Stop Blaming the Albatross

Observe & Ponder,

How many times have I heard that he, she, or it is an albatross around someone’s neck?

The image of a dead bird hanging heavily around someone’s neck always makes me wince a little, primarily because the albatross is unfairly vilified and targeted by those who need to place their angst on something or someone besides themselves.

I often equate the albatross to another target who is also falsely accused of causing others distress or difficulty: the black sheep.

I have a soft spot for black sheep, most probably because I was called one for a good part of my younger life by family members who were supposed to love and protect me. I once, shockingly, heard it firsthand from my beloved family member’s best friend at her wedding, to describe me. (Nice to meet you, too.)  At the time, I asked myself, “How is it possible to be her matron of honor and the black sheep at the same time?” I now know that the two were never mutually exclusive.

But I digress.

The albatross has been used and abused as a metaphor for perceived and continuous problems that someone is being forced to carry: a bothersome person, a psychological burden, negative business dealings or situations that have gone awry, and even the result of being rich or famous (boo hoo, poor, entitled you).

I say hail to the albatross.

If you’ve ever read the 1798 poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I don’t see how you would disagree with me that the albatross gets an unfair and untruthful bad rap.

The albatross was clearly the victim in the poem, and the sailor who so callously murdered the bird was the actual villain, which was why the rest of the crew forced him to carry it around his neck. It was the targeted and unwarranted killing of the albatross by the mariner that brought the curse upon the ship, not the bird itself.

“And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work ’em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.”

Masters of the sky, albatrosses have the largest wingspan of any other bird, and they can fly for months and even years without landing on solid ground. The Wright brothers’ first gliders were inspired by the albatross’s wing design.

The mighty albatross is capable of covering thousands of miles without so much as flapping their wings, and is known to travel over 10,000 miles in a single flight. They can even sleep while gliding, and land on the ocean’s surface only to hunt and feed on floating organisms, which is why they often follow fishing boats.

Albatrosses are remarkable for their exceptional flight ability, monogamous relationships, and devoted parenting.

Many albatrosses spend their first few years of life at sea, only returning to solid ground to breed. The male albatross shares a significant responsibility in raising their chicks and plays a crucial role in their survival. They are monogamous creatures and faithful partners who stay on land solely to father and raise their young. Some albatross species maintain their familial bonds for life, including their chicks.

While the poem’s narrative has given the albatross a negative connotation, it has long been a symbol of good fortune, and ancient tales extol their ability to bring good luck to seafarers. And yet, the albatross is consistently labeled as a heavy burden and a source of guilt impossible to be rid of.

In Coleridge’s epic poem, the mariner describes the psychological burden and the due penance he paid for senselessly killing the albatross by being forced to wear it around his neck as a reminder and symbol of his sin and guilt—i.e., the albatross did nothing wrong.

“Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung. “

The poem goes on to describe how every crew member on the ship dies except for the mariner. The dead albatross eventually falls off his neck, leaving the mariner forever destined to roam the earth telling the story of his survival. Some interpretations go so far as to claim that the mariner was redeemed, but I don’t see anything redeeming about his evil actions.

I think the mariner got off easy, and his being the sole survivor was grossly unfair. He never got his due. It was the albatross who should have survived.

“He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.”

The albatross, central to the poem, was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time, and yet it was this innocent and unsuspecting bird that became a scapegoat—a black sheep—in the annals of history.

Frankly, and most unfortunately, I know all too well a thing or two about that.

***

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43997/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner-text-of-1834

When the World Looks Away

Politics


In the summer of 1938, Hitler claimed that the Sudetenland, a border region of Czechoslovakia with a German-speaking majority, needed to be saved by Germany and threatened war if his demand was not met.

On September 30, 1938, the British and French leaders, hoping to avoid a war, agreed to this act of appeasement, officially allowing Germany to annex the Sudetenland, without Czechoslovakian input.

If this illegal and outrageous land grab sounds familiar, well, you know the old saying: “History has a way of repeating itself.”

Less than one year later, on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. On September 7, 1940, Germany began conducting mass air attacks against British cities, starting with London.

While Hitler was advancing through Europe, Charles Lindbergh and the America First isolation movement believed that there was no American interest in stopping Hitler and that Hitler’s sworn policy to harass and persecute Jews was an internal German issue.

Lindbergh was the leading opposition voice to the U.S. involvement in World War II—until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s declaration of war against the United States.

The defeat of Hitler and the horrors of Jewish genocide brought about the recognition of the State of Israel through the United Nations Partition Plan in 1947. The Partition Plan proposed to divide Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem designated as an international zone.

The Jews agreed, but the Palestinian Arabs and surrounding Arab states (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq) rejected the plan, leading to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the subsequent creation of the State of Israel.

And now, here we are with Russia and its dictator, Putin, invading Ukraine—the first invasion of a sovereign European nation since the end of World War II. Putin’s justification for his Ukrainian land grab was eerily similar to Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland.

The terrorist organization Hamas declared war by invading the sovereign state of Israel with a sneak attack, slaughtering men, women, and children, and causing the highest number of Jewish deaths since World War II.

Hamas’s justification for their war against Israel was the rejection of Israel’s existence, to improve its domestic popularity among Palestinians, which had seen some decline due to deteriorating living conditions under its governance in Gaza, and religious fundamentalism.

At a time when Ukraine and Israel are fighting for their very survival, it is shocking that no one has learned from the past and the lessons of World War II.

Instead of standing united against the Russian aggression toward Ukraine and Hamas’s murderous attack and threat to annihilate Israel and its people, isolationists like Tucker Carlson and Candice Owen, along with their sycophants, praise and enable Putin, and disparage Ukraine, the Ukrainians, Israel, and the Jews.

And while Europe has stood steadfast with Ukraine against Russia, most countries have turned their backs on Israel, the Israelis, and the Jewish diaspora by making excuses for the terrorist organization, Hamas.

Both conflicts began with cross-border aggression against internationally recognized sovereign states, which is the most basic violation of international law.

Both of these declarations of war by vicious dictatorships and authoritarian regimes against Ukraine and Israel had a clearly stated goal:  to wipe Ukraine and Israel off the face of the earth.

The terrorist organization Hamas against Israel and the dictator Putin against Ukraine both assert that Israel and Ukraine have no right to exist, and too many around the world agree with these murderous regimes.

The wars in Gaza and Ukraine have affected the world in significant ways, including deepening political divisions and exacerbating political polarization, causing mass protests worldwide.

Both wars have strained the world’s economy through inflation and high aid costs, and have significantly influenced elections, both here in the United States and around the world.

The failure to learn from past mistakes and allowing history to repeat itself is due to factors like insufficient critical thinking, generational gaps in experience, or a lack of comprehensive knowledge about previous events.

The wars against Ukraine and Israel are what happen when so many around the world look away.

My Memory of 9/11

Poetry

September 11 A

On 9/11, my office was on the corner of Broadway and 4th Street. Every day, my round-trip, six-block, same-side-of-the-street walk from the E Subway West 4th Street stop to my office went like this:

I would pass a police command station permanently parked outside of Washington Square Park by New York University. In the morning, there was always the same police officer—a graying man in his fifties, bopping up and down to music emanating from his mobile post. Sometimes it was Elvis or The Beach Boys; sometimes it was Frankie Valli.

On the way home at night, I would pass the command post just about the time that the morning and evening officers were changing shifts. The evening officer was in his mid-twenties, and his music of choice was The Police, which I found hilariously ironic.

I got to know their names—Officer Tommy in the morning and Officer Kevin in the evening. Kevin, the one in his 20s, would occasionally play Beatles music, and I would compliment him on his choice, sharing with him how I grew up on the Beatles. When Kevin started to play less Police and more Beatles, Tommy would tease Kevin and say that he was playing Beatles music for the “Madam Publisher.” Kevin had the cutest, impish side grin, and he reminded me so much of my son.

And then came 9/11. Following the horrific events of that day, our office building was government-mandated to shut down for a few days. My first day back into the city and back into my routine was a tough one.

The smell was unbearable, and I panicked at the thought of what it was. There were flyers everywhere—faces of hundreds of men and women affixed to telephone poles, fences, park benches, and trees. Many of the flyers covered the sidewalks and streets, and the pedestrians walked oh-so carefully to avoid stepping on the faces of the missing.

As I approached my half-block point from the mobile police station, the music was also missing. In the distance, I saw Officer Tommy running toward me, saying, “Thank God, you’re okay. I haven’t seen you in a while. I thought something had happened to you.” As he wrapped his arms around me, I felt awkward but also comforted.

Then he placed his hands on my shoulders, and through tears, said, “Kevin, the night cop—you know, the kid—he went to the World Trade Center to help that morning, and nobody has seen him since.” With his hands still on my shoulders, we stood there for a few seconds, both of us slightly embarrassed. “He was my kid’s age,” Officer Tommy continued. “And now he’s gone, just like that.”

Every day, we would catch up for a few minutes on my way to the office. He would go to Ground Zero most nights after his shift to help “bring his brothers home.” And he never played music again.

One morning, Tommy told me he was struggling. I told him that I found writing poetry to be good therapy, and that he should try it. “I’m no writer. I’m a New York City cop,” was his reply.

But he followed my suggestion and one morning handed me a poem about 9/11, which I immediately read when I got to my office. I was looking forward to seeing him that evening to tell him how talented he was and how his poem left me trembling.

But he wasn’t there that night, or the next morning, or the morning after that. At first, I thought maybe he was on vacation. But after a week had gone by, I asked the officer on duty, “Where’s Tommy?” And he answered, “He’s gone. He retired from the force. He couldn’t take the job no more.”

In Tommy’s honor, below is the 9/11 poem he gave me the last time I saw him. How terribly sad that I never got the chance to tell him what I thought about his stirring and poignant poem or to say a proper goodbye.

HONOR GUARD AT GROUND ZERO
By my friend, Police Officer Thomas Brennan from the 6th Precinct

Rake gently over our brother’s grave.
Speak softly where he sleeps.
His soul ascends
His spirit raised
Raised well above these ruins of death
He speaks to us
We stand erect
Amid the numbing breeze of winter’s breath
We salute our brother and raise our palms.
Raised well above our breast
Our palms outstretched
We crease our brows, our minds, our hearts.
Where underneath our brother lies
In sorrow, we salute him.
Honor Guard

 

My Personal Bill of Rights for Friends and Family

Observe & Ponder

(On this day of all days, I need to remind myself that I’m enough not just for today, but for the rest of my time here.)

1. You may not always like what I have to say, but you’ll always know where I stand.

2. I’m not looking for a relationship primarily focused on your needs and feelings, with little to no consideration for mine.

3. If I try to explain to you how your actions have hurt me, don’t try to twist everything around.

4. Stop feeling sorry for yourself by making excuses and start holding yourself accountable for your selfish and hurtful behavior towards me.

5. Take responsibility for your actions and words for a change because I see right through your flimsy rationalizations.

6. Don’t try to gaslight and accuse me of “starting with you,” when I’m trying to be heard in the hopes of salvaging whatever this is that we have (or don’t have).

7. If I tell you how your behavior makes me feel, that’s not starting a fight—that’s open, honest, and caring communication. Because if I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t be trying to fix things between us.

8. You dismissing how I feel is manipulative and narcissistic, so don’t do it.

9. Put yourself in my shoes, and be brutally honest with yourself for a change.

10. Own up to your self-serving actions because you don’t get to wound me with your thoughtlessness, and then play the victim when I call you out.

11. I’m not being “cruel,” I’m being honest.

12. I’m not overreacting; I’m reacting to being disrespected, overlooked, pushed aside, and used by you.

13. You don’t get to cause me pain, and then get angry when I speak up for myself.

14. Stop lying to me and yourself—your little white lies are lies nonetheless.

15. I have a responsibility to myself to stand up for my beliefs and my boundaries.

16. If I’m depleted instead of completed, I need to stop caring about someone who finds it so easy to invalidate and discount my emotions.

17. Don’t even think about saying “but” after you say you’re sorry, because I’m tired of hearing your empty excuses.

18. I’m looking for two-way relationships, or I need to move on. Life is too short to end up at a dead end.