This morning my head is crowded with thought-threads running here and there with about the same amount of coherence that you might find if an angry dog parachuted into a cat parade. It all started with playing that very excellent music that Mavis Staples recorded. My recollections of the civil rights era of the sixties and seventies comes through so vividly in her songs.
Now, I confess that I was never, repeat – never, directly involved in any of the million brave and courageous acts, nor did I ever face any of the dangers that those activists dealt with at that time. I was always comfortably safe wherever I was, more like an observer from a Martian newspaper reporting back on the conflict. But I admired those mostly uncelebrated warriors greatly and supported them where I could.
The series Eyes on the Prize is on PBS where it can be watched for free. You like seeing heroes in action? Forget the tiresome Marvel Universe – the scenes in these videos are filled with heroes. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. It is truly humbling to see what courage actually looks like in action.
Right now we’ve got one major political party trying to bury the history of slavery and its consequences as much as it can, while the other party has gone on to other things as if the struggle were completely over. The story here is not that America is a uniquely barbaric country because of our history, but that just about all of world history is of one group exploiting, enslaving, or in some way dominating another group, often through murder and torture.
Our takeaway lesson must be to look clearly at what has been done in our past and continue to steadily move away from such violent and harsh practices and behaviors. To accept that evils did occur and then reject the thinking that made them possible.
What to put in place of bigotry and violence? Well, compassion and mutual respect would be a couple of places to start. The Earth is not really a very big place, and we are all in this together whether we realize it or not. Whether we like it or not.
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Robin is off to California to spend time with grandchildren Kaia and Leina. Being eleven years younger than I am, she somehow worries that if she isn’t around to tend me that I will do something unacceptable, like keel over.
Being a rationalist I accept that concerns about octogenarians dropping off the planet are not unreasonable, but I respond that while our days might be numbered none of us know what that number is.
So I will send a daily text that says: I am presently alive and typing furiously.
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From The New Yorker
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GUILTY x 34
This thug of a past president is now officially a felon. Unless you live in the Fox News universe you already know that he is guilty of much worse things than this, because YOU SAW HIM DO THEM ON TELEVISION back in January of 2020. Now I believe that being a felon can be forgiven if the person sees the error of their ways, makes amends, and sincerely repents of their wicked ways.
See any of these behaviors in Mr. Cluck? Nope. Any reason to expect that there will be a repentance roadshow next week or next year? Not unless God grabs him by the tie and converts him like he did with the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus.
(Notice that Saul has a red tie in the graphic.)
Will Cluck spend one day in jail as a result of these verdicts? I would be surprised. Actually, I don’t think it is even called for. Prisons are not good places for anyone to be, and as good as he would look in an XXL orange jumpsuit, I think some form of probation and community service would be a better alternative. Plus there would be those innocent Secret Service personnel that would have to go wherever he did.
After all, he owes New York state big time for the costs they have accrued in putting him on trial, and I think that while it might take a while, starting to pay them back in these simple and straightforward ways would be a good first step in any attempts at his rehabilitation.
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From The New Yorker
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I am watching Ken Burns’ The Civil War for the second or third time, not sure which it is. It is a masterful thing from start to finish. I am ashamed to say that this crucial conflict was for me little more than a long list of so many dates and names until I watched Mr. Burns’ videos. He put flesh on those dry bones of the histories that I had already consumed.
This afternoon I watched the episode where Abraham Lincoln went to Gettysburg to dedicate a new Union cemetery.
As the narrator read the famous lines tears came to my eyes. I don’t know if Lincoln was the greatest American of us all, but he gets my vote every time. We are having our problems these days with politics that are by comparison an unseemly shambling. Men and women serve in Congress who I would not hire to sit our cats. It all seems such a mess on occasion that I wish I could learn to power-spit in order to express my feelings about it fittingly.
But think of what Lincoln faced. His country had split in two, and then the dying began in earnest. Before it was over 650,000 Americans had perished. Mr. Lincoln spent agonizing years trying to find a general to lead the Union army, and time after time after time their incompetence brought him to the brink of despair. The South was better led at that period, and an overall Confederate victory seemed to be nearly within their grasp.
Lincoln finally found his man. He drank too much, was decidedly un-flashy, and did not sit a horse with the dash of a George Custer or a Joe Hooker. But in battle he bit down hard on the enemy before him and would not be dislodged until he won. The tides of battle turned and after four bitter years the war would finally be over, with the Union preserved.
Is there another Lincoln out there? I don’t know the answer to that, but what I do know is that there are better women and men than most of those we see being interviewed repeatedly on our television news programs. We need to find those capable and honest souls and quit electing one self-serving SOB after another.
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Little Home In The Valley 