Cruel World

After an extended absence, I'm back to peddle my thoughts and preach to you, the choir, about the pitfalls and shortcomings of the world we live in.

Recently, I left one of the bands I play in to make room in my schedule for other things. I'd been with them for over 10 years and although we had built ourselves a nice following and a good reputation on the Houston/West Side barscene, I wanted to persue an 'original' project, and I decided to part ways with this strictly 'cover' band. It was and still is difficult...one gets used to the routine of their life, I do, and not playing almost every Friday night with Jeff, Chuck, Pat and Bobby will be, well, strange. With the schedule of my job right now, there isn't time to start up another project just yet: it's in the planning stages, but to my former bandmates, its a kick in the gut, I guess. Its the change that is the hardest to get used to, we are all comfortable with the routine "as-is" and don't often willingly "change".

Many things in this world don't willingly change, it is widespread in almost every facet of our lives.

My Uncle Ralph visited Houston and I met him for the first time I can remember. I was told we'd met before, but he held his hand down by his knee to show how tall I was when that happened.

To say my Uncle Ralph is a sharp cookie is a masterpiece of understatement. At close to 80 years old, he is still just as sharp as ever, and still holds the same job he's had for many, many years. He is a professor teaching graduate students at UC Berkley in San Diego and in Los Alamos. The subject? Rocket science. I am not kidding, but I wanted to ask him, "what are you a rocket scientist or something?"

In the fourties and fifties, after coming back from the war, he was enlisted, along with the other "best and brightest" by President Kennedy to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The mission was to harness nuclear power and he was part of the then-secret Manhatten Project.

Since then his life's work has been in this field, and is culminating in an achievement that's out of this world. I am not kidding. There will be much ballyhoo about this project, and in due time they will release to the press the full details, but their project has been written up in scientific journals as legitimate discoveries and accomplishments and will change the way the human race views their planet: You see, he has built the plasma motor, the motor that will take mankind to Mars.

I plan to interview him for these pages soon, but during our short visit, I didn't ask him any questions about it. Instead we talked about their (my Mom's, her sister and his) recent trip to their native Norway and some about one of his daughter's experiences as a nanny in Europe. One of the Florida Gator's basketball team is a former ward of her's and she characterized his parents as typical of jet-setting, rich parents in Europe: disassociated with thier kids. Spending precious little time with them- certainly not enough to her way of thinking, she is a former nun and current caretaker and advocate for the poor. Ralph says she found the same too-busy, hand the kids off to someone else-attitude in a lot of places, but the rich Arab families were unique because they threw outrageous bids to get her to become permanant nanny for their kids. She always refused: in her words, there was the most prevalent, morally bankrupt, disgusting side to these rich families, and one that carried on the "old ways".

One young son of one of these families was met by Ralph one day, and when Ralph asked him what he wanted to be, he said an engineer. He wanted to learn about physics and theory. Not long afterwards when Ralph bumped into this same kid, the kid came up to him again and told him he'd changed his mind: now he wanted to be a rocket scientist. Why?, asked Ralph, and was stunned by the simple answer: So I can make rockets to kill Israeli's.

This seven year old boy is an example of the vile form of "not-thinking" that is going on in our world, under our noses. Yes this boy probably heard this hate at home, and saw the violence bequeathed upon his mother and sisters in this male-dominated Arab household. But this despicable attraction to continue to hate this other race is so prevalent in that part of the world, I don't think it will ever be laid to rest forever. What he didn't hear at home, he heard on Al Jazeera, or from his school-chums, or even his teachers.

What is not understood by us westerners is the ease with which they flow into this hate-pool.

The conditions are still in place to indoctrinate young people to continue these hate-filled practices and evil beliefs and customs. The Arabs know we are revolted by these acts of destruction and murder. There seems to be no limit to the atrocities they continue to commit unto each other, while we shake our heads and wonder how it can be that a mother sends her child away knowing it will commit suicide soon and murder as many innocent people as possible in the process. How do we fight this? How do you fight a state-of-mind?

You need to figure it out, America, and fast.

(Photo Explanations)

Top Photo: HAMAS posters inside Palestinian refugee camps this week in Lebanon

2nd Photo: 85 year old Palestinian man injured in HAMAS clash with Lebanese military

3rd Photo: Ali Al Sistani, perpetuated the hardline; he's dead now

4th Photo: A Palestinian boy getting a haircut inside a refugee camp this week in Lebanon