Memorial Day Remembrance of Army Private John Ammon

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
May 31, 2011

Memorial Day is different from other holidays. Unlike Thanksgiving, Fourth of July or religious festivals where the celebrations recall rather abstract events, Memorial Day for me is about a particular person known and loved by his family and friends. Memorial Day is both a remembrance of millions of lives cut short by war and a remembrance of my granduncle, John Ammon (photo right), who was killed in the mud of France just before World War I ended in 1918. He was thirty years old--an orphan, a patriot, a noble friend and loving brother, a doting uncle, a caring companion and a fearless soldier. He deserves more homage than I can give here.

As a small gesture of honor, I went to his grave today in a quiet corner of Arlington National Cemetery (photo below right). The modest white granite marker is almost never visited and is nearly forgotten by his descendants after 93 years. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

How much more can a person give to a cause, to his country, to his unit, to his family than to bravely sacrifice his life? To endure the horrors of war's hell and not survive, to die in the blast of an artillery shell, instantly.

I remember him this day, and beyond, with a sad and grateful heart. Several years ago my cousin Albert and I wrote a tribute to uncle John, about his life and his death recalling as much a we could from his letters from the front and from family stories. In the process he became more real, a person of kindness, fairness and integrity.

As a son of a Swiss immigrant he was aware of a greater American purpose than himself and joined the army to commit to that higher cause. (photo left, printed memorial from the government of France in recognition of John’s sacrifice “pour la liberte pendant la Grande Guerre: Hommage de la France”; signed, Poincaire, President de la Republique.)

Shipped overseas in the spring of 1918 with his Company I, he was part of the final October assault against the Germans in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in the Champaigne region of northeast France. In the course of a month thousands of soldiers on both sides died in a torrent of steel and blood. (Read the book 'All Quiet on the Western Front' by Remarque to understand the horrors and agony of this battle.)

Uncle John almost made it through this holocaust, to October 16, when an artillery shell struck him and his buddies as they were maneuvering in the tiny village of St. George, within view of the local cemetery. He was buried with his friends not far away and later taken to Arlington Cemetery. His grave stone silently bears witness to this fine man on this Memorial Day 2011.

Read his story: Remembering John Ammon

A Moment of Joy in the Slums of Rio de Janiero

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
May 20, 2011

Surrounding the upscale condo towers and long white beaches of Rio de Janiero, up on the hills, there are numerous slum neighborhoods, shanty towns, where millions of people live in substandard housing with open sewers, tangled electric wires, broken walkways, private militias and drug gangs with machine guns as well as honest ordinary people with low paying jobs.

Rio's favelas appeared in the 1970s when many jobless rural people moved to urban areas hoping for a better life--in addition to the already impoverished city dwellers.

But with minimum skills and children in tow finding an affordable place to live became a nightmare and many people were forced to move 'uphill' into a favela (neighborhoods). Today Rio has more than 500 favelas (Sao Paulo has more than 600.)

The problems of life in these 'hoods seem endless: basic housing, safety, schools, medical care, clean water, earning a living. A recent innovative enterprise has been turning the favelas into tourist attractions with guides leading small groups through the narrow twisting alleyways among the extremely dense and crowded dwellings.

I took a tour through the biggest favela in Rio, Rocinha, during my recent trip. All appeared chaotic but controlled. It's impossible for an outsider to understand the social structure here given the 'layers' of control and influence. City officials, city police, federal military units, neighborhood bosses, drug gangs, armed youth militias. Our guide led our group (quickly. so as not to linger and perhaps see something illegal) down through a winding broken route cheered only by colorful graffiti and glimpses of the city and sea far below.

We stopped at an artists' cooperative, a bakery, crafts shop and were treated to a spontaneous dance performance by a darling 9 year-old boy (apparently on his way home from school) accompanied by a 'bang-on-a-can' band using plastic buckets and tin cans as instruments.

The 'music' was rhythmic and the boy's dance (tap, Michael Jackson and street rap dance) was quite engaging. Afterwards, of course, we tipped the group--another enterprise in this hard luck place.

Our visit was peaceful and safe but it's not always like this; see photos of a police raid on drug gangs. "Between December of 1987 and November 2001, violent death claimed 3,937 Rio youths under 18 years of age, mostly drug gang 'soldiers'. By comparison, during the same period, 467 minors died in and around the West Bank between Jordan and Israel, which is considered a war zone by the international community." (BrazilMax News)... In Rio de Janeiro, it is said that the difference between a living veteran cop and a dead rookie is the split second it takes to think twice about killing a child because you never know if he is armed or not. (BrazilMax News 2003)

But like death, life goes on and most people want to move forward with their meager lives perhaps catching the occasional glimmer of hope. There are also charitable organizations in the favelas that run day-care centers, schools, medical clinics, church safe havens. Laundry is washed. TVs glow at night with sit-coms. Books are read...and pretty wrist bands (photo right) are hand-made and sold by enterprising mothers to support their families. It's love among the ruins.

Homophobia Kills--International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO), May 17, 2011

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
May 17, 2011

International Day Against Homophobia

If you knew this child had a homosexual orientation
would you refuse to feed him?
to clothe him?
to shelter him?
put him out of the family?
tell him he could not desire love?

Think about it: such rejections would kill him.

It doesn't make any difference whether he is 10 days
or twenty years old.

Homophobia kills.

A Child is Born, the Torch is Passed

By Richard Ammon
GlobalGayz.com
May 15, 2011

Within 24 hours last week a dear friend's mother died of old age and my nephew and wife gave birth to a baby boy. There may be something profound in this cycle of life and death but I'm not sure. Is it just human anatomy changing forms? Is it an exchange of energy fields unknowable to us? Is it anything at all beyond itself?

Wiggly considerations aside, it all seemed irrelevant for a while this afternoon as I held the three day old critter in my arms, holding his little softball-sized head from flopping to the side, his sweet lips puckering and pursing, tiny nostrils breathing in the spring air, an occasional lifting of his lids to reveal his blue eyes not yet focused on what's around. His tiny fist held close to his mouth--the mouth that sought lunch from mom a while later, first from the left breast then the right. Suckling silently.

So incredibly vulnerable is the birthing days of a human being, the most endowed creature on the planet but the most helpless to start. And, ultimately and not sadly, helpless as the rest of us breeding and feeding, making and thinking, learning skills and gaining wisdom on the planet.

In an ideal world I would feel hope for this child to be nourished, directed and able to choose honesty and compassion as his life motifs, but the world he is headed into gives me pause. For all the wonderment of his birth there is caution in his future as I could feel it in my heart as I held his soft pink head.

As a 'gay uncle' I know first hand the evils that overtake once-healthy youthful minds and bend them into hateful homophobia. I hear the twisted talk of many (not all) religious leaders who are supposed to guide us toward a more loving world while declaring my personal way of being as an "inherent moral evil." I see the blindness of ethnic and racial madness that slaughters millions. I read of the cruel financial corruption in big enterprise. I know the ferocious humiliation of poverty and the toxic indifference of wealth.

This is not the world I want my nephew to learn from--yet he will.

As an antidote, I want him to learn the names of the trees around him (as my grandmother taught me) to study the planets, to learn the language of the sea, the sounds of the forest on a rainy night, the adagios of Mahler, the vibe of OM, to learn stillness in the great arc of his life and his death.

William Wordsworth's 1802 sonnet 'The World is Too Much With Us' laments the crushing world of materialism and cynicism then--and marks our present civilization:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon...
The poet's great lament is today's lament. He longs for a more natural way of being, in harmony with nature, adorned with benevolent mystery.

So too will I, as I can, lean this new child toward benevolence and nature and great art--but also advise him how to be wise in the world, to defend again too much "getting and spending". And own a good dog, like Heather and Bing.