6/2/23

 Friday, June 2, 2023

In bed     Woke from a sound sleep on tv room recliner at 10:40 from a dream of Race to the Outhouse by Willy Makit in hour 30 of the colonoscopy cleansing, a distressing age-related side effect?!?!  Up again at 5:25.  Let Lilly out into summery 58℉ weather expecting a high of 74℉, low wind expected again.  Sunrise was at 5:14, sunset at 8:25, 15+11.

Resolved: to get outside the comfortable confines of the house and enjoy the comfortable and lush space outside the house.  The first step was this morning when I spent time on the patio, sitting on the comfortable green patio chair Geri bought in Lake Mills, reading nothing, typing nothing, listening to nothing but the cardinal(s), goldfinch(es), robin(s) and chickadee(s) identified on my Merlin bird identifying app.  Merlin also thought it heard a brown-headed cowbird and a great-crested flycatcher but who knows.  I shot a video of the backyard at 6:50 a.m. and thought how very fortunate I am living here, how green and lush the grounds are, full of ferns and groundcover, how rich with flowers - bleedings hearts, bluebells of some sort, columbines.  I can't seem to enjoy these feelings of appreciation and gratitude without thinking back to 7303 S. Emerald Avenue, 1702 W. Walnut, other venues, other thoughts.  How many turns in life have brought me here in old age, how many turns could have led me elsewhere.  Should I thank Charlene Wegge for influencing me to choose Marquette in Milwaukee among the many choices offered by the Navy ROTC  scholarship program?  Anne Smith and WITI-TV for steering us back to Milwaukee after the Marines?  Bob Boden and others for offering me an appointment to the law school faculty upon graduation? Frank DeGuire for occasioning or causing me to resign my tenured spot on the faculty? TSJ for F&F and the profit-sharing retirement savings?  Bob Smith and Al Veik for leaving the HOP?Bishop Zieman and his scandals deflecting me from Santa Rosa?   So many influencers, so many choices.  How many were truly 'free,' how many foreordained or at least utterly predictable?  Too philosophical a query for early on a balmy morning.  Time to look and listen and be, to calm the minnows in the bait bucket, the caged squirrels.

On This Day in History  In 1941, Edward George Felsenthal III was born,  destined to become my classmate at Leo High School between 1955 and 1959, my roommate at Marquette University between 1960 and 1963, and my friend for life.  In 1960 he introduced me to his Journalism School classmate and my future and then former spouse, Anne Elizabeth Smith,  In 1963, he and I graduated from the university and were commissioned as officers, he as an ensign in the U.S. Navy,  I as a 2nd lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps.  One week later, he would marry his high school sweetheart Helen (Lyn) with me as a groomsman.  Two weeks later, I would marry Anne with him as my best man.  Then he was off to NAS Pensacola for flight training and I was off to MCB Quantico for Basic School, with MLK's marchers on Washington marching past my door in Stafford Courthouse VA in August, and ASC and I trooping to Washington in November for the transfer of JFK's remains from the White House to the Capitol in November.  Within a couple of years, we would both be in Vietnam.   I called Ed this afternoon to wish him a happy birthday and schmoozed with him for 20 minutes or so, also chatting with old college friend and former Marquette roommate of Anne Smith Camilla Wakeman.

Let’s Smash the College Admissions Process is an op-ed essay by David Brooks in this morning's NYT (though dated 6/1/23).  As Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action loom, he argues "maybe we can all take this moment to reimagine the college admissions process itself, which has morphed into one of the truly destructive institutions in American society. . .  Today, you don’t need bloodlines stretching back to the Mayflower to have a decent shot at getting into an elite school, but you do need to be born into a family with the resources to make lavish investments in your early education. . .  So the hierarchies built by the admissions committees get replicated across society. America has become a nation in which the elite educated few marry each other, send their kids to the same exclusive schools, move to the same wealthy neighborhoods and pass down disproportionate economic and cultural power from generation to generation — the meritocratic Brahmin class."

The essay prompts lots of thoughts.  First is the relevance of Isabel Wilkerson's great work in Caste.  Second is the continuing relevance of William Blake's 300-year-old poetic insight: Every morn and every night  / Some are born to sweet delight.  / Every night and every morn / some to misery are born. / Some are born to sweet delight / Some are born to endless night.   The lottery of birth.  Third, the evidence we see all around us of class-based inequalities, the advantages that accrue to children of the well-to-do and the disadvantages to children of the poor.  Gus Kahn was agreeing with William Blake when he composed Ain't We Got Fun in 1920, writing "The rich get richer and the poor get children," changed later to 'The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.'   When I watch MSNBC and CNN, I'm reminded of the leg-up in life that children of the well-positioned have: Mika Brzezinski daughter of national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, Alicia Menendez daughter of Sen. Richard Menendez,  Laura Jarrett daughter of Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, Anderson Cooper, son of Gloria Vanderbilt.  Jake Tapper's father was a prominentl Philadelphia pediatrician and a graduate of Harvard Medical School, his mother a psychiatric nurse.  Jake attended expensive private day schools.   Erin Burnett is the daughter of a corporate attorney.  She attended exlusive private elementary and middle schools before attending St. Andrew's, a private co-ed college prep boarding school, and then Williams College.  She began her career as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs working on mergers and acquisitions.  It's not that all the accompllished and privileged were 'born to the purple' nor is it that those who are are guaranteed great success without talent and hard work, but but only that for those who are fortuante enough to be born on 2nd or 3rd base, it's a lot easier to reach home plate.  

The other thought that comes to me while reading Brooks' op-ed is how very fortunate I have been in life in light of my unpromising economic start in our 3 room  basement apartment after WW II, Dad with PTSD bouncing from unskilled job to job, often unemployed, alchoholc, both parents without a high school diploma, relying on Mom's earnings as a waitress to support our family of four.  The circumstances were hardly auspiious by any means but my mother insisted from my earliest memories on the importance of schooling.  I suppose being taught by the Sisters of Providence at St. Leo Grammar School, with 42 children in our classes, girls on one side, boys on the other, was not top flight education.  There was no gym and physical education consisted of being let out onto Emerald Avenue with traffic blocked off between 77th and 78th streets.  But the sisters must have imparted the basic learning skills (along with the every present religous indocrination) because I was prepared for the rigorous education I received at Leo High School which prepared me to win the NROTC scholarship and attend college out of town.  My mother's insistence on attending strict Catholic schools, on studying and doing my homework and earning good grades, the sisters' insistnece on attendance and respectful behavior, the brothers' imposition of academic and personal discipline and respectful behavior, all put me in a position that when the Navy opportunity was made known to me (by the good brothers), I was able to take advantage of it.  As Robert Frost said "and that has made all the difference."

Moved squirrel-proof feeder to back yard; listened to Nina Simone.  I hung the feeder from an S-hook on the damaged tree off the patio hoping it is too high for the deer to feast on.  Then I sat at the patio table and listened to my 'Female vocalists' playlist including Nina Simone's incredibly powerful "Strange Fruit."

Southern trees

Bearing strange fruit

Blood on the leaves

And blood at the roots

Black bodies

Swinging in the Southern breeze

Strange fruit hangin'

From the poplar trees

Pastoral scene

Of the gallant south

Them big, bulging eyes

And the twisted mouth

Scent of magnolia

Clean and fresh

Then, the sudden smell

Of burnin' flesh

Here is a fruit

For the crows to pluck

For the rain to gather

For the wind to suck

For the sun to rot

For the leaves to drop

Here is

Strange and bitter crop