named Steve. There was Stephen A., my grandfather, who begot Stephen
B., who begot Stephen R., who begot Stephen R. Jr., who has not begot
anybody yet but another Steve cannot be far away. Stephen R. Sr., my
brother, is inexplicably not Stephen C. (Chaires having a venerable
Florida history on my mother's side), and equally inexplicably it was
not his first son Stephen who went to West Point, like himself and his
father, but his second son Brian Michael, whose middle name comes from
me, just as my own middle name also comes from my father's younger
brother David. Thus although I am neither a Steve nor a graduate of
West Point, or of one of the other service academies like the husbands
of my father's two sisters, I am at least a D.
Uncle Dave and
I share more than two thirds of our names. We both married
non-Americans, and as I discovered just a couple of years before he
died, he was also an Outrageous Conspiracy Theorist. He pointed to the
CFR, whereas I tend to talk about Big Brother, which makes me wonder if
being little brothers has something to do with being resistant to
Official Conspiracy Theory (Al Qaeda, Communists), as well as being
attracted to foreign women. The call of the wild?
Speaking of
which, I have another piece of evidence that Plautus's old joke, Nomen
est omen (used often in German), has some truth in it. I have always
been fascinated by the sound of calliopes, even as a kid. It was not
until a few years ago, however, when I developed an interest in
traditional Irish music, that I discovered why. The sound is strikingly
similar to the uillean pipes! It struck me, at least, and sometime
after that it dawned on me that my name contains within it,
recapitulates so to speak, the entirety of my paternal Irish genealogy,
except for the Steves. I am the direct descendant, onomastically, of my
oldest known Irish ancestors, my great-great-grandfather Michael and my
great-grandfather David (who started the Steves).
They say
appreciation of this instrument is an acquired taste, but I can feel it
and I know it is the same feeling that calliopes evoked in me long
before I had even heard of uillean pipes. Hence I feel justified in
saying it, silly as it sounds: the pipes were calling. More than that,
I admit, is speculation. It's a pity that Michael left no written
record of himself except what can be gleaned from birth certificates
and other tidbits, but one thing I know for certain is that he, like
me, was an emigrant, an ex-pat. I think it's also safe to assume that
he left Ireland, given the year, 1859, for economic reasons, which
makes two more things we have in common besides the name.
don't know what Michael's politics were, but again, given the year of
his emigration, I would not be surprised if he was something like what
I would call myself, i.e. a rebel patriot. "Patriot" is a nasty word,
of course, given the nefarious uses to which it is put, but by that I
mean I doubt that Michael left his homeland for any lack of love for
his countrymen. It was not hunger per se in my case that made me leave,
but something akin to it, namely, a job offer.
I got my Ph.D.
in linguistics in 1973, just about the time the bottom fell out of what
had been a pretty good job market for such credentials, and being a
white male didn't help much either. Then they tried to draft me, and
not having the pull of a Bill Clinton (we both lucked out later in the
same lottery), I would have gone to Canada if I had not found a shrink
who thought the war was crazier than I was. By 1977 I was tired of
trying to convince people that I really was interested in that job as a
gas station attendant, file clerk, restaurant manager trainee, or
publisher's rep (one interviewer was anxious to tell me that since I
hadn't been in the military I would have trouble getting up early
enough in the morning to do the job), so I left anyway. I became an
applied linguist, which is a fancy way of saying language teacher.
After a stint in Iran, I landed here in Germany, teaching English to
university students.
I have no idea what happened to Michael
after he landed in New York with his wife Mary Hartigan and their
12-year-old son David. My grandfather never knew him or his wife, so
they must have died young. I know only a little more about his son
David, thanks to a short memoir my grandfather penned in 1965, which I
treasure -- e.g., that David served in the Union Army, started out in
the ice business in Yorkville and later opened a tavern. So I am free
to imagine what I like about them.
What I imagine is that
Michael loved his native country but hated what had become of it, how
it had been terrorized and suppressed by imperialists and their
collaborators. In his case these were the English and -- not to forget
-- some of his own fellow Irishmen, respectively. In my case I look no
farther than my birthplace, Washington D.C., to find the contemporary
imperialists and quislings who have turned my hometown into what Noam
Chomsky calls the terrorist capital of the world.
Chomsky is
from Philadelphia, so maybe he doesn't have the sentimental ties to
Washington that compel me to point out, in its defense, that the
Pentagon and the CIA are not in Washington but in Virginia, the NSA is
in Maryland (Ft. Meade), the School of the Americas is in Georgia (Ft.
Benning), Lockheed Martin is in Maryland (Bethesda), Time Warner and
Fox News are in New York, and so on. I have lived in all of these
places -- as an Army brat -- and have fond memories of all of them.
They are part of me, just as Ireland was part of the earlier Michael
(Ballyneety in County Tipperary is the only place I know about), and
the people we knew and loved there are also part of us, are our
countrymen, and nothing will ever change that.
Hence the word
"patriot," in the only sense that makes sense. I like to call myself a
"Thoreauvian conservative," according to his idea of government, but I
could just as well say "patriot" since I aspire to be counted among the
"very few" who "serve the state with their consciences also,
and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and
they are commonly treated as enemies by it" (Civil Disobedience).
Why should we let the boneheaded O'Reillys and Hannitys own the word?
Neither of these "patriots" ever wore the "uniform of their
country," as they would put it, either, a history they share with many
other great warriors such as Dick Cheney and (I'm sorry to say, but his
grace period is up) Barack Obama. Whether Little Bush wore it or not
depends on whether you think the expression applies to an AWOL Texas Air
National Guardsman.
There is not much I can do with the ghosts
of Michael and David, whose
names I carry, and as always the maternal side gets even
shorter shrift. Still, there is something. I feel there is something,
and that's what matters anyway. You can ask me what it is. I'm working
on it.
