7/12/2026

 Sunday, July 12, 2026

1804 Alexander Hamilton dies after being shot in a pistol duel by Aaron Burr

1951 Mob tries to keep black family from moving into all-white Cicero, Illinois

1966 Start of 3 day race riot in Chicago, looting brings out National Guardsmen

1967 Race riot in Newark, New Jersey, 26 killed, 1,500 injured & over 1,000 arrested

t6y

In bed at 9:05, up at 5:05; 0515 203.8 135/82/65 130; 63/82/62 sunny

Morning meds at 10:15 a.m., and Eliquis at 6:53 a.m. and 7 p.m.

I finished Ann Patchett's The Dutch House this morning.  I am hesitant to write about it because it triggers so many thoughts that I can't adequately express.  It is a story about intra-family relationships: brother -  sister, parent - child, step-parent - step-children, and husband - wife.  It's also a story about the relationship between Christian saintliness and mental illness and the costs of the Christian ethic, reminding me of Reinhold Niebuhr's An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, and its chapters titled "The Ethic of Jesus" and "The Relevance of an Impossible Ethical Ideal."  It's a story about grudges and forgiveness that also raises the persistent issue of free will vs. determinism.  It has been aptly described as resembling a fairy tale (evil stepmother, victimized children), but the characters and plot seemed believable enough to me.

The narrator of the novel is Danny Conroy, and its heroes are he and his seven-year-old sister, Maeve.  They grew up in the elegant, opulent eponymous mansion of the book's title.  Their father bought the mansion for their mother, Elna.   Their mother, however, hated the house and the wealthy lifestyle that came with it, and left the family when Danny was 4 and Maeve was 11.  The story was that she walked out on her husband and her children to move to India and work with the poor.  Elna plays a central but absent role in the novel until towards the end of the story, when she reappears in her children's lives, and the story of her departure from the family becomes less mysterious.  The family's housekeeper, Sandy, and the children's nanny, Flossie (Fiona) also reappear and provide more information about Elna's profound unhappiness in the Dutch House.  It turns out that the household staff had a deep love for Elna, whom they considered to be a true saint.

Why did Elna leave the house and the family?

Danny to Maeve: "OK, if you know so much about her, tell me why she left.  Maeve:  "She wanted - she stopped, exhaled, . . . she wanted to help people."  Danny:  People other than her family.  Maeve: "She made a mistake.  Can't you understand that.  She's covered in shame.  That's why she never got in touch with us when she got back from India. . .  Danny: Abandoning your children to go help the poor is India means you're a narcissist who wants the adoration of strangers . . . What kind of person leaves their kids? . . . Maeve: "Men! Men leave their children all the time and the world celebrates them for it.  The Buddha left and Odysseus left and no one gave a shit about their sons.  They set out on their noble journeys to do whatever the hell they wanted to do and thousands of years later we're still singing about it.

Throughout her life, Elna devoted herself to helping others.  

Mt. 19:21: Jesus said unto him, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven; and come and follow Me.”

Lk. 14:26: If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

Elna was in a convent when Cyril Conroy, Maeve and Danny's father, persuaded her to leave and marry him.  Throughout the novel, she appears as a radically committed Christian, someone who has completely internalized the ethic of Jesus of Nazareth.   What was Patchett's purpose in creating this character who behaves as she does?  What is she saying about Christianity? The teachings of Jesus?  The relevance of Jesus's teaching to real life?

    I came to this novel because of its focus on the loving relationship between a sister and a brother, which of course reminded me of my relationship with my sister.  For the last several years of her life, we started every single morning conversing with one another.   In the novel, the sister Maeve is the older sibling, whereas in our lives, Kitty was the younger.  We were only 2 years apart, whereas, with a 7-year age difference and an absent mother, Maeve took on a semi-parental role with Danny.  Nonetheless, the two of them reminded me of Kitty and me.

    Each of the principal characters in the novel has some flaws.  No one's perfect.  Danny was pretty vindictive towards his mother, never entirely getting over it.  He went through an entire medical education and residency, never intending to use the education for any healing purpose.  He just wanted to deplete his father's educational trust fund so his stepsisters wouldn't have access to it.  He and his faher both had a lust for real estate.  And, as he says of himself and his sister, "We had made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it." Maeve was pretty nasty about her mother's caring for the demented or aphasic Andrea Conroy.  Andrea, on the other hand, was just about perfectly evil when she ousted Maeve from her bedroom in the Dutch House, and then ousted both Maeve and Danny from the house and their putative inheritances from their father.  She was like Cinderella's evil stepmother.  

    Reading a book like this makes me wish I were a member of a book club that had read the book.  It's a great subject for discussion.  

De mortuis nil nisi bonum.  Lindsey Graham has died at age 71.  'nuf said.

The US has bombed more than 300 targets in Iran in the last few days,, yet we are told by our Dear Leader that we are not at war.  More happy horseshit from the American government.  It never ends.