Authors: John Strauchs
“I swear you sound like a crackpot, Jared.”
“That is exactly the point.”
“You’re not trying to imply that average people are stupid, are you?” asked Brett.
“Not stupid, per se!
They are ignorant—meaning they lack knowledge. There is
an ocean separating intelligence and education…
vis-à-vis
Obama. The average person is
educated to some degree but for the most part our educational system doesn’t teach anyone how to think. They are taught to memorize, not analyze. Moreover, the average person ISN’T very intelligent. They are merely functionally intelligent. They are clever, not
smart. Most have little interest in learning. Just look at how few people read books. Native intelligence is held to a relatively tiny minority. Functional intelligence is spread
across the masses.”
“And stupid people end up in government because they can’t hack it in the private
sector,” said Brett. “I know. I know. I’ve heard it all before.”
“What I am getting around to saying is that Senator Redmond is not going to
cross that line in the sand. He IS very intelligent and his understanding of these concepts
is acute.
No one could rise to his stature in government without that perception.
He is
not going to help me,” said Jared.
“But DOHA’s decision is outrageous. Surely that is obvious,” said Brett.
“Killing Randy Weaver’s wife was outrageous. Allowing dozens of children to
burn to death in Waco was outrageous, but both the government and the population at
large were almost unanimously indifferent. Indifference trumps hate. Over time, indifference is far more powerful,” said Jared.
“Yes, I know all this,” said Brett. “Very interesting, but let’s get back to DOHA,”
said Brett.
“I appreciate the civics lesson but we are getting off track. Again, how does
this all relate to your problem?”
“I’m getting to that. Aside from Jefferson, Clinton is without a doubt that most
intelligent president ever to serve in the White House. If that is true, why would he have
condoned these various fuck ups? The answers are simple.”
Jared’s cell phone rang.
“Sorry! I thought I shut it off.”
Brett loved these intellectual debates with Jared. The call was irritating.
“Hi Jenny,” said Jared.
“Jared, I can’t find Krissy.
She didn’t show up last night and she wasn’t in her
hotel room all night.”
“She has been out all night before, hasn’t she? Did you ask Jake?” asked Jared.
“Yes. She wasn’t with him.”
“Then maybe she met someone you would approve of.”
“I wish I could be certain of that,” said Jenny.
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the lobby of the Cambridge Marriott. Do you know where it is?”
“I’ll be there in 30 minutes.”
“Love you! Bye!”
Jared pocketed his cell phone.
“Jenny’s sister spent the night somewhere other than her hotel room, said Jared.
“Let’s wrap this up. Have any ideas?” asked Brett.
“I thought I could refuse to renew some of the patent licenses. Wouldn’t some
pressure help?” said Jared.
“They’ll just seize more patents on the basis of national security and make you
fight them in court even if you are likely to prevail.
They’ll dry up your money,” said
Brett.
“They wouldn’t sink that low,” said Jared.
“Of course they can sink that low.
Remember, no one is responsible.
It will be
done by nameless, disembodied bureaucrats.”
“Then I’m screwed,” said Jared.
“Yes, you’re screwed. A law suit is probably the only viable option,” said Brett.
Jared stood up.
“Do what you have to do,” said Jared.
“This Smolenskiy matter is serious, Jared.”
“I know it is,” said Jared.
“Well at least things can’t get any worse,” said Brett.
“I wouldn’t be sure of that Brett.”
Jared left the office. His cell phone rang again.
It was Hamid Mashhadi, his patent attorney.
“Hi Hamid. I’m glad you called back,” said Jared.
“I finished your paperwork.”
Jared tried to sense Hamid and found that he could feel his thoughts even though
he was miles away. It was fascinating. He wasn’t sure how it worked and promised himself to work on this later to discover how this happened.
As he focused on Hamid,
Jared’s thoughts were flooded with odd religious chants.
lem.
The chants were from the Koran.
Jared shut it off.
Hamid was a practicing MosHis housekeeper, Marie, was
incessantly saying her rosary. How was it different?
It wasn’t. Only the specific words
were different, but the process was exactly the same. Jared usually avoided extreme religious people.
As Marx said, religion was the opiate of the masses.
Hamid, Marie, and
many others who Jared had to deal with, needed their daily religious fixes.
It was as
much an addiction as were heroin or cocaine.
“I am going to FedEx it to you for Saturday deliver. Is that OK?”
“No problem, Hamid. Just don’t make it an early morning drop off.
They won’t
deliver to the island so I have to get to the mainland,” said Jared. “Are you calling from
your Boston or DC office?”
“Boston.”
“How does it look?” asked Jared.
“Not good my friend.
I received at least six calls yesterday asking for the rest of
the technical information. These calls were not from the PTO, mind you,” said Hamid.
“Just ignore them.”
“I shall. Have a good day my friend.”
“Thanks, Hamid.”
They both hung up.
The pressure was building. Things were only going to get worse.
Jared often dreamt about the very brief time in his life that he had a taste of what
felt like everlastingly happiness.
The images, sounds and smells bubbled up like wild
springs in the emotion-parched desert of his mind.
Even though he lost his parents as a
young boy, he knew a great deal about them.
His knowledge wasn’t from stories about
them, it was from memory. Jared never forgot anything.
Jared stepped out on the balcony and climbed over the railing to the flattop roof
and settled into a small lawn chair. He lit up a Romeo and Juliet. He took a few swallows
of strong Colombian coffee. He closed his eyes and remembered.
His father, Karlis, was a cultured and educated man.
His mother, Erika, much
younger than his father, was a serenely gentle and loving woman. She married at nineteen
when Karlis was thirty-two. Her formal schooling stopped before she completed the
equivalent of high school. Despite the difference in their ages and education, they were
devoted to one another until their deaths.
Jared’s father was a brilliant man and earned degrees in mechanical and electrical
engineering. His accomplishments were quickly recognized and he was rewarded with a
prestigious position in county government in Latvia SSR.
It was an important stepping
stone to national leadership. His work had nothing to do with engineering, but the position provided his family with minor privileges and it paid well—as well as one could expect in the Soviet Union at the time. He accepted it without complaining.
Karlis’ father inherited two large farms during the short period of Latvian Independence, before the start of World War II in Europe. Wars in Europe and Russia swept
through the Baltics scores of times over hundreds of years and did so again.
The Germans and the Russians devastated the land. After the defeat of Germany, Roosevelt
handed the Baltics and most of Eastern Europe over to Stalin at Yalta to appease the ruthless ambitions of the psychotic leader of America’s war ally. Most scholars ascribed this
aberrant decision to Roosevelt’s failing health and overwhelming fatigue. The war had
transformed the Soviet Union into a world power.
The Ziemelis lands, amounting to more than 640 hectares, were seized by the Soviet government and local communist land reform committees after the war. Shortly following the death of Stalin in 1953, many farms were transformed into collective farms—
Kolkhozes
. Now everyone and no one owned the land and everything on the land. Because of his prominence in the county government, Jared’s father was eventually given a
small parcel to use to raise vegetables and other small crops for the personal use of the
family. Karlis petitioned frequently for his father’s house and out buildings, but the petitions were summarily rejected. It was a magnificent house. It was built in the middle of
the nineteenth century when Latvia didn’t exist and the lands were variously ruled by
German Barons or the Czar of Russia. It had a thick thatch and sod roof. The sides were
constructed of massive logs and walls of stones and boulders.
By 1950, four families were living in the house his father grew up in. Jared’s
grandfather and family were driven out of the family home. They were too prosperous
and owned too much land. The new families were from Georgia. Stalin tried to stamp out
nationalism by routinely forcing the relocation of hundreds of thousands of people from
one part of the Soviet Union to another. Sometimes he only took children. It was an effective program. If the program faltered, there was always genocide. In his lifetime, one
way or another, Stalin ordered the deaths of tens of millions of men, women, and children
throughout the Soviet Union.
And, Jared’s family, and eventually Jared as well, were
caught up in this hellish maelstrom.
Jared knew the nightmares all too well so he preferred to remember the dream
times, the idyllic times.
Jared was born in 1970 in the state hospital in Valmiera.
His
name when he was born was Jorens. The name, Jared, wasn’t given to him until he came
to the United States to attend M.I.T. at the age of six. Neither Jared nor Jorens cared a
whit about names.
He couldn’t remember the first few months of his life, but he could remember being told about it.
And whether his parents owned the land they lived on, a small boy
knows nothing of politics and government.
If a small boy is loved and cared for, he
knows nothing of either wealth or poverty.
Life was amazing and wonderful for young
Jared.
His parents had a small apartment in the City of Valmiera, but most weekends and
almost every summer the family would move to the country to tend to their small parcel
of land. They were given a room to use in the former family home. The people living in
the house couldn’t speak Latvian, but they were friendly and hardworking and, like everyone else, tried to make the best of what was allowed them. Russian was the
lingua
Romana
for everyone. They welcomed the Ziemelis family even though it meant the loss
of one room where an entire family had lived before they were sent to a neighboring
Kolkhoz to live.
Jared’s father, Karlis, didn’t learn until several years later about the
Georgian family that had been relocated.
Had he known earlier, he would not have accepted the room.
Jared could stand when he was six months old.
He began to speak in the first
year.
He could read by the time he was two.
The old grandmothers in the house and
from neighboring villages came to see the remarkable baby from time to time. The oldest
Latvian women, the superstitious ones, were especially astonished by the boy’s advanced
abilities.
They would burrow down into the baby’s cradle to examine his ears.
Karlis
would laugh each time they came. Of course, he never let them see him laughing.
That
wouldn’t do.
“Lacplesis! Lacplesis,” said one black-shawled old grandmother who had walked
nine kilometers from a neighboring town.
“But his ear’s aren’t right,” said the other crone. “Those are not the ears of Lacplesis,” Lacplesis had very unusual ears. Jared’s ears weren’t unusual.
When Jared was just a little older and read about Latvian folklore, he understood.
At times he would climb up to a mirror in the bedroom to check his own ears. Lacplesis
was the Bear Slayer. He was the heroic champion of the Latvian people who was immortalized in an epic poem in 1888 based on ancient legends and songs.
After the death of
Lacplesis in a battle with the Dark Knight, they both fell into the mighty Daugava River
and were never seen again. As with most valiant champions in all cultures, poor and enslaved people waited for generations for saviors to rise again. Lacplesis slept beneath the
sacred blue mountain waiting until the people needed him again. The blue mountain
could be seen from the Ziemelis farm.
The very old women saw other things in Jared that he would remember the rest of
his life. When he was three, the oldest woman in the collective—she was well over one
hundred—scoffed at the boy’s amazing accomplishments.
“Karlis do not encourage him,” she said.
“The brighter the flame, the briefer the
light.”
Jared loved the farm.
He enjoyed working with his parents in the vegetable garden. They grew tomatoes, beets, cucumbers, and a small plot of potatoes. Jared planted
radishes. They had one cow to tend. Jared especially like the noon hour when everyone
would stop work and rest. These were the times his parents taught him lessons about the
world. These were the times that he would be offered marvelous things to eat. On most
days there was rye bread, caraway cheese, berries and honey. His father would dip into a
large wooden barrel and ladle a cup of birch water. The farm folk kept the birch water
until it soured slightly, when it was thought it tasted the best. Jared would drink the entire ladle without taking a breath. It was the life force of the majestic birch, he was told.
The grandmothers explained to Jared that the wood spirits lived in the birch and oak.
Jared could feel the life force flowing into him.
And there were the magical times in the country, such as the celebration of Janis
Day on June 23
rd
.
It was called
Ligo
.
The young men, and even Jared, but especially
those named Janis, were given wreaths of oak to wear on their heads. The pretty young
girls wore garlands of flowers in their hair.
The hills and fields were alive with hundreds
of bon fires glowing in the night as far as the eye could see.
Young men and women
would sing and dance. The men would jump the fire to show their bravery. It was a primordial memory that drove them; it was remembrances from the dawn of man. It was
seared into every Balts soul. The Balts are an ancient and remarkable people. Every farm
made
kvass
for Janis Day, a slightly alcoholic concoction made of fermented rye bread
and honey.
The revelers would travel from farm to farm with mugs in hand to beg for
libations. They were never turned away.
Jared also remembered those other joyful times in the country when someone
from one farm or another had a birthday.
The best one was the Krasnieki party at the
neighboring farm, the other farm that Karlis’ father once owned. People from every farm
within twenty miles came for that party.
It was a great feast. Every farm brought what
they could.
There would be smoked meats and smoked fish and eels, caraway cheese,
sweet tart cakes, farm-made candies, and best of all to Jared, the
pirags
, crescent-shaped
bread rolls stuffed with bacon and onions. They were marvelous. The old grandmothers
would scold the boy if they saw that there wasn’t a
pirag
in his hand. He always had one
handy.
There would be forty to fifty people at these parties, sometimes more.
The host
would have vodka and farm beer set on every table.
Soon, the entire party would begin
to sing folk songs that were taught from parent to child for millennia. The history of the
people was in these songs.
There would be great merriment in the singing, but many of
the songs were also laments. They sang of mothers grieving at the green-topped graves of
fallen warrior sons and of hardship and loss. They sang of the sadness in the heart of the
nation.
Jared especially treasured the quiet times with his parents.
The farm had a black
sauna. A fire in the sauna would be stoked for a day until the sauna stones were as hot as
they could be.
Small wooden tubs of water were kept close to the benches so bathers
could continuously douse the heated stones.
Great vapors of steam rose and filled the
sauna. The men and women would beat one another with bundles of birch switches to
increase blood circulation, making the intense heat easier to endure. It was in the saunas
that Jared first learned of the marvelous differences between boys and girls.
Young Jared was never seen as a freak or someone to be driven from the town.
He was a wonder and a joy to behold. The farm people found pride that someone like
Jared was in their midst. When he was five he could converse with adults. Many looked
forward to these conversations.
He already spoke several languages, picking up the tongues of the disparate peoples settled in their community by the government.
He could
even change dialects at will, having learned that Ukrainians resented being told that they
spoke Russian.
And, Jared could do extraordinary things. He could play musical instruments. He
memorized every word of every book he read.
Jared was strong beyond his short years,
furthering the gossip among the old women that he might indeed be Lacplesis reborn.
The villagers often told stories about Jared.
There was the story about when the
young boy saw six mighty Linden trees growing along a perfectly straight line.
He
walked down the line and then told an elder that a Swedish nobleman was buried under
each tree, entwined in the roots.
Not that anyone really believed the boy, someone
brought out a shovel from the barn and began to dig beneath one of the Lindens.
They
found a skeleton.
They found a gold medallion, silver coins, and rusted iron that had
once been a sword. This story was retold many times.
The found wealth was a boon to
the community. It was a gift from Jared. The marvelous find was kept a village secret.
One story was about a man who was working in the granary and saw an adder
pursuing a mouse. Young Jared had never seen an adder before. He ran to the snake and
picked it up to examine it more closely. The snake struck him in the face. There was no
way to apply a tourniquet.
He was taken to the hospital in Valmiera.
Adder venom is
weak but a snake bite for a young child could be dangerous.
Jared had fever and chills
when he arrived at the hospital. The doctors treated the bite but warned Karlis and Erika
that the boy’s condition was critical because of where the bite occurred. When the doctors made their rounds the next morning, there were barely any signs that the boy had
been bitten. It was a miracle. It was this incident that eventually brought Jared to the attention of the government, the end of his innocence, and the loss of his parents.
Karlis and Erika often took young Jared to the Baltic shore.
If there had been a
storm, they would all comb the beaches for amber.
Jared had an uncanny ability to find
the fossilized resin of ancient trees. Really good pieces could be sold for a little extra income for the family.
The boy sometimes called it
succinum
, the Latin word for amber.
He was learning Latin. Karlis couldn’t recall that amber was every mentioned in Julius
Caesar’s writings about the Gallic wars, but nevertheless, the boy somehow knew the
word. Roman emperors sent emissaries to the Baltic region in search of trade for amber.
It was set in jewelry and other ornaments, but unlike precious stones, it was warm to the
touch and glowed in golds and browns in the sunlight.
The young Jared generally had a calm and reserved nature, but he came alive and
animated at the Baltic shore. He would run along the wet sands and gather it all in. The
sea air was filled with brine and aquatic smells. The gulls sang and swooped into the
churning waters.
The sand clung to the boy’s wet skin like thousands of tiny diamonds.
Times at the beach stirred genetic memories in the boy with vivid recollections of primordial smells, sights, and sounds. The rhythmic roll of the waves on the land was music.
Hundreds of fathers of fathers spoke to him in his mind.
He had memories of the
shimmering turquoise seas around a Greek island, and more distant still, the shores of India. Sanskrit symbols danced in his head. And then there was the enchantment time, the
time of the fathers who came out of Africa, hugging the shore lines in their trek to the
north.
The joy he felt triggered endorphins in his small body. His mind was just beginning to sense the marvelous chemistry of his body.
It was all about the chemistry. He
soon learned to speak that language as well.
When they couldn’t go to the shore, Karlis looked forward to times with the boy
in the evenings after work. They usually read together.
His father taught him many lessons that he never forgot. He learned that he had to wash his hands until the soap would
no longer show suds. He knew how to tap the birch trees for their sap and how to calm
the bees when gathering their honey. He learned how to calculate the pitch of a roof and
how thatch was made.
He learned something every evening.
He never forgot anything
that he learned.
His father’s lessons were sometimes stern.
One day young Jared was looking
through the kitchen window and saw that a hawk had knocked down a sparrow.
The
hawk had the small bird pinned to the ground with his talons and was pecking at the
body.
This was something new to Jared. He had never seen a hawk with its prey.
His
father noticed that Jared was watching something and was curious about what it was. He
walked over and looked over the boys shoulder.
When Karlis saw the hawk, he bolted
outside and chased the hawk away. The small sparrow was already dead. He asked Jared
why he hadn’t chased the hawk away.
The boy explained that it was the way the world
was designed.
Karlis listened but then explained that it was the duty of the strong to
protect the weak. If Jared was stronger than the hawk, he had an obligation to protect the
sparrow.
“But then who will protect the hawk?” asked young Jared.