“SHIP OF FOOLS”: JUNE 4TH IN HISTORY

 

On this date, June 4^th, in the year 1939, the German ocean liner MS St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany, was turned away by U.S. officials on the Florida coast.

 

Their lives could have been saved. Most couldn’t imagine what was to come, but conditions for Jews in Germany were already known to be dire.

World War II broke out three months later when Germany invaded Poland. But German Jews were already in concentration camps before, to be followed by the Jews of Poland and other conquered territories.

 

A famous movie was made in 1965 (after a novel published in 1962), inspired by this ship and others similar to it. It was called SHIP OF FOOLS. In the movie, the Jewish tragedy was subdued and the voyage’s destination changed. But what stayed with me when I saw the movie in my teens was how cruel it is for nations to turn a blind eye to the known suffering of those who choose to make the difficult journey of leaving everything and everyone behind.

There, but by the grace of the almighty, go any one of us.

 

I cry for the doomed of the MS St. Louis. Let’s remember them this day and, please, *do better.*

February 20th in History

 

Or—

1872: NEW YORK'S METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART OPENS

 

{^The Metropolitan Museum of art circa 1903}

If you love visiting museums, I promise the Metropolitan Museum on New York city’s upper East Side will not disappoint.

 

At its founding, it was a modest thing, conceived in Paris by a small group of Americans who wished the new world to hold some of the treasures Europe had.

 

It grew to be one of the best museums in the world.

 

What I have learned about museums of such scope is to not try to visit all their parts, not even as “a focus plus a quick run through.” A quick run-through, as some do so they can attest to having seen, is exactly how not to enjoy a museum.

 

At the Met, as the locals call it, I make sure to focus on what I love and leave the rest. For me, it’s the Islamic art section, and (sometimes) the furnished period rooms. For you it may be Renaissance art, or art of the Far East, or costumes (much better at the Smithsonian, in my opinion) and even Impressionist art (stronger at the Museum of Modern art, also IMO.) Perhaps you’re intrigued by art of the ancient world (Greek vases, anyone?) or medieval iconography. No matter. The point is to go for what you like or are most eager to learn about when you are fresh and keen on both seeing and reading.

 

Two hours at a time does it for me. This is not a school assignment. This is about pleasure.

The key is to leave before fatigue sets in.

💐Happy Birthday💐 

💐dear MET💐

{^Damascus Room at the MET^}

MAY 16th IN HISTORY

 

Many events happened on May 16^th. Some tragic, (the quelling of the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943) and some that revolutionized our world, (Theodore Maiman made the first laser operate at the Hughes Research Laboratory in California, by shining a high-power flash lamp on a ruby rod with silver-coated surfaces, 1960) and so many more.

 

But my focus landed today on another event that happened May 16^th. The first Academy Awards were presented. (1929)

 

Why would my mind focus on such a nothing thing? You’d be just to wonder about my brain’s degree of feebleness. Could the current Hollywood writers' strike be ringing my bell? Not really, though there's a tenuous connection. Hear me out.

 

The OSCARS, as we have come to call these yearly bashes, are a strange thing when you bother to think and really contemplate them. Displays of vanity and self-congratulations of an industry most of us consume but are not part of. They are also too long and much of these evenings are clunkily not entertaining. And yet---

And yet, many millions the world over watch them live.

 

What started as a fifteen-minute presentation and dinner at a Los Angeles hotel (the Hollywood Roosevelt) with nicely dressed people, has grown into a global event that testifies to one thing: The American cultural power grip. It’s monumental, actually.

Love it or not, it is what it is. We didn’t need to wear T-shirts that screamed “America First.” The Oscars said it for us.

 

It’s also significant that they are losing their audience in recent years. Maybe this is another testament that our cultural dominance is waning.

 

History is like that. Mileposts to mark rises, falls, and the long road keeps on keeping on.

APRIL 11th IN HISTORY

 

April 11^th 1961 - Israel began the trial of Adolf Eichmann, accused of World War II war crimes.

I could claim to remember it well, because the whole country (then a very young one thirteen years old) listened to nothing else every weekday on the Voice of Israel, the national radio channel.

 

But I was even younger, and although the child of a Holocaust survivor who always knew something terrible had left my father without a single birth family member, I knew little of the details and don’t recall hearing the revelations of the trial.

 

To this day, Adolph Eichmann is the only person ever executed in the state of Israel. The death penalty is still legal there, but only for Crimes Against Humanity. The state used the gallows left from British Mandate years (1918-1948) and had to have a mock-execution to make sure the hanging apparatus still functioned.

 

One of my first memories was related to this. I was standing by the yard of our apartment building when two girls (they seemed like young women to little me then, but they were likely highschoolers) were discussing whether Eichmann should be put to death. I didn’t absorb the details of their positions, only that they differed on the matter.

 

I was too young to know any of the details of survivors’ testimony, or Eichmann’s retort that he was “just following orders.” Oddly, my only memory was of a civil and cogent discussion between two young people about the rightness or wrongness of the death penalty.

 

It’s a good memory, which serves me to this day. It’s the only way to address matters of importance— soberly, respectfully, and with a sense that another person who understands things differently is also trying their best, and that we might be wrong.

MACHINES AND (their) MACHINATIONS

 

March 28^th : many things happened on this day in history, but one less dramatic event caught my mind’s eye.

March 28, 1797 – Nathaniel Briggs patented a washing machine.

 

So what, you say. So many machines before and a whole lot more after, it’s a big yawn,

 

Evermore, we are not the drivers of machines but their slaves. If you ride public transportation or fly on planes, (machines) you will note that almost everyone is glued to their phones, (machines) and while we transport, it’s the machines that own us all the way.

We are located there, but we are not there. We are in our machines, increasingly serving their agendas, born largely of the greed or interests of other users.

 

Granted, this is an enslavement at will. The forced uses notwithstanding, (services and connections that don’t exist outside the world of the machines) we signed onto these dependencies ourselves.

I like my computer and especially email and WORD for my daily work. I like listening to recorded music, even if live music is often better. I’m as slavish to the mechanical world as anyone.

 

But something about it continues to cause me a low-level itch. What, I wonder, would it be like to cut all but the natural world out of my days if only for a few days?

 

I think about it, but short of taking rare Internet breaks I don’t do it.

Got to go and “do” the laundry now. I mean, my washing machine will do the doing, and I will sit here watching a concert given long ago and recorded on a machine.

©By Ken Benner

NOVEMBER 15 IN HISTORY

 

On November 15, 1777, the Second Continental Congress ratified the Articles of Confederation, which was the precursor to the United States Constitution. 

 

Maybe this should remind us why we banded together, and why we have been better for it.

 

Instead of the constant banter about having uniform ways for all people, and if they won’t do as we think is right, let them be banned, shunned, or let us call it a divorce*, consider the quiet ways of tolerance.

*(Divorce: In the context of the union of states, is the unspeakable abomination that are Civil Wars anywhere, the most tragic type of wars for what is already a tragic human impulse.)

Let’s consider living and let others live as they deem right.

 

Fighting is not glorious, regardless of some movies and their parlor tricks. Real heroes get along.

 

I’d like to see a lot more of these heroes in stories, especially for young readers; quiet get-along main characters. They seek not glory and thus are glorious.

Blessed are the peacemakers, especially the quiet ones who live what they say, and do not tell others how they must speak, think, or be.

 

The USA constitution strove for a balance. Let’s remember what it’s about.

This Day, DECEMBER 1st, in History

December 1, 1955 - The birth of the modern American civil rights movement occurred as Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back section of a municipal bus. Her arrest resulted in a year-long boycott of the city bus system by African Americans and led to legal actions ending racial segregation on municipal buses throughout the South.

The struggle to confront and make amends to a racist legacy continues to this day. Rosa Parks was one punctuation point on a long, continuous timeline.

To young’uns, born at a time of an African-American president, this seems like ancient history and yet they sense history’s long shadow in various ways even now. It’s impossible to understand today’s grievances without remembering and reminding what is, in historical context, a blatant disregard for the full humanity of others.

A much wiser person than me, who is also a renowned psychologist, put it this way: “Humans are hardwired to think in terms of ‘us’ and ‘not us’, with all the defensiveness this implies.” This served for self-preservation under threat and did, at times of great scarcity, have a function. But, I only hope, we are slowly evolving to override this and to understand that race and religion do not make anyone “not us.”

Remembering Rosa Parks today.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Hebrew: Yom Hasho’ah- יוֹם הַשׁוֹאָה

Challenging times, such as we're enduring now,  befall humankind periodically. Unlike our current global trial, some are utterly of our own making.

Israel observes Holocaust Memorial Day on the anniversary of the brave and doomed Jewish uprising of those who remained in the Warsaw ghetto. The dates were April 19-May 23, 1943. It is an attempt to paint the catastrophe not only in terms of annihilation, but recognize the enormous heroism of the perished and the survivors. Thus, the day’s full name is Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day.

All over Israel, this commemoration happened today. Every year on this date, at eight in the morning and eight in the evening, the sirens blare and the country comes to a standstill. People bow their heads in silence.
My memory of this day when I grew up in Israel was that the air was unbearably heavy and even lifting my head was an effort. It was a very recent event then, even if to a child it already felt like history. It was also personal, as I’m the child of a sole survivor who had no living relatives on her father’s side.

Israel chose to put equal emphasis on the heroism of those dreadful years. Internationally, the day is commemorated on January 27, the date of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by the allied forces. Obviously, the international community puts emphasis on their act of triumph over this evil.

Personally, I never bought the heroism angle, nor the emphasis on the allies’ role. Most Jews didn’t rebel or survive, and the allies didn’t enlist to save Jews, but responded to a military aggression by the Germans and their alliance. Both choices of how to commemorate this chapter are attempts to re-paint this horrendous time with emphasis that serves the purpose of seeing ourselves as we wish to be seen.

For me, this day is a reminder of the ever-present human capacity for evil. Most days most folks don’t want to recognize it. I understand, because I am no different. I push away the notes of the darkest shadows of our species almost every day, choosing to not fully see it. But one day a year, there is no escape for me.

The Talmud says, “The greater a man is, the greater his capacity for evil.” So on this sad Remembrance Day I know the depth of darkness has a symmetry in how much we can also rise. But I will contemplate the side of light tomorrow. 

Today I reserve for unmitigated sadness.

This Date in Personal History

Ever wake up, note the date, and think there is something about this date that is meaningful, something you should remember, do, or register. Something important...

But nothing pops into your conscious mind. Nothing even crawls in. Nothing.

I have that feeling every few months. I wonder if the birthday of a friend from long ago (like elementary school) or some appointment or work deadline I was supposed to meet is causing this sensation. Maybe. Probably. Who knows?

And this is when I go to this date in history. When all else fails, I feel a need to connect with the collective consciousness.

So on this date in history, the fourteenth of January, in the year 1601, church authorities in Rome burned Hebrew books. Oy vey. Sadly, not the last time this would happen.

On a positive note, in 1878 the U.S.A. Supreme court ruled race separation on trains unconstitutional. It would take eighty-five years for this to sink in some states, but it’s progress.

And on this very date in 1979, President Carter proposed Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  

I still can’t connect to the date’s personal thingamajig, but I’m satisfied.

{Last year’s, ^ but I love it}

Have a wonderful day!

Galileo and the Scientific Truth

On this date, February 26, in the year of our Lord 1616, Galileo Galilei was formerly banned by the Roman Catholic Church from teaching or defending the view that the earth orbits the sun.

Now, I am not anti-Catholic (emphatically not) or anti-religious. The church had its reasons, with worry that challenging this dogma would lead to questioning all dogmas, an unstoppable process. Indeed, history showed this fear to be justified, and the loss of dogmatic faith that had already begun then, continues to this day. The church had reasons to fear that the baby will be thrown out with the bathwater, an expression so vivid I’m using it despite it being a cliché.

The thing is, four centuries later and a formal reversal of this ban by the church itself, we still ban thinking that we fear will lead to abuses of the social fabric and result in hurtful conduct. Only now, it is happening in the name of freethinking.

We haven’t changed. We’re still terrified of our own species propensity to abuse one another, and in the name of protecting us from ourselves we fire/take-down/ban/shun uncomfortable ideas.

I know real tolerance and considered debate when I see it. We’re not there yet.

Saluting the brave Galileos out there. You give humanity some hope.

This Date in History

~November 13~

Indulge me as I reminisce, combining world history with personal.

The year was 2015, and it was Friday. DS had just moved to Paris, France, to attend graduate school. With the help of a Parisian friend, we found him a small studio on an eighth-floor walkup, something a twenty-year-old can manage even if we wouldn’t want to. It was in a central and hipsterish arrondissement #2, on the right bank of the Seine River, next door to a lovely park and a famous patisserie.

I had a weekly skyping “date” with him, which he had set, every Friday at six in the evening, (for him) nine in the morning. (For me.)

We had just spoken, and all was well.

And then it wasn’t.

In a matter of a few hours, terrorist attacked Paris in various locations and when it was over, more than a hundred and thirty people were dead and a hundred more left in critical condition. Two of the attacks were very close to DS’s location, one only blocks away.

Our Parisian friend was able to call him and find him at home. He was not following the news, so she was his source of warning to stay put and not go out to a café or a stroll, something most young folks living where he was would consider a most natural thing on a pleasant night.

I was reminded of my growing up years in Israel, with traumatized American relatives calling every time Jerusalem managed to make the news. Often these relatives were the ones to let us know what had happened before we knew.

I’d be tempted to say that Paris changed forever, but it’s my understanding that it hasn’t. Like Israel, or New York City after 9/11, the city rebounded, and thus the terrorists lost.

And something else came back to my consciousness. It takes very few people making bad choices to wreak havoc, and very many people making good choices to fix it.

When storytellers construct stories, we usually weigh the protagonists and antagonists evenly, at least numerically. My limited experience in real life reveals otherwise.

Which means we, the many, must work harder if we are to make up for destructive impulses of humankind.

NINE / ELEVEN

This Day in History

Any day before a reader was born is history.

If you write stories for children, (which, to me, means young readers/listeners up to the age of fourteen) September the eleventh two-thousand and one is history.

There are already some good Kidlit books that either tell of that day, or have it in the background of a story. I wrote one such, and my agent wondered if it was too soon. Less than six months later, a whole slew of children’s books came out telling of that day. It was not too soon.

It was a seismic shock for the United States, one whose reverberations are operational today. We fear depicting the religion in whose name the perverted individuals chose to act, because many innocent adherents should not be implicated. But if we tippy-toe around that, we can’t tell the story of that day honestly.

And if we tell it honestly, how do we tell it to a child?

For my grandparents’ generation, there was another day that lived in infamy. It was the day where Pearl Harbor, where most of the United States navy was docked, another nation whom we did not provoke chose to decimate the American fleet in a few hours.  Listen to the then president of the United States speaking to the nation here. Franklin Roosevelt said it clearly: December seventh nineteen-forty-one, a date that shall live in infamy.

The country of Japan is an ally now, after we defeated it. Few kids know that date. But it would not be farfetched to say that the events of that day are still reverberating in all we think, feel and do today.

I don’t know what we should do about nine-eleven, except that I am sure we should write about it, and tell young readers what happened. Best to do it with riveting stories, preferably engrossing fiction where imagined characters live through real events, because these are the stories kids read out of school.

Someday, through the haze of the passing time, we will not fear naming the perpetrators. We’ll be breaking bread with their grandchildren, and together we’ll confront new challenges.

But for now, today, nine eleven is still a date that lives in infamy.

Johnny Tremain

As a way to celebrate the miracle that is our country, one encompassing much of the continent from sea to shining sea where, let’s face it, many wish to come to and few wish to flee from, may I recommend a classic book?

Johnny Tremain, by Esther Forbes, was the first historical novel written for young readers, and a Newbery medal winner. My kid-lit reading group read it some months ago, and saved me with this assignment from missing one of the best ways to appreciate the effort and enterprise that was the founding of the union of states.

I felt I was there, with Johnny, as his focus shifted from his personal struggles to be somebody in a world that did not bless him with privilege to the honor and privilege of fighting for something greater.

And the next time anyone says something about how divided our country is, let them situate themselves in colonial times, where many of the English king’s subjects in the Americas were not the least bit supportive of the colonial rebels.

Because what we have now is a vibrant, imperfect, but astonishingly successful nation, where disagreements are settled by a system of state-by-state voting.

That is something great, and worth celebrating.

Happy July Fourth and happy reading.

Le Mot Juste

Or—

The Right Word

On this date in history, June 26 1963 to be exact, this faux pas registered:

US President John F. Kennedy gives his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" (intended to mean "I am a Berliner", but may actually mean "I am a doughnut") speech in West Berlin.

From www.onthisday.com/events/june/26

There are many examples of how much the right word in the right place at the right time makes all the difference. This example is not a weighty one. Hey, it’s summer, the sun is shining and I want to keep light.

But speaking of shining, I have always found the writerly edict to make sure every word shines to be absurd. Impossible, for one, and subjective to boot. It makes writers work themselves into a tizzy, often messing up perfectly good narrations.

Searching for just the right words is part of the process. This, especially when something nags at the writer that it just “isn’t right.”

One well-known trick is to click on the word and look at the scroll-down menu for “synonyms.” Still not quite right? Replace with a closer one, and click on its synonyms. I’ve done this in quadruplets. At a certain point, either the right one shows on the menu or the wee brain has an epiphany. Maybe it’s not the word, maybe it’s the sentence. Or maybe the paragraph or, goodness, the whole story.

Usually the right word settles, and once resting comfortably among the others, it’s sweet. Doughnut-sweet.

Or as we now write in the former colonies, donut. The spelling has to be "juste" right as well.

May 22nd in History

I stay away from politics on the Internet, because I have found that is makes good people behave and talk like bad people. Sometimes very bad people.

If you have followed any of my posts for any length of time, you know my fascination with “this day in history.” Lots of things happened on May 22^nd, this date in history. But the most interesting will bring out the venom of the politicos.

May 22^nd 1799, Napoleon declared Jerusalem for the Jews. Anyone who knows anything knows that it is central to the Jewish ancestral tradition in a way it is to no other tradition. But, whoa, don’t start me on that one.

May 22^nd 1942 The Steel Workers Organizing Committee disbands, and a new trade union, the United Steelworkers, is formed. Looky here; unions were both the best thing and what built the American middle class, or a cancer on our country— depending how your politics navigates your mind. Please don’t start.

May 22^nd 2015, Ireland declared Gay Marriage legal by popular vote. I like that this was done by popular vote and not by judicial decree, because legal marriage is a “communal acknowledgement” of status rather than a personal feeling. But, please, don’t start me on that one. (Well, I was the one who started— so woe on me.)

So here are some I hope we can celebrate together without bringing out the trolls and poisons that hatch in the mud:

760 14th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet

1819 1st steam propelled vessel to cross Atlantic (Savannah leaves Ga)

1842 Farmers Lester Howe and Henry Wetsel discover Howe Caverns in New York State when they stumble upon a large gaping hole in the ground

^All on May 22^nd.

But I saved my favorite for last:

                 May 22^nd, 1849 Abraham Lincoln receives a patent (only US President to do so) for a device to lift a boat over shoals and obstructions..

Oh, I forgot. There are some who are still mad about Lincoln. I’ll celebrate anyway.

January 30, This Day in HISTORY

There is something ominously grim when I look at January 30^th’s notable marks. On this calendar day in 1933, Hitler was sworn as chancellor of Germany. On this calendar day in 1948, Gandhi was assassinated. On this calendar date in 1956, African-American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.'s home is bombed in retaliation for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

That’s just for starters. On this date, also---

·         1925 – The Government of Turkey expels Patriarch Constantine VI from Istanbul.

·         1930 – The Politburo of the Soviet Union orders the extermination of the Kulaks.

·         1969 – The Beatles' last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records in London. The police break up the impromptu concert.

·         1972 – The Troubles: Bloody Sunday: British paratroopers open fire on anti-internment marchers in Derry, Northern Ireland, killing 13 people; another person later dies of injuries sustained.

·         1979 – A Varig Boeing 707-323C freighter disappears over the Pacific Ocean 30 minutes after taking off from Tokyo.

And so much more.

If this is your birthday, I apologize. I hope you celebrate with gusto and do something wonderful so the cloud hovering over this date lightens a little. Many small and a few great actions can make the kettle less black. Let’s polish it into a beautiful reflective silver shine.

I don’t know what is set in stone, predestined, or guided by unseen patterns. What I am sure of is that what we do matters.

History was. Now let’s make some.

It, is, Yes it is---

Happy New Year

But then, it’s just a number, Right?

I think about it, and realize something. From now until the next new year, everything that happens will be recounted as “In the year of our lord two thousand and eighteen such and such took place.”

I never felt close to numbers. Unlike words, they are not my friends. But I know people who adore them, and some even love numerology.*

*Numerology: the branch of knowledge that deals with the occult significance of numbers.

One of the people I know who swears by numerology believes there’s significant information in something numerologists call the master number. You get this number by adding all the numbers of one’s birthday, or the date of an event, until they are reduced to a single digit. Then, each of those single digits imbues significance to one’s life path, or in this case, the coming year’s essential path. It is its “master number.”

In this case, it would be 2+0+1+8 = 11

And then 11 is further reduced 1+1= 2

And so this new year’s essential path is the number two.

{If this sounds like mumbo-jumbo hocus-pocus to you, I agree.]

But what’s the harm? It’s kind of fun. It gives a strange illusion of some control over the future, in the way that knowing where the stock market is headed gives a sense that you can navigate it.

(Disclaimer: even the experts do NOT know where the stock market is headed. Apparently, chimps have made predictions that were just as good or bad, and this was the conclusion of a scientific study.)

So what does numerology have to say about the life-path of the number 2?

Quite a lot, it turns out. 

Here’s one summary—

As the second of all numbers, 2's symbolism is the union of and peace between different entities. It seeks to end separateness and unite all for the greater good whether it be music, food or humanity.

That’s kind of nice. But it’s still just a number.

Let’s try to make it thus.

The day of Mad Reckoning*

*a.k.a. Retunes (or exchanges)

We don’t “do Christmas,” unless you count the general good wishes of Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and homemade cookies. It’s been years since I spent time in department stores scouting for gifts in the month of December.

But what I do hold onto this time of year is to not go anywhere near stores the day after the holiday. I have made that mistake twice, but no more. The first time, long ago, I was lured by promises of uber sales. The second time I did it by mistake. I forgot the madness of the day and thought it might just be the time to look for something that could have waited. I should have.

The day after national gift giving, hoards descend on stores with gift certificates that fell from the trees or were handed in office parties. They make a rather joyful bunch. They were not the problem.

The ones that got to me were the other faction crowding the stores— the people with return receipts to exchange gifts they refuse to use. They never seem joyful. In fact, they seem angry, cantankerous, and garrulous.

That first year I saw a young woman in tears that the bathrobe she got cost so little there was nothing she wanted to get for it in exchange. She had some choice words for the gift-giver who was not present. I saw a child who got a toy he already had, in tears because his mother would not pay for something he wanted as she would have to add too much $$$ after the exchange. The worst was an older woman who refused to take anything other than cash for her return, because she said she hated that store.

It was not pretty. The energy was the most unhappy and unspiritual that I could recall. I vowed to accept gifts from now on and only return them, if I felt an overwhelming inkling, sometime later. From then on, this was the day to NOT go anywhere near stores. It was the day to count one’s blessing that I was here, and not there.

The day after Christmas. That’s today.

This Day in History*

*November 14^th, 1851

On this calendar date, one hundred and sixty-six years ago, Harper & Brothers in New York published Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

Many consider it one of the Great Books in the canon of western literature, certainly of North American books.

Confession: I never read it.

I even knew one of Melville direct descendants, the lovely Meredith Melville. I never admitted to her that I hadn’t read it. I had no excuse. I did read much longer books that book lovers think are must-reads (Yes, War and Peace) and I can’t say that whaling and fishermen are a turn off (The Old Man and the Sea, I did read that one) and really, I have no idea why some great books have escaped the net of my youthful reading, when either the schools I attended or my love of reading drove my cart. Some books just slipped by, and then slipped off.

Like Moby Dick.

But something has changed in me as the years accumulated. I no longer feel I should, or would. I can’t explain that, either. No excuses or “someday.” Call me Ishmael if you need to. That’s fine.

What great books have you not read? Do you still think you will?

&Happy Birthday, MOBY DICK&