THE FEBRUARIES

Call Her Grand

It's Mother's Day. Most of us, and certainly all mothers, would likely agree we should be celebrating Mother's Week. They have certainly earned at least a week.

For some, this special day is a chance to turn and look directly into their mother's eyes with love and gratitude and say Happy Mother's Day, Mom. For all of us, it is a time to reflect, a time to recall those unique characteristics making our mother our own. It's a time to acknowledge the gentle spirit who stroked our hair and kissed our cheek and prayed God would watch over us as she sent us out the door.

This day is for honoring mothers, but isn't it also a time to give special recognition to those mothers who are thought of so highly they are called grand?

We turn into her driveway crossing over the culvert covered with broken oyster shells, and engineer mom carefully guides the car onto two narrow concrete tracks with grass and weeds growing between them. Mom breathes a sigh of relief, shifts into park, and my sisters and I look to the obscured figure standing behind the screen door who has anxiously awaited our arrival.

The white clapboard house sits atop concrete blocks and seems high above our car to a seven-year-old boy.

Before we open a car door, the black-framed screen door swings open and everyone smiles.
It's our grandmother, my mom's mom, our Na Na.

As I write tonight, I recall her quick wit; she's always smiling and laughing in my memories. And although she's been gone eight years now, the sound of her laughter will never leave me. I hear it now and I smile because she was always laughing at herself--something silly she'd done. She taught me not to take myself too seriously.

We clamored out of our car and past her rusted gray Cadillac with mismatched tires, up four concrete steps and into the world's smallest living room. She didn't have much invested in her worldly possessions, but some are now collectibles and there were a lot of them.

The small two-bedroom home was quite full. Filled with modest furniture and keepsakes from a lifetime spanning riding in a horse-drawn carriage with Papa to living off social security and driving an old Caddy.

Upon entering her home a slight musty smell greeted you, but was quickly overcome by a variety of fragrances. It seemed like everything in there smelled like some kind of flower or another: Scented candles melted onto teacup saucers sat on doilies. Resting on a bookshelf in the corner above the TV, an antique, oval-shaped, mirror tray held several ornate, half-filled perfume bottles and a collection of costume jewelry consisting of painful-looking earrings. Another source for the pleasant smells were the small, squishy, football-shaped bath beads and decorative soaps we weren‚t suppose to use when we took turns in the one bathroom.
A museum celebrating her past, Na Na's house required more than a simple look around to find all the priceless possessions.

The simple chore of helping my mom fill her mom's near-empty Frigidaire with name-brand groceries from the League City, Texas Minimax store, taught me a lesson. I came to realize that selfless acts of love were shown in the house and instilled in my mom. I learned what mothers strive to teach us by their example: love is shown.

In the Bible, the apostle Paul recognizes this chain of motherly love and how it was passed to Timothy. In 2 Timothy 1:5 he writes, I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.

Mother's Day is almost here. As we honor our mothers, let's be sure to honor those mothers so special we call them grand.

Copyright © 2003 by Mike Stallings

A Tribute to Jim Campbell from Marty

Climb in. Take a trip with me back in time, back to Pampa, Texas in 1966. Let‚s stop here at Caldwell's Drive-In. Look over there at that couple sitting in the blue, 1963 Ford Fairlane. Here comes the carhop. I bet she's got cherry Cokes for 'em. Hey, you know who's in that car? It's those high school sweethearts--the future Jim and Marty Campbell.

While the Beatles sang, she loves me, yeah, yeah, yeah and Vietnam was becoming a familiar term, Marty and Jim enjoyed a carefree period of youthful dating--a time for them that would soon be replaced by children and a military career.

Jim and Marty were married in 1968, only one year after their high school graduation. In 1972, Jim joined the United States Air Force. Being married and having children at home earned Jim the title of old man by the other still-single members of his squad.

The old man, his wife, his son, and his daughter spent the next 23 years calling many places home. As is the military lifestyle, the family moved often, making their home stateside and overseas in Italy, England, and Germany. The cultural differences they encountered made for some humorous events. Like the time in England when the Campbell's neighbor, while walking in his garden (yard), asked Jim if he and Marty would like to come over that evening for a joint. Jim said he would need to talk to Marty. Later, a still very surprised, very concerned, Jim Campbell told Marty they had been invited to have a joint with the neighbors. Marty, laughing, told Jim in England a piece of beef, such as a roast, was referred to as a joint of beef, and was often just called a joint.

When it came to his role in the family, Jim felt it was his responsibility to be the breadwinner so Marty would be free to spend time with their children. Nowadays, that thinking is considered old school by some, but that's what the Campbell's believed and that's how they lived.

Jim always worked extra part-time jobs to put food on the table for his family, Marty said. He didn't want me to have to work. He wanted me to be there for the children.
Jim managed to earn two associate degrees during his military career and is now attending night school two to three times a week working on an accounting degree from Sam Houston State University.

He has 20 classes to go, Marty said. He said he may be too old to work anywhere when he gets it done, but he said he's going for it.
After being stationed in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, Jim returned home to his family, then living in North Carolina, and retired from the Air Force in 1992.
He now works for the post office as a carrier. Always friendly and gregarious, he usually takes a moment or two to visit with the senior citizens on his route.
Jim sees them (the seniors) with the curtains pulled back watching for him out the window or waiting by the screen door, and he waits for them as they hurry out to greet him. They are lonely and talking to him and getting their mail is the highlight of their day, Marty said.

Jim's gentle nature also makes him a magnet for his grandkids. He has four of them, but triplets are on the way! Having recently bought a boat, when Marty told Jim about the triplets, the first thing he said, We need a bigger boat.

Jim has always loved kids so much, Marty said. Wherever we were, Jim would always play with all the neighborhood kids. They would even come to the door during dinner and ask if Jimmy could come out and play.

The Campbell kids also brought friends home to experience what is an uncommon event nowadays: eating dinner at the dinner table.
Jim insists on family and friends eating together at the table, not in front of the TV with TV trays, Marty said. The kid's friends loved that we sat at the table to eat.
Jim and Marty Campbell were married 34 years last August.

It seems there are three secrets to their successful marriage. After you read them, think about what they are not.
Lean in real close--here are the secrets: love for each other, love for children, and love for God.

By the way, there was another popular Beatles song when Jim and Marty waited on those cherry Cokes at Caldwell's Drive-In in 1966--All You Need is Love.

Copyright © 2003 by Mike Stallings

Address by a College Dropout
I gave the undergraduate and interdisciplinary studies commencement
address at the University of California at Berkeley in May..... Anne Lamott

Let's Commence
I am honored and surprised that you asked me to speak today.
This must be a magical day for you. I wouldn't know. I accidentally forgot to graduate from college. I meant to, 30 years ago, but things got away
from me. I did graduate from high school, though -- do I get a partial credit for that? Although, unfortunately, my father had forgotten to pay the book bill, so at the graduation ceremony, when I opened the case to see my diploma, it was empty. Except for a ransom note that said, see Mrs. Foley, the bookkeeper, if you ever want to see your diploma alive again. I went to Goucher College in Maryland for the best possible reasons -- to learn -- but then I dropped out at 19 for the best possible reasons -- to become a writer.. Those of you who have read my work know that instead, I accidentally became a Kelly girl for a while. Then, In a dazzling career move, I got hired as a clerk typist in the Nuclear Quality Assurance Department at Bechtel, where I worked typing and sorting triplicate forms.

I hate to complain, but it was not very stimulating work. But it paid the bills, so I could write my stories every night when I got home. I worked
at Bechtel for six months -- but I had nothing to do with the current administration's shameless war profiteering. I just sorted triplicate forms. You've got to believe me. It was a terrible job, at which I did a terrible job, but it paid $600 a month, which was enough to pay my rent and bills. This is the real fly in the ointment if you are crazy enough to want to be an artist -- you have to give up your dreams of swimming pools and fish forks, and take any old job. At 20, I got hired at a magazine as an assistant editor, and I think that was the last real job I've ever had. I bet I'm beginning to make your parents really nervous -- here I am sort of bragging about being a dropout, and unemployable, and secretly making a pitch for you to follow your creative dreams, when what they want is for
you to do well in your field, make them look good, and maybe also make a tiny fortune.

But that is not your problem. Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going
to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.

At some point I finally started getting published, and experiencing a meager knock-kneed standing in the literary world, and I started to get almost everything that many of you graduates are hoping for -- except for the money.

I got a lot of things that society had promised would make me whole and fulfilled -- all the things that the culture tells you from preschool on will quiet the throbbing anxiety inside you -- stature, the respect of colleagues, maybe even a kind of low-grade fame. The culture says these things will save you, as long as you also manage to keep your weight down. But the culture lies.

Slowly, after dozens of rejection slips and failures and false starts and postponed dreams -- what Langston Hughes called dreams deferred -- I
stepped onto the hallowed ground of being a published novelist, and then 15 years later, I even started to make real money.
I'd been wanting to be a successful author my whole life. But when I finally did it, I was like a greyhound catching the mechanical rabbit she'd been chasing all her life -- metal, wrapped up in cloth. It wasn't alive; it had no spirit. It was fake. Fake doesn't feed anything. Only spirit feeds spirit, in the same way only your own blood type can sustain you. It had nothing that could slake the lifelong thirst I had for a little immediacy, and connection.

So from the wise old pinnacle of my 49 years, I want to tell you that what you're looking for is already inside you. You've heard this before, but
the holy thing inside you really is that which causes you to seek it. You can't buy it, lease it, rent it, date it or apply for it. The best job in the world can't give it to you. Neither can success, or fame, or financial security -- besides which, there ain't no such thing. J.D. Rockefeller was asked, "How much money is enough?" and he said, "Just a little bit more."

So it can be confusing -- most of your parents want you to do well, to be successful. They want you to be happy -- or at least happy-ish. And they want you to be nicer to them; just a little nicer -- is that so much to ask?

They want you to love, and be loved, and to find peace, and to laugh and find meaningful work. But they also -- some of them -- a few of them --
not yours -- yours are fine -- they also want you to chase the bunny for a while.. To get ahead, sock some away, and then find a balance between the greyhound bunny-chase, and savoring your life.

But the thing is that you don't know if you're going to live long enough to slow down, relax, and have fun, and discover the truth of your spiritual identity. You may not be destined to live a long life; you may not have 60 more years to discover and claim your own deepest truth -- like Breaker Morant said, you have to live every day as if it's your last, because one of these days, you're bound to be right.

So I thought it might help if I just went ahead and told you what I think is the truth of your spiritual identity ...

Actually, I don't have a clue.
I do know you are not what you look like, or how much you weigh, or how you did in school, and whether you get to start a job next Monday or not.

Spirit isn't what you do, it's ... well, again, I don't actually know. They probably taught this junior year at Goucher. But I know that you feel it best when you're not doing much -- when you're in nature, when you've very quiet, or, paradoxically, listening to music.

I know you can feel it and hear it in the music you love, in the bass line, in the harmonies, in the silence between notes; in Chopin and Eminem, Emmylou Harris, Bach, whoever. You can close your eyes and feel the divine spark, concentrated in you, like a little Dr. Seuss firefly. It flickers with aliveness and relief, like an American in a foreign country who suddenly hears someone speaking in English. In the Christian tradition, they say that the soul rejoices in hearing what it already knows. And so you
pay attention when that Dr. Seuss creature inside you sits up and says, "Yo!"

We can see spirit made visible in people being kind to each other, especially when it's a really busy person, taking care of a needy annoying person. Or even if it's terribly important you, stopping to take care of pitiful, pathetic you. In fact, that's often when we see spirit most brightly.

It's magic to see spirit largely because it's so rare. Mostly you see the masks and the holograms that the culture presents as real. You see how you're doing in the world's eyes, or your family's, or -- worst of all -- yours, or in the eyes of people who are doing better than you -- much better than you -- or worse. But you are not your bank account, or your ambitiousness. You're not the cold clay lump with a big belly you leave behind when you die. You're not your collection of walking personality disorders. You are spirit, you are love, and, while it is increasingly hard to believe during this presidency, you are free. You're here to love, and be loved, freely. If you find out next week that you are terminally ill and we're all terminally ill on this bus -- all that will matter is memories of beauty, that people loved you, and you loved them, and that you tried to help the poor and innocent.

So how do we feed and nourish our spirit, and the spirit of others?

First, find a path, and a little light to see by. Every single spiritual tradition says the same three things: 1) Live in the now, as often as you can, a breath here, a moment there. 2) You reap exactly what you sow. 3) You must take care of the poor, or you are so doomed that we can't help you.
You don't have to go overseas. There are people right here who are poor in spirit; worried, depressed, dancing as fast as they can, whose kids are sick, or whose retirement savings are gone. There is great loneliness among us, life-threatening loneliness. People have given up on peace, on equality. They've even given up on the Democratic Party, which I haven't, not by a long shot. You do what you can, what good people have always done: You bring thirsty people water; you share your food, you try to help the homeless find shelter, you stand up for the underdog.

Anything that can help you get your sense of humor back feeds the spirit, too. In the Bill Murray army movie "Stripes," a very tense recruit
announces during his platoon's introductions, "My name is Francis. No one calls me Francis. Anyone calls me Francis, I'll kill them. And I don't like to be touched -- anyone tries to touch me, I'll kill them." And the sergeant responds, "Oh, lighten up, Francis." So you may need to upgrade your friends. You need to find people who laugh gently at themselves, who remind you gently to lighten up.

Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all.
Laugh, rest, slow down.. Some of you start jobs Monday; some of you desperately wish you did -- some of your parents are asthmatic with anxiety that you don't. They shared this with me before the ceremony began.

But again, this is not your problem. If your family is hell-bent on you making a name for yourself in the field of, say, molecular cell biology, then maybe when you're giving them a final tour of campus, you can show

them to the admissions office. I doubt very seriously that they could even get into U.C. Berkeley -- I talked to a professor who said there is not a
chance he could get in these days.

So I would recommend that you all just take a long deep breath, and stop. Just be where your butts are, and breathe. Take some time. You are graduating today. Refuse to cooperate with anyone who is trying to shame you into hopping right back up onto the rat exercise wheel. Rest, but pay attention. Refuse to cooperate with anyone who is stealing your freedom, your personal and civil liberties, and then smirking about it. I'm not going to name names. Just send money to the ACLU whenever you can.

But slow down if you can. Better yet, lie down.

In my 20s I devised a school of relaxation that has unfortunately fallen out of favor in the ensuing years -- it was called Prone Yoga. You just lie around as much as possible. You could read, listen to music, you could space out, or sleep. But you had to be lying down. Maintaining the prone.

You've graduated. You have nothing left to prove, and besides, it's a
fool's game. If you agree to play, you've already lost. It's Charlie Brown and Lucy, with the football. If you keep getting back on the field, they win. There are so many great things to do right now. Write. Sing. Rest. Eat cherries.. Register voters. And -- oh my God -- I nearly forgot the most important thing: refuse to wear uncomfortable pants, even if they make you look really thin. Promise me you'll never wear pants that bind or tug or hurt, pants that have an opinion about how much you've just eaten. The
pants may be lying! There is way too much lying and scolding going on politically right now without your pants getting in on the act, too.

So bless you. You've done an amazing thing. And you are loved; you are capable of lives of great joy and meaning. It's what you are made of. And it's what you're for. So take care of yourselves; take care of each other. Thank you.

THE PROOF
Written by: Dana Carpenter

family praying for me....not for my safety, mind you, but for me to change my mind! I wasn’t about to be dissuaded. Before I knew it, I was lifted into the plane, strapped to my tandum instructor, and hanging out the window at 12,000 feet. Someone yelled "1-2-3," and there I was, flying—more free than I’ve ever been. That minute of freefall changed my life. I proved to myself that I could do anything with doubts cast aside and adversity as my guide.
I truly believe that the human spirit inside all of us can transcend any obstacle placed before us. With a little creativity and determination, we can accomplish anything we put our minds to. I’m living proof of this, and I challenge all you to be as well.

ERMA BOMBECK

By Bill Bombeck
Dear Readers:
In 1989 Erma began to experience a series of painful medical problems, but she disdained letting her readers know most of the details. She usually brushed aside rumors and inquiries with a joke and a plea that her purpose was to write humor and make people smile. Health reports are not funny. Her greatest fear was to become a "poster child" and have people feel sorry for her.

Throughout these assaults she remained unbelievably optimistic. Erma always knew that there was a pony in there someplace. Not only did the research and writing of her book I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise provide a nation with the heroics of kids surviving cancer, but it also helped give Erma the courage to face her many trials, including her last one.

I have met astronauts, war heroes, firefighters and police officers, but I have never known anyone with more courage than Erma. Courage has been called grace under fire. I would propose we call it Erma under fire.

Erma would not have approved of my words. But for this one time I will do what Erma admonished all who challenged her words, and that was to "go out and get your own column."

I have searched for a way to show my family’s gratitude to the thousands of fans and friends who have shown so much love and compassion toward her. I’d like to share with you a personal recollection I read at the family services that were held before the funeral.

* * *

In 1947, three or four couples were outside the Lakeside Ballroom in Dayton, Ohio. We were too early to be admitted for the big-band dance, so we all wandered over to the adjoining amusement park.

Not far from the ballroom was the roller coaster. All of the boys began cajoling their dates to ride with them. The girls giggled and said no. It was too frightening, and it would mess up their hair and dresses.

I looked at my date and asked her if she wanted to go. She didn’t hesitate. She said, "Sure, I’ll go." I was surprised and looked at her again. She was slight, narrow-shouldered, with tiny hands and feet. But she had the greatest smile and laugh. Her smile had a charming space between her two front teeth. I thought, this is some kind of girl!

The Lakeside roller coaster was a rickety old leftover from the Depression. The frame was mostly made of unpainted two-by-fours. No modern inspection by OSHA would have ever approved this for man’s use.

The cars were linked together with what looked like modified train couplers. They were mostly red-painted wood with metal wheels and a cog-like device that clicked loudly. The seats had worn, black leather padding. There were no belts, but there were worn steel bars that had to be raised and lowered by the attendant.

The attendant was an old man in oil-stained bib overalls. He said little, but raised the bar and she entered the seat first, and I followed by her side. The bar clicked in place just above our waistlines.
There were two tapered two-by-fours on the platform, each angled away from the other. He moved the one closer to the car to an upright position. The car moved forward, slowly picking up speed. The metal wheels on the metal track made so much noise you had to yell to your partner to be heard.
The car left the level starting track and began a slow ascent. In about 20 or 30 seconds, when the track became steeper, the cog device engaged the car. You could feel it grab. Then there was a distinct rhythmic clacking sound as the cog device labored to overcome the near-perpendicular angle of the track. You felt like it wouldn’t make it, but just when it reached a point that forced the passengers to stare, not at the car ahead or the track, but only at the night sky, it plunged downward, a wild, almost free, fall. Maybe, whatever controlled the speed was now broken.
She made her first sound since she had said, "Sure, I’ll go." She screamed and clenched my arm. I said, "Hang on to the bar." She kept hanging on to my arm. Suddenly we were at the bottom, and we both were so relieved that we laughed, and I saw that smile again.

The ride continued, with bone-jarring twists and turns, dizzying heights and abrupt plunges. Sometimes we would enter a dark tunnel, so dark the sparks from the wheels and tracks made it look like it was on fire.

She kept hanging on to my arm. I was gripping the metal bar so tightly I thought I would bend it. This was some ride. We were thrilled and exhilarated, scared and breathless.

We had been in and out of many tunnels. Each time they ended with almost blinding light in our eyes, and then on to another straight-up climb.

We started into a tunnel that seemed to plunge deeper than all the others. It kept dropping. We both sensed this one was really different. Finally, instead of the bright lights, we were back at the platform.

We looked at each other. We didn’t speak, but we sensed the ride had changed. The man in the bib overalls was standing by the tapered two-by-fours. He started to push one from its angel to a straight-up position. The car stopped. I told him the ride was great, but it was too short; we wanted to go on. He raised the bar. She smiled again. I looked at the attendant again. He said, "This is April 22, 1996 – your ride is over." I looked over at her seat. She was gone.

"Fahrfenugen"
by Rob Litowitz

            The dull, gray sky provides a lifeless backdrop as we step out of our guide's car.   He is a Slovakian Jew living in the Czech Republic.   By day, he leads affluent American tourists, mostly Jews, on tours of concentration camps within a day's drive from Prague.   Today, nearly 60 years after the War's end, we visit Terezin, the Nazi's "show" ghetto, Hitler's "gift to the Jews," where the Germans shipped Jews from every corner of Europe to stage soccer games, concerts, and cultural events for the SS propaganda cameras and the credulous international Red Cross.   For us, Terezin is a pleasant hour's drive from our comfortable hotel.

            Preliminary pleasantries exhausted, we round a bend and confront the barren squares of Terezin.   A small Czech boy, only recently a toddler, kicks a soccer ball across an empty street.   His plays his game unaware that on this site, a lifetime before,   teams of Jewish athletes, freshly imported for that purpose, dribbled, passed, and scored for the Nazi cameras; their first and final match perversely preserved in grainy black and white, shot by a Jewish filmmaker, himself an inmate.

            Outside the museum screening room, a robust elderly man meets us with a warm, winning smile.   Pavel, our guide explains, spent an all too brief adolescence in Terezin.   Here he last saw his father, mother, brothers and sister.   Here, he has returned in his twilight years to share his story.   Pavel has written a book, white letters on a black cover, adorned with a picture of him and his wife, strolling hand-in-hand down the boulevard after the War.   They had lost each other after Terezin, each shipped by transport to destinations with no hope of returning.   Many months later, on the rubble-strewn post-war streets of Prague, they pass one another, and in the culmination of miracles that brought them to that day, sparks of recognition arc between their wounded souls and their redemption begins.   Their smiles radiate from the black and white photograph on the book jacket.

            The prisoners of Terezin lost their homes, possessions, professions, but not their faith and dignity.   In the hollows of their ghetto prison, they carved out secret synagogues--still small places where they risked torture and death to honor the Commandments of a deity who all but the most unshakably faithful must have suspected of abandonment.   Pavel leads us to the only secret sanctuary still remaining.   Not officially part of the Terezin Memorial, it is not open to the public and, as befitting its origins, not easily reached.   Pavel raps on the pane of a window at street level on a dingy row of houses.   After awhile, a grizzled man emerges, holding a set of heavy keys in his workman's hands.   A faded black whaled corduroy fisherman's cap is pulled across his broad forehead, its short brief turned up with incongruous nonchalance.   Completing the slapdash ensemble, a pair of Adidas sports pants pay ignorant homage to the inmates captured on the German highlight reel.

            Shuffling down the street, he stops in front of a large, thick, heavy painted green double door.   His hand pounds once, twice, three times.   Bending over at the waist, squinting, he peers through the large keyhole, then lets out a piercing cry:   "Hoo-Hoo."   The old man's chant produces an old woman who opens the door and whisks us across the interior cobblestones courtyard to the southeast corner.   There, a doorway reveals a cloistered alcove, an enclave with vaulted ceilings and perhaps a half dozen colonnades.   Paint and plaster peeling, the walls reveal in the dim light meticulously printed Hebrew inscriptions lining the several arches.   Painted in dusty rust tones--the only color this makeshift congregation could purloin--inscriptions from the sacred Hebrew texts seem to burn with vivid intensity.   Initial awe gives way to recognition as I find myself looking upon an inscription drawn from an ancient text, its words instantly identifiable and understandable to me, though I barely comprehend the vast majority of the Hebrew dutifully recited on Sabbath or Holiday services.

            The very same inscription adorns the ark housing the Torah scrolls at the synagogue of my youth, where 30 years before, I had become a bar mitzvah, a Son of the Commandments.   This inscription's meaning had been revealed to me years earlier, on another crisp autumn morning.   My small Hebrew school class meekly herds into the safety of our sanctuary in Trenton, New Jersey.   We sit nervously, our feet dangling from plush red velvet seats, our heads resting awkwardly on the hard wooden backs of blonde wooden pews.     As I now stare up at the same inscription on the walls of the secret sanctuary, I hear the inspirational voice of our teacher--a veteran of Israel's War of Independence, and a living rebuke to the twisted, demonic ideology which spawned places like Terezin--reveal to us the humbling and cautionary admonition which the faithful of Terezin had risked everything to inscribe for themselves:   "Da Lifnay Mee Atah Omeyd--Know Before Whom You Stand."

            We leave the secret sanctuary, as workmen enter to repair damage from a recent flood.   They turn on fans and dehumidifiers as if in some desperate and belated attempt to rid this chamber of the fear and desperation it once housed.

            Back on the street, we pass a barracks which had served as SS Headquarters.   A young woman pushes a baby in a carriage.   On the street once chilled by the drape of Nazi Swastikas, the only symbol today is the irrepressible swoosh of the Nike logo on the back of the young mother's jacket.

            That night, on a train to Budapest, stacked stiffly on a narrow cot,   the day's images confound all attempts at sleep.   Annoyed by the faint odor from the shared bathroom down the hall and by the constant pestering of customs officials, visions of far less accommodating one-way journeys over this same countryside stifle the reflex to complain.

            Our final stop on our tour of Terezin   was the crematorium,.   Inside stand four enormous ovens capable of consuming the hundreds who died each day.   Too casually, our guide places one hand on a pulley and the oven door effortlessly rises.   German engineering.   Leaving, we glance above the front door at the engraved symbol chosen by the Germans to peer down upon all who entered this grim place.   An owl.   Symbol of wisdom, symbol of darkness, bird of prey.

            Shaken from all we had witnessed, we returned to the guide's car.   Entering his Volkswagen Jetta, anxious to depart, I violently jerk the door shut.   "No need to slam," our guide scolds, "German engineering."