Good Morning Vietnam
Last Saturday I began my weekend by pulling down Mary McCarthy's book of essays, Vietnam, from my shelf to read. This is a habit I honor somewhat in the breech, trying to get in a couple of hours of pure reading during the unstructured earlier hours of the weekend that does not have the stamp of some weekday deadline on it. Avoiding relevancy is not the issue. I have enough books on my shelf
that the suns rays flowing through the lens of the day will bring them to focus on book or another. I just pick from those lit up, knowing the others will become brighter later. One thing about living in a large country - a society - with a reasonably uniform culture and knowledge base; is that whatever I think of, consider, decide to form an opinion on or take action about. This will be done simultaneously by a large of other souls. I took a Philosphy of Science class once and think that this has a name and belongs to the branch of science that measures and models populations. I call it the beach thing because if you ever decide it's a good day to go to the beach, you will arrive at the beach the same time as several hundred others and will all stand in the crushed qhohog parking lot with your boogie boards and half-height sand chairs under your arms and squint darkly at one another.
An adjoined benefit to being associated in group with the human kind as this, is that you often get answers to certain questions very quickly. They will seem to emerge as one, you may then alter your outlook to the best posed and seek from the best rejoined. As patterns in my mind formed that caused me to compare Iraq and Vietnam I was told that this was error for they were and are very different. One is on page 196 (Goode's world atlas 19th ed.) and begins with a 'V' and the other is one page 185 (op cit) and begins with an 'I'. They are not the same at all, and ought not be likened or as'd.
A week or so ago I was talking to my friend Tran Nguyen (who I work with in the Theodore Mckeldin library) She grew up in Vietnam, it was the home of her childhood and youth, a place she says that was haunted by evil spirits and ghosts in those days (1970-1988) that caused people to drop dead in the middle of the street for no reason. I had mentioned Robert McNamara's name in passing and she exclaims "I know a song about Robert McNamara, we learned it in school: 'Robert McNamara he is a baby killer, he is a bad man...'." Here she stops unsure as to how I am taking this. I say, "it goes on to talk about running dogs and paper tigers." I am just guessing, it is really a question, but I have not given it rising inflection. She brightens up:
"Oh, then you know this song."
10:50:55 AM  ;;
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