We never thought that freedom could vanish overnight, but unfortunately it seems to be happening at a rather fast clip. Many people have listed the contents of the firehouse of insanity gushing from the White House, so I don’t need to repeat it here. The net effect, though, is that we are all drenched and drowning.
I was trolled recently about a comment I made on someone else’s Stack. The person thought that my relentless positivity was the problem. Believe me, that’s just my nature and no matter how awful things are, I don’t believe it helps to continue to commiserate and dwell on the details. And now is not the time to look back in anguish as to what may have gone wrong. Now is the time to step up and put out the fire—literally and figuratively.
So with that out of the way, I do want to share what for me was almost the last straw. The desecration of our beloved Kennedy Center shocked me to my core. Imagine a man with absolutely no class whatsoever being the head of this cultural institution. Will the UFC brings its depravity to the stage next?
Interestingly, after I put aside politics and enjoyed my usual light telly shows, I went to bed and continued reading Alexander McCall Smith’s 2008 novel The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday (in the Isabel Dalhousie series). My bookmark was on page 48, and I continued the story where Isabel is in Edinburgh at her niece Cat’s cafe waiting to meet someone. There were a number of foreign papers available, and she happens to pick up a Washington Post which featured a review of the latest opera at the Kennedy Center. Interesting juxtaposition of fact and fiction, and I found I couldn’t settle quite as well after that reminder.
But earlier in the day I spent time with the series that William Spivey has presented for all of us on his history Substack. I highly recommend this educational material, and I particularly enjoyed the original tapes of interviews conducted by Robert Penn Warren in 1964 with various leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. The reel-to-reel tapes were preserved by Vanderbilt University, and William has given us a transcript with a link to listen to the originals. In hopes of getting more needlepoint done, I was thrilled to have such interesting lessons in the original voices. The one I listened to yesterday was Kelly Miller Smith another hero of the movement who speaks eloquently about his work as an activist involved in the lunch counter sit-ins. I’m looking forward to learning even more today as I select another one from the Who Speaks for the Negro collection (the associated book was published in 1969 and republished by Yale University Press in 2014).
I could probably go on and on this morning, but I am going to leave you with a jingle from my childhood that has been resonating all week.
“Whistle while you work, Mussolini’s lost his shirt. Hitler’s barmy. So’s his army. Whistle while you work!”
RESIST ALWAYS
TTFN (and by the way, barmy means NUTS!)
I recall a slightly different version.
Whistle while you work, Hitler is a jerk, Mussolini bit his peeny now it doesn't work.
Nice piece Katharine! Thank you.
The one I keep hearing in my head is,
"We'll feed ourselves on artichokes
Until the Nazi Party chokes."