"Don't give up the ship."

 

Battle of Lake Erie (Unidentified artist: Fenimore Art Museum)

     The good news is that the blog post I wrote for today turned out well. The bad news is that it turned out so well, I decided to run it as a column in the paper on Wednesday.
     That does suggest a hierarchy, where columns are expected to have a bit more heft than blog posts. I suppose that is true. Since blog posts run — all together now — every GODDAMN day, they can be lighter, more personal, less, oh I don't know, newsworthy.

     Though blog posts do have aspects that columns can never enjoy.  I can, for instance, swear in blog posts. 
      Fuck.
      See? That could never happen in the newspaper. Though I've tried. Every time I get a new editor, I explain that I'd like to begin a column, "Fuck this," and introduce the word into the paper for the first time ever, to untie the hand bound behind our backs. No dice. 
     With the blog, I can root through my photos, grab a picture, and riff on it. Like the primitive painting above of a crucial moment in the Battle of Lake Erie, on Sept. 10, 1813, when Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry left his crippled flagship, the Lawrence, and crossed over to the Niagara to carry on the fight. 
     It's always meant a lot to me for various reasons. 

     First, the battle took place about an hour from where I grew up, in Berea, Ohio. And visiting the Perry's Victory & International Peace Memorial on Put-in-Bay has been a regular summertime treat for myself, and my children after me. (The peace being celebrated is between the United States and Canada, a sadly relevant detail given our president's insistence on ridiculing and threatening our literal closest friend).

      Second, Perry had taken the words of Capt. James Lawrence, "Don't give up the ship," and had them stitched into a battle flag. A sentiment I used for my 2004 memoir about crossing the ocean with my father.

     Third, the flag is a reminder of the importance of flexibility to victory. The "Don't give up the ship" flag was flying from the Lawrence the moment Perry, umm, gave it up. Which would seem contradictory, even hypocritical. But that is what the tide of battle demanded. A tactical retreat that was both necessary and worked. The flag was still flying when Perry and his men reboarded the Lawrence to accept the British surrender. Sometimes you pull back to win.

    Fourth, Perry had perseverance. The British were far stronger than we were in 1812, when war broke out. They were hot to avenge the loss of 30 years before, and claw back land that wasn't theirs, the sure sign of tyranny. They burned the President's House — though that is not how it became the White House, to cover the scorch marks; a myth of history too popular to disappear. 

      We need to cleave to what actually happened. As in 1812, the situation in our country is bad. Powerful forces that would douse our freedom stride the land, largely unopposed. We need to remind ourselves that at numerous times in American history Things Looked Bad. We have been rocked back on our heels more than once. Suffered humiliations worse than this. And while this assault from within, this traitorous rear guard assault, is perhaps the greatest threat our democracy has ever faced, our nation will face it, and it will prevail. Because if a weak, self-obsessed, ignorant, blundering swine of a man like Donald Trump can destroy America, the true essence of America, then America was not the strong bastion of freedom that I still believe her to be. Now we are brought low. And a great number of things will have to happen before we can stand tall in the world of nations once more. But a firm commitment to never surrender is key to making those things occur. Don't give up the ship. Unless you have to. Then do, to carry on the fight another way, on another ship. The key is to never give up the struggle, never indulge in defeat, in surrender, a luxury that none of us can afford.
    There, that will do for a Tuesday.