“According to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General [pre-2005], 19 percent of the general population of the United States has a diagnosable mental illness, 6 percent have an addictive disorder, and 3 percent have both a mental illness and an addictive disorder. Most of the sufferers continue to function more-or-less well outwardly, despite the internal turmoil: only between a third and a quarter of these illnesses result in diagnosable functional impairment or are severe enough to interfere with social functioning. The others may or may not be detectable by an untrained observer, even though they can seriously compromise the sufferer’s judgment.” – Major Laura J. Heath, USA, “An Analysis of the Systemic Security Weaknesses of the U.S. Navy Fleet Broadcasting System, 1967-1974, as Exploited by CWO John Walker”
Category: Lit & Crit
“I have a uniquely German capacity to vacillate between sentimentality and coldness.” – Tina Fey, Bossypants
“The totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is not the case.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein, “1.12”, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
“‘Defective’ was a big word in our house. Many things were labeled ‘defective’ only to miraculously turn functional once the directions had been read more thoroughly.” – Tina Fey, Bossypants
“We merely are waifs shipwrecked on the ocean of nature; and ever and anon, from a sudden wave that shall be more transparent than others, there leaps forth a fact that in an instant confounds all we imagined we knew.” – Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee
“The most trivial secret of the non-human object we behold in nature connects more closely perhaps with the profound enigma of our origin and our end, than the secret of those of our passions that we study the most eagerly and the most passionately.” – Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee
“Because I am nothing if not an amazing businesswoman, I researched what kind of content makes for bestselling books. It turns out the answer is ‘one night stands,’ drug addictions, and recipes.” – Tina Fey, Bossypants
“Every philosophical proposition is bad grammar, and the best that we can hope to achieve by philosophical discussion is to lead people to see that philosophical discussion is a mistake.” – Bertrand Russell, “Introduction” to Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
“In practice, language is always more or less vague, so that what we assert is never quite precise.” – Bertrand Russell, “Introduction” to Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
“In proportion as a society organises itself, and rises in the scale, so does a shrinkage enter the private life of each one of its members. Where there is progress, it is the result only of a more and more complete sacrifice of the individual to the general interest. Each one is compelled, first of all, to renounce his vices, which are acts of independence.” – Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee
“A legend of menace and peril still clings to the bees. There is the distressful recollection of her sting, which produces a pain so characteristic that one knows not wherewith to compare it; a kind of destroying dryness, a flame of the desert rushing over the wounded limb, as though these daughters of the sun had distilled a dazzling poison from their father’s angry rays, in order more effectively to defend the treasure they gather from his beneficent hours.” – Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee
“You can make a lot of mistakes in just one lifetime.” – Raymond Chandler, “I’ll Be Waiting”
“We are, as we have always been, dangerous creatures, the enemies of our own happiness. But the only help we have ever found for this, the only melioration, is in mutual reverence. God’s grace comes to us unmerited, the theologians say. But the grace we could extend to one another we consider it best to withhold in very many cases, presumptively, or in the absence of what we consider true or sufficient merit (we being more particular than God), or because few gracious acts, if they really deserve the name, would stand up to a cost-benefit analysis. This is not the consequence of a new atheism, or a systemic materialism that afflicts our age more than others. It is good old human meanness, which finds its terms and pretexts in every age. The best argument against human grandeur is the meagerness of our response to it, paradoxically enough.” – Marilynne Robinson, “What Are We Doing Here?”
“A society is moving toward dangerous ground when loyalty to the truth is seen as disloyalty to some supposedly higher interest. How many times has history taught us this?” – Marilynne Robinson, “What Are We Doing Here?”
“The wise say that for men there are seven gates through which admission may be gained into Heaven. There are asceticism, benevolence, tranquillity of mind, self-command, modesty, simplicity, and kindness to all creatures. The wise also say that a person loseth all these in consequence of vanity. That man who having acquired knowledge regardeth himself as learned, and with his learning destroyeth the reputation of other, never attaineth to regions of indestructible felicity.” – The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vol. I, Sambhava Parva of the Adi Parva, trans. Pratap Chandra Roy
“White people are scared of change, believing that what they have is being taken away from them by people they consider unworthy. But all they’re doing is poking a bear with a stick. In 2004, the Anglo population in Texas became a minority. The last majority-Anglo high-school class in Texas graduated in 2014. There will never be another. The reality is, it’s all over for the Anglos.” – Evan Smith, of the Texas Tribune (quoted by Lawrence Wright in “America’s Future is Texas,” The New Yorker, July 10 & 17, 2017)
“The souls of dead babies don’t wait around, like glass bottles, to be recycled into new ones just as good as the old ones were. They go somewhere dark, and silent, and forever.” – Francesca Leader, “Now you See Him”
“Why, why do you Americans always offer to help when you don’t fucking want to help, and you’ll die if someone actually takes you up on it?” – Francesca Leader, “Now you See Him” (emphases in original)
“Thou shouldst ever keep the virtuous before thee as thy models; thou shouldst ever with retrospective eye compare thy acts with those of the virtuous; thou shouldst ever disregard the hard words of the wicked. Thou shouldst ever make the conduct of the wise the model upon which thou art to act thyself. The man hurt by the arrows of cruel speech hurled from one’s lips, weepeth day and night. Indeed, these strike at the core of the body. Therefore the wise never fling these arrows at others. There is nothing in the three worlds by which thou canst worship and adore the deities better than by kindness, friendship, charity and sweet speeches unto all. Therefore, shouldst thou always utter words that soothe, and not those that scorch.” – The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vol. I, Sambhava Parva of the Adi Parva, trans. Pratap Chandra Roy
“By him is everything conquered, who calmly subdueth his rising anger. He is regarded as a man who by having recourse to forgiveness, shaketh off his rising anger like a snake casting off its slough. He that suppressed his anger, he that regardeth not the evil speeches of others, he that becometh not angry, though there be cause, certainly acquireth the four objects for which we live (viz., virtue, profit, desire, and salvation). Between him that performeth without fatigue sacrifices every month for a hundred years, and him that never feeleth angry at anything, he that feeleth not wrath is certainly the higher. Boys and girls, unable to distinguish between right and wrong, quarrel with each other. The wise never imitate them.” – The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vol. I, Sambhava Parva of the Adi Parva, trans. Pratap Chandra Roy
“Truly, one’s appetites are never satiated by enjoyment. On the other hand, like sacrificial butter poured into the fire, they flame up with indulgence. Even if one enjoyed the whole Earth with its wealth, diamonds and gold, animals and women, one may not yet be satiated.” – The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vol. I, Sambhava Parva of the Adi Parva, trans. Pratap Chandra Roy
“An ugly person considereth himself handsomer than others until he sees his own face in the mirror. But when he sees his own ugly face in the mirror, it is then that he perceiveth the difference between himself and others. He that is really handsome never taunts anybody. And he that always talketh evil becometh a reviler. And as the swine always look for dirt and filth even when in the midst of a flower-garden, so the wicked always choose the evil out of both evil and good that others speak. Those, however, that are wise, on hearing the speeches of others that are intermixed with both good and evil, accept only what is good, like geese that always extract the milk only, though it be mixed with water. As the honest are always pained at speaking ill of others, so do the wicked always rejoice in doing the same thing. As the honest always feel pleasure in showing regard for the old, so do the wicked always take delight in aspersing the good. The honest are happy in not seeking for faults. The wicked are happy in seeking for them. The wicked ever speak ill of the honest. But the latter never injure the former, even if injured by them. What can be more ridiculous in the world than that those that are themselves wicked should represent the really honest as wicked?” – The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vol. I, Sambhava Parva of the Adi Parva, trans. Pratap Chandra Roy
“Men scorched by mental grief, or suffering under bodily pain, feel as much refreshed in the companionship of their wives as a perspiring person in a cool bath. No man, even in anger, should ever do anything that is disagreeable to his wife, seeing that happiness, joy, and virtue, everything dependeth on the wife. A wife is the sacred field in which the husband is born himself.” – The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vol. I, Sambhava Parva of the Adi Parva, trans. Pratap Chandra Roy
Memorial DayMemorial Day
The final letter
July 23, 1950
Dear Folks
I have a little more time to write now than I did the other day. In case you didn’t get the other letter there was $80 in Travelers checks in it.
We are aboard a Japanese Ship (I can’t pronounce the name of it) We will get to Korea in the morning or at least we are supposed to. We have to sleep on the floor, eat “C” rations, wash in helmets all the comforts of home.
Tell Bob that I am in a 57 M.M. Recoiless Rifle Section, which we do not have yet and I
haven’t ever seen either but we will get them in Korea. I am an ammunition bearer and carry a carbine. There is five men in our squad.
The coast of Japan is in sight now, it is only about a mile (1) away. The name of it is pronounced Sasabu (I don’t know how it is spelled)
We pick up a convoy of ships and escorts here I hope.
We drew 40 rounds of ammo this afternoon and will get some more tomorrow.
Tell Toby and the rest of the kids to be good and to behave themselves.
Okinawa (or what I saw of it) was dirty, filthy and almost primitive beyond your imagination.
I got seasick on the first day out of Frisco and again on the 11th, 12th + 13th days as we ran into a typhoon. Don’t ever believe that it isn’t a miserable feeling. I wanted to vomit till my boots came out my mouth. One of few times and I hope for the last I missed three complete meals so you know I must’ve been sick.
I did not have time to get my baggage and equipment that was stored in the Walker, so they just gave me new stuff in place of it.
Please keep these pictures for me.
Well I can think of anything else so I’ll close. Write soon
Love
Henry
PERSONAL
Mother or Daddy
Tell Lib to send Ann what money that she (Lib) thinks neccessary. I have made out an allotment to Lib.
In case I don’t get back, and I certainly do intende to, make the kids go to school, they will need all they can get.
The Ascension of Henry Callis
Corporal Henry Callis, younger brother to my father, was on a troopship steaming to Japan in the summer of 1950 when the Korean War broke out. He was on his way with several hundred other troops to join the 29th Regimental Combat Team on Okinawa and be part of the post-World-War-Two American Army of Occupation there. The regiment was understrength and had only two battalions, instead of the three called for by its full complement. Nobody had expected war in Korea. If war came, everybody expected it to be nuclear and against the Soviet Union.
Henry and the others on the troopship arrived at Okinawa one morning and learned their mission had changed. They were issued combat gear and company assignments. By sundown they were aboard another troopship along with the rest of the 29th and were on their way to the port of Pusan on the bottom-right corner of the Korean peninsula. A day later they arrived. They disembarked and headed up to the front line, the location of which no one was certain. The North Koreans had launched a devastating surprise attack to start the war against South Korea a few weeks earlier, and were still on the march. What few American troops were available in Japan had been rushed to South Korea to help the shattered South Korean army. They were being overwhelmed. The North Korean army was large and well-equipped, well-trained and possessed of many veterans of the Chinese Civil War, which had ended the previous autumn. The situation was fluid and becoming desperate.
The soldiers of the 29th Regimental Combat Team were told they were going to fight a couple hundred communist guerrillas near a town called Hadong-ri. They headed that way by train and then by truck, and then by foot. Their rifles and machine guns were all new. The machine guns were still packed away in their protective shipping grease when the regiment got to Pusan. They hadn’t been test-fired and their sights hadn’t been aligned. And not all the equipment had been distributed. Not all the regiment’s doctors had medical tools and supplies.
The men — boys almost, like Henry, who had himself just turned twenty that spring — were very confident and very green. Very few of them, maybe about one out of every one hundred, were Second World War combat veterans. These were generally the sergeants and not the commissioned officers.
The regiment drew near to Hadong-ri and deployed along a ridge with one battalion on one side of the road and the other on the other. They saw a few soldiers moving around in the valley in front of them. They weren’t sure if these were stray South Korean soldiers, but they thought it likely that’s what they were. They had been told they would be mopping up guerrillas and they didn’t expect to see uniformed soldiers in front of them. The regiment’s commander and his staff got out of their jeeps and stood in the road at the top of the ridge and tried to figure out what was going on. They stood in a clump. Binoculars hung from straps around their necks and they held maps in their hands. Mortar and recoilless rifle fire slammed into the ridge. The first shots killed the regimental commander and his staff. The regiment was not facing a group of ragged irregulars they outnumbered five to one. They were up against a crack North Korean division that outnumbered them ten to one.
It was not long before the 29th Regimental Combat Team was shattered and routed. Its fragments were driven back down off the ridge and through the rice paddies behind it. Hundreds of American soldiers were killed or went missing. Henry was one of the missing. The soldiers were so new to their companies that many of them didn’t know each others’ names. There was no one who knew Henry Callis who survived the battle and could say what had happened to him. He was as gone as though he had vanished from the face of the earth, lifted up bodily in the rapture of war.
“The wife is a man’s half. The wife is the first of friends. The wife is the root of religion, profit, and desire. The wife is the root of salvation. They that have wives can perform religious acts. They that have wives can lead domestic lives. They that have wives have the means to be cheerful. They that have wives can achieve good fortune. Sweet-speeched wives are friends on occasions of joy. They are as fathers on occasions of religious acts. They are mothers in sickness and woe. Even in the deep woods to a traveller a wife is his refreshment and solace. He that hath a wife is trusted by all.” – The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vol. I, Sambhava Parva of the Adi Parva, trans. Pratap Chandra Roy
“By a son one conquereth the three worlds. By a son’s son, one enjoyeth eternity. And by a grandson’s son great-grand-fathers enjoy everlasting happiness.” – The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vol. I, Sambhava Parva of the Adi Parva, trans. Pratap Chandra Roy
“Sakuntala having worshipped the king according to proper form, told him, ‘This is thy son, O king ! Let him be installed as thy heir-apparent ! O king, this child, like unto a celestial, hath been begotten by thee upon me! Therefore, O best of men, fulfill now the promise thou gavest me! Call to mind, O thou of great good fortune, the agreement thou hadst made on the occasion of thy union with me in the asylum of Kanwa!’ The king, hearing these her words, and remembering everything, said, ‘I do not remember anything. Who art thou, O wicked woman in ascetic guise? I do not remember having any connection with thee in respect of Dharma, Kama and Arthas. Go or stay or do as thou pleasest!’ Thus addressed by him, the fair-coloured innocent one became abashed. Grief deprived her of consciousness and she stood for a time like a wooden post. Soon, however, her eyes became red like copper and her lips began to quiver. And the glances she now and then cast upon the king seemed to burn the latter. Her rising wrath, however, and the fire of her asceticism, she extinguished within herself by an extraordinary effort. Collecting her thoughts in a moment, her heart possessed with sorrow and rage, she thus addressed her lord in anger, looking at him, ‘Knowing everything, O monarch, how canst thou, like an inferior person, thus say that thou knowest it not? Thy heart is a witness to the truth or falsehood of this matter. Therefore, speak truly without degrading thyself! He who being one thing representeth himself as another thing to others, is like a thief and a robber of his own self. Of what sin is he not capable? Thou thinkest that thou alone hast knowledge of thy deed. But knowest thou not that the Ancient, Omniscient one (Narayana) liveth in thy heart ? He knoweth all thy sins, and thou sinnest in His presence! He that sins thinks that none observes him. But he is observed by the gods and by Him also who is in every heart. The Sun, the Moon, the Air, the Fire, the Earth, the Sky, Water, the heart, Yama, the day, the night, both twilights, and Dharma, all witness the acts of man! Yama, the son of Suryya, takes no account of the sins of him with whom Narayana the witness of all acts is gratified! But he with whom Narayana is not gratified is tortured for his sins by Yama! Him who degradeth himself by representing his self falsely, the gods never bless. Even his own soul blesseth him not. I am a wife devoted to my husband. I have come of my own accord, it is true. But do not, on that account, treat me with disrespect. I am thy wife and, therefore, deserve to be treated respectfully!” – The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vol. I, Sambhava Parva of the Adi Parva, trans. Pratap Chandra Roy
“Women should not live long in the houses of their paternal or maternal relations. Such residence is destructive of their reputation, their good conduct, their virtue.” – The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vol. I, Sambhava Parva of the Adi Parva, trans. Pratap Chandra Roy
“Remedies certainly exist for all curses, but no remedy can avail those cursed by their mother!” – The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vol. I, Astika Parva of the Adi Parva, trans. Pratap Chandra Roy
“It is from great foolishness that persons blinded by love of wealth always desire to make a partition of their patrimony. After effecting a partition they fight with each other, deluded by wealth. Then again, enemies in the guise of friends cause estrangements between ignorant and selfish men after they become separated in wealth, and pointing out faults confirm their quarrels, so that the latter soon fall one by one. Absolute ruin very soon overtakes the separated.” – The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Vol. I, Astika Parva of the Adi Parva, trans. Pratap Chandra Roy