How about we give some thoughts to Togo?

Togo is a long, rectangular-ish country with a 31-mile-long coastline in western Africa along the Gulf of Guinea. Its economy relies on commercial and subsistence agriculture.

I learned that from typing “Togo” into Google. I also learned Togo isn’t the least fortunate nation on Earth, nor is it the most. Afghanistan and Denmark are in the running for those two spots.

According to our own Central Intelligence Agency, Togo’s estimated per capita gross domestic product in 2020 was $2,100, putting it at No. 213 out of 229 countries. The life expectancy for Togolese is 71.36 years, putting them at No. 166, and Togo’s infant mortality rate is 41.19 deaths per 1,000 live births, which ranks No. 196.

I’ve never been to Togo, and I don’t know whether I’ve met someone from Togo. Still, when I see a bumper sticker or business sign that says “God bless America,” I think of Togo. Maybe it’s the name. It reminds me of “yoyo.”

Compared to the Togolese, many people in the United States have it good, at least materially. Most of us can get clean water, we maintain a healthy and healthful distance from unprocessed sewage, and most of us have a steady supply of food.

The estimated per capita GDP in 2020 for the U.S. is around $60,000, our life expectancy is 80.59 years (we’re No. 46!) and our nation has 5.17 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Those numbers aren’t the best among industrial nations, but they’re sure a far sight rosier than Togo’s.

So, why not “God bless Togo?”

By any material measure, aren’t the Togolese more in need of a supreme being’s blessing at this point? The United States is the home team, I recognize, but we need to keep things in perspective, don’t we, when it comes to asking a god for something?

Do we not say “God bless Togo” because we don’t live in Togo? Probably, but if you believe in God, you’ve got to believe God cares about Togo.

When we in the U.S. say “God bless America” are we asking God to bless America above other nations? Perhaps people in other counties are saying “God bless our place” and we expect God to decide which country makes the best case. Are we trying to achieve some sort of parity in prayers here?

People can believe anything from sense to nonsense in this world, and they usually do, but reason has a reason. Reason could be a gift from this very same god that we’re asking to extend blessings.

Last question: What do people who have “God bless America” stickers on their bumpers aim to achieve? Is it to persuade the driver behind them to make the same request? Is it a message for God to read? Does God even read car bumpers?

I saw a sign on a business several years ago that read “God bless the whole world.”

That covers this matter pretty well, but if you desire specifics, here are some suggestions:

“God bless the Western Hemisphere”

“God bless the land west of the Pecos and north of the Rio Grande”

“God bless the polar ice caps”

Or how about:

“God bless America, and Togo too?”

An elegy for Mark

Shelton-Mason County Journal columnist Mark Woytowich died last Friday of a heart attack. It’s such a sad subtraction for this newspaper, for his readers, for his family and friends, and for the water and land in Mason County that he loved and defended so dearly, and wrote about so clearly and adoringly. We exchanged several emails over the years, but we hadn’t talked in person until two weeks ago when we met for coffee in downtown Shelton. We settled in, and he eventually told me a story about seeing a dead whale on the beach near Ocean Shores in early April. Five days later, I got his column to copy edit. It was about his and his wife Linda’s encounter with that whale. The column was elegant, an elegy for this man. It was about death and life and hope and grief and so many of the tiny ingredients of life that we don’t notice. I made a brain note to write and tell him it was the best column he’s written — and I’ve read all his columns in the past four years. But he died four days later, and that note will never be sent.

Here are excerpts from Mark’s last column. The headline was “Ocean Shores: Witness to a whale’s last journey”:

“We park just above where the sand is shiny and Linda kicks off her shoes, rolling up her pant legs to wade in the water to where her calves are swallowed by the frothy last surge of spent waves. She stretches out her hands and turns in the surf.

“I watch her ritual; she bends, lifts, examines, tosses away, ever alert for shells, driftwood sticks, red jasper or — her favorites — clear white agate stones. We drive again. Linda’s feet are encrusted with sand and glow pink from cold. Then we see it. We see it for a long time but don’t understand. I slow the car. We are just north of Ocean Shores …

“It is a gray whale more than 30 feet long. I think it is recently beached because its upper flesh has not been pecked too badly. Its large tail has been still long enough, however, for blowing sand to partly cover its outline, as though an embossed paper shape. Gull talons make tracks across the tail and along the hard-packed sand upwind of the carcass.

“The whale is colored a mottled brown, copper, ochre, patches of flesh-like peeling wallpaper in the color of autumn straw. The rough, scarred flesh says, ‘Life is tough. I wore this skin all these years and it got me here. Here, but no more, no farther’…

“I wish the whale would tell me what happened. Linda comes over and points to a jagged edge on one of its fins. Was it a propellor strike, she asks.

“Starvation. Chemicals. Ship strikes. Warmer currents. Underwater sonics so disturbing that, if it happened to me or you, we would be driven to our beds with pillows over our heads.

“But ultimately it is just death, a process that breaks down all organic matter evenly. Gulls don’t care. Everywhere on the beach something is dying, clamshells and crab claws dot the tide lines every day. How many sand dollars did I roll over to get here? …

“Maybe there’s no proper closure here. I am simply connected to this whale through the act of photographing it, then writing of it later. I am just doing a job. I hope my hand is guided right.”

■ Contact Kirk Ericson at [email protected].