Disaster at Quincy's Museum

A big windstorm blew down an ancient magnolia tree on Quincy's museum this week. The damage was not too extreme and we pulled the branches off the roof with the tractor. None of the exhibits inside were harmed. A mouse exited from under the dead armadillo. The roof can be fixed.

What a gentle life we lead here in our nature preserve in the Green Swamp! We constantly watch the peaceable kingdom of birds, deer, fox squirrels and so many other critters in our view. We tend our gardens and rejoice in the pleasure of being here and hearing the buzz of the hummingbirds. We wait for the chittering of the chimney swifts who will come soon to inhabit our chimney. The wrens are loudly nesting under the porches, the hawks are impossibly shrill, and at night the owls screetch and chuckle. Already I hear the constant din of frogs and evening insects.

And what a gentle life I have as a volunteer teacher in our local public school. I love my students who are so connected to me, and whose eyes shine when they see what is coming for them this day.

I cannot imagine how awful it must be to be an Afghan child in these days! From here this life they have seems so grim and scraping. What happened yesterday when a US soldier killed families is just unimaginably terrible. How can we think about this?

I remember when I was sixteen and traveling overland with my dad and two siblings in this area many years ago. No matter what my dad said, we kids looked at the life we saw, and we concluded that these people were so strange, so foreign, so poor, we couldn't connect at all. The faceless women whom we barely ever saw were covered with dark cloth and scurried around in the shadows. The men, as far as we could see, did nothing but sit in bars. Secretly, we called them "the drones".

It is really hard to understand such a culture. How can we expect that the average military recruit can understand, especially when some of these people are gunning for them? Still, there is no excuse for shooting whole families and putting them into a fire. I am not surprised that a US soldier could lose it and do such a heinous thing, though it is never forgivable.

Most of our military rank and file come from the lower American class. They have been brought up to accept spanking in the public schools. They think that having guns is great and might is right. They do not think hard about issues of kindness and trust. But,I also know that many of our military have done an incredible job of bringing a better life to the Afghani people.

That said, it is probably time for us to get out of Afghanistan. We can support them in what they can do to make some kind of country they can live in. The U.S. can't do this for them. We have different agendas.

So, we can pull the downed tree off Quincy's museum, but it's up to him to dust off the exhibits.