9/4/24

Wednesday, September 4, 2024

1957 Governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, called out the National Guard to prevent 9 black students from entering Little Rock's Central High School

1970 Marxist Salvador Allende won a narrow plurality of votes in Chile's presidential election

2016 Mother Teresa was canonized by Pope Francis in a ceremony at the Vatican

Raspberries are so delicate and fragile, it's not often we see one still on the stem at Sendik's

In bed at 9:45, awake at about 3:50, and up and out at 4:07 to put a full load of laundry in the washer and let Lilly out at 4:30.   Loaded and started the dishwasher at 6:30, and took out the recycling.

Prednisone, day 115, 10 mg.,day 20/28   Prednisone at 5 a.m., diclofenac at 5:05, morning meds at 6:35.  

Watching Lilly on the stoop, feeling a little (only a little) impatient at her caution and hesitancy to venture out into the dark predawn morning.   I thought of Jane Kenyon's Otherwise.

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,

it will be otherwise.

I'm still thinking of what I read the other day of Erik Erickson and his theory of 'integrity vs. despair' in old age, also of Jesus's teaching 'love your neighbor as you love yourself', and 'seven times seventy.'  I'm wondering whether I'm too hard on myself and the World, too pessimistic, too cynical.  It's all so self-defeating.  I got to thinking, for no reason at all, of my father's view of his world after his time in the Marines in World War II, his experiences on Iwo Jima, what it must have been like for him to watch Kitty and me growing up, ignorant of the Truth about the World and about our species, the Truth he knew and never talked about.  We were living in different universes, his burdened by what he knew and we didn't, ours offensive to him because of what he knew.  I don't have to wonder how he would be assessed on the 'integrity vs. despair' scale in his old age.  I know he was laden with regrets, mostly about our mother, perhaps about Kitty and me, but I'm not at all sure of the latter.  Kitty and I acquired his 'abiding sense of tragedy'; we all carried it throughout our lives.  Only my mother escaped, miraculously because if anyone 'deserved' it, with all the hardships in her life, it was her, a motherless child. . .  The things one thinks about as one listens to the dishwasher and the dryer balls early in the morning as the rest of the neighborhood wakes up.  

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
A long way from home, a long way from home

Sometimes I feel like I'm almost done
Sometimes I feel like I'm almost done
Sometimes I feel like I'm almost done
And a long, long way from home, a long way from home

True believer
True believer
A long, long way from home   A long, long way from home 

Life without televised news.  I've gone 4 or 5 days now watching no televised new programs, no MSNBC, no CNN, no NBC Evening News with Lester Holt, and of course no Fox News..  Can I keep this up?  How long?  I am so sick of news, both network and local,   especially the 'news' about the presidential contest between Harris and Trump.  Nine weeks from today will be the day after Election Day.  Will we know the results of the presidential race?  Other races?  Trump has already been priming his MAGA base voters to believe that only cheating will produce a win for Harris and Walz.  Will there be violence?  Are we heading toward a new kind of civil war?  Will Israel beat us to it?

Cauliflower Bacon Soup.  I spent a good part of the morning cleaning up (mainly dusting) my bedroom, particularly the bookshelf where I keep my colored pencils, watercolor equipment, etc.  The afternoon had me in the kitchen making my cauliflower bacon soup.

 

Anniversaries thoughts.  The integration of Central H.S. was an ugly event, with White people shouting hate-filled comments at the 9 brave, indeed heroic, Black students who came to be known as the Little Rock Nine.  Governor Faubus was the commander-in-chief of the Arkansas National Guard, which he activated to prevent the Black students from attending the school on the first day of school.  President Eisenhower outbid him by nationalizing the Guard, making himself the commander-in-chief, and ordering them to facilitate the attendance of the Black students at the previously all-White, Jim Crow school.  I had just turned 16 and was attending my all-White, Catholic, Leo High School while Kitty was in the all-White, Catholic, 8th Grade at St. Leo Grammar School whence she would move on to the all-White, Catholic Visitation High School.  We were taught to love our neighbors as ourselves, but not to go to the same schools as our Black neighbors.  Actually, the key was to keep Blacks from becoming neighbors by refusing to sell or rent to them, or as our pastor, the Right Reverent Patrick J. Malloy put it: "Keep out the undesirables."

The people of Chile freely elected Salvador Allende.  The result of their 'free and fair democratic election' was displeasing to Wall Street, corporate America,  our American president Richard Nixon, and his right-hand man Henry Kissinger, who assisted General Pinochet and the Chilean military in overthrowing the Allende government and in establishing a murderous military dictatorship.  Allende committed suicide.

Saint Mother Teresa,  So much I could say, but not today.  For a decidedly contrary view of her saintliness, read the Wikipedia entry on Christopher Hitchens' book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (1995).