ON THE OTHER HAND
Mayer, Milton
On the Other Hand by MILTON MAYER Point of the Sea-Wolves If you ever come to see me—and will I ever see you if you don't?—I will take you to Point Lobos. You won't want to go, but you'll never...
...But war is, in itself, deadly sin because it requires the just man warring for justice to injure the innocent...
...Scott Heath (the oculist who told me that it wouldn't hurt to rest my eyes once in a while, "at your age") had given me...
...Surreptitiously I pulled the plug out of the wall behind the bed and the lights went out...
...You get the heat index by deducting 55 degrees (45 for grapes) from the average mean daily temperature for March in your area and multiply by 31 and then by 12 and you have the heat index...
...So I read on: "By planting in a raised bed, espaliering his tree against a white south wall of his house in front of a concrete patio slab, he might even boost himself out of the lemon climate clear up into the grapefruit class...
...Man the Intruder is allowed to walk on the path...
...It's the greatest I've seen...
...Then, if the fellow turned out to live in my area, I'd be in a fair way to get started with that part of the operation...
...It was just what I needed...
...I've never had a lemon tree...
...I lie flat and read Thomas Wolfe's The Web and the Rock, which is not a good book...
...Here was an epic vision...
...I got a lemon tree, from the whole family...
...No camping...
...It will not be trapped by Man the Intruder...
...I'll plant it in a bed raised higher than Hainan's gibbet," I said, "put two coats of white paint on the wall, and get the biggest concrete slab the Monument Works has got, and we'll boost ourselves clear up into the watermelon class...
...Or, read or not, is it that their commitment to war commits them not to question the assertions of an admiral...
...defenses, allowed Russia to gain -on us in military strength...
...At dawn on Monday, incendiary bombs dropped on houses along the waterfront and fires broke out . . . Suddenly a formation of low-flying planes swept over us and began strafing . . . The Arab quarters in the Manakh area, where 60,000 people live, burst into flame from naval shelling . . . The French cut off the water supply . . . There was no water to fight the fires . . . More strafing planes screamed over...
...In the evening my friend Van Peski came over to see if we had anything to eat in the house and I showed him my lemon tree...
...The next day I transferred the lemon tree to an immense tub that Dr...
...The warrior may be a just man warring for justice...
...It makes the Grand Canyon look like a hole in the ground...
...but it is deadly sin, so just men have to be forced by their governments to fight...
...Mommy talked to Mrs...
...He went on to say that the home gardener ("That's me," I said, mentally) can tinker with raised beds and wind screens, with reflected heat and warm south or west walls, to raise growing heat far above the level of his local climate...
...I can always get the conversation to lag, so I figured that sooner or later I'd find out what the a.m.d.t for Mar...
...May they break out into a cold sweat and emerge from it purged of their blindness...
...This made me start humming Valencia, and Mommy said to shut up again...
...Or into the Watermelon Class Clear up into the grapefruit class...
...Three hundred forty-five acres along the soudi shore of Carmel Bay...
...But war does something worse than injure the innocent...
...If the elevator's crowded, use the escalier...
...Just what is a simple windbreak...
...From the Democratic National Committee, November, 1956: "The GOP cut back U.S...
...For a long time I have been boring The Commonweal—and its readers— from within...
...That night I came up with The Western Garden Book and opened it to "Citrus" on Page 352...
...You just stand there...
...I ask you—could you think that the two things were the same—as you implied in your January article in The Progressive...
...asked them to do so...
...temp, for Mar...
...So I decided to skip it unless, during a conversation some time, somebody were to say, "Speaking of good books, let me tell you what the average mean daily temperature for March in my area is...
...Then I asked Mommy if she would get up and go out and see if the south or west walls were warm...
...Now I don't know the average mean daily temperature for March in my area, and I don't know where to find out...
...No, friend, the two things were not the same...
...We hurried into side streets...
...Its Ambrosian heel is war...
...square of his garden into a Valencia orange climate...
...What the British and the French did was much worse, because the British and the French are, like us, highly civilized, and the Russians are not...
...Never even said goodnight...
...It is Edward Weston's only failure...
...This is holy ground...
...The sign at the entrance used to read, "Do Not Disturb Anything, Living or Dead...
...Man the Intruder just stands there, sniffing up the sage and cutting himself down to size...
...Sawdust is high in carbon when you put it in soil...
...How am I?" I said...
...The editors of The Commonweal would never violate the first principle of political prudence and moral acceptability—a principle having to do with ends and means— in their personal lives, or in their glorious Christian struggle for racial equality and social welfare, but the commitment to war is an open-ended commitment, which consumes all other commitments, political and moral, as it eats its way through men's hearts...
...There wasn't...
...Then she came back to the bed and put the plug in and the lights went on and she resumed her Proust...
...United Press report on pin-point bombing of Port Said November 12: ". . . The lagoon was filled with boatloads of evacuees...
...End of the Atomic Age Dept...
...The tree had five lemons on it...
...his photographs, "My Camera on Point Lobos" miss it, and he knows it...
...Want-ad in the Monterey Peninsula (Calif...
...Heisler looked at me as if I had undergone some minor changes, and said, "Maybe you'd better look in at the office tomorrow...
...With some minor changes (perhaps a simple windbreak) he can raise an 8 ft...
...24- (AP)- President Eisenhower told Congress today . . . "Of the 760V2 million dollars obligated for Far-East non-military aid during fiscal 1956, 7261/2 million was for 'defense support.' "All of the 110 millions spent in Europe for non-military aid in fiscal 1956 went for defense support...
...Thomas says —there are two ways of looking at a sin: either simply, in itself, or in relation to the sinner...
...I'll get up and 'phone them," I said...
...She said to shut up, so I went on reading...
...She's like that...
...There is nothing to do there, just be there...
...It is every artist's failure...
...That won't do at all," said Dr...
...Point Lobos is a State Reserve which the Save-the-Redwoods League persuaded the State of California to buy twenty-five years ago...
...There were some other things, like the Swiss hair restorer that Kimi Nagatani smuggled in from Switzerland, but the lemon tree was the piece de resistance, so called because I can't resist talking about it...
...Pretty soon I can't read any more of it, and then I fumble around for something else...
...Little Julie was home for the holidays, and the day she left she went to Point Lobos with me...
...I won't stop you, because I want you to be free to do my will or not...
...From all reliable reports, the Russians killed women and children, deported many, and refused to change one bit or allow the U.N...
...I don't live in Santa Barbara, but I know people who do, and if I'm ever invited down there I'll strike up a conversation about their lemon climate and see if one thing doesn't lead to another and maybe get some cogent dope on av...
...He was pretty well softened up by that time, so I took the sawdust and planted the lemon tree in it...
...Never said another word...
...Oh," I said, "I'm going to put up a breakdown anyway, either a simple breakdown or a complex breakdown, I haven't decided which...
...Lest We Remember "Washington, Sept...
...Here's what it said: It said that the optimum heat index for a lemon tree is 1900 degrees...
...Almost nobody goes there...
...But I've read Proust myself, and I know how it is, when you're right in the middle of a seventy-five-page description of one hair in the Baron's mustache, you lose the thread when somebody interrupts you...
...Will sell for $300...
...Darn," said Mommy, who gets abusive when things don't suit her, "darn that light company...
...Not a gum-wrapper to be seen, and if there were, you would pick it up, without knowing why, and put it in your pocket...
...Many boats capsized and scores were drowned, many of them children . . . Port Said's tuberculosis hospital was hit...
...How does it differ from a complex windbreak...
...Cypress about it...
...Some of my liberal friends who are liberal with their bigotry will wonder why a good liberal would characterize two Roman Catholic publications as the second and third best periodicals in America...
...I had one," said Van, "but the darned fool thing died on me...
...27: "According to figures published by the Army newspaper Vor Haer, Denmark spends only 3.6 per cent of its national income on defense...
...Any editor who had been leading the Manchester Guardian, or any other good English paper, would know that the British government on Cyprus has been jamming Radio Athens, as extensively, expensively, and elaborately as Cyprus reception requires, for the past two years...
...Letter from a man—and a good one—of God: ". . . The highly civilized British and French pin-pointed their bombing and stopped as soon as the U.N...
...Heisler...
...Onshore the Monterey cypress gnarls, the snakes slither, the wildcats kitten...
...I got up in my little white nightie and pattered out to the kitchen and opened the kitchen drawer to see if there were a grapefruit knife in it...
...Mommy didn't say anything, but I went right on thinking...
...Its editors insist upon reading the Church Fathers, instead of reading what Jesus said to the Father of the Church when the latter went after the centurion's ear...
...After a while I said, "Have you ever drunk cocoa-nut milk, Mommy...
...Point Lobos is the place where the Editor of The Progressive forgot all about politics and people, and just stood there...
...No object, living or dead, must be disturbed, injured, or removed...
...A very sensitive instrument...
...I watered it and watered it, and still it died...
...Some of the latter-day Sons of the Church, all the way up to bishops, have begun to wonder whether atomic war could possibly be just...
...But war, like all other sins, may be looked at either simply, in itself, or secundum quod, which means in relation to the warrior...
...No smoking...
...Maybe your shame will move you, then, to change your ways...
...Don't the editors of The Commonweal read an English paper...
...Then I told her what the book said...
...You won't want to go, but you'll never forget that you went...
...We Western Gardeners are pretty informal, and the author of The Western Garden Book is no exception...
...So I thought about changes, major and minor, and how hard they are to make, and how I went wrong in my youth, in spite of the good advice I got, and how hard it was to change now, and this made me want to talk to Mommy again...
...It was a genuine lemon tree...
...I will move you to protect this one place against yourself, to keep it a monument to my handiwork, and to make it a scandal to yours...
...Dick Cummings gave me a tract, and we fanned the breeze a while, and then I braced him for a load of sawdust...
...They are associated with the Plymouth Brethren and are Fundamentalist Christians who admire Billy Graham...
...Then I looked at the wind screens in the windows, but they were nailed on...
...Dr...
...I got up and raised the bed, so as to tinker with it, and Mommy hollered until I put it down...
...No fires...
...I asked Mommy, who was reading Proust, and she didn't know...
...God said to man, in 1933, "See here...
...Watering, said Mrs...
...The vision blossomed, flowered, fruited...
...Cypress said it should be planted in peat-moss, in a very warm, protected place, and should hardly ever be watered...
...If war, simply, were just, just men would rush to get into it...
...But I will trouble your conscience, which is my way of working on you...
...So I turned my thoughts to "a simple windbreak...
...This was what it said next: "A gardener in Santa Barbara, for example, lives in a lemon climate...
...People sometimes change subjects like that, especially at parties, and most especially when the conversation lags...
...Friedy Heisler, the famous psychoanalyst, came by, non-professionally...
...No picnics...
...Can be used for either prospecting or for observing above-ordinary increases in radiation...
...I let the book fall...
...All day I admired the lemon tree...
...If a Santa Barbaran, merely by planting in a raised bed, espaliering his tree against a white south wall of his house in front of a concrete patio slab, might boost himself clear up into the grapefruit class, what couldn't a man do in Car-mel, which is 250 miles north of Santa Barbara...
...C, will kill a lemon tree faster than anything else...
...to enter the country...
...Maybe the admiral's (and assertions like it and not just in The Commonweal), is a slip, in which case it is a Sigmundian slip...
...Her av...
...Mommy got it at the Cypress Gardens Nursery, in a two-gallon tin can with Christmas paper around it...
...I'm going to use that for my lemon tree," I said...
...No nothing...
...Wash Your Own Brains Dept...
...The power has failed again...
...The Church Fathers—and not even all of them— take issue with Jesus and maintain that there is such a thing as a just war...
...Lest We Remember (cntd...
...She just stood there...
...temp, is mn., especially when she's crossed...
...This compares with 11 per cent by the United States, 9 per cent by Britain, 7.2 per cent by Canada, 6.4 per cent by France, and 4.2 per cent by Sweden...
...I returned and said, "They said it will be on again in five minutes, so we might as well talk...
...It is even as St...
...That night Dr...
...When it got to be bed-time, I went to bed...
...Van is a Dutchman...
...But the whole town was a mass of bullets and fire . . . The streets were littered with bodies . . ." The Commonweal tells its readers that they may send their donations for Hungarian relief to Catholic Relief Services, 350 Fifth Avenue, New York 1, N. Y., and adds: "Contributions for the 60,000 Suez evacuees and war victims may be sent to Emergency Committee for Relief to Egyptian War Victims...
...Renters dispatch from Copenhagen...
...Lest We Remember (concl...
...Further off the gray whales were spouting...
...20 West 10th Street, New York 18, N. Y." The Commonweal Present company excepted, The Commonweal is, I think, the best magazine in America, if one does not count The Catholic Worker (which is the best anything in America) as a magazine...
...but they will stop wondering when they read them, and maybe even stop being bigoted...
...May be that Point Lobos is the greatest spectacle in the world...
...the mere commitment to it confuses editors, whose confusion injures thousands of innocents...
...The Commonweal's commitment to war—uneasy, like The Progressive's, and therefore, perhaps, all the more tenacious—leads it to print an article by an admiral, under the title, "Voice of Liberty," in which the admiral says: ". . . The importance to the [Soviet] regime of such broadcasts [by "Radio Liberation"] is indicated by the extensive, expensive, and elaborate jamming to which the Communists alone resort . . ." This is a false, and significantly false, statement...
...Point Lobos is where the sea and the land fight it out...
...You're all over sawdust," said she, and I told her what I'd been doing...
...Inshore the breakers were breaking against the granite pinnacles of the headland, and then falling back and smashing against the oncoming breakers, sending up great torrents of fume, tormenting the water, and clawing im-potently at the blind and barren wall...
...I didn't have money for peat-moss, so I went up the Valley to see the Cummings boys at the Valley Lumber Co...
...The sea-wolves bark, the cypress gnarls and the moss meanders, the snakes slither and the wildcats kitten...
...Mommy said, "There's some light coming in here from somewhere," and she got up and pulled the curtain back and saw that the neighbor's lights were on...
...Here was something a man might do...
...Offshore the Lobos, or sea-wolves, were barking...
...I went on like that, and got to saying "windbreak" so often that the word began to sound meaningless, or worse...
...is in somebody's area...
...In another few years you will have ruined this coast...
...Some people curl up with a good book...
...He couldn't even hang onto Indonesia, much less a lemon tree...
...It draws heavily on nitrogen in the breakdown process...
...Some of them have decided that it couldn't be, as if it could be just to kill one innocent (or to crucify one Christ), but unjust to kill a half-million (or to crucify the entire Apostolate...
...Don't tell me—let me tell you what I got...
...Herald: 24-TUBE Geiger counter...
...Cost new $550...
...Then I had my picture taken draped lifeless over the sign, and they changed the sign to read, "Disturb Nothing...
...For the first time in your life (and the last, until you are buried) you know your place...
...The other creatures are slaves...
...Into the Grapefruit Class What did you get for Christmas...
...You will run from your shame to come here, and go sadly back...
...But this, in a recent Commonweal editorial, isn't a slip: ". . . Before the whole fantastic process is over, it may well be that, aided by American dollars, the dictators of Yugoslavia will have brought new freedom to Eastern Europe . . ." And in case you wonder whether I have taken that jewel out of its setting (or out of Orwell's 1984), I give you the next, and concluding sentence: "The very possibility, at any rate, makes continued aid to Tito a politically prudent and morally acceptable gamble...
...Isn't a windbreak a windbreak...
Vol. 21 • February 1957 • No. 2
