Civility and Civil War

      That word "civil" has so many variations (think civilization), perhaps reflecting the zig-zag course of our current times, each of us trying to find our path.  Being civil was once the norm; politeness was everywhere, and doors were always opened for women by men (or so my parents taught me).  To say thank you, whether it was with a letter or a call, was not only done right away but was done without a second thought.  People acknowledged each other, or so it seemed.  It was people being civil and a person was expected to treat another as he or she would also care to be treated.  But looking back, I realize that much of that depended on where you lived, the color of your skin, and perhaps even where you worked or what you did at work.  The janitor at my school was certainly viewed differently than the teacher, but I don't remember thinking that he was any less a person by any means.  I washed dishes and bussed tables while in high school and felt that little separated the janitor from myself.  We had our jobs, plain and simple.  We joked with the cooks, did our work, and took home our paychecks.  And then the riots broke out...

      It was Watts in southern California, an area I knew little about since Los Angeles was huge even back then.  To drive into Watts was like driving into Hollywood, places an hour away from where my neighborhood was located.  But once in college, I began to see a bit more of the world outside my city, even if I still didn't understand the "struggle."  We college students were protesting Vietnam back then so leaders of movements such as Stokely Carmichael and Cesar Chavez took second or third place.  In the end, even after being in the midst of all of those times, I emerged with little actual knowledge of its history.  Farm workers?  Still struggling.  Blacks and civil rights?  Still struggling.  Women and equal pay?  Still struggling.

     The recently-retired (and former Secretary of Labor) Robert Reich wrote: The nation is becoming browner and blacker...In a few years America as a whole will be a majority of minorities.  Meanwhile, women have been gaining economic power...And with more women getting college degrees than men, their pay will surely exceed male pay in a few years.  At the same time, men without college degrees continue to lose economic ground.  Adjusted for inflation, their median wage is lower than it was three decades ago.  In other words, white working-class men have been on the losing end of a huge demographic and economic shift.  That’s made them a tinder-box of frustration and anger...And the Great Recession split us rather than connected us; the rich grew richer, the rest of us, poorer and less secure.  (But) Not even this degree of divisiveness would have taken root had America preserved the social solidarity we had two generations ago.  The Great Depression and World War II reminded us we were all in it together.  We had to depend on each other in order to survive.  That sense of mutual dependence transcended our disagreements.  My father, a “Rockefeller” Republican, strongly supported civil rights and voting rights, Medicare and Medicaid.  I remember him saying “we’re all Americans, aren’t we?”  The year he wrote that was 2012.  This civil discourse of ours appears to have been festering for awhile, but then what did I know?

      As but one example, I knew of the Civil War but then discovered that I really didn't know anything about it.  General Meade?  Ever heard of him?  He was apparently instrumental as a Union general in turning the tide of the war but he upset the press and well, they shifted their praise to Robert E. Lee, said Smithsonian (the Union was the army of the federal government at the time of President Abraham Lincoln; the Confederates were the army of the states which sought to break away from the US).  Wrote The New York Review of Books: At first glance, the battle between the Confederacy and the United States looked extremely one-sided.  The Union had nearly two and a half times the population of the Confederacy, three times the acreage in improved farmland, and four times the bank capital.  The value of goods manufactured in New York alone was equivalent to four times the total across the entire Confederacy...But the South had two advantages.  First, the Confederate government had access to cotton, which was hugely in demand in Europe, and might underwrite loans and bond sales.  Second, Confederate officials didn't need to conquer the North, but simply to exhaust its resolve -- or its finances.  And exhaust they did, so much so that the U.S. government had to turn to a little-known banker to help bail them out, Jay Cooke (he had retired at age 36).  Somehow this all goes back to which side wanted to keep slavery, as well as to pay off the debt owed by Britain, a debt, added the article, that: ...was paid off by British taxpayers only in 2015.

      So that's just a small bit of American history.*  And when it comes to the history of distant lands, I must admit that I was again somewhat blank.  Yes, I should know the backgrounds of my neighboring countries, that of Canada and Mexico.  But even keeping up with my local history gets a bit murky when the rest of the world is so close online.  The names tend to blur...Macron, Modi, Thatcher (wait, how did she get in there).  And I'm also terrible at timelines, even messing up our own presidential order, especially when it gets to Harding and beyond.  Basically, I'm the opposite of my brother who not only absorbed but remembered historical events and their timelines with ease.  He could recite famous battles and their leaders, and note the similarities of past events to today, even keeping dates and important figures in the right order.  Me?  I can't seem to keep the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses apart, much less the Pharaohs or the Chinese dynasties (as a bit of trivia, Apollo is the only mythological god to keep his name in both Greek and Roman mythology).  

      So forgive me if I delve into the continent just below us in the next month or so, that of South America.  I won't even pretend to know who's the head of Columbia or Chile, much less the smaller countries such as Suriname or Uruguay.  Heck, I even mess up their early civilizations...Aztec, Mayan, Inca, and more (basically, the Aztecs were in central Mexico, the Maya were in Central America and those parts which were later incorporated into Mexico, and the Inca were in the southwest coast of South America).  So imagine my surprise when I read that other civilizations had preceded the Inca in Peru by some 20,000 years.  Carbon-dated evidence unearthed in the city of Caral, north of Lima, made it the oldest city in all of the Americas.  The oldest.  And those potatoes, those 3000 varieties of potatoes?  They were being cultivated as far back as 8000 BCE.  Yes, this upcoming trip would be one of discovery down south, and a neighboring "south" nowhere near the U.S.  We were heading to Peru and Ecuador, perhaps better known to most as being the homes of Machu Picchu and the Galapagos.

      Now at this point, a quick note about Peru as mentioned in the DK Eyewitness guide.  When you picture our country going to war with itself, imagine other countries that fought to gain their  independence.  When Peru finally defeated the Spanish and declared its own independence in 1821, it faced a turbulent 40 years ahead, going through 35 presidents (with only 4 constitutionally elected) and 15 constitutions.  Jump to today and Peru's political situation is not much better; the first 4 presidents of this century were implicated in corruption scandals, and the last 5 years have seen Peru elect 5 different presidents.  But move the view scope back a few centuries and there were pretty much the same politics.  As Charles C. Mann wrote in his book 1491 that the city of Tiwanaku grew along the shores of Lake Titicaca, a huge alpine lake which sits at an altitude of 12,500 feet (that's over 2 miles high): University of Chicago archeologist Alan L. Kolata excavated Tiwanaku during the 1980s and early 1990s.  He has written that by 1000 AD the city had a population of as much as 115,000, with another quarter million in the surrounding countryside -- numbers that Paris would not reach for another five centuries.  The comparison seems fitting; at the time, the realm of Tiwanaku was about the size of modern France.  Mega droughts arrived and: Tiwanaku splint into flinders that would not be united for another four centuries when the Inka [Inka is the indigenous spelling, Inca the Spanish version] swept them up.  Wari [a rival nation to the south] also fell.  It was succeeded and perhaps taken over by a state called Chimor, which oversaw an empire that sprawled over central Peru until it, too, was absorbed by the Inka.  Okay, way to much info but I brought it up because it gives a bit of perspective of when the Inca arrived (since we pretty much only hear about the Inca and not so much Tiwanaku) and the thriving civilizations that were there before them.

      And those mega-droughts author Mann mentioned?  As he wrote: ...some climatologists believe that the Pacific is subject to "mega-Niño events," murderously strong versions of the well-known El-Niño patterns that play havoc with American weather today.  Mega-Niños occurred every few centuries between 200 and 1600 AD.  Then came this from National Geographic: The serene turquoise waters of the Mediterranean Sea hide a sharp-tasting secret: a layer of salt up to two miles thick, lurking deep underneath the basin.  The ghostly white minerals are one of the few traces of an ancient Mediterranean Sea that vanished millions of years ago.  Some scientists believe that the entire sea evaporated for a time, desiccated like the Sahara to the south.  Even after decades of study, the details surrounding the sea’s vanishing act and the torrents of water that refilled the basin remain an enduring mystery.  The refilling of the Mediterranean about five million years ago may have been the biggest flood in our planet’s history.  By one estimate, the cascade of water that filled the cavernous basin was about 500 times larger than the flow of the Amazon River...today, the Mediterranean Sea is a vital pump for global water circulation.  Evaporation infuses its waters with an extra dose of salt, which spills into the Atlantic and helps drive oceanic conveyor belts that circumnavigate the planet, influencing temperatures, storm patterns, and more.  Whoa!  The Mediterranean Sea dry?  

      Richard Carlson, in his best selling book some decades ago which he titled Don't Sweat the Small Stuff...and It's All Small Stuff, wrote: A hundred years from now we will all be gone from this planet...If you have a flat tire or lock yourself out of your house, what's it going to mean one hundred years from now?  How about if someone acted unkindly toward you or if you had to stay up most of the night working?  What if your house didn't get cleaned or your computer breaks down?  Suppose you can't afford to go on a much needed vacation, buy a new car, or move to a larger apartment?  All of these things and most others are brought into a deeper perspective when looked at with a hundred year view.  This idea was captured so well in the Italian movie, Still Time, where a workaholic who can't seem to stop, watches as time begins to speed up for him...literally.  And let's face it, time does just move on, wiping out civilizations and seas as if they never existed.  A hundred years from now, a thousand or a million years from now, how much of this will indeed matter?  But for those still young and facing an ever-changing climate, it likely matters a lot.  Fights over water --both receding and flooding-- may intensify and may arrive sooner than we think.  A new study out by The New York Times showed that many of the fresh water aquifers in the US are depleted or nearing depletion...as their study showed (one which reached out to dozens of federal, state, and local agencies "...to collect millions of groundwater-level measurements for tens of thousands of sites, some of which have been tracked for a century"): The change is already happening in parts of Kansas, where 2.6 million acres of land no longer have enough groundwater to support large-scale agriculture.  The western part of the state has seen some of the worst declines yet in groundwater levels.  Corn yields have plummeted to levels last seen in the 1960s, erasing decades of gains.  Other states risk following a similar path.  So at that point, when farming is forced to shift away from water-intensive crops such as corn, soy, rice and cotton, will the US no longer be the "breadbasket" of the world?  And at that point, what will our civilization look like?  Will we be headed for a civil war over water?

      But you'll likely read more about all of the above once we arrive in Peru in a few weeks.  And if it seems that we're becoming world adventurers, that is far from the case, at least as our planning went.  Seeing national treasures such as Machu Picchu had always been on our bucket lists for decades but the opportunity just never came up...until we spotted one being offered with Smithsonian.  Okay, going with them was a bit pricey but we couldn't resist a trip that not only visited both sites (Machu Picchu and the Galapagos), but was also being led by accomplished scholars and professionals in their fields...the lecturer who would be guiding us at Machu Picchu has worked as an archeologist there for 37 years.  An archeologist, no less.  If there was ever to be a learning experience, and from people so experienced, this would be it.  So we bit the bullet, dove into our savings, and plotted out the dates...but not before telling a few of our friends.  Wait, they said, can we go?  Uh, okay.  Then another couple asked the same thing.  Uh, okay (the tour only allowed a maximum of 20 people total, split into 2 groups of 10).  But lo and behold, soon they had all booked so off we'll be heading in a few weeks.  To South America, no less.  Really?  

     This journey would be my first trip traveling beyond Mexico, and even in that country the farthest I had been had been was to its center for a wedding in San Luis Potosi, and later to visit friends near Guadalajara.  So when it came to places way, way south of the border, I was blank, even after hearing so much about Costa Rica, Belize, and crossing the Panama Canal (all pretty much from ex-pats, of course, most of them ready to retire).  So why a tour** (this would be our first)?  First off, my wife and I were no longer spring chickens with time to waste, much less to trek off exploring trails on our own in foreign countries whose residents spoke little or no English (we still do travel that way for the most part in Europe).  And the main reason for this guided trip was that we wanted to learn, especially in a land so obviously full of history; this time we wanted to do more.  We wanted to come back with an education.  And a tour led by Smithsonian-approved lecturers?  Well, it seemed to check all the boxes...

      But first, let me back up a few paces lest you think that we've become lavish spenders gallivanting around the world month after month.  We are lucky, plain and simple.  Both my wife and I grew up poor, as in poverty poor, but we both had parents that instilled many good things in us, one of which was to get out of --and stay out of-- debt.  Like most of you, we worked and saved and put funds away into a retirement fund, never expecting that we would actually see the day when we would actually retire.  But in those years, two government events happened, and happened 10 years apart:  Social Security and RMDs.  Those of you who still may have many years to go before you face any of this, let me just say that those ages come up sooner than expected.  And when that first one hits, you will likely read columns telling you to not to take your Social Security early or you'll lose out on thousands and thousands of dollars.  But when I began comparing the money gained by going out early (at 62) vs. waiting until age 66 (or 70 to truly reach the "max"), the break-even point for me was at age 88.  Only when I reached that age would I begin to start to make more money than I would by taking it at age 62 (fair warning: those were my numbers so each of you should do your own calculations).

      As to those RMDs or Required Minimum Distributions, which forces you to tap into your retirement plan to pay the taxes owed (basically, most retirement plans, with the exception of Roth IRAs, allow you to put money into a retirement fund before it's taxed; you won't have to pay on the monies in these funds until they're withdrawn).  So we ran the numbers again and the IRS tables (those RMD tables which "advise" you how much to withdraw each year) have me living until 96.  Okay, the government is very optimistic and it'd be great if my wife and I did reach those ages.  But we were both much more realistic, figuring that 10+ years would be a nice timeline (although we hope to surpass that, both physically and mentally).  Base your retirement withdrawals on a 10-year timeline vs. a 35-year timeline and the numbers (and taxes) jump up substantially.

      So why tell you all of this?  Because while it may seem that we are both spending like crazy on exotic trips (I mean, Africa, Alaska, and now South America in one year?), we are actually quite practical (as an example our cars are both close to 15 years old).  And this was meant to be somewhat of a short explanation of how we felt we could afford a trip with Smithsonian.  But we're also quite realistic when it comes to how many years we may have left.  Already we have friends our age facing debilitating nerve pain or cancers, and others who are being severely limited with late-onset Parkinson's or dementia; and of course, my brother passed away at age 76 from a pancreatic cancer that seemed to appear out of nowhere.  The point being, you never know.  As the Dalai Lama XIV said: There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done.  One is called Yesterday and the other is called Tomorrow.  My wife and I looked at what we had accomplished, and part of that was being fortunate enough to have put enough away in our working years to actually retire.  But realistically, we had to ask ourselves, when does one begin to use, and in many cases, enjoy those funds?  In this case, the government pushed us. The thought of saving and continuing to save had us reaching an age when we would probably no longer enjoy what we would be seeing, or no longer be able to walk up that path or explore that park.  The last thing we wanted was watch all that we had saved being used to pay for an assisted living apartment setup which would turn into our final resting place, our unwanted memory care (that is, if we were still capable of making such a decision).

     There's a Tibetan prayer that says: Grant that I may be given appropriate difficulties and sufferings on this journey so that my heart may be truly awakened and my presence of liberation and universal compassion may be truly fulfilled.  But as Elaine Pagels wrote in her book Why Religion?, the Gospel of Thomas said: Knock upon yourself as on a door, and walk upon yourself as on a straight road; for if you walk on that road you cannot get lost, and what you open for yourself, will open.  Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds.  And when he finds he will be troubled.  When he is troubled, he shall be astonished.  Recognize what is before your eyes...and the mysteries will be revealed to you.  As she said in a Harvard interview: ...history challenges us to create narratives out of incomplete data, particularly when you’re working with ancient sources.  It’s about finding meaning and trying to interpret how it shapes our cultural legacy—what matters about it, and what doesn’t.  These are deeply connected.  Life goes by far too quickly, something my wife and I have sort of always known but now that we're older, know a bit more deeply.  For my wife and I, it was time to take a tiny piece of that guilt away from our years of working and from what we had saved; it was now a time to simply enjoy seeing and learning something new, perhaps some of that being experieced in other parts of the world, and perhaps some of that being found within ourselves.   No doubt, our struggles in earlier years were little different than what single parents face every day; and we were extremely fortunate to be where we were, knowing that so many others still have difficult years ahead, even as they near our ages.  But we also know that despite all of our recent and upcoming journeys, often a simple sunflower or a sunset are all the travels we need.  So for all of you readers, may your own journeys ahead be as "troubling" and as "astonishing" as your lives...you may find that many discoveries await, not only throughout the world but throughout yourselves!

*An interesting peek at our presidential history shows that not a single president escaped name-calling, or worse.  In his book Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels, author Edwin Battistella wrote that "insulting the President is a time-honored tradition."  Even the Republican Abraham Lincoln was attacked on all fronts, including by pro-slavery advocate, Samuel Morse (the inventor of the Morse code) who called Lincoln "illiterate, wicked, without brains [and a] coarse, vulgar, uncultivated man".  Perhaps an even darker part of our history is shown in the book by Timothy Egan, A Fever in the Heartland.  As a review in The Guardian noted, this period was The Roaring 20s but also the rise of the Klu Klux Klan: The scene is distinctly American: a Fourth of July celebration amid stalks of corn and creekside parks; men, women and children gathered for a parade accentuated with a painted prop plane, many in conical white hoods.  Kokomo, Indiana, was a typical midwestern town in the summer of 1923, when it hosted upwards of 100,000 Klansmen for a “monster” Independence Day rally.  Half of its 30,000 residents belonged to the most famous and American of hate groups, including its mayor, prosecutor, its police force and school board.  That was in line with many other Indiana towns and cities in the early 1920s, when the Klan, as the author Timothy Egan recounts in a startling new book, was brazenly resurgent and mainstream across the country.  Membership was somewhere between 2 and 5 million nationwide, and was disproportionately middle-class – doctors, lawyers, teachers, many, many policemen.  There were Women of the Klan leagues and Ku Klux Kiddies groups.  As Egan notes in [his book] the Klan had, by the early 1920s, 15 US senators under their influence, as well as 75 congressmen, several governors and the mayor of Anaheim, California.  The order’s national paper, the Imperial Night-Hawk, had a larger circulation than the New York Times.  

**As my friend told me, there are three terms when booking with a tour group: see, visit, and tour.  The first, in his opinion, could be as simple as a drive-by, a passing glance, say a quick view of Manhattan's towering buildings.  The second term of "visit" meant that you would likely stop and get out, but not go in...say, a visit to the Grand Canyon.  While the last term would mean an actual guided tour encompassing all three with a background of history thrown in.  They're all interesting definitions, semantics as good as those used by airlines when they say "direct" (which gets you there but possibly with many stops) vs. non-stop, which means just what it says.  One final note about Elaine Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels and a MacArthur genius grant (I didn't want to bombard you with more asterisks).  She used her doctoral background in religion to question, among other things, why Christianity started the practice of removing women from religion (as she notes, the Father, the Son, and the historically asexual, Holy Spirit)?  But her book goes far beyond this, diving into questions of guilt and what we carry from the early teachings in our lives.  Much of this came into play in her own life when she lost her son at a young age, then watched her husband die unexpectedly soon after.  It's worth a read or listen, bringing up many questions that perhaps have no quick answers.  The review from NPR gave a quick summary...