Desmond Tutu died today (kids, if you don’t know him, go to Google). It appears that his death marks the end of the era of the Movement Against Apartheid in South Africa (that resulted, finally, in the end of apartheid in SA). Some major movements within my memory that involved millions of people include Ban the Bomb (against nuclear weapons), Civil Rights (end apartheid (and slavery) in America), End the War (US’s war in Vietnam) and Tear Down the Wall (kids - it divided Berlin between Communist & western Berlin, and thus between Communist & western Germany). Not in any way to belittle any of the heroes who worked in any of these moral campaigns, but Desmond Tutu was a towering figure in the fight to end apartheid in SA. The (Black) Archbishop of the Anglican Church of South Africa, he was the very publicly outspoken spiritual moral core of the movement, and he preached & lived non-violence always. Absent his leadership there would, almost certainly, have been appalling violence in that country (beyond the daily violence against Black people in that country at the time). (I would say the same about Nelson Mandela who led from a non-religious perspective and also non-violently after his long imprisonment.)
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In 1968, Joan Didion wrote these words in “On Keeping a Notebook,” from the 1968 collection “Slouching Towards Bethlehem -
“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.” [Margaret Sullivan in The Washington Post, December 24, 2021]
Lordy, I wish I’d written those words. I have not read enough of Joan Didion’s work and will remedy that very soon.
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I just cooked & ate amaranth for the first time, with Original Log Cabin Syrup, and I am going to eat it every day from now on.
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“Officers opened fire on a suspect when they spotted him assaulting another person at a Burlington Coat Factory in North Hollywood; one of the bullets went through a dressing room wall, striking & killing a 14-year-old girl.” [The Daily Beast]
or that news sentence could have - should have - said:
A cop shot & killed a 14 year old girl who was trying on clothes for her quinceañera, (which is a huge deal for Hispanic girls & their families). The cop shot & killed this girl INSIDE A DEPARTMENT STORE because …. Well, shit, it doesn’t matter why.
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The Unabomber (yo kids, look him up on Google, too) is 79 years old and being transferred to the medical facility for US prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. For several years he thought it was completely OK - and sensible - to mail bombs to people & institutions he did not like. And now, he is old, sick & pathetic, as is the typical end of dictators, violent narcissists & bullies (“my” John N. soon to be among them). Gives one pause.
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Exceptions do not prove the rules; they disprove them. Whoever originally came up with that phrase should be fined & fired.
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At the end of some years - and surely every year since 2016 - I think of Dylan’s song “Black Diamond Bay.” It has an iconic line (at least to me): “And there’s really nothing anyone can say,” which means something because my mind attaches it to the ending part of the song, as you can see here —
I was sitting home alone one night
In LA watching old Cronkite
On the seven o'clock news
It seems there was an earthquake that
Left nothing but a Panama hat
And a pair of old Greek shoes
Didn't seem like much was happenin’
So I turned it off and went to grab another beer
Seems like every time you turn around
There's another hard-luck story that you're gonna hear
And there's really nothing anyone can say
And I never did plan to go anyway
To Black Diamond Bay.
If there is any history written after 2024, history, that is, that leaves the outrages & wrongs of our own Tiananmen Squares in the text, it seems likely to include quite a bit of blankly watching, discerning nothing happening (as the democratic republic of the US is sliding into the sea), checking out and grabbing another beer … because there’s really nothing else anyone can say.
Wow. This is one of your best posts, ever. Please keep on writing.