War Creation Evolution


Chapter 4

May Day.  Mayday!
Not long afterward, the Germans were deserting and surrendering in droves. There is a photo on page 137 of Pérez's division history which shows four young children, perhaps five to 10 years old—a little girl, three boys, hurrying forward out of the snow-covered foothills, lightly clothed, their hands up, to surrender. It tears your heart out. Another follow-up wish to know: What of their parents? Had their father died in combat? Had their mother been "mistreated"?


Have you grasped the not so veiled meaning of Eisenhower's "non-fraternization" order? Perhaps it has just dawned on you. In the presence of officers, when Pérez was at Dachau, a scruffy loud-mouthed private bragged about "laying" a young German girl. Peals of crude laughter: Her elderly grandfather had hung himself. Ha ha hardy ha ha! He committed suicide from shame and guilt over his inability to save her.

Pérez almost hoped the oven of Dachau was still operational to stuff this guy into it, but his violently churning viscera finally yielded up only pity for someone so sick, so he let the appealing thought perish. The officers laughed nervously and that was that. Possibly the loud-mouth just made this up. Unlikely. Overall, the conduct of U.S. troops, as reported by credible war historians, was exemplary in this respect. Far, far better than that of the Germans and Russians.

Near Garmisch-Partenkirchen... Breath-taking scenery!... close to the Austrian border, a German battalion surrendered to Pérez's regiment. Some years later, reading some of his favorite novels, he discovered that Hans Hellmut Kirst was an artillery captain taken prisoner there. You have just got to read Kirst! Movies of his novels have been made, including The Night of the Generals. Get a view from the other side.

The German soldiers, strangely, were people too. Kirst is so good! An anti-Nazi all the way. His most touching—and most horrible book—is the novel in which a German officer's compassion for basket cases is vividly described. Pérez hadn't known until then what "basket case" really meant. Keine Ahunung. Not the faintest idea. They were men who had lost both legs, one arm or both, and parts between and above their legs. Ah, so terrible, horrible. They literally were in baskets, to hold them up, hold them together. Kirst writes inimitably about true brotherhood in war—for all that Nazi officialdom could do.

You have got to read Wolfgang Borchert. Kirst and Borchert. Kirst in combat on both the Russian and the western fronts; Borchert imprisoned for criticizing Hitler and the Nazis when a soldier on the Russian front. On opposite sides from us, but Pérez feels such a kinship with them. With all the Deutsche Soldaten. He had no enmity in his heart for them. Ever. He knew they were just poor children of God forced into their situation.

Oh, yes, it may have been exhilarating to them at first. Such easy victories. Vast conquests. Some would have been fanatic Nazis. Pérez was compelled to resist them all, but without hatred. A horrendous turn of events in one sense for Eduardo—but a sure sign that the war was ending—was when corpses of soldiers too young to shave were found among the dead. Hitler was sending young boys and old fathers to die. Another horrible spectacle was horses' corpses. The German war machine was literally running out of gas. No motor transport.



Similar to what Pérez saw but without lots of dead horses

When Pérez zigzagged through a fortification in the Siegfried Line—knees and adrenaline pumping all-out, bullets zinging past him—he and his buddies arrived on the other side to be shocked by an incredibly ghastly sight. Dead horses, smashed wagons, wreckage everywhere. The enemy totally dispersed.

Corporal Ashworth, from Tennessee, an irrepressible joker, caught and mounted one of the surviving horses and rode it down to a castle on the not too distant Rhine. A fabled castle on the Rhine.... From which some of the troops looted random treasures. Ed might have remonstrated but.... already un fait accompli. Ashworth came out with a knight's helmet and a lance. He mounted the horse and went whooping around like a 10-year old. We all felt equally exhilarated, having come so far alive. Finally tiring of his once-in-a-lifetime game, Ashworth just threw the priceless relics to the ground.

Ed won't pretend to be holier than they. He strives to be a worthy Christian but falls short. We will be judged according to our lights and he had received great light. As Mark Twain said—Eduardo will quote it again—"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example." The truth of this hurts, but should never deter anyone from doing what's right. Pérez wouldn't have been able to put up with himself had he followed their example. He was excited to look at, not carry off, some invaluable artifacts.

Twain meant this half ironically, of course. Good examples aren't sissies, little goody two shoes. Targets so often of derision, they have to be strong and struggle hard. They have to put up with a lot.

B-17 Flying Fortresses had bombed the Siegfried Line immediately before the infantry assault. Shortly before that, Eduardo's platoon was as close to ground as they could get as a self-propelled 155mm howitzer mounted on a modified Sherman tank blasted away at a seemingly impregnable bunker. "Oh, no!" they groaned to themselves. They knew what would happen next. It did. After firing a predetermined number of rounds, the howitzer clanked away at full speed. Who was still there to take the return fire? A sixty-four dollar question. You get three guesses.

When, a few minutes later, the Flying Fortresses appeared.... What an awesome sight!.... Pérez and his buddies could have stood up and cheered. An unsafe procedure. They cheered wildly in their hearts. Without the U.S. Army Air Corps, Pérez felt they would never have made it past those fortifications.


Photo of 103rd Division troops at the Maginot Line. The only photo their inexcusably negligent photographers took of the Siegfried Line is of the Division Band (Can you believe it?) celebrating atop an atypical bunker after the action was over. The Siegfried Line, so named by Hitler himself, stretched from the border of Switzerland up to Belgium. It had "dragon tooth" defenses against tanks at any point where they might be able to attack plus bunkers close enough together to cover any necessary field of fire.

Pérez hasn't been able to find any photo typical of what they encountered. To the best of his recollection, he was sprinting on concrete, not dirt, through a long, imposing concrete construction. He apologizes. Adrenaline was pumping with such pressure it wouldn't let him slow down or stop for a proper look around.

The band! Who knew they even had one? Was it back behind the front tootling on horns and pounding on drums to fire them up, encourage them and urge them on? If that doesn't beat the band!... Yes, it does, but let's not beat on it, Pérez says. He probably would have sought a spot on the band himself, if he'd had the requisite talent and skill.

In retrospect, Eduardo deeply regrets that in the euphoria of another battle won, his squad took no advantage of the opportunity to clamber up to the top of the Siegfried bunker and raise the flag. Every squad, naturally, despite the inconvenience, carried around a large American flag to heroically raise just in case a great photo op presented itself.

Oh, well, they were only infantrymen. Let's hear it for the six Marines and the Navy medic who raised the flag at Iwo Jima! A courageously, bloodily won symbolic opportunity. Just his dogface platoon's luck, though! It would have availed them nothing. Not a single fearless photographer ever tagged along to click shots of them in action. Sometimes some were right up front though, no doubt.

There was no separate Air Force then. There was an Army Air Corps, so the pilots and crews could ironically sing along with the rest of the troops, "Oh, the Army made a man out of me, a man out of me, a man out of me. Oh, the Army made a man out of me, A MAN OUT OF ME!" The infantry troops likewise liked to sing, "Oh, it's whisky, whisky, whisky that makes us feel so frisky, in the corps, in the corps! Oh,it's whisky, whisky, whisky that makes us feel so frisky IN THE UNITED STATES AIR CORPS! My eyes are dim, I cannot see, I have not got my specs with me, I HAVE NOT GOT MY SPECS WITH ME!"

It was B-17 bombs that had cruelly destroyed the faithful, innocent horses.

Wolfgang Borchert died at age 26 from hunger and privation suffered when at the icy cold Russian front. He is famous for his telegraphic style. Short sentences. Short short short stories. One of them, Die Kegelbahn (The Bowling Alley), begins with this sentence: "Zwei Männer hatten ein Loch in die Erde gemacht." (Two men had made a hole in the ground.)

As stated above, Pérez felt no hatred for the enemy. In one instance, he was grateful to the enemy. The troops had overrun enemy positions and Pérez and Harold Holmes, his best buddy, his foxhole buddy, found a hole in the ground—shortly before reaching the Maginot Line, where the Germans set up no MLD (main line of defense). The French had constructed it with all guns facing east. A useless line when outflanked by Hitler's treacherous Blitzkrieg through Belgium. Eduardo was Harold's best man in Gainesville where Harold was married not long before they boarded trains for Camp Shanks, New Jersey, and embarked for Europe.

Harold, a Quaker, had not asked for deferment as a pacifist. He wanted to do his part. Quakers are such wonderful people. But they occasionally can lose their tempers and patience. Have you seen The Friendly Persuasion, based on Jessamyn West's novel, starring Gary Cooper? Remember how the wife and mother (Dorothy McGuire) cheerfully fed the Confederate troops and fully lived up to her principles until a Reb started after her pet goose with roast goose in his eyes? That cooked his goose! She took after him with a broom.

The hole in the ground was the best foxhole seen by soldier eyes. It was deep, had shelves dug into the dirt inside, was commodious by any foxhole standard and covered with logs and dirt on top. How it was dug still mystifies Eduardo. Of course fear of booby traps made them very cautious, but finding nothing suspicious, they liberated it. All the talk you hear about foxholes.... Try digging one in frozen ground with a little folding shovel. Dynamite would work if you could get some.

That morning the German 88 wake-up serenade had already started up and Pérez had to complete his matinal ritual in a santiamén! (holy amen). You couldn't have set your watch by German punctuality that morning! No doubt the trains were no longer running on time in Germany with Nationalsozialistische (Nazi) precision and everything was going to pot.

Pérez and Holmes darted for the foxhole. Blocking the entrance in a wild effort to scramble into it was a shrieking second lieutenant from another outfit whom they'd never seen before. He had been hit by shrapnel. As shells whistled overhead, some exploding nearby, Harold and Eduardo turned him over flat on the trampled snow and checked out the back of his heavy fur-lined jacket. It had a jagged hole in it, alright.

Harold took out his trench knife and started slashing away. An emergency. No time to waste. A beautiful jacket. A shame. Harold cut through three or four layers. Just before encountering flesh, he discovered a jagged chunk of shrapnel about the size of a large kernel of half-popped popcorn. No blood. The lieutenant hadn't even been scratched. Ah, man.... War is hell! Harold and Eduardo had only one night in the luxurious hole before moving.... back! The first and only time they retreated.

The Little Battle of the Bulge (a salient projecting out dangerously far) had just begun. The first evidence of it: A Sherman tank that had passed them only moments before suddenly came roaring back in full retreat. With no preamble or explanation—obeying radioed orders—Corporal Wybornski all at once shouted out, "Let's get out of here!" They got out of there at full speed to avoid being cut off by a pincer movement.

As it turned out, this was a German feint just to the south to deceive troops in the vicinity of Bastogne, Belgium, where the main thrust of the Battle of the Bulge was directed and a defiant General Anthony W. McAuliffe uttered his famous response to a demand to surrender: "Nuts!"

A few weeks later, their platoon and other troops were loaded up and trucked to Strasbourg, the newly liberated capital of Alsace. They had no idea what was going on. As usual. Troops not at the front (nine out of every ten men) received The Stars and Stripes, in which a certain amount of news and Bill Mauldin's famous "Up Front" cartoons were available to non-combatants—not depicted by Bill. Dogfaces up front knew nothing. With scant supplies of toilet paper sometimes running out, they'd have been glad to have a copy of The Stars and Stripes to wipe their behinds with.

The troops were arranged in order and marched up to a platform to present arms as Anthony W. McAuliffe took over as the new commanding general of the 103rd Infantry Division. Only much later, on learning of the other Battle of the Bulge, did they realize what a great honor this was for them.... and for McAuliffe. See? All that parading around in basic training served a purpose after all. Pérez wishes he had a photo of that. To any drill sergeant's eye, Infantry or Marine, the troops would have looked way beyond bedraggled. Hey, it was great. They were worn out but alive and away from the front!

From Die Kegelbahn

Wolfgang Borchert
[Es war ein Mann...] Er hatte eine Nase, die Parfum riechen konnte. Augen, die eine Stadt oder eine Blume sehen konnten. Er hatte einen Mund, mit dem konnte er Brot essen und Inge sagen oder Mutter....

Schiess, sagte der eine.

Der schoss.

Da war der Kopf kaputt. Er konnte nicht mehr Parfum riechen, keine Stadt mehr sehen und nicht mehr Inge sagen. Nie mehr.

From The Bowling Alley
[There was a man...] He had a nose, which could smell perfume. Eyes, which could see a city or a flower. He had a mouth, with which he could eat bread and say Inge or Mother.

"Shoot," one of the [other] men said.

He shot.

Now the head was ruined. It could no longer smell perfume, see a city again, and never again say Inge. Never again.
Pérez's mouth continued to say Mother with great affection and reverence and not long after war's end he saw an unruined city. In Vienna his mouth said in love a Germanic name. The first unruined city he saw once the war was over was the city: Paris. "How can you keep a boy down on the farm after he's seen Paree?" said the lyrics to a popular song. Ed knew then that he would be returning to Europe as soon as possible.

One day, after completing the requirements for a Masters Degree in Foreign Languages, he saw a notice on the department bulletin board. About Fulbright Scholarships. Spain and Latin America were not included at that time. He had studied more German than French, though he had minors in both. So.... He applied for a Fulbright Scholarship to the University of Vienna. There was only one available for each state and, amazingly, he got one. He had no way of knowing how many applicants there were but.... with only a minor in German, he must have been the only one!

Several months previously, Pérez had taken the State Department written exam for the position of Foreign Service Officer and passed it with a high score. He could have done even better but had taken only one Economics class and had never heard of Adam Smith or the "silent hand." Seems impossible, now, that he could have been so ignorant of this. An oral exam in Washington was required. Pérez scraped together all the money he could, borrowed a friend's car and took off for the nation's capital, sleeping in the car on the way there and back.

He really sweated the exam but thought he had done well. He figured that foreign residence in Argentina, his nearly straight-A record in college and his service in the Army would get him through. None of this did. Oh, brother.... Cheese 'n crackerzzzz! Obviously he really blew the oral. A short time later, an article in Time magazine appeared, excoriating the Department of State for having obligated so many outstanding young people to show up in Washington for interviews and then not selecting a single one! Can you believe it? After a certain amount of experience, you can.

As a typist at the University of Michigan Press, Pérez had the good fortune to work at one of the world's first word processors—an IBM computer hooked up with what looked like a standard IBM electric typewriter. His boss, one of the most amiable, good-hearted men Pérez has ever known, would supply titles, names, and addresses of potential donors which Ed would type in where the cursor appeared to complete form letters asking for contributions to various University of Michigan funds. This, rather than a punched-card system, was employed.

After-hours, fairly late at night, Ed would type up stuff related to the boss's Rotary Club activities. It was O.K. with the university to use the equipment for this laudable civic purpose and the boss paid from his own pocket. Ed vigorously refused to accept any pay for this, but the boss insisted. The boss! Why won't his name appear in phonetic transcription in the air! Such a wonderful man and Ed can't recall his name.

Eduardo was the only male typist. He could type faster than any of the girls. No exaggeration. How can this be? Just accept it. He was one of just two boys in his high school typing class too. Makes you wonder how come he hasn't picked up more girl talk. Typing revolutionized women's lives. And society. At last, lots of relatively good jobs in a clean environment, not like the factories.... Pérez is thinking of the cannery where doña Josefina worked, along with sewing, as a way to help out when his Dad, Simón, had no other job than with the WPA (Work Progress Administration) digging ditches.

Sometimes his main pay was the carp he caught in the marshes near where the digging was done. Carp was a trash fish and seems to still be so considered in the U.S. It's a delicacy to the Japanese and others with discriminating palates. The Pérez family was very happy to have it to supplement their potatoes and their bread and milk. Milk toast, too. Pérez is still happy to have it now when Anneliese takes the time to make her marvelous homemade bread. Bread and milk with store-bought bread? Ugh! Yuck! Double that, with the stories doña Josefina had to tell of the cannery. (Have you read Steinbeck's Cannery Row?) Hold that ketchup! At least back then. The sweepings from the floor went into the catsup vat.

It was the University Press job that stimulated Eduardo's fascination with computers and led to his side career in mathematical linguistics and cryptography. An expertise which enabled him to stay on in Chile after the last of his two two-year contracts with the U.S. Information Agency expired. The Agency is best known, probably, for its Voice of America broadcasts.

Re: "Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos." Until the cabin was built, Pérez had not said his personal prayers aloud for some time. Always silently. In Basic Training, after taps and "Lights out!" he would kneel at the side of his bunk and pray silently—repeated in the morning before reveille. Live buglers back then. No recordings. Only "boogie woogie bugelers of Company B," as in the popular song. One night, as he prayed, the soldier in the next bunk staggered in, blind drunk, stumbled over him, and let loose a stream of base invectives not in harmony with the tenor of Pérez's prayer. After that, he knelt on the opposite side.

With their cabin's three levels plus the motor home and Anneliese's early morning programs on C-Span, having intervals of uninterrupted privacy was no problem. Sometimes, a conservative author, journalist or—a very rare bird—a conservative movie personality was on. One so good that Anneliese would run downstairs to tell him. She hadn't caught him kneeling yet, but he wouldn't mind at all for her to find him thus. It might even improve her high opinion of him. He would even continue his prayer aloud. "And bless Anneliese to recognize her husband's special, hidden, virtues."

He preferred to pray aloud, always. Rather difficult in hectic modern life. Private prayers are very personal. They should be private. Ed loved the story about Simón Pérez's amén. His dad had eyes only for Josefina. Her loveliness left him dumb, speechless, like an ox stunned by the slaughterer's ax. Sometimes at night he would approach her humble home and just stare silently, enthralled to be that near her.

One night he posted himself silently behind a tree and to his surprise heard Josefina's dear voice. She was praying. She preferred to pray aloud and had sought refuge outside her crowded house. She was ending her devout, beseeching, prayer asking that she might be blessed with an honorable, virtuous good man as a mate. Someone like Simón. She actually said that! Upon hearing her breathe amén, his voice strangled by tears, Simón added his amén, like a grand—for him—never heard before lost chord.

So why pray aloud? It seems a foolish thing, in a way. God knows what is in our heart, spoken or unspoken. It's easier to comprehend how this can be than ever before in this age of super computers and concepts of five, six, seven or more dimensions, parallel universes, etc.

But prayer is primarily for us. We know, unless irredeemably hidebound and tone deaf, whether we are just routinely going through the motions. Attentive to our own voices, we should be able to detect every hint of insincerity, hypocrisy, subterfuge, smugness, holier-than-thouness, sanctimoniousness, self-satisfaction, deviousness, self-seeking, humbug, exaggeration.

We can also detect humility. The humility of one so humble that one is not proud of it. For that, all we have to do is reflect on how small we are in this speck of this vast universe. And yet God knows us and loves us. Well, who knows? Lost in prayer some day, if it has not occurred already, a grand, majestic lost chord may reverberate throughout our soul and—it's up to us—continue to reverberate forever.

Let us not forget, however, that prayer is also for God. Can we imagine the greatest and most powerful of all totally alone in the universe, no other sentient beings evincing awareness of His glory, mercy and love? Free will is a constant in the equation. Worship, adoration, from mindless robots is a total no-brainer. Some people, exercising their free will—reveling in it, wallowing in their sacred freedom as though it were mire and they were pigs—blame God for everything that's wrong in the world and in themselves. And yet to some of them there is no divinity, barring themselves and their ilk. God is dead.

Do we need our families, friends, other consciousnesses out there to be aware of us and share bonds with us? "No man is an island," wrote John Donne. "Every person is a peninsula," according to Pérez. Latin paene, almost; Latin insula, isle. Almost an island.

Whenever Pérez watches the "Merkun people" go by.... The Merkun people the Merkun people the Merkun people.... Doesn't it drive you crazy to hear the relentless reliance of some politicians on this term for us? Couldn't we just once, at least, be their "fellow citizens," "y' all out there," or "you long-suffering tax-payers"? These particular pols all know exactly what the Merkun people need and want, having heard their voice through rigged polls or in a figment of their imagination, and are here to give it to them.

Pérez is developing a board game called The Merkun People which, when ready, he will make available on the internet. Draw a card that says "The Merkun people" and Go back 10 squares, Do not pass GO, Go to jail.

Let's make that: Whenever Pérez watches anyone go by, he thinks, "Hey, look at that, will you? Another consciousness. How wonderful, how amazing! Unique in many ways. The beauty of it: Everybody different! "Thank the Lord," as Sergeant Coulter would say. Eduardo marvels at how special each one is, how much each could offer (talents, life experiences, relationships with others, dos and don'ts), if we could only tap into it. We can't to any extent in most instances, so that's what makes those close to us so infinitely wonderful. So dear.

That's what makes the teaching profession so great. Who else gets to meet and know rather well so many consciousnesses and share in both directions across a very narrow or wider neck of connecting land. (I'm serious! There was any number of conscious ones.)

Thank God for languages, widening the necks and making our peninsulas so much closer together than otherwise, in space and in time. Conceptually, this is not too difficult to envision in these advanced times, in five or however many dimensions it may take. Many of us joined together, tenuously or more firmly and all joined tenuously or more firmly with God—this last part ultimately up to us, whatever our other ties may be.

So as a tiny consciousness in this immense universe, Pérez prefers to address himself to the Supreme Consciousness aloud. Obviously, family prayers are necessarily aloud. Necessarily, we do our best to keep any note of humbug or hypocrisy out of them. Not so with repetition, however. All too frequently. Some say the same prayer over and over again. Yeshua decried "vain repetitions." Let's strive strenuously to prevent ours from falling into this category.

Praying aloud should weary us of always hearing the same thing, causing us to reflect on what we're doing and have been doing, on others' needs, on innumerable blessings not wholly or rightly perceived before, our opportunities, our decisions, and introduce a little variety. Yes, our loving family members' little detectors may be out—never in wait to pounce, to condemn, but to help and encourage, striving always to increase bandwidth and firm up connections. Heartfelt repetitions are not vain. For our own progress, though, we should try to avoid ruts.

For those new to prayer who have not yet developed sufficient confidence to pray in their own words on their own, there is always The Lord's Prayer . Say it thoughtfully, earnestly, and it will always bring you strength and determination.... Hope. Humility. No matter how many times you may repeat it. But sing it, also, to better express the depth of your emotion and for variety. Many midis of it are available. The version followed in Albert Hay Malotte's great hymn is found in the King James version of the Bible, Matthew 6:9-13.

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation,* but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen

*Help us not to sin; i.e., not to succumb to temptation.
Do pauses in family and other spoken prayers make us feel uncomfortable? Is that why we sometimes use vain repetitions, fearing hesitations? Will God be upset with us if we fumble for words? Should this make others uncomfortable? Have faith! "....the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words." (Romans 8: 26) We may stumble, but words are not all. Not everything.

Pérez's most common vocal prayer consists of one word—often repeated a number of times daily. Breathed softly or shouted: "Glory!" First thing each day he likes to go outside and look at the sky. The heavens. Glory to God in the highest! What a glorious creation! What great love to let us live on earth! What infinite love to send his Son to earth, to teach us, guide us, set the perfect example—offer to us by giving up his own life as a sacrifice the promise of eternal life. Of resurrection and unbounded joy.

Who would not want to earn this? Not for promised reward, however. From gratitude. Love. Gratitude for the Savior's love and condescension. Con-. Remember Latin cum, with? To come down, descend, and share with us our lowly mortal life! To suffer every rebuff and indignity, a cruel crown of thorns, a horrible death on a cross, and forgive the evil-doers.

Pérez loves to look at the heavens any time of day (or night) and, awestruck, he sometimes startles others by breathing "Glory!" aloud, with arms outstretched, looking heavenward. With added eloquence because of Anneliese and the cloths of heaven a poor young student would place beneath her feet. "The sky is the daily bread of the eyes," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Some do not believe in God. If we are going to live again after this earthly life and there is some power, a God, able to make it possible, of all conceivable ways that might be imagined for accomplishing this, could any be more marvelous? None. Only a Father in Heaven, with a love, power, and wisdom so great as to be inconceivable to man could conceive of and put into effect such a wonderful, motivating, heart and soul-touching plan.

In a recent publication extolling the wonder of numbers, mathematics and probability—fascinating to Eduardo—the author claims that given enough time, any improbable, unbelievable event can take place. About that time, Ed got out the 15-year-old drill he has and started to drill a hole. His new cordless one didn't have enough power. Nothing happened. Focused on setting up the workpiece and so used to using the cordless one, Ed had failed to plug it in.

Are you going to tell Ed that that cord was going to plug itself in? Was any form of inanimate matter or power ever, in a zillion zillion years going to plug it in? No way could it plug itself in. Time at times seems forever, yet not time alone, but timing is everything. All too soon, from an earthly perspective, Ed's old drill, drill cord, and the whole caboodle will be dust.

Listen, Pérez, mindless anecdotal "evidence" like that is unacceptable. Given enough time, anything CAN happen! Sure, sure. And old Grandmother Earth will be getting older than the universe before we know it.

Amazingly complex things like eyes don't just come about by themselves, by random, haphazard mutations in any sequence whatever. A bird's wings serve no survival purpose unless full-fledged for flight, not just for warmth—every bone, nerve and muscle exactly right in terms of weight and function, together with a brain capable of making millisecond adjustments however the wind may blow.

The poor bird might as well have broken wings unless every last thing is perfect. Easy prey. Oh, sure, aeons ago the creature started out just gliding. No trick to that. A piece of cake! A pie in your face, it is! Try gliding a piece of paper or anything at all. Any piece of anything not cunningly crafted.

So, about evolution.... Sure, there's change within species. That's obvious enough. But all by itself from warm primordial soup (said to contain a simple sugar) to any living thing, in Ed's opinion, not in a giga ziga zillion years. This hasn't been replicated yet and a zillion monkeys working at it a zillion years could no more accomplish it than they could type out the complete works of Shakespeare.

Time is not enough. Without timing... Timeliness... Sequencing—of each step, theoretically of many, countless steps under the right conditions at exactly the right time—has to be part of the equation. Plus many must occur simultaneously. And there hasn't been enough time. Mathematicians much more brilliant than Pérez compute that the necessary random mutations could never occur as claimed for lack of time!

A process was employed that didn't just happen by happenstance all by itself. Thinkers should not be criticized for thinking, but divine intelligence and power should be factored in and not disregarded. The infinite number of wonders we behold, hear, touch, feel, taste, smell, or sense in any way can be sensed with appreciation, wonder and gratitude only by sentient beings. Our good sense and senses tell us that a Sentient Being is behind all the living forms in otherwise formless matter.

What is most crucial to dispassionate acceptance of the theory of evolution? The discovery of two or three missing links? An archaeopteryx "fossil," half-bird, half reptile? Seized on by devout evolutionists—before it was scientifically examined—as consoling confirmation of their authoritative true faith? A similar, authentic fossil or two? No. Finding a convincingly large number of transitional fossil stages on which to base believable scenarios or—at the very least—the hypothesizing of viable ones that take into account the astounding number of complexities on every hand... and cilium!

Some writers on the subject firmly disallow all doubts, sure-sightedly envisioning, for example, seamless transformations of an artiodactyl (antelope-like animal) into a modern whale. Sure, check out this ankle bone from a whale fossil—no larger than a lug nut. Yep. In this little case right here. See? It's a perfect match to an antelope one, exactly as anticipated. I'll replace the cover now. Consider the case closed!

Escape is a key word in these discussions. Escape the gaping jaws of predators by taking to the atmosphere or the hydrosphere. Wing away in the air or splash off in an ocean. Escape and survive.

So primeval predators on land terminated their pursuit the instant terrified prey plunged into the water? And no Eocene crocs or sharks lurked in wait delighted to have free home delivery? Out of the frying pan into the fire apparently didn't apply. How long did hundreds (tens of thousands?) of the poor beasts have to thrash about in the new habitat before developing appendages that served equally well for swimming and trotting? How long did it take for their nostrils to migrate to their backs and become blowholes? When their appendages were half-way to becoming as useless, both as flippers and legs, as our appendixes are, could they paddle and waddle fast enough to escape fierce carnivores fully evolved and adapted?

How many aeons went by before the antewhales decided to take the final plunge? Was chewing cud such a bother that evolving baleens forsook grazing on green meadows cuz they could so effortlessly strain plankton through evolving buck teeth? At what point were sperm antewhales able to gobble up squid as efficiently as they chomped up grass? How tortuously slowly did the pitiful, progressively hoofless ungulates that were not snacked on starve to death, fit for neither land nor sea?

Where are the whalelopes that got wet feet and—about half-way—backed away from this perilous double-jeopardy life-style, escaping the hazards of the ocean by frantically waddling back onto terra firma a final time. Let's examine lots of antelope ankle bones, contemporary and from the fossil record, to see whether some of them are curiously deforrned and carry maritime chemical signatures of some sort.

The evolutionists should take a harder look at ethology, the study of animal behavior. Forgive the irony. Most ethologists, for the most part evolutionists, should take a much closer look at evolution. What about "instinct"? As a key part of their theory, wouldn't they have to accept Trofim Denisovich Lysenko's doctrine of acquired characteristics, for which he was ridiculed, misquoted, and reviled?

So a certain bird is the first of its kind to build a nest of certain materials in a certain way in a certain type of location. A miraculous thing in itself! The results are so excellent they favor the bird's survival. Others of its species like what they see and do likewise. This behavior is transmitted to the young and voilá, all birds of that species end up building their nests in the same way. A miracle on top of a miracle!

In the distant past a female African python must have coiled itself around its eggs for no discernible—no explicable—reason. Let us suppose that it was just a random, accidental thing. Let's say that it liked the feel of the eggs against its skin and enjoyed rubbing itself against them. Coiled, shivering, and vibrating, the snake generated heat that kept the eggs 11 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than otherwise until the eggs hatched. No how did the very first female python to do this manage to hatch without this?

Somehow this behavior which favored little hatchlings' survival must have ended up in its DNA. It somehow must have sensed that this strange behavior enhanced survivability, so it decided to do it habitually. The behavior was imitated by other snakes, delighted and impressed by what they were seeing, and bye and bye, voilá, voilá, all female African pythons ended up doing the same. Not one individualist among them. Every single one in lock-coil, lock-shiver, lock-vibration.

Old Trofim, a staunch evolutionist, could be laughing through his beard. A great favorite of Stalin's, he set Soviet agriculture back some thirty years. Stalin looked to him for theoretical, "scientific" underpinnings for evolving the New Soviet Man, accomplished in large part by mass murders.

What did evolve under Stalin—a great victory of Marxist atheism, despotism, historical determinism and the dialectic method—was the emergence of numerous freedomless alcoholics, misfits, and criminals. And yet many of them followed the light that was in them and became greater for what they endured! Alexander Solzhenitsyn emerged as marvelous, amazing evidence of this.

The moths of London.... They were once light in color. Then the industrial revolution came along and since blending with their environment helped them escape predators, many dark ones survived. Along came pollution that was so bad something had to be done about it. The environment got lighter in color and so did the moths. Seemingly true, quite convincing, but in fact the study was seriously flawed. Read Discover, Sept. 2002, p. 78.

Polar bears evolved during the Ice Age when brown bears ventured farther and farther north to harvest abundant seals. Bears on the light side of brown had better camouflage against the white snow and consequently ate better than the darker ones. (Would it be heretical to suggest that the conversion from dark to light had to be complete before it could effectively camouflage the bear? A white blotch on the animals left foreleg might not do the trick. Oh, a progressively lighter brown would do it? But until it's totally white, how does it help the bear survive by catching more prey?) Over time, however, evolution supposedly totally polarized the situation.

Many animals—take man's best friend—have incredibly gifted noses. The seals that smelled the best (in both senses of the word) evidently were the most tasty—a bear's first choice—so the evolution of seals turned out to be so defective in this regard that they had to rely on their eyes alone. Their noses were useless except for poking up through holes in the ice for a quick snort of air and getting swatted by polar bears.

You like this scenario? Pérez is developing a knack for writing them. A revised one, closely patterned after evolutionist models and therefore a bit more plausible: Many seals erroneously figured that anything as smelly as a bear was dead and couldn't hurt them. They learned a second or two too late to pass the news on to others that the bite of a bear was even worse than its smell, thus assuring the polar bears' survival—which, of course, was their main aim.

As everyone knows, modern man evolved in Africa from hairy simians. A curious contradiction: White reflects infrared rays, black absorbs them. This didn't bother polar bears. Through unnatural selection—polar bears had no predators before Early Man came along—they just built up blubber for insulation and evolved great hair (so determined were they to have no bad hair days) that allowed the passage of infrared while remaining very white in appearance.

Then Homo Erectus tribes ventured into Polar regions to harvest the abundance of both seals and polar bears. Blubber insulation didn't suit them, so they suited up in white polar bear skins. They needed camouflage and the heavy bear pelts did a better job for them than the dark hair and skin that so unbearably absorbed heat in the tropics.

Polar bears are the largest, most powerful land-based predators, so only a limited number of Erectuses were able to warm and camouflage themselves in this manner. The older, weaker, unskilled, unlucky specimens were removed from the scene by the Polar Bear Solution. Having dark hides no longer made any sense at all now that they were wearing polar bear pelts, so the survivors let natural selection go to work on them and voilá, voilá, Earth's first Caucasians! Hey, why hide such nice hides behind all that hair? Just not right, so evolution shed it for them. Going overboard, as it sometimes does, evolution shed Erectuses' hair almost all over the place.

Some evolutionists believe that ultraviolet radiation and vitamin D determined the distribution of lighter and darker skins. Such was their need for said vitamin, that experience taught the early Erectuses above 50º latitude—where said radiation is distressingly less intense—to go around stark naked in the icy cold and eat lots of fish liver to enhance chances of absorbing optimum coveted Caucasian dosages. Of course, as always, there were some who wouldn't go with the flow and their descendants' skins are comfortably dark to this day.

Preposterous! Evolutionists vigorously reject such silly, shallow scenarios. But there's more. Thanks to polar bear skins and their newly invented igloos, the whiter evolving Erectuses could enjoy intimate, warm togetherness, which encouraged reproduction. The female Erectuses, who were very fastidious, encouraged their mates to do #1 outside. In the extreme Arctic cold, anything exposed to the great outdoors was instantaneously frozen stiff. Dr. Pérez leaves it to you to consider whether a "cryogenetic" or "cryoagra" phenomenon might also have abetted procreation.. (From Greek kryos: cold or freezing.)

Many millennia later where in warmer climes dwellings constructed of little blocks of clay rather than blocks of ice dotted the landscape, an ancient threat against vile enemy piddlers was still in common currency. To wit and namely, the Biblical saying (paraphrasing), "not a man among them shall be left to piss against the wall." (1 Kings 16:11)

A pungent pronouncement, but the ancients didn't know the half of it. The great and mighty men of yore with their mighty nightly streams stand to be puny compared with what your and (not very likely) my slender progeny have in store. (Just kidding!) I am referring, of course, to the survival of the fattest postulate. As the generously prosperous continue to consume gigacalories of fat and carbs during the critical child-bearing years, it is entirely possible that within a million or so years—give or take an aeon or two—humankind will give birth to a new race of humastodons, big in mastos (breast), odontos (tooth) and rear end and elsewhere.

"Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?" (Matthew 6:27) There are those without a thought in their heads and others excessively thoughtful who easy as pie can add cubits to their... girth..., of which they have no dearth. Still others, sorrowfully, don't have a prayer. Pérez himself—just as one small example—has been thoughtfully struggling to add to his stature ever since he said goodbye to immaturity (not that long ago, if ever, some say), and can he add a millicubit to his stature or girth?

But brainy or brainless, geezer, dork or geek, change, growth, and decay relentlessly bombard all of us and our DNA like gamma rays and there are those seriously brilliant ones with brain power to the power of pie... er pi... who, heedless of the intertangling of infinite variables involved, want to open Pandora's box without a concrete clue concerning what could come out.

Who can divine the workings of the Divine? Could a version of evolution or elements thereof be an instrument of God? A manifestation of freedom in an ultra-profound sense? (This implies competition.) Who can naysay or gainsay it? But take thought. A little thought. A tiny precious pearl of thought. Our own. Our very own. Surprising somebody. Pandora shouldn't have all the fun. Yes, there is that implication. But not all thoughts are dangerous... unless we are attempting to debunk something.

It may surprise some to know that dialects had their origin far away and long ago in that same primeval jungle. Our hairy simian-like ancestors had evolved opposable thumbs—grasping for a great leap forward in their evolution. Some of them had evolved so exceptionally that they had opposable big toes too. The thumb ones had the habit of standing out on a limb sucking their thumbs and beating their chests while crowing, "Tarmangani!" (later immortalized in print by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Tarzan of the Apes).

To the thumb ones, this meant "Me heap big tough dude!" The thumb and toe ones, who could swing around on vines grasped with thumbs and/or toes in any combination, bugled out an almost identical Tarmanganwheee! but with the meaning, "Hey, lookame, heap daring evolving young man on flying trapeze!"

This was only the beginning, but in the process these our ancestors discredited the "bow-wow" theory of the origin of language. Tarmangani and Tarmanganwheee!—as should be abundantly clear—in no way, manner, means, shape, or form had anything to do with the objects or actions concerned. That is, unless these early Semi-Erectuses were getting the first agglutinative language started on its way and manga, for example, was an onomatopoeic rendering of the sound of pounding on a heap big drum: mangamanga, mangamanga!

As you know, in agglutinative tongues, any possible combination of meaningful syllables can be incorporated into one word, so who knows what tar, ni and whee might mean. An example from Swahili: mimi ninakupenda wewe analyzes out as:
mimi - me
ni - I
na - signals present tense
ku - you~x
penda - love
wewe - you~y

mimi ninakupenda wewe - Me Irightnowyoulove you.
This brings to mind Rousseau's concept of "le noble sauvage." Noble for their simplicity—ostensibly—among other things. These "savages" can have the most complex languages imaginable. (From our point of view. From theirs, English is almost insurmountably weird and difficult. Their beliefs and customs can be a bit complex, too.) Tarzan is reported by Burroughs as having said, "Me Tarzan. You Jane." Sounds ridiculous, but wait! Tarzan no doubt was deliberately reducing his complex agglutinative utterance to a simplistic form he figured Jane was bright enough to understand.

Any pet lover knows that in their native tongue dogs say "Woof-woof" not "Bow wow." "Bow-wow" is a word borrowed from English which, clever though these dogs may be at herding sheep and fetching sticks, they have never managed to master satisfactorily. Hispanic dogs say "Guau-guau," with a pronounced English accent. French dogs say "Tou-tou" as well as "Ouâ-ouâ," with a delightful French articulation. Italian dogs limit themselves to "Bau." Like their "owners" they eschew garrulity. This kind of diversity complicates things quite enough but to top it off, the only canines in our primeval jungle were African Wild Dogs—the meanest dudes alive.

According to the bow-wow theory, it was onomatopoeia that started languages on their way. Words came into being through imitation of natural objects or actions; hence, the imitation of a dog's bark meant "dog."

To express dog in primeval Erectish would call for something like "yip-yap." But the first time an evolving Homo Erectus experimented with onomatopoeia—something he couldn't even spell, let alone pronounce—his imitation yip-yap-yappy sound was interpreted as a mating call, he was at once surrounded by a pack of the most vicious animals on earth and only escaped by scrambling up out of reach—employing every opposable device at his command, including his knees and elbows and clamping and swinging on vines with his teeth. Much more could be said, but Pérez prefers to keep this scenario Italianate.

By the way, Barking Dogs Do Bite: the English title of one of Vitus B. Dröscher's intriguing ethology books. Turns out it's a myth that they don't. His splendid books take the name of one of the 30 or so chapter titles in each volume. Pérez neglected to mention that dogs say wau-wau (vow-vow) in German. Watch out if you hear that in Vitus's native Germany

Does this whole discussion sound foolish to you? Of course! Everyone knows that women invented language. How could it be otherwise? Yet mention is never made of the fair sex in these hypotheses. Yes, it is true, the first palindrome (Hey, what's one palindrome against talkathons?) was spoken by Adam, but Eve immediately upstaged him. (Palindromes read the same, forward or backward.)
Adam: Madam, I'm Adam.
Eve: Eve.
And then Eve, continuing on without pausing to draw a breath:
Bird rib
Top spot
Straw warts
Yo! Banana boy!
Do geese see God?
I saw I was I
No lemons, no melon
Stack cats
Mix a maxim
Name no one man
Step on no pets.
283-4382
Elu par cette crapule (French)
Barg nie ein Grab (German)
Yo soy (Spanish)
Lavoro oro val (Spanish) .........
In reaction to Eduardo's carefully thought out scenarios, Anneliese always interjects this: "There you go again. You've been reading Dave Barry again."

"Ho!" responds Ed. "Authoritative, coldly logical evolutionists are measurably funnier than amiable Dave. But don't you worry. Little by little they will evolve scenarios that totally explain everything, in persuasive, convincing, and, yeah verily, irrefutable ways. Given enough time, that is. Given enough time, anything can happen.

As you estimados lectores (esteemed readers) undoubtedly have perceived, the foregoing discussion—beginning even before Cryoagra—has edged disturbingly close to the subject of "biology." Ed abhors this sort of thing, as you know. Besides, this kind of debate is rarely carried on in a calm, cool, dispassionate manner. The ad hominem fallacy immediately rears its ugly head. (The truth depends exclusively on who says it.) I've got a lot more initials than you, you creep, among which Ph.D. is only a starter. You've got your nerve to question a highly evolved specimen like me. What I'm saying can't possibly be stupid. Take a look at all my degrees.

Straw men, flimsy as all get out, are propped up to be easily elbowed aside or blown over. (You surely have noticed that they are never straw women. As Anneliese once or twice has said: The weaker sex? Quatsch! Twaddle! Bosh! Nonsense!)

[A discursion about Mormons, originally at this point, has been transferred to a separate location. Click here if you would like to read it now.]