Stimulation

There are many things that stimulate memories. Last night I acquired a new one.
I was told by the Genius of Pittsburgh that smell is the strongest sense that stimulates memories. The fragrance of your Mother's cooking, the smell of your Father's coat long after he is gone, these all have power over your mind.
Taste can bring on recall. The taste of Minestrone brings on the fondness and tenderness of a small diner in Atlantic Highlands with its mist and coolness and thrill of a new love.
Hearing's effect has been muted by the passage of the giants. No longer do the hopes and dreams of human beings rise up ablaze with the words of Lincoln or Roosevelt or Churchill or Hitler. "Ask Not" where they have gone, we all know.
Now we come to the crux of the matter, visual! There is beauty and tenderness and pathos in that path from the eye to the brain. There is the grandeur of Ansel Adams. There is the young girl weeping at Kent State. There is the young girl so horribly burned by napalm. There is the desolation of My Lai, (Why was Hugh Thompson Jr. never awarded a Medal of Honor? If there is such a thing as honor in war, he was the penultimate example). There is young John Kennedy saluting his Father's cortege. Now there is a new one.
Last night I watched the news on television. There was a fantastically elegant cruise ship docking in Haiti. It was not all a faux pas, they did bring some bottled water. I wonder if it was Perrier. Haiti, a place of desolation and disease and malnutrition and violence and death. Recent developments have made Haiti a cause celebe among the glitterati of the world. I have news for the rich and famous of the world. All of those terrible things are not so new to Haiti. Those things exist all over the world. I wonder how many children could have been supplied with mosquito netting by the cost of adopting one child from Malawi? Malaria makes a lousy photo op. Come live in London where it takes a village to make a child feel like a pariah.
The sight of that cruise ship aroused a bile in me. Holland was fed by an air drop. Berlin was fed with an airlift that had more problems to deal with than permission to land. The sight of that cruise ship will remain with me and another sense will also be there. Something smells! Perhaps it is the tint of the residents that is holding back the relief that should be so readily available. Many of the Haitians speak French. If they cannot understand why they have been allowed to suffer so, they might speak to the residents of the French Quarter.
I will close now as I have to recharge my bile duct.