10.1.2020 – Two Trains remembered

Two Trains remembered
I should have but, can’t forget
what I did not know

In my reading recently I came across a description of the arrival of Mackenzie King, the Prime Minister of Canada, at the city of Berlin in 1937 in the book Four Days in Hitler’s Germany: Mackenzie King’s Mission to Avert a Second World War.

The author of the book, a Mr. Robert Teigrob, writes that Mr. King came by train and that the train stopped at the Friedrichstrasse station in downtown Berlin.

Mr. Teigrob notes that the Friedrichstrasse station was rebuilt and expanded for the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics and the station today in 2020 is much like the station in 1937.

Almost in passing, as more of in-text footnote, Mr. Teigrob also notes that people using the Friedrichstrasse station today in 2020 will pass by the Trains to Life memorial.

The Trains to Life memorial, according to Wikipedia, depicts two groups of children. One group is a pair of children symbolizing those saved by the Kindertransporte, which brought 10,000 Jewish children from soon-to-be Nazi-occupied countries in Eastern Europe to safety in the United Kingdom and other countries. The other group consists of five children, who represent the 1,600,000 Jewish and non-Jewish children brought by Holocaust trains to the concentration camps and later killed there.

Two trains.

West or east.

Life or death.

Never forget is the mantra of the holocaust.

But I never knew about this memorial.

Somewhere in my mind is a notion about the Kindertransporte program that saved the lives of 10,000 children.

But I had not put into perspective.

And I was not aware of the is memorial.

I did not know or did not think about how this played out in real life.

Never forget.

But how do I remember what I did not know.

It got me to thinking.

80 years from now and memorials start to go up representing groups of kids impacted by decisions and programs of today, which side of the memorial do I want to be on?

80 years from now and memorials start to go up representing groups of kids impacted by decisions and programs of today, which side of the memorial do I want to see have 10,000 lives and which side do I want to see have 1,600,000 lives.

80 years from now and memorials start to go up representing groups of kids impacted by decisions and programs of today, which side of the memorial do I want my great children to point at and say, that’s where our family was.

Maybe I forgot.

Maybe I forgot to remember.

Maybe I did not know about this memorial.

But I will not forget that memorials to our time are coming.

And I will not forget which side I will be on.

9.14.2020 – authors, yourselves of

authors, yourselves of
those laws on which your (and my)
happiness depends

Mr. Samuel Adams, the cousin of John Adams, not the beer, said in a speech in Philadelphia on August 2, 1776, the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, that:

Nothing that we propose can pass into a law without your consent.

Be yourselves, O Americans, the authors of those laws on which your happiness depends.

I have to feel that Mr. Adams, if alive today, would read the papers and watch the news and say to himself, “something went wrong here.”

Or maybe not.

Maybe Mr. Adams would say, “Gee Whiz, I WARNED YOU.”

All these issues.

We did it to ourselves.

But I have a hope in Mr. Adams’ closing thoughts.

“Go on, then, in your generous enterprise, with gratitude to heaven, for past success, and confidence of it in the future.“

Confidence of it in the future.

Maybe it is a curse.

But I still feel it.

9.13.2020 – on nine eleven

On nine eleven world history, infamy one word for the day

The recent anniversary of 9/11 brought so many and to this day almost unbelievable and unreal memories. Many references were made to the fact that no attack since Pearl Harbor had been made against the United States. Fewer and fewer people will remember Pearl Harbor. But the news media will always commemorate with films clips of burning ships and the clips of President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking Congress for a Declaration of War. The most famous part of the speech and maybe the most recognizable words from the speech is the first line that states, “Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in world history.” But that is not what FDR said is it? The News Reels of the era clearly show that FDR said, “Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.” The existing typescript of the first draft shows that the phrase used the words, World History. It also shows that the words are heavily crossed out. Penciled in above is the single word, “infamy.” The archivists say that the edits are made in FDR’s handwriting.

I admit the word may have been suggested to FDR. I cannot claim that FDR thought of the word. I can say that compared to the WORLD HISTORY, the use of the word INFAMY makes all the difference. Abraham Lincoln could have started out saying 87 years ago instead of four score and seven. But Mr. Lincoln chose Four score and seven. Trumpets instead of car horns. The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines INFAMY as: evil reputation brought about by something grossly criminal, shocking, or brutal or an extreme and publicly known criminal or evil act. An extreme publicly known evil act. Shocking and brutal. Infamy. 9/11.

9.12.2020 – most reckless action

most reckless action
perpetuated in the name
of college football

Christine Brennan of USA TODAY, a writer I like and not just because she is a Michigan Fan, wrote today in her article, I love college football but just can’t watch amid COVID-19 concerns, In what has to be the riskiest roll of the dice in the history of college sports, 76 universities, many of them in the South and Southwest, are embarking on the most reckless action ever perpetuated on college campuses in the name of athletics, pressing on with their quest to play football in the middle of a pandemic.

Ms. Brennan states, “The worst thing you’ll be able to say about those schools is that they were too cautious about the health of their student-athletes.

What’s the worst thing you’ll be able to say about the schools that allowed football and other sports to continue? That answer will come in a few months.

But at the moment, what we do know is that the dozens of schools playing football have no idea if by allowing fall sports to be played, they will bring illness, hospitalization and even death to their campuses and communities. They can’t know what they will unleash. They’re just guessing and hoping.”

For longer than there has been a pandemic I have been suffering from a near-terminal case of Harbaugh.

I even talked my Doctor (a Notre Dame Grad but here in the south, what you going to do) to put ‘Suffers from Harbaugh’ on my official Medical Record.

That being said, I like Jimmy “I lost the Brown Jug” (in case he thinks I forgot about Rickey Foggie and Lou Hotlz’s one year with the Golden Gophers) Harbaugh.

And I understand, if not Jimmy then … who?

I don’t think His Evilness Urban Myer will come out of retirement but I would … well …

So I resigned to being good but not great.

And the only real goals left for me as a Michigan fan is to be 1) The first team to 1,000 wins (sometime now in 2024) and 2) not let Ohio State pass us in all time wins in the Michigan – Ohio State series … in my lifetime (58-51-6) so they got to grind out a few wins in the next 8 years.

So what do I have to say?

I agree with Ms. Brennan.

Michigan Football was here before I was born and will be here after I die someday.

I feel the pandemic is real.

I feel we can take time to pause and be safe.

I can wait.

And, as Coach Schembechlor said, “Those who remain will be Champions.”

9.9.2020 – enchantment is cast

enchantment is cast

upon you by all those things

you don’t have need for

I finished up work on time last night and my commute home took as long as it took me to walk from the back room to the kitchen.

My wife was about to leave for the grocery store and I asked, ‘Can I come along?’

Working from home has it positives and I am not sure I am ready to sing the I miss the drive to downtown Atlanta blues, but aside from our walks I do not often leave home between Sunday and Saturday.

My wife looked at me like I was up to something.

I just wanted to get out.

“I just have a few things,” she said.

OK.

“You can’t ask for anything.”

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

OK.

And off we went.

A trip to the grocery store.

If you can separate it down to its parts, it is bizarre and amazing.

Eudora Welty wrote in her short story, “The Corner Store” or “The Little Store,” that “Running in out of the sun, you met what seemed total obscurity inside. There were almost tangible smells – licorice recently sucked in a child’s cheek, dill-pickle brine that had leaked through a paper sack in a fresh trail across the wooden floor, ammonia-loaded ice that had been hoisted from wet crocker sacks and slammed into the icebox with its sweet butter at the door, and perhaps the smell of still-untrapped mice.”

Kroger is a long way from the Corner Store of Ms. Welty’s Jackson, Mississippi.

Running in out of the sun, you are met with bright lights but still the tangible smells.

But the scope and breadth and width of all the available stuff is still there as well.

Ms. Welty wrote, “Its confusion may have been in the eye of its beholder.“

I also thought of Bill Bryson’s comments on a visit to the Liverpool Docks.

Mr. Bryson wrote, ” . . . gazing out on miles of motionless waterfront, it was impossible to believe that until quite recently – and for 200 proud and prosperous years before that – Liverpool’s 10 miles of docks and shipyards provided employment for 100,000 people directly or indirectly. Tobacco from Africa and Virginia, palm oil from the South Pacific, copper from Chile, jute from India, and almost any other commodity you could care to name passed through here on its way to begin made into something useful.” (Notes from a small island, London : Doubleday, 1995).

All the world was brought together for me here under one roof.

And my wife had already said, “You can’t ask for anything.”

So into Kroger we went.

Oreos from somewhere.

Giant apples.

Slabs of fish, and steak and ribs.

Coffees and teas from everywhere.

Fruity drinks and salty chips.

Frozen foods that covered any other type of eatable that wasn’t fresh.

Was there anything you could eat that wasn’t here?

Was they anything that I needed?

No, not really.

But as Ms. Welty wrote, “Enchantment is cast upon you by all those things you weren’t supposed to have need for.”

I was under an enchantment.

I wanted everything.

Kroger.

Where the world comes together just for me.