Category: Miscellaneous

On this, our country’s Independence Day, let me tell you a story about America.

Several years ago, my long-lost brother Brad got back in touch with me. Technically, my stepbrother, because he was the child of my Dad’s second wife, but everyone in my family is only half-sibling to each other anyway, so we don’t pick at the technicalities. We had online correspondence for a while and then one year he offered to pay for a vacation for me to see him back where he lives on the East Coast. This was shortly after my Mom died, and I needed something to clear my head, so I said yes. Besides, as it turned out, after Dad and his wife separated, Brad wound up moving to a small town in Maryland not too far removed from where my Dad’s sister and brother (my aunt and uncle) live. How Brad ended up there is a rather odd and involved tale in itself, and unfortunately I can’t remember most of it. But he didn’t even know that Dad’s other relatives were nearby, and this also served as a means for us to meet them, since I hadn’t seen my aunt and uncle in years either.

What does this have to do with America? Well, this part of America is right outside Washington DC, and not too much drive from the Gettysburg battlefields. So in addition to Brad and I meeting my aunt and uncle (and their spouses) we toured the sites. Brad took me to Gettysburg. My Aunt Pat and her husband Joe took me to Arlington National Cemetery. And Brad and I met my Uncle Mark in Washington, after doing a short tour of the Smithsonian.

The last time I was in Washington was as a kid, maybe before high school, when Pat and Joe took me to the Smithsonian then. And I remember seeing the giant flag that was flying over Fort McHenry, during the War of 1812 battle that inspired the writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” When I was a kid, the flag was displayed vertically, well lit, in such a way as to convey its size and importance. But as it turned out, being exposed to light that way damaged the fabric of what was already a very old piece. When I went to the modern flag exhibit, that giant wall display wasn’t there anymore. There was a set of dark, walk-through corridors showing the history of the Fort McHenry flag, its public displays and the attempts at restoration. And in the middle of the exhibit, one of these darkened corridors had an angled display of the flag remains they were trying to preserve, under ultraviolet light. And that light made the white of the stripes and stars look more twilight purple, and the field of blue look more night black.

Then one of the last things we did before I had to go home was when Pat and Joe took me back to Washington to see the National Archives, where the originals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are kept. I’d remembered seeing those too. And when I was younger, those were obviously fragile copies, but they were still legible. But a similar concern with light and deterioration has caused the government to move the documents to a new building, and when I made the tour this time, the room was in a normal, but very dim, light, and it was all I could do to read anything on the documents.

And part of me thought, if it’s like this now, how long is it going to be before these artifacts are so fragile that they have to be taken away from public display? And will that be enough to save them?

It was a sobering experience. I can actually say that I got to see the foundations of my country’s democracy fade away before my very eyes.

As far as the political stuff, I need a little more time to articulate my first idea, so let me start this blog with a small review of the  May 22 Game of Thrones episode, “The Door.”

For those who for some reason don’t already know this, Bran Stark was continuing to develop his psychic powers within the great tree, as he had been doing in previous episodes.  In one of his visions, he’d gone back in time and seen the younger version of his father, Ned Stark, Ned’s sister Lyanne, and “Wyllis,” a stableboy who Bran realized was Hodor, but still normal and able to talk.  In the present, Bran tried to find out what happened to make Hodor “Hodor,” but of course Hodor couldn’t tell him.  In this week’s episode, Bran’s psychic travel took him into the present where he confronted the White Walkers and their zombie horde, and at this point, their leader, the Night King, grabbed Bran’s arm.  When Bran woke up in the tree, he realized the armprint was still on his wrist.  Bran’s mentor, “the Three-Eyed Raven”, told him the Walkers were now able to enter their sanctuary and that he should go back in the past to learn as much as he could while there was still time.

So Bran’s mind goes back to the Stark estate while Meera and the tree spirits vainly try to fight off the zombie hordes.  Meera desperately tells Bran to wake up and “warg” into Hodor’s body so he can use his strength to help fight.  So Bran, while still watching Wyllis in the past, possesses Hodor’s body, creating a link between himself, Hodor and Wyllis, and as the Raven, the tree spirits and Bran’s direwolf are killed, Hodor covers Meera’s escape to an exit corridor as she drags Bran off on a sled.  And as he closes the door behind him, the last thing Meera says to Hodor is “Hold the door” – while in the past, Bran watches Wyllis suddenly collapse.  As Hodor is being ripped up by zombies, Bran sees the other peasants gather around Wyllis as he goes into convulsions, screaming over and over again, “Hold the door, hold the door” – which eventually gets turned into “Hodor.”

This climax has staggering implications.  Not only has Bran demonstrated the power to affect the past (though he’s not in much position to do so right now), in the process of doing so, he created (or resolved) a time paradox in which he turned Hodor into “Hodor” before Bran was even born.

Personally, the horrific manner of Hodor’s death means I’ll never be able to think of that line in the same way again.  It was of course a joke.  Like, some of us were wondering if Martin was ever going to publish that next book so that we would finally get the Hodor point-of-view chapters.  There were some fans who would actually carry on online conversations using just “Hodor.”  The thing was, if the word didn’t really mean anything, then really, it could mean anything.

Throughout the Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire series, the recurring mystery has never been, “Who were Jon Snow’s real parents?”  It was always “What the heck does ‘Hodor’ mean, and what happened to make him that way?”

And now the Great Mystery is finally revealed.  And now all the suspense is gone.