2009. Starring Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson. Directed by Oren Moverman.
My Dad was fond of an old country song, “The Letter Edged in Black.” He recalled that, back in the day when all communication, however urgent, relied on mail service, letters bearing bad news were enclosed in envelopes marked with black around the edges. The intent was to warn that the message inside was not routine correspondence, and that the recipient should be prepared to hear the worst. The shock of learning some things without warning would only amplify the message.
The next of kin (”NOK” in military parlance) of service members are prepared more than most to hear such news, but the shock is handled differently. When combat hero Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is assigned to the Casualty Notification Unit to complete his final months of service, he views it as a bit of an insult. Delivering bad news, adhering to a stiff and cold script and watching the impact on loved ones resulting from his visit seems like a lousy chore to someone who has seen as much as he has. His partner, Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), trains him to exercise detachment, stick to the script and avoid touching anyone. Speak only to the primary next of kin, don’t park out front, and don’t wait around, drawing attention. His professionalism masks a detachment from his emotions, necessary not only to the successful notification of death in the line of service, but to his own well-being.
The Casualty Notification officers encounter anger, resentment, nausea and deadened shock, reactions that the seasoned Captain Stone warns his protege to expect. But, as The Messenger takes its time to show us, they are not prepared for the reactions they experience themselves, particularly when they make an official visit to a new widow (a surprising Samantha Morton) and the heartbreak and grief manage to get around everyone’s defenses.
The Messenger shows a new viewpoint on war that is devastating but not divisive. The cold violence that the officers deliver to the loved ones waiting back home must be an awful burden to bear, but they always speak on behalf of the Secretary of the Army and repress both pain and empathy in the name of military professionalism. Alcohol occasionally seeps inside the Captain’s self-defense, while the distance of an ex-girlfriend wears away at the young Staff Sergeant, putting him in a dangerous situation with the new widow whose life he’s just destroyed.
“I think they ought to show every damn funeral on TV, live,” Harrelson’s character growls at one point, and that’s the argument I’ve tried to make. Pretending that the deaths don’t represent real lives cut short, that the mission doesn’t result in orphans and grieving parents, makes war too easy. And makes all of us too willing to ignore the network of pain behind every fallen soldier. There are letters edged in black being delivered today, somewhere in America, and we should be witness when that bad news is delivered.
Today marks the first day of my second year without a job. I don’t get tired of saying that it’s not so bad — every day is like that laundry day you add to the end of a long vacation. The biggest hit has been to my savings, but I figure that if the period spent rescuing my self-esteem while mourning my father wasn’t a “rainy day,” I’d never save enough for a real downpour.
Back in the dark days, coming home from another unrewarding day at the office, that Bright Eyes song would always drift into my head. Especially, the verse that goes:
Now and again it seems worse than it is
But mostly the view is accurate
You see your breath in the air as you climb up the stairs
To that coffin you call your apartment
And you sink in the chair, brush the snow from your hair
And drink the cold away
And you’re not really sure what you’re doin’ this for
But you need something to fill up the days
A few more hours. . .
My Dad, who worked hard, never understood watching the clock, knowing that your life includes those same hours you can’t wait to see pass. He never had a job in which the ideas and energy you offered were refused. He was made happy by working and passed that trait down to his bratty kid — who unfortunately chose to work in an industry in which The Office doesn’t seem like a fictional place.
A full year has passed now, and there have certainly been doubts that I’d ever work again, and days when things didn’t go right, but there has never been a day as miserable as the average day in that office. Every day since walking out of that slowly sinking, drain-circling pool of poisoned dreams has been a stroll through a world of possibilities. I’m not going to join the circus as it passes through town, but I could. I’m not going to pursue my dream as Super Bowl-winning quarterback at this stage. But I’ve decided that I’m going to be happy, somehow, doing something.
I am sad to learn of Walter Cronkite’s passing this evening. He lived to be 92 — quite an achievement — but he seems like the last of a dying breed. When I was growing up, he was the voice of authority. Hard to imagine in these hyper-partisan days, but he was an anchorman whose outlook you didn’t question — if he said so, it was so. The assassination of President Kennedy was bad enough until Walter took off his glasses to announce his death, then you couldn’t do anything but lose it. Because it was so.
1968 probably changed everything. The riots at the Democratic Convention, then Vietnam, then Nixon, then the country tore apart. In his latter years, I read that conservatives hated Cronkite, and I couldn’t understand. He was the last honest man — I’m sorry that you disagreed with him. It just meant that you were wrong. The proper thing to do was to acknowledge this and move along. But it would never again be the kind of country that could hold two different opinions. You were right and everyone else would be wrong.
Walter Cronkite passed away in a country so unsure of itself that it was always on the attack, always tearing down the other side, condemning the other viewpoint. In the eyes of people who grew up in the broadcast of that reasonable, rational reporting of the news, he was the voice we always hoped would deliver to us the bad news, because we could handle it coming from him. Always friendly, always rational, always suffering alongside us.
RIP Mr. Cronkite.
My last truly important birthday was probably my 18th, and that was a long, long time ago. I still feel like I’m 18, act like I’m 12, and sleep like I’m 5 months old. But life doesn’t often let you live in the blissful ignorance that I’ve mastered. Nothing will make you feel the icy fingers of mortality around your neck like cleaning out your childhood home, putting it up for sale, and preparing to close that lengthy chapter of your life.
That’s what has occupied me for the past two weeks. My sisters and I looked through our parents’ remaining belongings, decided what to keep and what to sell. Eventually the rooms in that very familiar house became empty and small. We sat at the kitchen table and repeated the stories we’ve told many times about life in that house. We noticed that a cardinal flew by — an in-family omen of my Mom — and that a penny appeared on the floor of my bedroom — an omen of my Dad. We cleaned and straightened and prepared for the realtor to usher through interested buyers and nosy neighbors. I focused on the garage and set aside some of the odds and ends that my Dad had left there, grabbing at the rapidly disappearing threads that connected him to the life I now find myself wandering through.
And today, my odometer clicked up another meaningless notch. Which is strange, because I never feel any older on this anniversary, but I know that I must be, because those days with them in that little warm house seem so long ago. And I know now, sadly, that the empty house is part of my life going forward, as much as the one that rocked with laughter and happiness. I guess that growing up, which I am still doing at 48, is a matter of trading experiences for memories. I’m lucky, because almost all of them have been good, thanks to life in that little house.
Found out late this afternoon that Kill Rock Stars recording artist Jeff Hanson, 31, has died. This tragic news, on a cold and rainy day in Minneapolis, is sad and sobering. I first heard him being interviewed on public radio a couple years ago, describing how he sung his trademark falsetto (forgive me if that’s not the right term) as a child, and utilized the same style when he became a songwriter. I picked up his self-titled LP, and was impressed with the delicate, unconventional songs. If you are a fan of Elliott Smith or Iron & Wine, this is an album you should listen to.
No definite word on cause of death yet — but it doesn’t matter. This was someone with a surplus of talent, who was reportedly excited at how his career was going, who had an unlimited number of songs to write, who has left us too early. I am really saddened by the news. RIP, Mr. Hanson.
Jeff Hanson site
Today marks six months since I quit my job. I’m happy to be able to say that I haven’t felt a bit of regret. Sure, when I go to pay rent every month, I wish I still had a paycheck I could turn over. But I don’t miss spending my days with bitter and unfriendly people. In a weird way, I miss the routine, but I’m working on a more-positive one, thinking of ways I can make and save money, applying for jobs, writing and communicating with creative and encouraging friends I’d neglected.
Quitting at the start of a recession may not have been the best idea, but stepping off the wrong path and onto a new one has given me a chance to make a better choice. I know that, had I stayed for the sake of having a job and a steady paycheck, my health and self-esteem would have suffered, and I may have become bitter and joyless as well. I’ve learned that life is too short for that.
So tomorrow begins a new day of possibilities, opportunities and ideas. Like I have for the past six months, I look forward to getting up in the morning, and seeing what might come my way. Maybe tomorrow will be the best day of my life.
Scientists have tested 32 people between the ages of 92 and 102 and found that their blood still carries antibodies created to fight the 1918 flu, responsible for killing 50 million worldwide. And the immunity still works, as tests on mice protected them from the killer flu virus.
The 1918 flu virus has “mutated out of its deadly form” and is no longer a threat (although researchers have used genetic material from flu victims to recreate the virus in a government lab, so watch out), but the antibodies created by the immune systems of those who survived that period have actually grown more potent. Scientists hope to use this study to create vaccines for future epidemics.
Money quote:
“It’s incredible. The Lord has blessed us with antibodies our whole lifetime,” said study co-author Dr. Eric Altschuler at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey. “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”
The study apparently was inspired by a plot in the since-cancelled TV show Medical Investigation, in which a town struck by a revival of the epidemic is saved by a transfusion from an elderly butler. TV drama, is there anything you can’t do?
The study is described by Nature magazine — I’d supply a link, but they don’t appear to be offering the article online. Here’s a link to the AP article.
Dear readers — both of you — I have to admit that I am now gainfully unemployed. Leaving the job I worked for eight years was painful, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I guess that, eventually, the loss of one’s self-esteem outweighs the anxiety of being without a job, and you decide to trade one problem for a different one.
There’s a saying about risk and change: You can’t steal second base without taking your foot off of first. But the thought that has really stuck with me is, you don’t need a perfect plan when you’re trapped in a burning building — just getting out will qualify as success.
The obstinate German in me hates the idea of not doing this right. But as I’m fond of saying lately, my daddy didn’t raise a quitter, but my mama didn’t raise a fool.
If anyone is the least bit interested, see my LinkedIn profile. I’m open to a different challenge, and fully ready to face a better tomorrow.
I finished watching HBO’s John Adams miniseries this past week, having read the David McCullough best-seller on which it’s based. The miniseries was very well done, although it stuck with Adams and his story rather than portraying the events America was experiencing at the time. Paul Giamatti’s performance as Adams made the patriot very human, and the film showed that Abigail Adams (Laura Linney) was her husband’s best friend and counsel.
Characters so well known to history students wander in and out of the tale: Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Sam Adams, and John Quincy Adams among them. At first, David Morse’s Washington made me laugh, but only because it was like seeing a painting come to life.
What strikes the viewer (and reader of McCullough’s book) is the devotion these citizens have to the idea of a better government, a better country, to a higher notion of freedom than they’ve experienced under the British king, and the personal risk they will face in attaining it. Adams begins the miniseries by defending vilified British soldiers because the government for which he is willing to die would not offer less than a blind justice system. And his fellow rebels, in the end, respect the soldiers’ acquittal and Adams’ role because it is the kind of bravery and moral bearing that will sustain the government they seek to create.
Revisiting the story of how our country was born, with the ideals of Jefferson and Adams, the leadership of Washington, the passion of those who dumped tea into the Boston harbor, the dedication and sacrifice of so many lesser-known citizens who fought and defended those ideals and moral standards, makes me horrendously sad. I can only image those patriots, seeing what we have accepted from the Bush Administration criminals who have sullied the reputation and damaged the future of this great country over the past eight years, feeling that we’ve rejected their dream and their work. Let’s begin earning that hard-won freedom we’ve enjoyed, and sooner than later.
Happy Fourth of July!
My Dad told me a great story this weekend. When he and his brother were kids (late 1920s), they would visit a nearby neighbor, an old pioneer living in a shack in the woods, who was excited to have their help to set his bear trap. The trap was so huge that the man couldn’t stand on each toothed side and set the trigger in the middle. So he’d have the kids stand on one side while he stood on the other and set the trap. Apparently, nothing fatal occurred to any two-legged mammal as a result.
As a reward, the old-timer would offer them something to drink, then open a can of condensed milk and split it among a couple glasses.
He and his brothers would happily recite a slogan for the wonderful convenience of canned condensed milk:
“No tits to pull,
No shit to pitch,
Just punch two holes
in the son-of-a-bitch!”
Memo to Jeff: call Borden’s. . .
Next Page »