An older recording from my college band Flame-Hand Robot:

Burning Lungs by brettmcatee

Once there was a prince who lived quietly and comfortably in his father’s castle. Word came to town that they were giving out free…toys…no…plague immunizations in the forest but the prince passed, even though plague was serious, because he had grown up reading that dragons liked to trick people with the promise of plague immunizations. Also, highwaymen were a thing. But man, the other kids went, and really had a good day, and didn’t die of plague.

 “If you really wanted to be there,  you’d be there.”

I have a difficult time prioritizing major life movements. I’ve always wanted to live in or near mountains, most specifically Colorado. So why do I still live in Kansas City? Read the rest of this page »

As I sat down to watch “Life Boat,” Alfred Hitchcock’s 1944 movie based on a John Steinbeck story about the survivors of a Nazi U-Boat incursion forced into a tiny…well…life boat, I expected a few good ethical questions to arise out of the human drama.  Whatever the film’s drawbacks, at the end of the evening it had me thinking.

We tend to value human life above all other forms.  Viewing human history and our various violent situations currently suffered, it might be dryly commented that this value isn’t high.  Maybe it isn’t sometimes, but it’s always higher on the list than say…squirrels and trees. Read the rest of this page »

The last convoy transporting U.S. soldiers left Iraq this morning. As I perused the news headlines, this story was third on a major news outlet, which warrants a whole essay in itself, but some other time. I reflected on what the Iraq War’s end means both to me personally and in a larger sense.

I’m not able to come up with much. It feels momentous, because the Iraq War defined a major part of the first decade in this century. Countless articles, documentaries, political sound bites, and debates ran in the background everyday for eight years. A particularly formative and influential eight years of my youth. Now it is over. But it doesn’t feel over.

We did not have concrete victory conditions for this war, so it is difficult for me to gauge. No Dark Crystal to heal nor ring to throw in a volcano. No classic and definitive moment of achievement. Media coverage has waned over the last year or two, and I as an average citizen have little grasp on the situation in Iraq. Is it stable? Can it stand on its own or will the Iraqi government quickly become a thorn in the side of the U.S.? I’m relatively uninformed, and I have to assume the people in charge have considered many options.

We left one area, but tensions seem just as high because we are still at war elsewhere. Afghanistan in particular, and the escalating hostility between Iran and the West. I don’t get the sense that Iraq is back up on its feet and prospering, rather there is simply not much left for us to do there. The national identity of Iraq isn’t strong enough for us to work with, and fragments are hard to put together. The suffering and confusion of that region didn’t start recently. They won’t end imminently.

Running into an election year, I’m hoping to see more of these decisive moments, cynical reasoning or not. Historians will have to sort out all of the echoes and ripples. For now, with little foresight, I will just be glad there are Americans coming home.