Meeting That Deductible

The assassin who murdered that health insurance CEO recently was caught at a McDonald’s in Altoona PA when another patron recognized him from online photos and called the police. Authorities now have the gun, the guy, and what seems enough evidence to bake him hard in court.

He might not come to trial for a year or two because if you are affluent enough you can spend quite a bit of time waiting for your case to come up as your legal teams place tire-puncturing devices across every road leading to you and prosecutors must clear them one at a time.

But there is still a question regarding this story that I’ve heard nothing about so far.

• If a perfect stranger could look at a photo and pick him out instanter … where were all the people that he knew who didn’t do anything even when they saw his image on the evening news? All of his buddies and all of his family and all of his classmates in school … did even one of them make a call?

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The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

H.L. Mencken

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Somewhere along the way I realized that my social and moral education was improved more by listening to the stories told by oppressed peoples than those related by their oppressors. Nothing I have learned since that epiphanic moment has changed this outlook.

My early life was a sheltered one but in the 60s I became aware that not everyone in the USA was of Scandinavian ancestry. Well, I thought, there’s something to be learned here. So I bought some books, attended some lectures, listened to some blues and spirituals and ultimately decided that I was enlightened. I’ve got this, thought I, and it wasn’t all that hard.

Well, I didn’t have it, and still don’t. Intellectually I was able to go only so far on my own, and I have had to turn to others for help. That’s why a piece in Thursday’s NYTimes on Nikki Giovanni was so interesting. I knew of her, but had not read much of what she has written, so for me there was much to learn from this article.

But the real treat was a link to a video conversation between Giovanni and James Baldwin that was recorded in 1971. It was fascinating to see two brilliant people spend two hours talking about ideas. To argue respectfully as black intellectuals even as they each had to lean in from their respective sides in order to bridge a generation gap.

My personal needle felt it had moved an inch or two toward understanding when I had finished watching these videos. Maybe I’m wrong and I am just as obtuse as I was when I got up this morning, but I don’t think so. I may not ever know fully what it means to be black or red or brown or yellow, but I do believe that I can do human better than I have done in the past and that what I have just watched was one step moving in that direction.

Here are the links:

• When Nikki Giovanni Was Young, Brilliant, and Unafraid.
• Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in conversation, Part One
• Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in conversation, Part Two

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Holy Highway 61 Revisited, Batman! I just watched a trailer for a film that comes out Christmas Day and while I know it likely won’t come to Paradise, which the pandemic turned from movie Heaven (sorta) to movie Limbo (pretty much), I will by God drive to see it when it comes within range. It’s called A Complete Unknown and is about a relatively short period in the life of a guy that we geezers grew up and old with. His name is Bob Zimmerman.

He might not have known at the time that he was writing the background music for our lives, but that’s what happened. Those lyrics of his … well … they won him a Nobel Prize. What territory do they cover? Not much, really, just human rights, civil disobedience, war, injustice, aging, grief, love, loss, Billy the Kid … and on and on. Not a bubble-gum piece in the lot.

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As of Sunday morning Robin and I are gradually winning our battle against a virus as muscular as a microbial Hercules and as unpleasant as finding president-elect Cluck sleeping in the guest room would be.

Robin is her eighth day and I have as yet had only four days to whinge about my problems. Friday night I barely slept because my nose had become a raging cataract to the point where I could not lie horizontal and had to spend the night sitting up in Robin’s recliner.

This too shall pass, is what we tell ourselves between whoops and cringes. I have a suspicion that the culprit may be RSV, which is doing to me exactly what I saw it do to a thousand infants in a dozen hospitals. But although I may be ancient I have big lungs, unlike all those babies back then who struggled for days to catch their breath.

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