“We must come to understand the deep mutual connection of kinship between the various forms of our spirituality. We must recollect our original spiritual and moral substance, which grew out of the same essential experience of humanity.”

— Vaclav Havel

Sometimes the difficulty I have beginning a column is the search for a meaningful quotation. I was tempted to begin with the words President Bush delivered in Baghdad when he said: “The war is not over, but it is decisively on its way to being won.”

However that was followed by Muntadar al-Zeidi, an Iraqi journalist and a correspondent for Al Baghdadia, an independent Iraqi station, who stood up and hurled his shoes at President Bush saying: “This is a gift from Iraqis, this is a farewell kiss, you dog!” Upon throwing his second shoe he shouted in Arabic, “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!”

I suspect that most of the world has, by now, witnessed this. Of course, Bush’s response was an attempt to downplay the meaning of this action by saying, “All I can report is it was a size 10.” The kind of playful commentary I believe has cast a dark shadow over this administration more like his early days when he was away at school.

Hitting someone with a shoe is considered the supreme insult in Iraq we’re told. The Star Tribune reported it means that the target is even lower than the shoe, which is always on the ground and dirty.

Al-Zaidi was hustled out of the room where the news conference was taking place, and apparently he was kicked and beaten until “he was crying like a woman.” I suspect this was the case.

From there, Bush met with American forces at Camp Victory and told troops that “America is safer and more secure” than it was before the war. Hummmm!

Last week a woman shared a story of the time she was at the University of Minnesota for a graduation exercise when Madeline Albright, then the Secretary of State as well as a good Bohemian, gave the graduation talk. This woman stood outside and watched the protesters protesting as Madeline’s limousine was passing by.  She said a student kept circling around the car on his bike repeatedly and was jumped by security folks from the limousine that convinced him to stop by applying some physical pressure.

The “action” that has transpired in Iraq remains in question, at least to many. In some ways it’s similar to the “Vietnam conflict.” Read “The Things They Carried” by Austin’s own Tim O’Brien.

I’ve spent a number of years writing my own memories of my experience in Vietnam and processing out of Vietnam with post-traumatic stress. It wasn’t understood or treated as well then as it is now. Thank God it is now.

I have written and rewritten this a number of times over the years and of late have been encouraged by our son Casey to get on it. I think I am finally there however, my printer is not working and that is driving me crazy. I’ve also heard that it is not good to talk about a book one is writing until it’s a done deal.

Last Saturday I joined the Up For Discussion in Plainview at the Jon Hassler Theater about Generational Change, beginning by looking at a recent AP story on learning to succeed or survive. The survey concluded students lie, cheat, steal, but say they’re good. Most of us were in the “aging group” but there were three sons there presently in college. Some of the aging group owned up to their own earlier “misdeeds.” I held my high school story back.

Thirty six percent of today’s students have used the Internet to plagiarize (We didn’t have that advantage). Ninety-three percent said they are satisfied with their own character and ethics. The two broad questions were explored: 1. How do we form conscience or how is conscience formed in us? 2. How do we acquire a “world view,” and how would we compare the “world views” of our parents, our children and ourselves?

And then there is the weather. Something is not right when the temperature can drop from 40 degrees above zero down to 2 below along with the “clipper” wind chills.

“Every piece of brilliance in history carries with it the seeds of its own stupidity.” — Garrison Keillor