Notes from my Knapsack 3-21-24

Notes from my Knapsack 3-21-24
Jeff Gill

Who will watch the guardians?
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There's an old Latin tag that traces back to Juvenal: "quis custodiet ipsos custodes."

You can translate it "who will guard the guardians" or in more contemporary terms, who will watch the watchers? "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" however you put it today is an enduring question.

With the Oscars behind us, I've had some thoughts about the vast and somewhat unwieldy film "Oppenheimer." It tells a story from our history, which a passing few can still remember, and there's new information revealed out of the archives, but the personalities at the center of the creation of the atomic bomb are certainly compelling and that's what the cinematic version of J. Robert Oppenheimer's life was trying to capture.

There was attention to the ethical issues around whether we should have developed nuclear physics to create the weapons we did, and when humanity should use them. "Never" is one answer, but it's been negated by the fact that it has been done, twice directly on human targets, more often if you count the human cost of nuclear testing which killed downwinders, movie actors (ironically, John Wayne may have been one of them, caught in swirling irradiated dust filming a movie and dying later of lung cancer), and even some of the technicians at work in places like Los Alamos and Oak Ridge.

Alfred Nobel was so struck by the destructive power of dynamite he'd helped bring into the world he created a prize to develop peace. Oppenheimer had his own hopes for what the world would do with the inventions he helped bring into being, and that to me is where the movie recently honored both revealed and obscured at the same time.

Robert Downey, Jr. justly earned a great deal of praise for his portrayal of a governmental official, Lewis Strauss, who had come into conflict with Oppenheimer in the post-war era, and ultimately helped see to it that the views of scientists were not, in fact, the ones that made the final decisions about weapons development, let alone deployment.

There's a further story beyond the simple rise and fall of one brilliant physicist which perhaps another filmmaker will take on. That's the tension, left unresolved at the end of "Oppenheimer," around "who will watch the guardians?" The genius of Los Alamos seems to have thought that scientific elites would have a key voice at the table, if not the deciding presence. Downey offered up a Strauss whose bitter and somewhat ominous presence shadowed the realization that politicians would be making the decisions from then on, about new bombs and future command and control protocols for nuclear weapon deployment.

Yet, perhaps unintentionally, the story in the film makes it clear that there is no such thing as a purely rational scientist, either. They are driven by urges and impulses they're not always entirely aware of, and need some balance brought into their lives and work. Gen. Leslie Groves is almost a moral center, and certainly the calming presence, in the story on screen and perhaps in actuality. So did Nolan mean to imply military control is our best course?

I kind of doubt that. But the question, left unresolved, is one we still have: in science, in weapons, in vaccines, in space. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? We're still working on finding an answer we're comfortable with.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he does not have a final answer on this one, either. Tell him how you'd manage such matters at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Twitter.

Faith Works 3-15-24

Faith Works 3-15-24
Jeff Gill

Trying to remember, and not always succeeding
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Jersey City is a mystery I will likely never solve.

I've driven through it a few times, as many do and never notice it. If you're going from the Newark (NJ) airport into Manhattan, you'll almost zoom over it on elevated roadways. It's a city of some 300,000, just a bit smaller than Newark which is New Jersey's largest city, both in the shadow of New York City.

My father, who died four years ago this week, graduated from Iowa State in 1956 and got a job in Manhattan. He lived in Jersey City for that year, taking public transit and sometimes walking to his job on the other side of the Hudson, the Statue of Liberty on his right hand heading into work.

He talked about it once in my presence, actually to a group of children I was part of, explaining the meaning of the Statue of Liberty and of freedom to us. I never found out the company he worked for, where their offices were, or what he did.

Ron Gill grew up in a small town in western Iowa, attended a state school, and a day trip to Council Bluffs let alone over to Omaha was a big deal. He got a forestry degree, went west into national forests for his summer training, and had been through Los Angeles where an older sister lived, on his way to Portland, Seattle, then up into the Cascades. What I'm saying is he had seen big cities, but he'd never lived in one.

It may have been too big a leap, from Ames, Iowa to Manhattan and Jersey City. My impression, admittedly vague, is that it didn't go well. It had something to do with importing lumber and building products, and he ran back and forth a bit from the office to the docks, keeping accounts, checking invoices, "struggling to understand" how the business worked he said, but "glad to get back to the Midwest."

After his year in New York, he got a line on a sales job back in Chicago through a college friend, with the Edward Hines Lumber Company, and was happy to return west. He would work in the lumber business in the Chicago area the rest of his career. Not long after getting semi-settled in a YMCA residential hotel in LaGrange, he met another resident on the women's side, went to a football game at Wrigley Field with her (look it up!), met her parents at Thanksgiving and married her the next July. They were together 62 years.

During his last year, when I was back home I asked Dad about Jersey City. He was vague, and dismissive, and in retrospect, I think he was finding it hard to remember what I was talking about. "I wasn't there long."

Yes, but that first year after college is a big deal. He looked at me, puzzled; "I married your mother within a year of getting back to the Midwest." He went on to tell me familiar stories I knew well of that next year. But of the fall of 1956 to the fall of 1957 I was fated never to hear more of from him again.

It's a familiar reminder: talk to your parents, your grandparents if you still have them, older family members in general, while you can. It's good advice. No matter how well you inquire, you'll still have questions when they're gone, but it does feel good to know you did talk, there were new stories, that there were some puzzles made clear when you still could.

My point here is to press the urgency back even further. Don't wait too long. Memory is a funny, tragic, fleeting thing. Ask now. Take notes. Don't wait.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not always sure how far to trust his memory, either. Tell him what you've forgotten at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.