and thinking, wiping away a tear or two, and why do we have a Department of War?

I was outside very early today, as I always do, chasing sunrises. After I get my computer work started, I will do my laps in the pool. A great horned owl was hooting and keeping my attention earlier today. 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 their direction and location, and the crickets and tree frogs added in made quite a combination. I often joke about my monastic ways. It seems I am more often alone 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, including Saturdays and many Sundays, I religiously check my emails, and as I sat down today to read emails, a note I had received on 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 in about a ninth-grade class where the discussion turned to 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 what will happen today, and wondering why my son was drawn to this song so many years ago. I use words from songs quite often in correspondence, counseling, and working with teenagers. Words can be so powerful and moving, and, conversely, they 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 whom I have known for many years and with whom I correspond regularly by email; they 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 the day when one of my students came upset that her brother had just joined the Marines. She comes from an extended family of 11 kids across several marriages, with stepdads and stepmoms. It is great at Christmas time and bad at times like this. How do you explain war to a teenager? 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, play pickup 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 first 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, where we were told how to find the 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, then three, then four, and I could no longer look up names and sought a place to sit down on a bench. I wrote in black ink on my hand where to find them on the wall; the ink stayed with me as I found a bench. A recent email from a friend who lost her husband, who had come back from Vietnam, 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 that 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, 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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