Try on the latest essays from Millennium Man.
The 90s are about over and the divorce rate in America is climbing again. Millennium Man witnessed no less than eight dissolutions of marriage at Chicago's City Hall one day last month, and the varied deals that went down during the two hours prior to his own dissolutionment.
Irreconcilable differences appears to be the settlement of choice . . . the incompatibitlity of two people to plan and live together any longer. Perhaps the love has died out or one of the partners becomes abusive, or maybe it's just time to go their separate ways. Time, the healer of many things, can also erode a relationship as sure as a river digs a valley.
But the variance of style in this courtroom was not as emotionally charged as it was mostly a display of lawyers flashing their papers and aplomb. It was interesting in the lobby of the 30th floor to hear these barristers, who privately speak vehemently about their opponents, sidle up to one another in public with gladhanding and patent smiles. And in the courtroom, listening to their little clauses noting that each party was sure who was paying the attorney fees, and, oh yes, that the fees are more than fair and reasonable. Ka-ching!! Pathetic, isn't it?
But it's all about common law, isn't it? There were policemen getting divorced, and lawyers, and a guy who brought his Arabic translator and the cases went down, quickly over a period of only two hours. And then it was done and they went off to get on with the rest of their lives. The judge so much as blinked to each party during the cases, mumbling a patent line of legalese that only the court recorder understood, by rote.
Millennium Man realizes that relationships develop over many years and people more likely than not, grow with their spouses and become a unit of trust and love, a true partnership for life. Sometimes, though, things break down and we go off in different and separate directions. It works for awhile but the tensions become too much to bear for one or both and it's time to make a change. It's perfectly okay to take that leap, and often both parties get psyched up after the separation, getting ready for the future and becoming stronger individually. It's a time for both people to take a look at themselves, to make some self-evaluation and turn their lives around, learn something new and build on strengths that they've developed over the years.
But take this advice, if it ever comes to happen to you. Settle yourselves before you seek the law -- if there are kids in your life, or debts, or assets, all the stuff that marriages can be made of -- get them settled before the lawyers start dickering about it. You can save yourselves plenty of grief and, quite literally, thousands of dollars in legal fees.
And, in the end, wish each other well, good luck, and good fortune for the next phase of their life. It is, indeed, all about making adjustments and getting on with life, accepting the future the way we've prepared for all our lives, and doing it graciously with little or no animosities toward anyone.
Recenty, Illinois governor, George Ryan, visited Cuba with an entourage of businessmen, news people, and hangers on. The trip was not sanctioned by the government and politicians on both sides of the fence criticized hizzoner's intentions as "encouragement of Castro's embargo of the Cuban people". Ryan's visit was the first by an Americano governor in forty years and was driven by humanitarian intent. He visited with students from Havana University, but it was his seven hour conversation with Fidel Castro that was most fulfilling and resulted with Castro's permission to take a young boy, stricken with fatal portal hypertension, back to los Estados Unidos for treatment of his rare disease.
The essence of the talks with the Cuban premier was politics and the trade embargo (the end of which the governor officially endorsed). Castro was quoted as saying the visit was constructive and praised Ryan's courage. Ryan pulled no punches with the leader of the last communist bastion in the western hemisphere and stated that both countries would benefit if the sanctions were lifted.
If I were Mr. Castro I would think that outcome very carefully. There are plenty of people who believe his government would collapse under a free market economy and perhaps Castro himself might be apprehensive of his own demise as all powerful muckety muck. But the real apprehension will sink in once the embargo is lifted and the businesses, those good ol' boys at McDonald's and General Motors, sink their fangs into the island country, changing it forever. The beauty of Cuba is in its pristine simplicity, the old cars and ways of the people. Like, do they really need the Dodge Boys to come down there and equip everyone with Durangos? No, if I were Castro I would open the doors to the tourists and cash in on the trade bucks but put a moratorium on western business from entering and altering the economy. Say, in forty years, but not now.
The missile crisis is thirty-seven years done now and the Castro regime poses no threat to this great land that we love. The boycott exists only because Castro is still in power and it just pisses off all the powerful politicians that he is getting away with it.
Veterans' Day
The eleventh month . . . the eleventh day . . . the eleventh hour. It was said to be the time that the great guns ceased their official shelling of no man's land, way back in 1918. Armistice, a day to end the war that would end all wars. Little did they know, eh?
Man has been at war ever since two Neanderthals fought over a woman or a peccary leg. The millennia of man have seen the likes of the greatest empires -- sophisticated societies who took what they wanted, seizing beast and slave alike. It was the easiest way to build cities of stone and erect monuments to themselves and satisfy their gods. Since the dawn of civilized history, man has been fighting for power, fame, and wealth -- the more obtained, the greedier they became. Some were religious ventures to conquer and convert whole peoples. The strong ruled the world and the weak suffered to toil at their feet.
After the renaissance, man took to a new age, an age of science and reason, fine art and musical genius, yet the powerful and greedy continued to wage wars between the fiefdoms and empires. So it went through the nineteenth century, an age of power and production that produced mechanical devices to ease our lives, but also weapons to create mass slaughter. Just as they quibbled in the past, the kingdoms of World War I got into it again and the destruction and carnage was something never seen before. Awesome automatic weapons devastated entire units of men, soldiers who were disciplined to march forward, blindly, and die horrible deaths in the name of the duke, fuhrer, or president.
Millennium Man knows what it is to be a soldier. The face of war has many moods -- fear, boredom, horror, and laughter. The job of the soldier is to take them as they come, to be ready to fight for his life when the time comes, to do what he must to get the job done. The work is always hard and the risks are the highest as he gambles with his life. Those of us who survived being soldiers know what life has to offer and how quickly it can be snuffed. We know that the sweet life is one that is lived happily, without fear. No matter the name of the king or archbishop or general sending us on his bidding. We fought to survive and that was it. That is how we endured the worst of war's horrors. It worked for us and for our fathers and their fathers before them. Let's not carry this tradition into a new millennium for our sons and grandsons to experience. Life is too short to live in fear for it.
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