Pain management

‘Kay, here’s my question du jour:

Why the hell are Lidoderm patches only available by prescription? You should be able to pick them up at the supermarket checkout stand, next to Mounds bars & People magazines. Along with cortisone ampoules, too.

I mean—if you can toss some junk food for your body & your brain onto the conveyor belt, you ought to be able to add a little pain relief to the mix, too.

Especially if your back hurts as much as mine does & your pain management specialist has hared off to Hawaii like some irresponsible nitwit with his pregnant wife & you have to wait until next week to see him.

Okay—as you can tell, I’m a little edgy. Once I hit 8 on the pain scale of 1 to 10, 10 being “shoot me; now”, I get just a tad cranky. In the sense that Ivan IV Vasilyevich lost his temper occasionally & fussed at the courtiers.

So when I…acquired…a couple of these Lidocaine patches, at first I was not hopeful. After all, that OTC “pain cream” I got a while back doesn’t make a dent in the problem. But I somehow managed to slap one of them on one of the four main trigger points (naturally, they’re just at the very edge of your reach on your own back) the other night & was stunned.

I’d been at the whimpering point (okay, I was crying) because it hurt so much, & then when I realized that the pain had dissipated, I started crying again at the relief. I actually got to sleep that night without having to talk myself down from the ledge & into pretending that it’s only discomfort & therefore bearable.

That relief allowed my muscles to relax for a while, which in turn allowed me to do some of the exercises that are supposed to help mitigate the trigger points. I’m dreaming of Lidoderm patches the size of trade paperbacks, that I could spread from scapula to scapula & from about T4 up to the base of my skull. Then I could face the world with a smile.

But I’ve only got the one patch left, which brings me back to my question: why the hell can’t I get these OTC? It’s not like I’m going to start smoking them. &, really—it would be a boon to all humanity if I were out of pain.

Especially if you’re in the same time zone as I am.

Cold crime cases

I came across an interesting story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune about the correlation between ice cream sales and homicides.

Because it seems that whenever sales of ice cream increase, so does violent crime.

They cite some specifically frozen dairy-related crimes—although nothing that includes actual death. The one that intrigues me involves “looting ice cream in a flea market”, because I’m just, you know, trying to picture a smash-&-grab kind of thing with tubs of rocky road and blueberry swirl.

Of course, they do climb down from the headline by noting that—yes, ice cream sales increase when the temperature rises, at about the same rate that people pissing each other off increases, but while the two are correlated, there’s not a causal factor.

They wouldn’t say that, however, if they cut in line at the Baskin-Robbins store in front of a mother with three kids. Because there would be blood on the floor, but there wouldn’t be a jury in the world that would convict.

Brains in retrograde

‘Kay, let me just get this out in the open: I am such an idiot.

I spent yesterday morning at Swedish Auto Factory, getting yet another radio antenna mast installed on my car. It’s the sixth or seventh in less than two years.

That’s because there’s one of those overhead storage bins in my tiny garage into which I have to back the car. (It’s a challenge reversing into it; but it’s much worse backing out of it, because of the way the parking lot has been, uh, designed.) The very first time I tried it I just wasn’t thinking that the hatchback was going to go under the overhang—the hatchback with the antenna up because the radio was on.

So even before I moved in, I had to replace the mast.

I was fine for a while & then one day I wasn’t thinking (again—that seems to happen to me a lot), forgot to turn off the radio/lower the mast, & bam; another antenna.

& like that.

The last time (before this) was just a couple of weeks ago, because I had the music on really low volume & completely blanked out.

Well, I called SAF & got the owner. “Dan? It’s [Bas Bleu]. I need a new antenna. Um.”

Dan: “Again?”

I told him I was just going to put SAF on direct deposit & book a standing appointment.

This time it wasn’t entirely my fault. Well, okay, it was—I was driving. But I did turn off the radio; I did. Only I didn’t check whether the mast had actually gone down. (It’s getting a little finicky because the car’s going on for 12 years old.)

So yes, another one bit the dust. Crap.

Someone told me that this may be happening because Mercury is in Retrograde. I don’t know who this Mercury guy is, or where Retrograde can be found (somewhere in Serbia?), or how he’s making me lose the plot. But if I ever come across him, I’m going to give him such a pop that will knock him clear out of the Balkens & make him wish he’d stayed wherever he was supposed to be.

Then I’m going to run him over & ram an antenna up his lower gastrointestinal system so far that he’ll be getting reception from his larynx.

I finally tacked up a couple of reminders on the storage bin; hoping that I’ll actually notice them & think about what I’m doing:

Meanwhile, back at SAF, where I swear I’m now getting a substantial discount on both parts & labor because of the whole economies-of-scale thing, when I collected my key yesterday & promised yet again that I wasn’t going to do this anymore, Dan said, “I’ll pray for you.”

I suggested he direct any such prayers to Saint Jude.

Unless there’s a patron saint specifically for idiots.

Gratitude Monday: The enlightened Founding Fathers

Re-reading the Declaration of Independence last week got me thinking about the principles on which the Founding Fathers established this nation, and how they went about charting and navigating new political waters. Their courage, their reason, their farsightedness and their dedication to learning from the past to shape the future are (to my way of thinking) a considerable part of why we’ve survived with a consistent government for more than 200 years.

So this Gratitude Monday I say we give it up for the Founding Fathers. Damn, but these guys had style.

For one thing, we celebrate our independence on the anniversary of the signing (more or less; I’m not going to quibble about a day or two) of the Declaration of Independence. I’ve already written about what a stunningly beautiful document that is. But here’s the thing: we celebrate making the statement as our moment of independence and not, say, the surrender at Yorktown, when it could have been said that we actually won it.

The Enlightenment was all about the ideas, of course; but, still.

First of all—they weren’t perfect. No one’s saying they were. But, in very trying times they put their not inconsiderable minds to solving highly complex and high-risk issues that had serious consequences whichever way things fell out. When 56 representatives signed the Declaration of Independence, they absolutely knew they were pledging their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to the cause of dissolving the ties with Mother England.

And they did have fortunes to lose—they were for the most part successful men with comfortable lives, which they put on the line by taking this radical step. Never before had ordinary men put their money where their mouths were in saying “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” and “that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

(Yes, Jefferson borrowed that last list from John Locke; it was the Enlightenment, after all. But Locke had spoken of life, liberty and property; this whole “pursuit” and “happiness” idea? Radical, dude. Totally rad.)

And yes—by “all men” Jefferson actually meant only men, and really only white men; women and men of color weren’t considered part of that equation. But he did mean “all white men”, meaning “[white] men of all social and economic classes”, which was also rad. The last document spelling out the rights of the governed was Magna Carta, and the only people who counted in that one were barons and better in the social strata.

But I’m going to leave the Declaration aside and move on to another extraordinary document, the one that defines us literally and metaphorically as no other document does for any other people. Yes, my children, I’m talking the Constitution.

You may think I lead a sad life (okay, I do), but every once in a while I pull that sucker out and read it because it is just beautiful. A carefully-reasoned charter for how the FF thought a government should work. Compared with similar documents, it is amazingly short—just a few pages. (You drop the California state constitution on your foot, you’re going to need a cast.) And, considering that they had no precedent to guide them, they laid out a form of government that is as beautiful and reasonable and flexible and—yes—balanced as any ever devised by men.

I suppose it’s that Enlightenment thing, balance; but seriously—no one had ever thought, “Hey, this whole gov’mint thang might work pretty well if we divvy up the powers three ways. And—how ‘bout we make sure that no one of them ever gets top hand? Yeah, that could work, huh?”

Of course, they said it more elegantly than that. But in just seven articles they mapped out what powers went to which branch, how each would provide a check on the others and what redress We the People would have against them all.

Plus—they learned from the past. Imagine that.

Following the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the new United States weren’t really what you’d call united—they were sort of loosely confederated. Which worked about as well as a chocolate teapot. No one would play nice with anyone else and they were all pretty much in it for themselves. (Interesting to me that the FF figured out the flaws in this system, but the leaders of the 15, uh, Confederate states didn’t in 1861. Um.)

So they put their bewigged heads together and thought and thought, and agreed that everyone would have to give up some autonomy in exchange for economic and political stability. Or, as the preamble says, “ to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence [sic], promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”. That pretty well covers all the major food groups.

Yes—their plan was still for white males. Black men were counted as 3/5 of a person for purposes of electing Representatives (women and Indians weren’t counted at all), and of course no one except the white adult males had voting rights.

But here’s the deal—and another reason why we should give the FF their props: because there was concern that the Constitution wasn’t locked down enough for the states to ratify it (remember—even though the loosy-goosy management of the Articles of Confederation hadn’t been successful, people were still leery of a, you know, central government), Mr. Madison of Virginia got together with his posse and proposed ten amendments, which spelled out very clear limitations on what the government could and couldn’t do.

This Bill of Rights, as it came to be known, beautifully limits the reach of official Federal mitts. (A friend of mine believes the amendments should have stopped after five words: “Congress shall make no laws”, but I think he may be joking about that.) And many of those limits were in direct response to English abuses:

No established religion, also known as separation of church and state. That Church of England thing really ate people’s lunches.

Freedom of speech, of the press, of peaceful assembly, of right to petition. All of these had been curtailed by the English at one time or another.

Right to bear arms—because we didn’t believe in a standing army, we relied upon militia to come to our defense. Look it up—the amendment says, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep & bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” You never know when you're going to need to lurk behind hedges and shoot at English troops marching down the road.

No quartering of troops; no unreasonable search and seizure; due process of law, to include no double jeopardy and no self-incrimination; speedy trial by jury…and on and on, until you get to the tenth, which (and damn, these guys were good) limits the powers of the Federal government to those specifically stated in the Constitution. No slipping any surprises in, guys, ‘cause this is a written Constitution.

And the amendments constitute another beauty of FF capacity to plan ahead—they’ve allowed it to grow with the country and the times. So that counting the Bill of Rights, it’s been amended 27 times. The 13^th abolished slavery; the 14^th established the Equal Protection Clause; the 15^th prohibited denial of suffrage based on race, color or previous condition of servitude; the 19^th finally opened up the vote to women.

And yes--there have been crack-pot amendments: the 18^th banned the production and sale of alcoholic beverages. And it had to be repealed by the 21^st a few years later. We make mistakes and we recover from them. It's the recovery and learning that really matter.

I could show how the judicial-legislative balance has evolved by talking about how Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) established the "separate-but-equal" interpretation of the Equal Protection clause; and then Brown v. Board of Education scuppered that 58 years later by deciding that separate is inherently unequal, opening pretty much everything to, well, everyone. But we have a more recent example.

The DOMA ruling last month encapsulates two of the ways the FF really understood how this would work: it was the judiciary branch slapping down the legislative, based on the Equal Protection clause of the 14^th Amendment. That old Constitution, she just keeps rolling along, despite the massive wrenching of the War Between the States, industrialization, entry into the world stage as a great power—all things that could have broken a system less carefully planned.

So—Founding Fathers, many thanks for a job well done. I’d buy you a drink if you were around today. And if you let me into the bar. With my lady-money.

Multiple Twitter personality disorder

Okay, I’ve said it before, but the Twitter-dot-com is a strange, strange place.

As I’ve mentioned, I have two Twitter accounts. First is a “professional” one, where I follow people who…well, look—I’m trying to get in with the Agile, SaaS, interesting enterprise software crowd, okay? In general I follow people who are high tech subject matter experts (SMEs) in Big Data, Enterprise Social and specific companies I’m interested in working for. About 98% of my tweets there are to do with Big Data, Enterprise social and specific companies I’m interested in working for. Occasionally I’ll toss in a human-interest comment; but usually that’s directed at a SME or someone working for a company I’m…well, you get the drift.

The other is the one I associate with this blog. The people I follow there are ones I think are going to be just plain interesting—writers, performers, smart-asses, publishers, journalists, whack-jobs; people who’ve tweeted something that gets me thinking, people who make me laugh, people who piss me off. I’m more inclined to reply than to retweet this crowd; which is the opposite of my nothin’-but-SaaS account.

So—with maybe five or six as overlap—two essentially and entirely different subsets of the Twitterverse.

And at no time has this divide been more in evidence than this afternoon, after the Asiana Airlines plane crash at SFO.

My blog account lit up with tweets about the crash—the fragmentary bits sent out by a few passengers on the plane (it was apparently carrying people bound for the Silicon Valley; of course they were taking pix and tweeting even as they were being evacuated), tweeted & retweeted, augmented by dribs and drabs of speculation, until it was a complete tsunami of mixed information and misinformation.

But it was totally vibrating with the event.

Meanwhile, back at the Big Data ranch, the SMEs have been spewing out their same auto-tweets of “sage” Big Data/Social advice, along with the usual “inspirational” quote nonsense. Exactly as they do every other minute of every other day. There was a brief spurt of maybe three tweets about the crash for every 100 SME chirps (mostly from the news outlets) and then back to business as usual. Literally.

It’s like there are two different Twitter planets, and I’m caught in some bizarre vortex of Interwebs cognitive dissonance.

Just give it a damn rest, will ya?

Oh, Lord—this is making the rounds again. You know—that “ha-ha-you-Americans-can’t-organize-your-way-out-of-a-paper-bag-so-we-Brits—who-have-a-much-better-record-at-this-sort-of-thing—are-assimilating-you-back-into-the-uh-well-it-used-to-be-the-empire-but…” thing.

It first struck back in 2000, when we had the whole hoo-ha about the Gore-Bush election, And it was apt and amusing. The first six or fifteen times someone sent it to me. (I was in the UK at the time.)

Well, snorfle, yes; we definitely screwed the pooch on that one and opened ourselves to any kind of snook-cocking anyone wanted to engage in. But, really, people—we’ve moved beyond it; surely you should, too.

However, before we do, I’d like to address a few points:

1) Back when it first came out, it was Utah that HM did not fancy. But I can see the case for North Dakota, too, so this gets a pass.

2) David Cameron appointing anyone to anything? Seriously? Bwahaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!

3) Uh—“Congress” includes the Senate, dimwit. (Imagine if you said “Parliament and the House of Commons will be disbanded”, or do I need to get down to words of one syllable?) If you want to skewer, best to actually do a bit of research so you don’t look like an ignorant yahoo in the process. Just sayin’…

4) Your points 1 and 2 are redundant with respect to spelling. As for objecting to filler words, not really in a position to cavil, innit? (Also, from what I’ve seen on social media, there’s definite confusion over there on your/you’re, and there/their/they’re. Might want to brush up.)

5) I’m willing to accept the point about guns and lawyers; maybe even therapists. But, tell me—how’s that whole “mustn’t grumble” thing working out for you? And your aversion to therapists might be because they're not included in the NHS?

6) Sorry—better include “corkscrew” in there with the vegetable peeler, or the deal’s off. You do not want to mess with Californians who’ve lost access to wine; you just don’t.

7) Yeah, that whole “beer” delta was a thing, wasn’t it? But we now have microbrewers popping up everywhere (including North Dakota, although perhaps not Utah) that out-brew a lot of what gets served in British pubs. (Where, BTW, icy lager is quite the rage and there’s way too much over-priced bottled Bud sloshing around inside the Flower of British Youth for anyone over there to make remarks. People drink it here because it’s cheap; you don’t have that excuse.) And independent brewers are being swallowed up or pushed out by the conglomerates, so I’m thinking you really don’t want to go down this road.

8) Oh, please—there have to be more Brits on American TV and in movies than ever. We can't get enough of you. Throw in the Aussies and Canadians, we're completely stuffed.

9) Uh, which Four Weddings and a Funeral did you watch? The one I saw had MacDowell (the “d” is up; you might want to get your nits right if you’re going to pick them) as Southern American as they come. Did you get confused?

10) OTOH, I’ll give you the fact that that film made me want to hurl, independent of accents.

11) I have two words for you: “Downton Abbey”. I wish we could take back the 8^th Air Force if this is what we got in exchange.

12) I’ll give you the points on football, but are you seriously saying that cricket is more interesting than baseball? They're both unspeakably dire. Someone needs their meds adjusted. Oh, wait—the NHS is probably diluting them to save money.

13) Tea? With china cups and saucers? And biscuits? What freaking century are you talking about?

14) While we’re talking beverages, you should hang your heads in shame at the amount of instant coffee you drink.

And finally—let me just point out that neither you nor anyone else can revoke our independence because no one gave it to us. We took it by force of arms. 

Which, if you check your own history books, was a Big Freakin’ Deal to Britain back then. (When Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, not only was he unable to man up enough to hand his sword in person to Washington, but his band played “The World Turned Upside Down”. For a reason.)

So, for one more time—so amusing, you Brits. Ha-ha. It’s been 13 years; could you please come up with something new?

If not, let me tell the one about Blair being Bush’s poodle. That always cracks me up.

Lives, fortunes & sacred honor

In between the picnics and the fireworks today, give some thought to the basis of the holiday: the Continental Congress approving the Declaration of Independence, authored by Mr. Jefferson of Virginia. It's one of the most beautiful pieces of writing you're going to find anywhere; concise but eloquent.

NPR has printed it for you, but you can also listen to several of their reporters, newscasters and commentators reading it, and it's a document that cries out to be heard.

A beautifully-reasoned and eloquently-stated list of the reasons why--with reluctance—the British colonies along the Atlantic coast feel they need to take the grave step of breaking away from Mother England.

We recognize how serious a move this is, it says; but, given the pattern of abuse by the British monarch, we don't see any way out of it. We know it will cost us both blood and treasure, but it's costing us more if we don't do it.

Here are a couple of clauses that really strike to the heart:

"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

"We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States."

And—my very favorite of all:

"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Imagine, if you will, the current denizens of the US Capitol pledging their lives, their fortunes or their honor to anything.

No, I didn't think so.

So go back to the original and really listen. This is where we came from, and we should remember it.

Three days in a Pennsylvania town

In the summer of 1863, Robert E. Lee was taking the war into the North. Up until June of that year, nothing significant had happened in the East above the Mason-Dixon line. Lee wanted to change that for a number of reasons.

For one, all the slogging around Virginia was wreaking havoc on vital agriculture. He hoped that a swoop through Pennsylvania might give the Old Dominion a rest. At the same time, in the time-honored custom of armies everywhere, he expected to pick up a few things to keep the Army of Northern Virginia going. (There was a shoe factory in nearby Chambersburg, for example.)

Finally, he hoped to convince Northern pols that fighting to keep the South in the union wasn’t an economically or politically viable proposition. Invading Harrisburg or even Philadelphia would give a lot of people pause to think.

And from his experiences with the Army of the Potomac and its various commanders, he reckoned he had a reasonable chance of making that happen.

Well, except he was operating under a couple of handicaps: his most gifted general, Thomas J. Jackson (known as Stonewall from his performance at the first battle of Manassas), had died of wounds inflicted by his own troops at Chancellorsville in May. Lee had considered Jackson his right arm and it was a grievous loss.

The second drawback was that his cavalry commander, J.E.B. Stuart (James Ewell Brown, if you’re asking) had basically disappeared up his own behind. One of the main functions of cavalry was to gather intelligence about the enemy’s movements. After making big splashes in the Peninsula and Maryland campaigns of 1862 by dashing around the Army of the Potomac, he separated his unit from Lee’s main force in late June, leaving Lee with no reliable data on the Army of the Potomac’s whereabouts.

Lee found them, under the command of George G. Meade (of whom it might be said that at least he wasn’t Joe Hooker. Or George B. McClellan. Or Ambrose Burnside), at Gettysburg, a small town with a theological seminary and interesting topography, on 1 July.

The two armies maneuvered some and fought for three days in July heat that you cannot imagine unless you’ve experienced it. Thanks to the actions of cavalry Brigadier General John Buford at the first meeting, Union forces held the high ground, but it can’t have felt like much of an advantage to those who were there.

To a certain extent fighting blindly (Stuart showed up on 2 July, but didn’t have much in the way of intel to share), Lee issued uncharacteristically ambiguous orders to Lt. General James Longstreet on the 2^nd, and then sent Maj. General George Pickett’s division up Cemetery Ridge on the 3^rd, resulting in utter carnage.

(In Ken Burns’ seminal documentary, The Civil War, historian Shelby Foote made a comment on Pickett’s charge that has stuck with me. It was something to the effect that, if he’d been a soldier given the order to cross that open space and run up the hill in the face of massed Yankee fire, he’d have said, “Lieutenant—I don’t think so.” That comment came back to me when I stood at Colleville-sur-Mer and looked down from the cliff onto Omaha Beach. I don’t know how either the Georgians or the GIs of the 29^th Infantry Division took those steps.)

After three days of this, the armies faced each other in heavy rain on the 4^th; then Lee withdrew. Meade did not pursue. The Union held the ground, but the Army of Northern Virginia (what was left of it) was able to return to Virginia and regroup.

Up until then, Lee had believed in the invincibility of his army—he’d asked it to do impossible things so many times, and it had. At Gettysburg, he was heard to repeat, “It is all my fault.”

Combined with the surrender on 4 July of Vicksburg to U.S. Grant (breaking the lines of communication for the Confederacy in the West), Gettysburg basically was the point at which it became clear that the North was never going to quit, and the South was never going to win.

But the war would continue for another 22 months, with Grant taking command of the Army of the Potomac steadily grinding down Lee’s armies, and Sherman implementing the concept of total war through Georgia and the Carolinas.

Gettysburg was the tipping point, 150 years ago today.

A day at the Somme

The first week of July has a lot of historical significance if you’re a military historian. I’ll have more to say about some of the domestic bits later, but today I want to remind you of one of the most amazing stories of command idiocy in the annals of British history.

On 1 July 1916, the British Expeditionary Force impaled itself upon the idea that if you only throw more men at entrenched machine gun emplacements, you’ll achieve a breakthrough in a war of stagnation.

The first day of the Battle of the Somme cost the Brits 58,000 casualties (almost 20,000 of them dead), but won no breakthrough. Neither did it break through the dense crania of the British generals. The new commander, Sir Douglas Haig, remained boneheaded to his death, which unfortunately came long after the Armistice in 1918.

(Generals typically were not in danger of injuries, unless they fell off their polo ponies or slipped on the floor of the officers’ mess.)

No, wave after wave of Tommies went over the top from 1 July to 18 November without enough land to grow a crop of wheat changing hands. The ground was churned to sludge by unbelievable numbers of artillery bombardments; farmers are still turning up unexploded shells as they tend their fields. In the end the butcher’s bill ran to 420,000 British, 200,000 French and 500,000 Germans dead, missing and wounded.

So pause a moment and think of the day when the sun truly began to set on the British Empire; and consider the tens of thousands of men who’ve rested along the battle line for the past 97 years.

Gratitude Monday: O, Canada

Gratitude Monday—and it’s Canada Day. So I’m thinking about how great the Canadians are, individually and collectively.

I could get silly and talk about Leslie Nielsen or one of my favorite TV shows of all time, Due South. But I’ve already done that.

And Canadians are way more than wacky comedians and upright Mounties in a cynical American city. They’re even more than mail-order pharmacies and refuges for cabernet-toting discontents fleeing whichever administration gets into office down here.

They are pretty much in every way the kind of neighbor you’d like to have on your street. They don’t throw loud parties, or park huge SUVs in their driveway, or toss their clapped-out washing machines in their weed-infested front yard.

They quietly go about their lives as conscientious citizens of the world, picking up the trash they find (and disposing of it responsibly) and pitching in whenever asked to help set the worst things to rights. They define the term “stand-up guys”.

Two things in particular I’m thinking about:

Teheran, 1979. In the midst of the chaos of the overthrow of the Shah, six American diplomats were given shelter in the Canadian embassy for 79 days, until they could be extracted by a joint Canadian-CIA mission. It was an act of both neighborly kindness and extreme courage for the Canadians to hide the Americans, especially at a time when it was clear that “diplomatic courtesies” didn’t rate high on the Iranian revolutionary priority list.

The Canadians risked personal safety and national policy to help out six Americans, who’d probably been trash-talking hockey teams right up until the embassy takeover. They didn’t hesitate and they didn’t flinch.

My second example of Canadian rectitude is Lt. Gen. Roméo A. Dallaire. Dallaire had just about the worst job of the 1990s: Force Commander of United Nations Assistance Mission Rwanda (UNAMIR), from 1993 to 1996. During the worst genocide of the second half of the 20^th Century, Dallaire commanded forces without resources, with limited remit and  no backing from his political masters. I cannot believe the fortitude of a man who still managed to save thousands of the people under his care.

Although at a terrible, terrible cost. Washington Post reporter Ken Ringle told the story much better than I could, so I’ll let him do it. It was an impossible command, an impossible remit and an impossible expectation. But Dallaire took it on.

I can just picture most American generals after that posting—speaking engagements, management consulting, appearances on talk shows. Dallaire went back to Canada, where PTSD led him to a suicide attempt. His big public outing has been to testify at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda against Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, who was subsequently convicted of war crimes. He also advocated for children affected by war—something he’s an expert in.

I cannot express my admiration for the country that produced people like this. You don’t think of them a lot, because good neighbors don’t get in your face. But you’re always really, really glad they’re there.