6/18/2026

 Thursday, June 18, 2026

1815 Napoleon Bonaparte and France were defeated at Waterloo

1963 3,000 blacks boycotted Boston public schools to protest de facto segregation

1968 Supreme Court banned racial discrimination in the sale and rental of housing

1982 Voting Rights Act of 1965 was extended by the US Senate by an 85-8 vote

2020 US Supreme Court ruled that the Obama-era Dreamers Program (DACA), enabling undocumented migrant children to study and work, can stay

2025 After negotiating for18 months, Nippon Steel finalized its $14.9 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel.

In bed at9:30, up at 6:20; 0640 131/76/58 120 203.6; 56/48/70/55  mostly sunny.  

Morning meds at 8 a.m., Eliquis at 7 a.m. and p.m.

Scattered thoughts about Stoner while attempting to back up my newer computer on my former SanDisk 2 TB external drive:

This is a photo of my beautiful young maternal grandmother, Catherine O'Shea Healy, the only photo I have.  She was an Irish immigrant who married Dennis Healy, my grandfather, another Irish immigrant.  Catherine, after whom my sister, Catherine /"Kitty, was named, died when my mother was about 6 years old.  She died from pernicious anemia, a disease caused by a vitamin B-12 deficiency, a disease that became curable shortly after Catherine's death.  Catherine had 5 children before she died, one of whom died at birth and in infancy.  My mother, Mary Norma Healy,  was the second of the four surviving children, with three brothers.  Dennis raised the 4 children alone, with help from some of his immigrant sisters.  

Some thoughts on reading Stoner:

1.  I didn't enjoy reading this book, except for the sections in which Stoner fell in love with and had his passionate affair with Katherine Driscoll.  He was happy then, enjoying life, and harming no one, though the affair was foredoomed to end.  But it ended in the saddest way, not by one or the other falling out of love, or by discovering an incompatibility, or by a disagreement, but only because the wretch, hunchback Hollis Lomax, went after Katherine's career.  He forced the two to end the affair, and Katherine left, quietly, on a train, leaving not even a note for Stoner.  Again, Stoner had been fucked by the fickle finger of Fate, in the form of Lomax.  The two lovers loved each other as much when they ended their affair as they did during the affair, but it was not to be.  I raised the moral questions yesterday or the day before; this morning I think only of the emotional costs for both of them and imagine the depth of their sadness.

2.  Stoner has a small cadre of intensely loyal supporters, including the protagonist of The Correspondent, who read it three times.  One of the professional reviewers I read claims to reread it every year.  These folks, however, must be professional litterateurs, or gluttons for punishment, because it's hard to derive much pleasure from reading the story of Professor Stoner's life.  Indeed, I wonder why Williams wrote the book; what was his point?  That's why I asked ChatGPT yesterday what the moral of the story is.  Was Stoner a hero or a chump and a coward?  Why did he stick with the nasty Edith?  Why didn't he fight to protect his precious relationship with his daughter, Grace?  Why didn't he put up any fight (until late in the game) against Lomax?  When does stoicism and conflict-aversion become simple cowardice? Or, was he some kind of Stoic hero, enduring the long, hard slog to teach composition and literature to undergraduate students, many or most of whom don't care?  How are we to think of Professor Stoner? The Greek Stoics valued rationality, the life of the mind, and emotional self-control highly, but I have to wonder whether William Stoner wasn't too philosophical, and too disciplined and self-controlled.  It cost not only him, but probably even more his daughter Grace and his beloved Katherine.  

3. John Williams has a pretty jaundiced view of college professors, not that I can easily disagree with him.  He wrote of the very bright and insightful Masters analyzing himself, Stoner, and Finch when they were all students.  He teased Stoner and Finch about their idealized views of the university and academic life, saying, "It is an asylum... a rest home, for the infirm, the aged, the discontent, and the otherwise incompetent."  He told Stoner, "You are the dreamer . . . our own Midwestern Quixote," but at least Quixote tilted at windmills.  Outside the university, however, Masters told Stoner he would simply be "chewed up and spit out" because he expects the world to possess a meaning and justice that it does not. He concludes: "You have no place to go in the world."  Further, Masters compared the university to the Church in the Middle Ages, which didn’t give a damn about the laity or even about God, but “we have our pretenses to survive.  His assessment was a variant on the notion that those who can't do teach, and I believe there is a lot of truth in the idea that academics, at least at the university level, include a lot of misfits.  Most English professors cannot produce great literature; they can only teach it.  Most law professors are not naturally great lawyers; indeed, they would probably be lousy or mediocre lawyers who turn to teaching as an escape from the practice of law.  It's a make-believe world in law school, lah-lah land compared to the rigors and requirements of the private practice of law in a highly competitive environment.  I, of course, was one of those misfits for much of my adult life, and I do not consider myself excluded from that "misfit" category.  I felt like a misfit also in the Marines, skinnier and less athletic than all others, and a lot less "ooh rah" oriented.  I joined for some psychic compulsion deriving from my Dad and Iwo Jima, and I suppose from my admiration of Colonel Kurdziel and Major Holmberg at my NROTC Unit at Marquette.  I seemed to be a more natural fit for the Navy, but I opted out and into the Corps.  I felt like a misfit in the private practice of law, too, never comfortable with charging a couple of hundred dollars an hour for services that were unavailable for people like my parents and sisters.  I was at best a Legal Aid or government service-type.  Or perhaps I like Master's thought about Professor Stoner, just not having a place to fit in the world.

Obama Library Dedication.  I watched it today.  Michelle stole the show.  I got wistful watching the speakers, the entertainers, and the big crowd of celebrities and ordinary Chicagoans.  I suspect Geri and I will try to take a room at the Hilton or elsewhere one of these days so we can visit the library.  I don't mean to suggest that I was a diehard Obama fan when he was in office.  I posted an abundance of outraged comments in the Washington Post about his policies toward Wall Street after the financial market came close to collapse from the subprime mortgage crisis that he inherited and assigned to Timothy Geithner.