innocence – David Vaszko's Blog

This afternoon we commemorate Memorial Day.

Originally we observed Memorial Day to honor those who died in the Civil War. But as America engaged in more wars, it became our obligation to remember the militrary personnel who died in them.

I want first to talk about the Civil War. It was the event that shattered America’s image of itself. One historian wrote that people who had been raised to ask God for the grace to be a martyr, to die for His goodness without being violent, were called upon to be killers.

It was no longer just plantation owners and professional soldiers who were violent but one million or more men. As so many people said afterward, we lost our innocence, the belief that nothing bad could happen to us – especially something caused by ourselves.

Think what wars do. The Civil War made us realize we had stooped to the barbarism we always associated with Europe.

World War I destroyed the freeedom of movement between countries. In the United States civil liberties were removed. If you criticized the war or America’s foreign policy, you were arrested.

After World War II, rather than glory in our freedom we continued to wage war. Criticism of the mililtary and of foreign policy was dangerous. One could be branded a traitor for criticizing the nuclear arms race.

Our prosperity allowed us to forget the government’s suspicion of us. We trusted each other. We did not live in fear.

With Vietnam came division among us we had not experienced since the 1860s. The Vietnam War made America feel that we failed, that not only did we lose, we were wrong and we deserved to lose.

We became confident in the wrong way. We glorified drugs and cheap sex. We disrespected authority.

We felt that since the war was lost and also unjust, the government would learn its lesson.

While the government was supposedly learning its lesson, Americans abused personal freedom with as few qualms as those who waged the Vietnam War.

Then two Iraq wars revealed that we as a nation had not learned either a moral lesson, a political lesson or a constitutional lesson from Vietnam. Americans embraced each Iraq war, though each was unnecessary.

The sad thing about the Iraq wars was that our consumerism could not cancel out the government’s disrespect and mistrust of us. We lost our trust in each other at the same time we lost most of our civil liberties.

We were not able to see that if the government does not want you to be free, the next step is it won’t want you to be comfortable. The government that wants you afraid will eventually want you hungry.

Somebody just shouted, What’s the point? This.

War destroys civil liberties. It creates mistrust and cynicism. Our wars are claimed to be fought for freedom, but with each war people become less free.

In these cynical times it is easy to dismiss those who died for freedom because now we have little freedom. It is tempting to say their deaths have been a waste.

Likewise, those who passionately celebrate Memorial Day refuse to recognize how unfree America is. It is very difficult for my administration to try to bring freedom back to America and to keep the hawks in check.

We need to realize that battlefields are only one place where freedom is defended. The function of a battlefield is to protect freedom from foreign armies. Our heroes did their part.

We must do ours.

Fight for freedom at city council meetings, at the state legislature, at the offices of senators and representatives. Tell them you do not want to take loyalty oaths or be filmed all the time.

Meet with police departments and justice departments. Tell the officials their officers will be shot if they enter your house because they think you are suspicious. Tell them you will not answer questions about your neighbors.

But it isn’t just confrontation that preserves freedom. It is also lilfestyles. Our way of life does not preserve and encourage freedom. I read in a financial newspaper that democracies only work when citizens are not greedy.

I take this to mean if citizens are greedy, they do not pay attention to government.

When we decrease our shopping, as well as our fear of each other, we will start to feel what it’s like to be free. Then we will realize the military and law enforcement have attained too much power, that we foolishly assumed more laws and surveillance would protect us, that we are more afraid every year.

On this Memorial Day I want you my fellow citizens, to think about our heroes in a different way. If diplomacy fails to restore freedom, you owe it to them to dismantle our police state – physically, even if you have to strangle your brother who is an officer for Homeland Security or your sister who sells surveillance equipment to DHS.

The nation is in a crisis. There is no innocence to lose. Only gullibililty, deception and constant cowering.

If we do not rise against this police state, America will have failed, and will have failed with great cowardice, our courageous heroes.

“Sycamores are one of the prettiest trees in Sacramento,” he said.

“Most everybody feels the same way,” I told him. “The trees are all over Midtown, East Sac, Land Park and Curtis Park.”

“I think they come from London.”

“Some do. Some are native to California,” I said. “Sycamores grew along the banks of our rivers. They were here when Sutter came.”

“So they left the sycamores along the river and planted the trees from London in town?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said.

“Well what happened?”

“There were a lot of trees along the shores of the river where the people who came after Sutter settled. In 1847 a guy wrote in his diary that Sacramento was ‘a town in the woods, with the native trees still waving over its roofs.’

“But people cut trees for wood and built fires against the trunks of others. Finally in 1853, the last tree that was native to the plain came down. It was on oak.”

“Then they started planting more natives?” he asked.

“No,” I said. Actually they planted Calilfornia Sycamores in 1850, way out of town at Sutter’s Fort Burying Ground where Sutter Middle School is now on I and Alhambra.

“Sutter gave up ownership of the land in 1849 and 1850. Dr. R. H. McDonald bought the land. He named the cemetary New Helvitia Cemetery. New Helvitia means New Switzerland. Sutter came from Switzerland.”

“So Dr. McDonald planted the trees?”

“Nobody seems to know. But we know that the trees on the school’s lawn at the corner of Alhambra and I are the oldest in town. McDonald could have had them officially planted, or someone who had a loved one buried there could have planted them.

“There was a lot going on. A nursery owner named James Warren was selling non-native trees to replace the natives that had been cut or burned down in town. Over at the graveyard beyond Sutter’s Fort, the guy who bought the land from McDonald in 1857, J.W. Reeves, made a beautiful cemetery with trees and shrubs and flowers. The cemetery went all the way to H Street.

“Cemeteries were a big thing in those days. According to Gary Wills, they were considered parks where the living could go and commune with the dead, themselves and nature. Cemeteries were on the edge of town not just for health reasons, but as a symbolic meaning that death is the end of one world and the beginning of another. At the edge of town in the graveyard, the living were in a spot between both worlds looking out to the wilderness, wondering where their loved ones were and what their own death would bring.

“In 1875 the City gained ownership of the cemetery. From then on it was maintained less and less. After 1912 hardly anyone was buried.

“In 1908, the people who had moved out that way wanted to increase the value of their property. They eventually got the cemetery planted in grass so it would look better, and not so much like a cemetery.”

“And of course the sycamores kept growing?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. “I find it interesting that somethng intended to be sacred could become an eyesore and a nuisance in just thirty years.

“While the property owners wanted walls, shrubbery and trees removed from the graveyard, people in Midtown between B and H and 21st and 23rd started planting London Sycamores. That was around 1910.

“The London Sycamores look better than the California ones. They grow taller and fuller. Nevertheless, next time you’re backed up on Alhambra waiting for the light on H or J to change, look to the trunks of the big California Sycamores on the corner of the lawn at I Street. They are beautiful. If traffic’s slow enough, you can sit through a couple of lights and really get an appreciation for the trunks subltleties.”

“So in spite of development, sycamores still stand above everything like they were planted to do?”

“A lot of them have been cut for skyscrapers,” I replied. “Even where they’ve been allowed to remain, it’s hard to notice them because the buildings are real tall.

“There is an intriguing one on the southeast side of the Wells Fargo Building. It leans way out into the street. It breaks up the orderly row of trees and the rigidity of the two tall buildings. I noticed it when I was walking from the parking lot. Even though I was going to be late for my meeting, I decided to sit on one of the benches and look at the tree.

“It got me thinking about the present – what a great city we have. It got me thinking about the future – how important it is to keep our old sycamores so we can enjoy them, and how important it is to plant new ones so they will be tall when the old ones come down.”

Tag: innocence

The President Speaks: Memorial Day

Sycamores