On Home (A speech)

My favorite place is home; home—not an exotic location or a mythical land. I can’t tell you about Las Vegas or the mountains of Mordor. I can’t spin a wild adventure for you; I can only tell you of mundane, unromantic home.

My love of home started early. My childhood was filled with the importance of home. It was not that we had a picturesque stately home or the all-American farm house. In fact, we moved all the time. One of my most prominent childhood memories is the moving van and boxes as far as the eye could see. One year we lived in a large house with a large pound, another year we lived in my grandma’s basement. What made home important was our family. It was strong family that defined my childhood, not the houses we passed through.

While my childhood built a foundation, it was not till I traveled to the dark heart of the Middle East that I truly understood the blessings of home. I still remember clearly our platoon Sergeant ordering us all to head back to the house at the end of our patrols. It was one of the most meaningful word phrases of my life—“Head back to the house.” Each and every day we would go out into a city ruled by violence and hate. Each and every day we all tried make it, “back to the house.” Some days it was a goal unaccomplished. After a year of days, those of us who were left returned again to our homes; I made it back to my house. Only when death is a constant companion do you understand the safety of home.

Today, though, if you ask me why home is my favorite place, it not because of memories and feelings of safety. It is much more personal and simple. Now when I come home after a long day of school I find dinner waiting for me. My home is not filled with silent books and abstract internet searches. I find conversation, interesting and complex. Old chores like washing dishes become an exercise in companionship. My house breathes life and personality; my own house has become a home. Home is where my wife is. My favorite place is home.

On Sheep

Ah…Facebook, you are a constant muse. If my pen runs dry I can just look to you for inspiration and wisdom.

I started noticing women posting colors yesterday. I thought nothing of it; I assumed it was some meaningless posting (like song lyrics without context). My wife dug a little deeper and informed me that it was for a cause. Women were posting their bra color to raise awareness for breast cancer. I let it go until I saw my own sister’s bra color on Facebook. I decided enough is enough. Please allow me to vent my anger over this phenomenon.

I am already aware of cancer. I know a friend who has breast cancer. My nephew almost died of cancer and my grandmother did. To me it is not some trite cause you can support by telling me your underwear color. Can anything be more insulting, trivializing such a heartbreaking disease? Sorry. You cannot get to feel good about helping a cause unless you do something concrete to help. Please give money or time to help fight the disease not meaningless gestures. Don’t cheapen yourselves or the pain felt by many families with empty words. I know what it’s like to hear people say, “Support the troops” and watch as they go about there daily lives as if nothing is different. I hate cheap and empty words.

The deeper anger I feel is how these postings are degrading to women. Moreover, the women who are degrading themselves don’t even notice. Can you only express yourself through your sexuality? It seems so as I read over and over each girl telling the world the color and style of her bra. Think about this from my point of view. I will turn thirty this summer. I do not want to think about what bra a seventeen-year-old girl is wearing. It is disgusting for me to think of such things, yet there it is out in a public arena for all to dwell on. I can understand a seventeen-year-old girl not understanding her sexuality because it is new to her. What really irks me is how older women of wisdom and stature, who should guard against such foolishness, have also posted. You should know better. You should know the power of your sexuality.

I want to get this point across because I will not be part of degrading women. I can’t stand it. I will further explain the mind of a man for women who think this is no big deal; after all, it’s just a bra. Women, after posting your bra color, the next man you engage in conversation (even when you have something important to say like asking for cancer research donations) will be thinking to himself: “I wonder what color her bra is today. I wonder if it has lace. I wonder what her nipples look like.” And don’t go thinking it will be some sleaze ball creep either; it will be a man of character. He probably doesn’t even really want to think of you sexually but he is designed to. The more character a man has the more he appreciates beauty and there is no greater beauty then a woman’s form.

A man of character has to deny himself until the proper time to enjoy such great beauty. Some men are better at this than others. When sexually intimate images like a bra color is given out, they spark the imagination of a man. I don’t excuse a man of his actions, but it seems to me that Facebook posters don’t understand the consequences of theirs. Don’t make it any harder for a man to hold you in respect and honor.

Just so I don’t sound too harsh and sexist. What of all the boys who posted jokes or fake colors of their own? They are the fools. They trivialize the very people they should honor, and degrade those they should protect. They are not even worth the time it takes to write about them.

I thought it was very telling that one poster kept posting “SUPORT THE CAUSE” over and over any time a color was added to the collage of immaturity. At least someone understood the people were just acting as sheep following those in front of them. If this can happen on Facebook, what of our electoral process? What of our democracy?

On War

The problem with explosions is that I participated in one, more than one actually. If you really want to know, one almost killed me on New Year’s Day, 2005. It was a few seconds late and a few shrapnel pieces short of the ending credits for me. It did hurt like hell though and I had a gimp limp for about a month. Someone almost got that prize money for giving me the hard good-bye.

This all came searing back into to my brain while watching Sherlock Holmes in the theater. It was the brilliantly-filmed, slow-motion, multiple explosion scene that made me think. While I should go into a long diatribe about how real explosions don’t let you get up and run through them, I won’t. What struck my mind, as I watched the flames reach out and grasp for the hero, was how explosions—the premier expression of violence in our day—have become our entertainment. Is this the price we pay for fighting wars year after year without end? Our entertainment becomes confused with our nightly news? The news and movies are filled with the same explosions therefore they must be the same. Maybe I read too much into it all but I have had a very intimate experience with a very real explosion. I hope you only watch the romanticized version on the big screen. Even more, I hope you can still distinguish between the two. I don’t want to live in a world where you can’t.

Yet what really bothered me as I watched the story unfold is how our hero is also a simple expression of violence. Sherlock Holmes, one of fiction’s great intellectual heroes, is reduced to using his logic and deductive skill to maim and bully—we call that cool. He is reduced to a back room brawler who destroys out of boredom. Does he fight evil? No, just any weaker than himself for a night's sport. Has man’s ability to think become only expressible through violence? Is that what we have become as American men? What ever happened to the idea of the common good and our heroes standing up for the weak? Why don’t our heroes use intellect to create more and destroy less? I am so tired of the anti-hero. Can I please have one hero I can look up to and strive to be like?

I could go on about this more but I am tired of asking questions; I want to go eat some popcorn and watch Gran Torino.