Brother

Lewis Mumford wrote of the "passive barbarism" of the United States, post-WW II.

The full quotation: "In the passive barbarism that the United States now boasts under the cover of technical progress, there is no promise whatever of victory or even bare survival. Without a deep regeneration and renewal, the external triumph of American machinery and arms will but hasten the downfall of the Western World."

I've been reading Mumford to try to get a handle on my time, while writing a book about our country's penchant for war and what it says about 'our time.'

My brother and I were going through our father's things the other day--old photographs and momentos, letters he'd written to our mother, newspaper clippings, birth and death certificates, etc.etc. As we scratched and clawed through the past, a different picture of our history emerged, not only that it wasn't as bad as we thought but that there was a definite nobility to it, that we actually descended from a great race of semi-primitive people always seeking to improve their lot.

It was my brother's birthday, April 5. Lea Ann and I flew from San Francisco to Las Vegas for the day, to surprise him. Surprising him was Paula's idea, my brothers wife.

My brother's name is Blair, he's three years younger than I am, but there are many times he acts as the older brother and I act as the younger.

We spent hours going through boxes and files, holding up black and white photos to the light, trying to connect this person with that person, until I became exhausted and fell asleep on the floor. When I woke, the first thing I saw was my brother hunched over his computer screen, trying to track down a family connection in Scotland on the Internet.

The biggest difference between my brother and me? My brother kept things like the things we were looking through together for all these years, when I'd wanted to throw them away.