The Star Spangled Banner...unabridged version

I was maybe 6 or 7 years old when I found my grandfather's Naval manual. He had been a Seabee in WWII in the Pacific Theater. Inside the front cover where the words to our National Anthem "The Star Spangled Banner" by Francis Scott Key
Until that time, I only knew the first verse, the one we sing at ball games.
Here are all four stanzas. Remember the context, Key was being held on a British warship, while they bombarded Fort McHenry in Baltimore. The battle was fierce and waged all through the night. Peering into the pre-dawn light...amidst the smoke of the battle, Key strained to see the flag, because if the flag still flew, the American's had not surrendered...

 O say can you see by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation.
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave

Feeling Disconnected. Holding Politicians Accountable in an Anonymous World

                                        

I feel disconnected.

I feel disconnected from my country. I don’t feel like we’re American’s anymore. I feel like we’re selfish and more concerned with our side winning whatever argument is on the table. Don’t get me wrong...I feel that my side is right on most of the major issues. I’m a conservative. Very conservative. I’m a patriot. Very much a patriot. When I owned a home and was watching a ballgame on TV –even if I was alone- I stood for the National Anthem and sang along, with my hand over my heart. If I’m watching a game at a sports bar I still do that.

There was a time in this country when that wouldn’t be odd at all. But now words like “Tea-Party” “jingoistic” and even “nut” come to mind when people see someone doing that. Why?

Because we’re disconnected.

There was a time in this country when being a patriot, being over-the-top American, was admirable. It used to be that Independence Day was almost as sacred as Christmas, or Easter. It was that way nationally because it was that way locally.

But now we stay inside. We hide behind our fenced-in yards, drive straight into the garage at night, and never see our neighbors. We’re disconnected. We don’t know each other. We are all anonymous. We interact more on Facebook and Twitter than we do  sitting on our front porch, or at a cookout.

When I was a kid, it was almost typical to wake up in the morning, come downstairs, and find one of the other moms on the block sitting at our table, having a cup of coffee with my mother. Not every day. Hardly on school days at all. But once or twice a week, and more in the summer. Or they came over and sat on our patio, and talked while we kids swam in our little pool.

When was the last time you had a cup of coffee with a neighbor? When was the last time it happened spontaneously? Without invitation or planning. Not a book club gathering, or a scheduled meeting to plan the Christmas bazaar. Just a spontaneous cup of coffee with a friend. That’s how it was then. The phone would ring and 2 or 3 minutes later Mrs. Riccio, or Mrs. Messick, or my “Aunt” Sharon (we Yankees have a thing about christening all our parents’ friends of long standing “Aunt” or “Uncle”. It’s a term of endearment. Most were not related in any way) who lived next door would be sitting at the table with my mom, talking about kids, money, broken washing machines, husbands, and what was for dinner that night.

Does anyone do this anymore? Do we stay put long enough to have friends like that? Not just neighbors, that’s a very generic term unless it has meaning attached. Everyone on your street is your neighbor...even if you don’t know them. I mean neighbors who become friends...for life.

I see us as disconnected. As soon as we move into a house we are already eyeing the next one. Wishing our brand new home had this feature, or that accoutrement. We find old friends on Facebook and accept that as interaction. We base our self-worth on how many Twitter followers we have, and whether our latest bit of wisdom –reduced to 140 characters of pure genius- has been retweeted. Readers might laugh at this, but you also know it’s true for almost all of us. We all get caught up in this virtual lifestyle we lead now.

My daughter talks to her friends on Skype. I talked on a phone. In a coat closet. With the cord shut in the door. We went outside and played after school, and saw each other face to face. The adults were tinkering with a car in a garage, or cutting grass, or raking leaves. Now they pay someone to do that for them, and cars are repaired with laptops instead of wrenches.

I don’t dislike technology...not in the least. But I dislike the disconnect we all feel because of it’s intrusion into our social setting.

If you remain disconnected long enough, all sense of community dies. And behind that are the death of civility, caring, understanding, decency, respect, honor, integrity...and accountability.

We are a nation of zero accountability. We have leaders who are no longer accountable to us. Not like they were in my youth. They are unaccountable because they are unknown. Knowing who your Senators are is easy. Knowing who your Congressmen are is easy. Knowing them is lost on us. I mean knowing them. Knowing them because they are part of the neighborhood.

In my book, “Remembering America: Looking Back at the Last Innocent Age,” I tell a wonderful story about writing to our Congressman at the time. His name was Pete DuPont and I wrote to him in the 3^rd grade, relating my concerns about pollution. (It was 1972...we were all into “ecology”) The thing is, I knew who he was. I was eight years old but I knew who he was. I saw him at events. I knew his face. When he got a letter from an 8-year-old boy at Wilmington Manor Elementary School, he took the time to answer. (Doubtless with the help of a staffer) He was part of our community. He knew that when he came home from D.C. and toured the state, he was going to meet people who had seen him before. People his kids went to school with. People who he had helped with problems. He was accountable to us because he was not anonymous.

Look where we are now. We move around so much, looking for that magical floor-plan that will make us feel like we’ve finally arrived, that we don’t know anything at all about the people next door. Or down the street. Or in the pick-up line at our kids’ school. They must be okay...they live in my neighborhood. But I don’t know them. Not at all. We are totally disconnected.

All throughout my teen years and early twenties, when I envisioned owning a home one day and raising a family, I wanted to recreate the neighborhood I grew up in. I wanted my daughter to have life-long friends who lived two houses away. I wanted to have big, cookouts where the whole block came. I wanted to be noticed by some dear people in this huge anonymous world. I wanted to make a few friends later in life, and work on cars, and raise our kids, and split the cost of renting a roto-tiller each spring to dig our gardens.

I have none of that. Few of us really do.

We are an anonymous, invisible, isolated nation now. Slowly –in my lifetime- we have all crawled into our own shells of anonymity. We buy a house, put up a fence, install a few cameras, and an alarm system, and stay indoors. We sit on the deck in the back yard. We have wonderful, amazing neighbors with wonderful amazing stories living right next door. Or across the street. And we’ll never know about them. Because in 2 or 3 years we’ll be moving again. Or they will. They’ll maybe come for dinner once...after three or four years, and almost as many cancellations and reschedulings. But they’ll never just “pop in” with a cup of coffee in hand and sit and chat. They won’t amble over while I have the hood up on my car, just to hold a flashlight while I gap the spark plugs, with no real intention than to just visit for an hour, nurse a beer or two, and get to know each other.

We are disconnected. We are distant. We are all divorced from each other and it renders each of us worthless to all but our dearest friends and family. The rest of the world sees only some guy. Some guy in an ugly car, driving too slow in the left lane so we flip him off. Or a fast-rising executive who sees nobody in the restaurant save his perfect reflection. So he has a loud, rude, animated conversation on his cell phone, while I try to eat my sandwich. If I shoot him a dirty look, he responds with a dismissive glare. If he cares enough to respond at all.

We are disconnected. From each other. From our nation. From our God. From ourselves.

We have been told what we want, and need, for so long now that we don’t really know anymore. We forgot the thing we once dreamed about. We are so worried about getting our kids into the best school, the best cheerleading camp, the best dance class, the best football program, that we forgot what miracles they really are. It’s not that we don’t love them. It’s that we forgot to tell them. We disconnected from them. And sadly, there is myriad temptation and turmoil waiting to fill the void, and connect with our disconnected kids.

Maybe if I had not lost my home, and my career, and my life, I wouldn’t have this perspective. Maybe if I had remained in the Philadelphia area, I would never have felt so disconnected. But then maybe I wouldn’t have noticed it in myself...and in this country.

We’re all anonymous. From the President –whom nobody really yet knows anything about- on down to the folks next door. Anonymous. Invisible. We scream at the talk-radio host and we actually feel hatred sometimes. Hatred for a person we’ve never met. That happens only when a society is disconnected from each other. Only when we are so anonymous that we don’t matter anymore.

And when we, as a society, see each other that way, (Or better stated don’t see each other at all) then we have leaders who hide behind the anonymity and abuse their power. The first abuse is indifference. We see that all the time now. We elect men based on party platform, and speeches, and when they get to Washington they do the opposite of what we thought they would. They don’t represent their electorate anymore. Because they don’t know their electorate anymore.

Because they aren’t one of their electorate anymore.

They are anonymous. They are disconnected.

If this country has any hope remaining, she is going to have to reconnect.

Reconnect to each other. Reconnect to the heart of patriotism whose beat is muffled- almost to silence- somewhere in her great chest. Reconnect to the spirit of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution and the ideals they held dear.

Reconnect to the God who blessed them with those ideals.

We need to reconnect. Reconnect to everything great that made this country great. Or we will surely become as anonymous as grains of sand on the seashore of eternity. 

An Open Letter to President Obama...

I lost another job on Monday. Before I ever even started, the company withdrew their offer and froze all hiring. This fall, assuming I have no health insurance by then, I will be required to register for an Exchange. I have decided to refuse this. I wanted President Obama to know of my plight...and the plight of so many in this country. I intend on forwarding this to the White House via regular means, but I wanted to share it with my countrymen...

President Barack H. Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington DC

August 22, 2013

Mr. President;

     I hope your vacation is going well and the weather is providing you a period of rest and rejuvenation from all the golf and vacationing that has been wearing you down in this, your second term.

You will excuse me if I sound a bit cynical and a touch sarcastic. It’s just that, well...I am.

     You see Mr. President, three days ago I was informed that a job I had been offered only a week before, has been withdrawn. The company decided to freeze hiring for the foreseeable future. Part of their reasoning was the rising cost of healthcare, making it unaffordable for them to provide. This unaffordable-ness came as a result of your “Affordable Care Act.”

     Five years ago I might have smiled at the irony of those words. But I’m not smiling.

     Mr. President, five years ago I lost my career as a mortgage broker. I was never a rich man. I broke the lowest level of a six figure income only twice in ten years. I made good money but never was so consumed by material means as to earn the large sums that many of my associates in the industry did.  Instead, I chose to limit my office time, and focus on the time I had with my daughter.

     I am a single dad. My daughter is my treasure. She is the axis upon which my world spins. Of all the roles I play, being her dad is the one by which I define myself. My daughter and I spent our time together in the little 2500 square foot ranch house on five acres that we owned for four years. She grew from age 6 to age 10 in that house. I never remarried, choosing instead to focus on her and on being a great dad. I think I did an admirable job.

     I lost my house in 2008. Part of losing a house and having no place to live is having no place to keep your pets. We had two beautiful Springer Spaniels, named Bonnie and Cooper. We raised them both from puppies. They are gone. I had to give them away. We had a cat named Giacomo. He is gone too, as is my daughter’s Welsh pony. My garden is someone else’s garden now. The little country house I wanted all my life belongs to someone else.

     I live in Nashville, but I am a native of Philadelphia. When I lost my home and could not find another job, I had to make a decision. Do I stay in Nashville and remain active in my daughter’s life and be her dad? Or do I move home, or move to North Dakota and work in an oil field, or to Texas, or someplace where there was work and leave my daughter behind with her mom? For me, there was only one choice. I love my daughter.

I know you love your kids. People tell me that all the time, they say “Well he loves his kids, that makes him okay in my book.”  No disrespect sir, but Pol Pot loved his kids too. It doesn’t make you a good president.

So...I stayed. Staying meant sleeping in a Volvo 850. I am 6’ 4” and Volvo 850’s are not very comfortable for me to drive...imagine sleeping in one.  But I did. Sleeping in your car is actually against the law. It’s vagrancy and so it required me to hide my car in some tall brush behind a church in Nashville. I took showers at the County Rec Center. I ate every other day sometimes. I worked every odd job I could find and put out hundreds of resumes. To date I have put out almost 250 resumes to no avail.

     So I kept on trying. I kept on being my daughter’s dad. I refused to let her see me broken so I hid my tears. Do you know what it is like to have to lie to your daughter about where you live, Mr. President? No? I didn't think so. Let me tell you...no pain hurts like that. I wonder, Mr. President if you have ever cried yourself to sleep at night, with the image of your daughter in your head, and worried that your current state would be all you have left as a legacy?

     I wonder if you have ever had to explain why she can’t come stay overnight every other weekend like she used to, because you don’t have a home anymore? I wonder if you know how it hurts to watch her growing up before your eyes and almost feel the time rushing past and worry about how your homelessness will effect her.

     I have wept many many times thinking about my daughter. I worried that some day one of her classmates would find out I was homeless and tease her about it. I worried that she would be embarrassed by my situation. I worried that she would grow up in fear that this would happen to her.

     I pushed myself day and night. I worked every odd job. In 2009 I resumed my college education via an online program and in May 2012 I graduated from Liberty University.

I was still homeless as I did this. I thought that doing these things would open doors of opportunity for me and my daughter. But no doors opened. I have spent another full year since graduation, doing carpentry, and putting out resumes, and still sleeping in my car. And missing priceless moments with my daughter.

     Ten days ago I had hope. Hope that perhaps this enduring nightmare was coming to a close. Monday, that hope was dashed yet again. Dashed as a direct result of the policies you so erroneously and yet stubbornly cling to, Mr. President. Policies that literally stole a job –and the hope for a home again with my daughter- right out from under me.

     To say my heart is broken is an understatement. For the first 48 hours I was spinning through space. I could not grasp how this could happen again. Today I am angry. I am angry that the man charged with leading this great nation, cares nothing at all for the plight of her citizens. You care more about adherence to your ideology than you do for those you are supposed to lead.

     This afternoon I made a decision. This fall, because I am unemployed, and have no health insurance, I am supposed to register for an exchange. Mr. President, I wrote this letter because I wanted you to know the plight of your citizens. My other intention is to inform you that I will NOT be registering for that exchange. I am a man. I am a dad. I am an American. I want to pay my own way. I refuse to let others pay for something I would gladly pay for myself. I will not lower myself and violate my own integrity and work ethic and heritage. A heritage of hard work and integrity that my grandparents –immigrants on both sides- passed down to me. They came here with nothing, worked hard, took nothing from anyone that they hadn’t worked for, and built a life. I want that same opportunity.

     If this results in my being prosecuted, so be it. Someone has to take a stand, sir. Someone has to look you in the eye, straighten out their backbone, and with the respect due the office you hold, tell you “No!”  "No sir! I will not violate my conscience." I will not lower myself. I will not become a statistic and a name on a list. I want a job. I want to work, and pay my own way. Your job is to create an environment whereby employers can hire men and women like me. Then we can take responsibility for ourselves, and pay our own way.

     I respectfully refuse your handout, sir. And while I doubt your precious vacation time will be interrupted with news of my refusal,  perhaps one day it will be brought to your attention. Perhaps you will read of my plight. Perhaps you will grasp the pain I live in every day. Perhaps you will look up from this letter, and see the faces of your own beautiful daughters, and for just a moment grasp what the past five years have been for me. Perhaps.

Enjoy your vacation, Mr. President. I envy you having those treasured moments with your family. I miss those times for myself. I have all but given up hope that I will enjoy them again.

God Bless America,

Respectfully,

Craig Daliessio