I nearly didn’t post this week at all. But let me share a personal tradition that I miss while I’m sitting here on the sofa, the television paused. I had a writing assignment I shared but the most important thing I used to do this time of year, when I was teaching, was show episode 10 of season 1 of The West Wing. The entire series is playing on Netflix just now. A homeless vet dies wearing a coat that Toby Ziegler donated to charity. It had his business card in the pocket and for that reason Toby is called by the DC police to the Korean War Veterans Memorial in West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C.. They hope he can identify the body.

[I believe in stories, in the truth of stories. One of our first assignments in Junior English involved a story from American Indian Myths and Legends, edited by Alfonso Erdoes and Richard Ortiz. [It’s the other of the books I had to purchase over and over because it wandered off from my classroom.] I discussed the term “myth” and how it is often used to disparage a story: “Oh, that’s just a myth!” But the word is also unfairly applied to other people’s scripture. Myths contain what people considered necessary knowledge, valuable truths. The stories in The West Wing are fiction, not remotely mythical, but they contain truth, as all the best stories do.]

Toby Zeigler is Jewish, generally a curmudgeon, and not at all thrilled by the Christmas season, carolers, and trees everywhere. But then he recognizes the tattoo on the arm of a Korean War veteran who died of exposure during the night. There are several other threads to the episode, but I focused on Toby’s determination, though in a later season he mentions his “number never came up” for Vietnam, to ensure the dead man is given proper respect. I shared statistics about homelessness, which is proportionately very high among veterans. I can recommend “In Excelsis Deo” and “Noël” the following season, also episode 10. From season 3, “Isaac and Ishmael” was written and released just weeks after 911 with a statement at the beginning that no effort was make to fit it into the timeline of the series. That one is powerful too.

[It might be of interest to note that, according to a class I once took, the first time God spoke directly to a person, was to promise Hagar’s son Ishmael a life of honor and purpose, and in this way some assume both Judaism and Islam were fathered by Abraham.]