It was a haunting image. The flag-draped coffin starkly alone in what looked like a deserted cemetery.
Then around noon, December 24, 2020, Christmas Eve, it slowly was lowered into the awaiting grave.
It was cold. Temperature hovering around Zero. A devastating Minneapolis blizzard, on the horizon.
Jerry Rotman, the ebullient, articulate, entertaining, caring, patriot, was put to rest. Because of the pandemic, the funeral played out on Zoom. The former Marine, Ivy League graduate lawyer, the kind of father you want, and a damn nice man. He was my 87-year old cousin.
Louise, his dear wife died earlier this year of Covid related issues.
The country is dying All countries do. All people do. All leave a legacy.
Some are positive.
Jerry’s was, and even today remains, a positive force.
To me, the ultimate test of a man is if he is strong enough to laugh at himself.
A short story.
Jerry knew I was writing a series of essays trying to figure out what was going on in our ancestors’ minds and in their lives. I wanted an explanation for the decisions they made that still affect us today. Jerry said he long had wondered the same things.
So, as a young man coming home to visit his family in Iowa from his New England classes, Jerry decided to go via Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. He wanted to see what his father saw many years earlier as a new world, a new life, was about to begin. He wanted to experience the emotions.
And he did.
Over the phone, even 60 years later I could feel the powerful impact of what he absorbed.
The intensity must have been exponentially more dramatic as he sat in the family living room, next to his father, displaying his heated sensations in great detail. An act of extreme empathy.
Slowly his father reached over and put his warm hand atop Jerry’s and gently whispered in the Eastern European accent he never could lose, “But, Jerry,” he said. “We came through Canada.”
Stick with me for the next few seconds and you probably will be right.
There actually are people who know about "things."
Some of the really smart ones say no “thing” is a “thing” until you can measure it.
They, and equally smart "thing" people, say no “thing” is real because when you measure it you really are measuring the probability that it is real. Sure, they say, the Sun will rise in the morning because it has for millions of years. So the Sun is real.
But, the realist has a teacher who says, "It depends on how you measure it. When and where you measure it. Even why you measure it."
For instance, those satellites high above us see “things” differently than we see “things.” So their reports to our GPS are adjusted so we can know where we probably are, or are going, or have been.
This is no small “thing.” Human time is different in space. That astronaut who spent the year in space no longer is the same age as his twin brother who stayed on earth.
So try to remember some of this when your friend, or former friend, is talking about the election.
S/He may be right. The probability is that Biden won. The probability is that the Sun will rise.
But, who knows, the Sun may not rise tomorrow morning.
“It’s the office of the Presidency that’s keeping him from prison andthe poorhouse,” Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale who studies authoritarianism, told a New Yorker reporter.
Published in 1879 … but it could have been about the first ten months of 2020
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”― Charles Dickens
Number of dead/maimed on Harry Truman’s watch from two A-bombs dropped on Japan and number of Americans on Donald Trump’s watch from Covid-19 seem similar.
Musings on yesterday, another day in a long string of CoVid-19 inspired isolation.
Had a long phone conversation with an Auto Insurance agent. I Was trying to lower my payment since we only drive about 25 miles a week. The agent sounded like a 17-year-old girl. She ended with a 70-year-old expression. “Good-bye, Mr. Kroloff you’ve been swell.”
After watching my wife Susan for about 5 minutes I asked, “What are you thinking, just looking straight ahead for so long?” Her answer. “I’m staring at the chair.” I decided it was best not to ask a follow-up question.
Later I talked with one of my favorite retired spies. He asked if there will be Presidential Debates this year. I am a historian, so told him I’d have an answer in November. He is the one who predicts the future. Everything is mixed up.
Last week I posted an essay titled, “WHAT IF GOD IS A STRING?” It covered a lot of territory including my stay in a hospital just down the hall from Covid wards. I should have added a couple sentences regarding how different religions, clans, countries and tribes have developed their own unique “origin” or “creation” stories. Today, a large clan of scientists who study cosmology is creating a modern epic about the formation of the universe. It is called “The Big Bang.” Coincidentally, cosmic creation begins just like the Islam, Hebrew, and Christian Bibles. They tell us that In the beginning there was nothing and then there was everything. It is the same thing but different.
It also occurred to me that every day in isolation is Wednesday.
This is a nice little story. It has a touch of politics, baseball, basketball, one French word, history, and a urinal in the National Press Club.
I am not addicted to George Will, the conservative political columnist. He has a highfalutin way to say simple things. Each column seems to have one word that needs to be looked up to figure out what the devil he is trying to say.
However, I am addicted to George Will’s alter-ego, a sports columnist and author. Yesterday he wrote about America’s addiction to Baseball. As expected it had one of those hifalutin words, “aperçus.”
That, if you Will, in a very convoluted way made me think of President John F. Kennedy’s political counselor, Lawrence F. O’Brien, a truly nice man from Massachusetts. He was one of the three Postmasters General for whom I worked as director of special projects.
I learned he, too, had an alter ego. The other Larry O’Brien was addicted to basketball.
Most people might have thought politics was Larry’s vocation and basketball his avocation. For a while they were right. Then his vocation and avocation flipped.
Background: I forget why Larry left his job at the White House dealing with politicians. But, there were a lot of perks as a cabinet officer. For instance, he had the biggest most elegantly wood-paneled office in Washington.
One of my tasks was to be an advance-man. A few of us on O’Brien’s staff took turns setting-up and shepherding his many business trips around the country.
Each of us would devote a lot of time preparing. We would be coordinating with folks in Washington and wherever he was going. Then we would fly to the site or sites, arriving two or three days in advance to coordinate with the hotel, the venue, the police, the news media, local politicians, and the undertaker who usually supplied the black cars for the “caravan” that sped us from one speech or meeting to another.
Once I forgot to check-out the trunk of the limo. The luggage compartment popped open and, with Larry standing next to me, I began loading his suitcase. Oops, the trunk was full of the phony grass used around graves at burial ceremonies. Fortunately, the PMG knew more about advancing than I did. He shrugged it off.
Usually, the trip back to Washington was the best part of the job. Almost always the flight home was just Larry and Georgie chatting, in first-class no less, sort of unwinding and getting to know each other.
We both had other jobs not related to public appearances. Larry was running the largest civilian government agency, as well as still doing liaison work between the White House and Congress.
I was mostly tied-up with the introduction of ZIP Code to the nation’s letter writers and explaining to reporters why and how the postal cops (The Inspection Service) just busted some really bad guys.
Larry obviously adored his only son, “Young Larry,” who around that time was an Army First Lieutenant in Vietnam, at the height of the fighting. A very vulnerable position. Meanwhile, the senior O’Brien was working for a president (Lyndon Johnson) who powerfully backed the devastating Southeast Asian battles. Larry’s concerns were an occasional topic of our conversations.
O’Brien was not an orator, nor much of a public speaker. He’d look down though his glasses onto the podium and see a typewritten page, try to memorize the next sentence or two, and look up to talk.
“Bam,” right in front of his already impaired eyes would be the intense, almost disabling lights set up by the TV crews.
Then came the speech in Springfield, Mass, his home town. It doesn’t matter that I can’t remember a word or the theme. The event was in a high-school gym … the very basketball court where he grew up loving the game.
It was off-the-cuff, humorous, sad (bringing a tear to the eye), informative and one of the best speeches of the hundreds I’ve heard throughout the years. He didn’t have to look down and readjust his eyes.
At least in my presence, O’Brien was not one to show much emotion or even enthusiasm. He was just sort of an even presence, accepting life as it flowed over and around him.
Once, long after the Post Office days, while standing at a urinal at the National Press Club in Washington doing what one does in those situations, I looked up and who should be at the urinal to my immediate right, but Larry O’Brien.
By then he was well settled-in as Commissioner of the National Basketball Association, which logic said should be an ideal place for him to work.
“Larry,” I asked, “how’s the new job?” wondering if his dreams had been fulfilled or shattered.
I never saw such a joyous, animated O’Brien. He loved it, I learned. Not just the basketball stuff, but the whole package.
He could go to any game he wanted. And he worked in an environment in which he could enjoy and contribute so much that now The Larry O'Brien NBA Championship Trophy each year goes to the winner of the NBA Finals. It is a biggie.
This, curiously, brings me back to columnist George Will and the confusing word “aperçus” in his recent column on sports obsessions.
Apparently, that word is the past participle of the French verb apercevoir. Something most of us would be afraid to speak, let alone write.
I learned from Professor Google that among other things it is a synonym for “synopsis.”
Every synopsis of obituaries about O’Brien that I’ve seen, emphasizes Larry’s obsession with politics.
Thank you, Mr. Will, for reminding me again that there is more to just about everything than meets the eye, and especially in this case, the “ç”. Whatever that is.
WILL THERE BE AN ACUTE SHORTAGE OF GRANDPARENTS? IF SO, IS THAT A GOOD THING OR BAD?
Everything we see, we hear, we feel, and what we believe, is relative to how we process what we see, we hear and we feel.
For instance, we stand on a corner and watch a slow moving bus. The passengers behind the windows are moving from left to right. At that exact moment the passengers see us sliding from right to left. (That’s a simplified explanation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, which is about physics, but also works for some metaphysics.)
So, please consider these four harsh and quite unpleasant big-picture statements that really are about money.
Millions of otherwise reasonable Americans and citizens of other countries think supporting an unborn baby’s right to life is more important that their grandparents’ right to life. Or vice-versa.
Millions assume the survival of a business is more important than the survival of its staff and customers. Or vice-versa.
Millions believe health insurance is a privilege only for those who can afford it, and the government should not be responsible for the others. Or vice-versa.
Millions are convinced it is more important to strengthen the safety net for wealthy people and businesses than the net for poor people (including the working poor). They essentially argue that a strong circulating dollar is more important than a strong DNA. Or vice-versa.
Millions of others probably are like me. We bounce around in the middle between the vice and the versa. We know that once in office every politician’s vote affects constituents’ quality-of-life and quality-of-death. We know that some votes seem relatively innocuous yet unforeseen consequences can lead to tragedy.
E.g, an unfilled pothole causes a car to veer into an oncoming vehicle. Injuries occur. That might not have happened if either of the drivers had learned about defensive driving. But, someone made a budget decision to drop drivers-ed from their school curriculum because the money was needed to upgrade its football stadium, which grew in size. Meanwhile, it had been a hard winter and someone else knew there were too many pot holes and too little money to hire more workers. So potholes grew too.
If you’ve lived in a rural school district, that kind of thinking would not be unusual.
But, we don’t ask our elected officials (down to county and lower levels) how they determine whose life is worth saving or improving, and whose life is on the other side of the divide. And why they think the way they do? Especially in allocating budget monies.
For the most part, those of us in the middle don’t have an opportunity to ask decision makers about the pros-and-cons they considered when choosing options that affect our lives. Especially the cons.
So, we depend on the rapidly shrinking “edited and fact checked” free press. We know that most of what we hear or read is provided by people who thrive on providing us what we want to hear or read, without nuance, or even what we in the middle consider to be fact-checked.
Unfortunately, with minimal exception, members of the media neither ask nor report on the often complicated decision-making process. In part they have given up and assume politicians will not answer, or bureaucrats will pivot off onto another topic, or the person behind the podium will stop them from even having an opportunity to ask. I personally would like to know how they developed their positions on questions such as those in the four statements above.
Grandmas and grandpas like me have no knowledge of what is going on behind the facades erected by newsmakers so we fear the worst. We fear for our future and fear for the future of our children and their children.
No matter what we may say to others, behind the facades we ourselves have built, we are relatively sure fear is stronger than hope. And we fear we are as expendable as an old penny.
Or vise-versa.
What do you think?
uncredited picture from BestLife.com
Sunday, May 10, 2020
poor georgie's almanack:
Every day I find a headline or two on the inter-web I don't understand.
Today's headline ... “France mandates masks to control the coronavirus. Burqas remain banned.”
FYI: I cleansed credit card with hand sanitizer. It no longer has any virus (computer or corona). Actually, it no longer works. Sanitizer ruined the swipe on back and the chip on front. Nice lady at MasterCard not surprised. New card should arrive snail mail today.
Monday, April 20, 2020
poor georgie's almanack:
Some kind soul in the 2,000 mile trip from Honduras to our kitchen put a banana bandaid over a severe boo-boo.
THE TOUGH “BIG THREE” YALTA SUMMIT … SECRECY ON THE SEAS … OIL
PLUS A FLYING, AND ROTATING THRONE THAT WAS TOPPED BY AN IMPULSIVE ACT OF KINDNESS.
It was Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1945. The USS Quincy was anchored next to the USS Murphy in the Suez Canal’s Great Bitter Lake.
Increasingly frail, exhausted and sick, the president of the United States of America was returning home after an arduous week-long meeting in the Black Sea resort town of Yalta.
There, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Russia’s Joseph Stalin, and England’s Winston Churchill, “The Big Three,” had made plans for the end of World War Two and decided which parts of Hitler’s Europe would be their own “spheres of influence.”
FDR flew from Yalta to The Quincy, the ship that would take him back to America. Before the Quincy began it perilous trip the American president would conduct a second round of summitry, this time with Arab leaders. FDR’s blood pressure on the USS Quincy was 260 over 150, according to several historical reports.
Two months later, Roosevelt would be dead.
During five hours of one-on-one discussions with Saudi Arabia’s ruler Ibn Saud, the gaunt but gritty FDR made an impromptu gesture of kindness and empathy that cemented the bond between Saudi Arabia and the USA … a relationship that significantly changed history. (Photo: USS Quincy meeting. Ibn Saud and Roosevelt are seated.)
I learned about this because my client in the 1990s was Alan Reich. Like FDR, Alan was confined to a wheelchair. At age 32, his neck was broken in a diving accident. His disability was much more serious than FDR’s, whose legs were paralyzed at age 39 by Polio. Reich, also in a wheelchair, had a stellar career in and out of government. He, then was president of the National Organization on Disability (NOD). Roosevelt and Reich clearly proved that people with disabilities surely have important abilities.
Alan told me he wanted to create an annual award for heads-of-state celebrating their country’s efforts to improve the lives of people with disabilities. The award would be in FDR’s name. The plan was simple, but the implementation would be tricky. Reich, the UN Secretary General, and a yet-to-be-found major donor would jointly make the annual presentations to heads of state.
Reich already had hooked Boutros Boutros-Ghali the sitting Secretary General (SG), but he needed to reel-in a big bundle of money to fully support the award.
Alan asked me to be his sole traveling companion for a one-day trip to New York. By then I was fairly adept at handling the intricacies of accompanying a virtual quadriplegic, getting in and out of wheelchairs, cars and planes and navigating his wheelchair across busy streets. The two of us visited the Saudi’s acting UN ambassador in his office and then had a short session with the SG at the UN Building.
I had hastily located a photo of the historic 1945 meeting between FDR and Saudi King Ibn Saud. For us it was just a prop. For Saudis, we learned, it was iconic. That image symbolized the very moment when the nation began to evolve from one of the world’s poorest down-and-out countries that couldn’t pay its bills into the stratosphere of the wealthiest nations.
The intent was for me to take a photo of Alan in his own wheelchair next to the ambassador holding the historic photo. We then could tell our story in a short caption.
The ambassador’s visit was part of Alan’s campaign to raise $5 million from the desert nation for the award. Alas, the Saudis passed on the opportunity. The FDR award eventually was delivered to about ten heads of state, mostly at the UN, with meager funding from elsewhere. But, that’s background noise for this essay.
Long after the New York trip I had time to research the FDR/Ibn Saud session. And what a story that photo revealed!
It begins with a quirk of geology. Much of the parched, sandy Arabian Peninsula covers a sea of oil.
As WWII was grinding to its end both England and the USA, knowing that oil would power the recovery, wanted to get their hands around all of it. They were courting 70-year-old Ibn Saud, the wily desert fighter who created Saudi Arabia and became an absolute monarch. Only FDR had made a concerted effort to come and see him.
Ibn Saud often left his palaces to live and govern in a tent. He had relatively few modern conveniences. At that time Saudi Arabia was desperately poor, making more money from pilgrims visiting Mecca than any other source. The king was wary of the surrounding Arab rulers who wanted his land, especially the religious sites. So, he sought a powerful security partner he could trust mano-mano, as well as wanting income.
The Saudi ruler knew the logistics for the American president’s trip to meet with him was a really big deal. Safely moving 63 year-old FDR through Nazi submarine-infested waters, and within range of German aircraft, was a major mission. An armada of warships and dozens of warplanes were involved in the voyage from Norfolk, Virginia in the USA to the “Big Three” summit and back, including the Suez detour to summit with Ibn Saud.
One vessel, the USS Murphy, had taken a stealth side trip to Jeddah, the Saudi city on the Red Sea. There it picked up the King and his 48-person entourage of servants, cooks, an astrologer, food taster and imposing barefoot body guards. Seven sheep were penned on the rear deck to be skinned and cooked following Islamic dietary traditions. Sailors created the pen by stringing ropes between depth charges.
A group of the King’s wives and harem, originally scheduled for the trip, remained in Saudi Arabia. Navy brass nixed having all those women onboard for the trip from Jeddah to Suez.
During his first time on a motorized ship, Ibn Saud slept in a large tent erected on the Murphy’s outside deck. The tent was supported by the ship’s forward 5-inch gun, pointing up toward the stars. Sailors, of course, nicknamed the destroyer “Big Top.”
Angelo Marinelli, a seaman on the mission, told his local paper, “They built campfires on the deck of the destroyer. Every sailor aboard was carrying a fire extinguisher in case the fires in the tents got out of hand.”
Several reports claim the ship’s crew, the king and his entourage overcame language barriers and got along famously. The Navy men introduced many of their guests to movies and the king’s bodyguards impressed sailors with demonstrations of using their scimitar-like swords. Or maybe those were warnings?
Because the hulking Ibn Saud suffered severe pain while walking, ship decks were carpeted to alleviate some of the King’s discomfort.
Once aboard the Quincy and seated next to the US President, Ibn Saud and FDR famously bonded. In large part that was because of their disabilities. The King, whose cane is visible in the photo, had never seen anything like the President’s wheelchair and was fascinated.
In an impulsive act, FDR gave Ibn Saud one of his wheelchairs. This turned out to be a much bigger deal than the officially planned gift, which was a fully-manned DC-3 passenger plane with a swivel throne. Thus, while in the air, the King could painlessly rotate toward Mecca to pray.
After discovering that the thin wheels of FDR’s chair didn’t work in Saudi sand, and because the king was much larger than the president, the monarch had several constructed with wide wheels.
In summary, the USA was awarded the long-term right to drill, process and sell the oil. Saudi Arabia became one of the richest nations in the world.
That picture of the two leaders, one with a cane and one with a cape over his shoulder, hiding a wheelchair from cameras, became the most-seen photo in all of Saudi Arabia. It showed two sly old, battered men who had conquered their worlds and their painful disabilities.
And it depicted one of the most significant impetuous acts of kindness and compassion in modern history.
Addenda:
1. A long retrospective on these April 1945 events posted on the Saudi based arabnews.com provides colorful details about the secret meeting. It includes some of the after-event notes prepared by the chief US diplomat involved, William A. Eddy, who was the official translator.
He reported that near the end of their meeting “Roosevelt told Ibn Saud: ‘You are luckier than I because you can still walk on your legs and I have to be wheeled wherever I go.’ The king replied: ‘No, my friend, you are more fortunate. Your chair will take you wherever you want to go and you know you will get there. My legs are less reliable and are getting weaker every day.’
“At this, the president said: ‘If you think so highly of this chair I will give you the twin … as I have two on board.”
2. The Ibn Saud meeting covered considerably more than oil and there were strong differences of opinion about a future Jewish state in Palestine. Nonetheless, the camaraderie was deep.
3. Before seeing Ibn Saud, Roosevelt met with King Farouk of Egypt and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. These were much less historic events.
4. England was America’s main rival for the Saudi oil. After leaving the USS Quincy, Ibn Saud went to meet Winston Churchill near Cairo and returned to Jeddah on an English warship.
Canny FDR had sanctioned that meeting expecting the two would not get along. The Saudi ruler reportedly found the British Prime Minister to be an unpleasant character.
The posting on arabnews.com says the Churchill-Ibn Saud session occurred because the English PM found out that FDR was going to meet with Ibn Saud and wanted to be part of the action.
Quoting William A. Eddy’s notes, “whereas the Americans had taken (Ibn Saud) on a destroyer, (The British) were going to return him on a cruiser.” That would be a larger and supposedly more prestigious ship.
Later, the king told Eddy that he “did not enjoy his return trip to Jeddah.” Among his complaints about the dull voyage were … “the food was tasteless; there were no demonstrations of armament; no tent was pitched on the deck; the crew did not fraternize with his Arabs; and altogether he preferred the smaller but more friendly US destroyer.”
