The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher standard.
~ George McGovern
When Russell Means died the day after George McGovern (Oct 21 & 22, 2012), I'm pretty sure it was the only time two South Dakotans led The New York Times obituaries.
I have admired Senator McGovern since I was a kid. The best of the best.
Also, it is too frigging hot.
Debbie & I were at an American Legion game because her boyfriend (who became a high school football coach) was playing. I remember sitting in the metal grandstand behind 3rd base, staring hard at that big full moon, thinking I would see those men hopping around on it. Thinking that we were here & they were there. I had never taken a science class & really didn't know how ridiculous that was.
From my diary:
Today is the most significant date in the history of mankind—man landed and walked on the moon. My God! Right now I'm watching them! At 4:17:42 EDT, Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin became a part of history. I'm seeing history. Of all the thousands of years man has existed, it was right now that this happened. Men have been dreaming of the moon all those years, & it's now, when I'm 17 years old, I Elinor Nauen am alive—imagine what will be going on when I'm old. It's familiar, because it's basic to science fiction that the moon is a space station but this is real. To me it's incredible, but Varda & kids her age (7) will grow up with this, take it for granted. I now feel old. Oh God. Men are on the moon. Men are on the moon.
And now it's 50 years later, just like that, and I AM old. And even though I said it clumsily at the time, it WAS thrilling to be alive for something historic & wonderful.
He was a good-looking black hipster who was also a very conservative Orthodox Jew. He read Torah beautifully & had an eidetic memory. He tried to make me see the different shades of black skin. One year on Yom Kippur we walked to the East River, talking intensely, & agreed that that was the highlight of the holiday for both of us. Seriously fun.
Eli died unexpectedly yesterday.
It's hot & we sleep. One of this little loving machine's best qualities is that the minute I get into bed, he hops in & snuggles between me & Johnny. It's not always the best quality when it's 100° out but I love it, & that he starts to purr the second he comes near us.
Old Person Poem in Two Parts
1)
my mother asleep
in her hot
nursing home
I sit
like a three-day airport delay
waiting
she's not dying—
it's not a vigil—
no one relieves me
she is 95, she is dying
slowly
I can't—
long enough to be—
patient, to be an ant
on the last peony
2)
the very old mostly sleep
the half-old kill time
the young dash to a brewery
when I was young
I smoked pot all day
it takes a wheelchair to get my thoughts to the table
Bombs and pistols do not make a revolution. The sword of revolution is sharpened on the whetting-stone of ideas.
~ Bhagat Singh, Indian revolutionary hanged at age 23
Bombs & pistols also don't make a public policy, or make for a comfortable time of it, or much else in fact. And if people had sharper ideas, bombs & pistols would be less prevalent, no?
Pigeon holing sounds dirty, like cornholing, which is in fact only beanbag toss. Who would put a pigeon in a hole? & why? What is a pigeon hole? When did the pigeon go into the hole? Did it want to? Is it still there?
Is "hole" a dirty word, is that it? Ace in the hole, to buttonhole someone, burn a hole in one's pocket, watering hole, hole in the wall, hole in one.... Nope, they're all OK.
So?
Little red rooster, they treat him nice
He ain't laid an egg in all his life
I'm going away somewhere before long
Fantastic to take the great Ed Foster to his first-ever baseball game, & to sit in the first row. He understood it more quickly than any other newbie I’ve gone with. (I often think about Endi, from Sarajevo, who stared fiercely for a few minutes & then announced, “I understand! Nine against one.” He sat back smugly & didn’t pay attention until he suddenly noticed that the bases were loaded. Which confused him to the point where he lost interest altogether.) Ed, though, never took his eyes off the game, asked a few questions (he started at “which one’s the shortstop?” but pretty quickly was asking sophisticated questions that showed he really grasped what was going on) & immediately put on his souvenir t-shirt.
One of the pleasures of baseball is thinking about why I like it. Today’s reason: with baseball you don’t have to have a stance, you don’t have to proceed. You’re just there, in a pleasant fog, untimed. You don’t have to be productive or thoughtful. You just have to watch. You just have to be present.
Why don't I get out of town more often? It's unbelievably quiet here. I breathe. I read a few pages. I look up & breathe.
Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.
~ Richard Adams
For sure, among the many things I love about winter is being indoors, preferably with hot chocolate, watching the flakes come down. But there's so much more.
I'd guess that it's these hot days of July when people most (think they) enjoy winter?
I love fireworks & the years when we can see it from our roof usually satisfy me in a primordial-fire ooh-aah way. I have memories from decades. The assortment (snakes, roman candles, sparklers: Safe for Kids) we'd buy from Rich Brothers—just driving an unfamiliar road outside the city limits was exciting. Hitchhiking home to Maine & crossing Pennsylvania during the Bicentennial, with fireworks a few miles off the highway in every little town, me sitting up high in a semi, wondering. My birthday fireworks one February on Chinese New Year. Stopping with Eileen at a giant place in South Carolina, where we separately spent the same amount of money & bought almost the exact same things. I could write the story of my life in firecrackers & bottle rockets.
They were as beautiful as ever last night but alone on my roof, I couldn't enjoy them aesthetically for thinking about tanks & camps & despair.
Khruschev's Hat
Harry Truman is sizing up Khruschev's hat
he remembers it
from their days
in the rodeo
he advised him to get rid of it
now he is thinking
about kicking Khruschev
in the head
lie down, Nikita, he taunts, & I'll do it
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
I love this guy (by which I mean this poem) & it seems like the right thing to post on Independence Day, dunno why.
That's one hole too many & the top's stretched out.
Maybe I'll throw away something else some day.
It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
~ Franz Kafka, The Zurau Aphorisms
What more is there to add.
Paving First Avenue. Now they're putting down a zillion lines for traffic. I don't know what all those boxes & stripes are supposed to mean. Does anyone? (I'll try to remember to take pictures.)
I once bought a lutefisk TV dinner for the plastic cover with its scan of the lutefisk & potatoes. I threw the food away many blocks from me.
Y'all know about lutefisk, right? Cod cured in lye, a Scandinavian "delicacy." My dad had his office in a small building called the Nordic Hall, where the Sons of Norway had their lutefisk dinners. I am here to tell you that lutefisk smells awful. I got Myron Floren's autograph at a Sons of Norway event. Only one person, my accordion-playing friend Rachelle, was every excited about this revelation.
I also had a book of lutefisk cartoons that to my chagrin has long since disappeared. The only one I remember was a golden-arches fast food McOlson's LutefiskBurgers, with the display "1 sold." (Oh my, there's one copy available at Amazon for $1,999.99. Free shipping!)
Finally found the postcard of our front door (see June 25). (Does this mean I can stop searching'n'cleaning?) Our super, Jeff, made the sign. I still am astonished that it worked. That was pretty much his entire success as super.
Jeff, not yet 60, is now living in a nursing home in Maine, his memory destroyed, I assume from HIV. The last time I spoke with him he didn't know who I was or any of our mutual friends. Several others have died & I think only Maggie & I still live in the Pound from those days.
When Sam Shepard died almost 2 years ago, I looked high & low for this photo of him. Today I looked everywhere for a "don't piss here" postcard & found this photo. Alex was filming a documentary on Kerouac & Shepard was one of the people we interviewed.
Not just the neighborhood, that’s my front door. The graffitti won’t be there long, if our landlord’s recent (fency!) past is anything to go on. Long ago, when the area was much less bustling, the super had to post a sign on our door: “don’t piss here.” Which worked, to my surprise. No one ever used our doorway as a urinal again. Someone made a postcard of the doorway. I’ll find & post it.
We all know that prime ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart.
~ Saki
Seems like a good reminder as half the countries in the world seem to be choosing leaders, in one way or another.
It's the summer of adventure! Robyn up for anything & today it was the Conservatory Garden. The neighborhood around the train hints at the East Village from my early days. The birds—wren? nuthatch? sparrow?—bathe with obvious enjoyment in a fountain. Something violet in a strip of white & red. It's OK that I don't know what I'm seeing. I see it.
Water Heron Rock
Rock standing still
looks no closer
than water
rushing
great blue heron
intent on dinner
ignoring our desire
that it spread
shadow wing
over
mushy leaves
mill ruin
dog path
Carolina wedge
not-quite-cloudy
sky
When JetBlue emailed me to say my return flight from Ecuador had changed, I noticed it left Ft Lauderdale 3 minutes earlier than before & they had put me in a different seat. Much to-do later, I was all set.
The next day Willis pointed out that the flight was actually a whole day earlier, not just three minutes.
You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.
~ Medgar Evers (1925-63)
Do young people know who Medgar Evers was? Mississippi civil rights activist, the state's field secretary for the NAACP, a World War II veteran. After the Brown decision in 1954, he was denied admission to the University of Mississippi Law School, but was instrumental in the eventual desegregation of "Ole Miss" in 1962. Assassinated. His widow spent 30 years pursuing Byron De La Beckwith, who'd been acquitted by an all-white jury—Beckwith was finally convicted 30 years later & died in prison, still an unrepentant segregationist, from all accounts.
Marble Cemetery looking towards 3rd St, 8 a.m. today. I don't know that I've ever seen it so green. Every spring, the magnolia tree blossoms briefly & I wonder how many more times I'll see it.
Carolyn Maloney is my long-time Representative. She is effective, excellent on guns, healthcare, women's issues (& more), hard-working. Really one of the best people in Congress. She has a potential opponent in the next primary. Not terrible, but absolutely not an improvement. Ditto for my beloved Jerry Nadler, who was my Rep till they moved the lines—he's the most liberal Congress member & someone is challenging him too, claiming to be more "progressive."
WHY?
Why spend time & money opposing someone good, rather than run for an office they might be able to win (Maloney & Nadler regularly win with 80-90% of the vote) &/or where the incumbent isn't so great.
Since tRump & AOC do people assume that they are qualified for/deserve any office they want? Why are Beto, Stacey Abrams, Hickenlooper, even Steve Bullock who I think so highly of, (et al) running for prez when they potentially COULD be elected to the Senate? Why did Cynthia Nixon run for gov when she could have won a city council or state senate race? Examples abound! Can anyone put party over ego?
Even with his eye bandaged & feeling beat, he looks so good.
It was cataract surgery, which is not that big a deal, but when he was later than expected I figured they'd dropped a scalpel into his eye & he was dead. He suffers, but I worry & suffer, which makes it harder on me.
You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
~ Maya Angelou
One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding.
~ Henrik Ibsen
These are kind of the same quote, right? And somewhere a physicist is saying that the universe makes room for the stars... & psychiatrists, martial arts instructors, rabbis—they all have a version of this too, I bet.
This is what makes me love my city: First came a party in an apartment with incredible views of the West Village & beyond, with food made by friends, a poet and his Ethiopian wife. The food is great but the best part is their warmth, how much they love hosting, & the array of friends from young to old, artists and who-knows-what who relish this annual invite. On the way home, I came upon people singing opera atop a piano, dozens of people gathered round. A balmy late spring night, feeling safe & stimulated in my beautiful town.