Dear Jud,

I am more and more bothered as time goes by things and people and their stories being forgotten. That is one thing I really meant when I said I was an "incorrigible atheist." I have an indelible sense that death is totally final and always have. I have known so many people with varyingly acknowledged senses of having an afterlife and having to face judgment and account for themselves, from full believers to half-hearted atheists. This is one thing I have never had any doubts about. It is in my bones. So mortal, finite remembrance of people I have known is very important to me. At times, it becomes a rage against that very mortality and finitude. But I have no urge toward wishful thinking in the matter. Now that I think of it, I wonder why. Most everyone else has doubts that flip flop from doubts about finality to doubts about immortality. I stay the same, but not from any moral conviction of knowing the "TRUTH" or ridiculous desire for consistency. I just do. It is I. Going over these old pictures has made this acute to me.

One story that should not be forgotten - was related to me by an old grey haired man who had his long hair done up in the masculine fashion that has been popular now amongst the affluent and he had incredible scars all over his upper torso. They were from bullet wounds and bayonet stabs.

He told me this tale..

He had been an Army infantryman in the vicious fighting on Attu Island in the Aleutian chain of Alaska in WWII. He did not tell us about the horrors of war, but of two things that were humorous. When the fighting had stopped, soldiers would get up on the mountainsides and slide down on their butts. Murderous children. Also, both sides, Japanese and American, wore white camouflage covers so that there could be no automatic identity of whose side a soldier was on. There was a Japanese soldier who had been separated from his unit. Hungry, he studied the American chow lines, noticing that many of the soldiers kept their white covers on. There also must have been a number of short, brown skin Americans (Hispanic? Italian? Navaho?). He seems to have gone through the chow time on several occasions without anyone noticing until he was finally captured. When I said that was a wonderful story, he replied, "That's old stuff. It's time for me to die." He did not die on us, something I should be used to but still disturbs me very much. But I seriously doubt he is still alive.

Another story: She was an old lady, very delicate, frail, but strangely fresh looking. She started telling me how she had married an Englishman in England who, after a while, acknowledged he was homosexual and deserted her there. That was many years ago, but she was still savagely but not mindlessly bitter. She was a person of many aspects. A profoundly believing Christian, she still refused to forgive him. She was what many people would call "crazy" but functional and independent enough not to be institutionalized. She had that terrifying tone of irony and "I know something you don't know about the REALTRUTH of things!" that the 'crazy' have and is just as profoundly NOT Christian at all. Being with her for that short while was like having a peep into a really existent magical world, but the world of the real GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES.

It is all right to tell these things because they do not betray any confidentiality. There is no possible way to identify the person even if someone wanted to.

In a related manner, you were worried about acknowledgements and permissions. Acknowledgement is necessary, but only within the actual necessary context. There should, of course, which is why I trust you automatically with anything and everything, no distortion of what a person said. You always present things with a me opposite you (in all its different senses) a stance that is perfectly clear. Sometimes I do not do this, but I think all those occasions are harmless. Also, if you acknowledge and do not misrepresent, then ANYTHING on the web you can quote. This is covered under the laws of scholarly engagement and free speech. Even people that want to charge money or keep their writings to themselves, once they make a statement open to the public, whether it is in a copyrighted book or whatever, it can be quoted even within large but reasonable units. So I would not worry much about that. After all, this is a scholarly endeavour and even in its way a news reportage of the State of the Union of the world of knowledge. It is a noble endeavour in the finest sense of the word ON YOUR PART.

'Sincerely'

Gary C. Moore