1030

Sunday, October 30, 2022

In bed at about 9:30, awake at about 5:30, up about 6, 5 pss, snifter nightcap.  59 degrees out, cloudy high of 57 is expected.

Trick or Treat

Today is Bayside's little goblins day.  Over the last couple of years, we have had no kids come to our door.  The most we have ever had knocking on our door is probably 3 groups.  I'm usually the one to answer the doorbell and distribute the candy and I enjoy it, really delight seeing the kids in their costumes and their orange plastic pumpkin collection baskets.  On Andy and Anh's former block in Fox Point, literally hundreds of kids would show up from far and wide on Beggars' Day to gather candy.  Most of the houses were adorned with Halloween ghosts and skeletons and other creative spooky decorations for what had somehow become an annual neighborhood festival of sorts.  Quite a sight to see.  In my childhood in Chicago, trick-or-treating was always done on October 31st and after sundown, regardless of which day the date fell on.  Somehow, somewhere, sometime the problem of poisoned candy, razor blades embedded in apples, and other horrors became commonplace enough that trick or treating was moved to daylight hours on a weekend day near the 31st. What to think of this? 

Neighbors Roman, Anna, and MaryLou Savary

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont

We watched this movie on Netflix last night, a story of a lonely widow, played by elegant Joan Plowright, ignored by her daughter and grandson after the death of her husband and her move to a 'golden age' hotel in London.  After tripping and falling in front of the basement flat of a young writer named Ludovic Meyer, Mrs. Palfrey and Ludo strike up a friendship.  At the Claremont Hotel where she resides in a small cheerless room, Ludo comes to be mistaken by the other residents as Sarah's grandson, a mistake encouraged and then sustained by Sarah and Ludo.  It's a lovely but sad story of old age and loneliness and approaching death, although as one of the residents tells Mrs. Palfrey "We're not allowed to die here."  All the elderly residents in the Claremont, played by character actors, are portrayed humorously but respectfully in the movie.  In another fall, Sarah breaks her hip, is hospitalized, developed pneumonia, and dies, with Ludo her friend to the end.  Leaving the hospital, Ludo sees a shrunken old lady in a wheelchair, alone on a walkway outside the hospital.  He makes a point of greeting her which causes her to look up and smile, reminding me of John Prine's brilliant, sensitive "Hello in There" and Brandi Carlile, barefooted and at home, singing it on Stephen Colbert's program after Prine's death.

Civil Rights 1963, White Rights 2022

I listened to Barbara Chase-Riboud's I Always Knew on the way to Whole Foods to find the salsa that Micaela served the other night on our last game night.  The letter to her mother was written in the summer of 1963, the summer of MLK's March on Washington.  As I listened to her description of frustrations and fears and anger of American Blacks in 1963 I pondered how it might apply to MAGA people today and probably since Obama's election in 2008:

    "I read about the riot in Philadelphia in the Times but I'm afraid one must be prepared for a lot worse to come before things get better.  By the March on Washington we Negroes have shown a remarkable unity.  Remember we used to say they could never get together like Jewish people?  Well, they have! and the opposition can certainly see their strength and determination.  This scares and frustrates them because they see also their ultimate defeat.  When people see defeat coming, it makes them mad, frustrated and desperate.  The result is nastiness, violence, and brutality to the last degree.  Now everyone is so aware of the problem that there is no escaping it anywhere.  People resent this.  They resent having to think about something that never concerned them before, which really concerned only us.  Already in the South, the violence has already started and the segregationists are digging in for a long, hard fight.  They can no longer either ignore the problem or pretend that Negroes are happy or pretend that they can't change it or anything else.  There are no shadowy corners left for people to hide [in.]  You are either for or against.  In America, the Negroes will begin to see how wicked and nasty the people can get when they are pushed to the extremes of a decision.  And if this [1964] civil rights bill doesn't pass, the Negroes have no choice then but to be just as nasty back. It is going to be Hell."

    Barbara's letter was written when Anne and I were living in a dinky furnished apartment on US 1 in Stafford Courthouse, Virginia, where many of the March on Washington participants from further south would have passed on their way to Washington.  It was written a few months before JFK was assassinated on 11/23/63 and about a year before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed by LBJ on July 2.

    Is it a stretch to analogize the fears, frustration, disappointments, and anger among American Blacks in the 1960s with similar feelings among White American MAGA people in the 2000s, especially after the election of Barack Hussein Obama in 2008?  Perhaps, and all analogizing carries incongruities within it.  The huge difference of course is the fear, anger, etc., of the Blacks was grounded in oppression, persecution, and long-term lack of the 'privileges and immunities' of citizenship and personhood whereas any similar feelings among Whites are based on loss of hegemony, power, and privilege. Blacks in the 60s and 70 knew they were relatively powerless in a racist society where they were stigmatized by race and heritage.  Powerless politically, powerless economically, and powerless on the streets against racist law enforcement.  "BLACK POWER" was sought not only by Stokely Carmichael and SNCC but by all the civil rights organizations, militant and otherwise.  And it's growing Black power, highlighted by the election and re-election of a Black president, that triggered the growth of right-wing, white nationalist, white supremacy movements, and the election of a White racist, authoritarian, fascistic, anti-immigrant president in 2016.  "Why do we want these people from all these shithole countries here? We should have more people from places like Norway." White Replacement Theory.  "Jews Will Not Replace Us!",  Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson.  Sean Hannity.  QAnon.  White supremacy, Black subordination, Reconstruction battles, Jim Crow, States' Rights - The Civil War never ended.  It continued and continues in differing guises up to today.  The January 6th assault on the Capitol and on Congress was its most vivid manifestation.  More will probably follow and probably with more success.  Barbara Chase-Riboud wrote her mother that 'when people see defeat coming, it makes them mad, frustrated and desperate' and "They resent having to think about something that never concerned them before, which really concerned only us", i.e., minority status and power sharing in a multi-racial, multi-cultural polity.  

    The things one thinks of on a trip to buy some salsa and nacho chips.

War

News today that because of drone attacks on Russian warships in the Black Sea, Russia is pulling out of the UN-brokered agreement permitting Ukrainian grain to be shipped out to the world.  So Russia retaliated for a bomb blowing up a strategic bridge between Crimea and Russia by raining down cruise missiles, bombs, and rockets on civilian targets throughout Ukraine and retaliates for an attack on warships by contributing to world hunger, especially in poor nations, i.e., punishing more non-combatant civilians, always claiming that their inhumane crimes are the fault not of their own decisions, but because of the West.  Also news of Russian forces blanketing battle areas with white phosphorus, "Willie Peter" as Americans called it when they used it in Vietnam, supposedly for illumination purposes only.  It burns through everything and everyone it lands on, from the skin down to the bone.  An American soldier who had fought in Ukraine reported that soldiers who were sprayed with it committed suicide rather than live with the burns. 

Eighth Air Force by Randall Jarrell

If, in an odd angle of the hutment,

A puppy laps the water from a can

Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving

Whistles O Paradiso!--shall I say that man

Is not as men have said: a wolf to man?

The other murderers troop in yawning;

Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one

Lies counting missions, lies there sweating

Till even his heart beats: One; One; One.

O murderers! . . . Still, this is how it's done:

This is a war . . . But since these play, before they die,

Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man,

I did as these have done, but did not die--

I will content the people as I can

And give up these to them: Behold the man!

I have suffered, in a dream, because of him,

Many things; for this last saviour, man,

I have lied as I lie now.  But what is lying?

Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can:

I find no fault in this just man.

Gospel of John, Ch. 19  I find no guilt in him.  So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.  Pilate said to them: 'Behold the man . . .I find no guilt in him. . . .  We have no king but Caesar. . . So he delivered him to them to be crucified.

Gospel of Matthew 27:19  While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him. 'Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him.'

Gospel of Matthew 27: 24-25  Pilate saw he was getting nowhere and a riot was developing.  So he sent for a bowl of water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood.  The responsibility is yours."  All the people answered: "His blood is on us and on our children."