Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Contrariwise...

 On the evening of November 22, 1963, my dear Uncle Nat, a Dallas lawyer, my mother’s brother, went down to the court house with his partner because they feared Oswald was being denied his civil rights. I don’t think they got very far. They went, not because they didn’t love Kennedy, but because they did…

 

Last night, as I was going to bed (early, as always) the news told me that the Chauvin jury was still out. They also said that Mr Biden had made a statement indicating clearly which way he wanted them to go, and also that he had phoned the Floyd family. I was uneasy – what about the presumption of innocence, which would have been available even to Adolf Hitler? The BBC may have been uneasy as well, because they kept telling me that the jury was “sequestered” and couldn’t hear the president’s views.

 

This morning, of course, all such anxieties are subsumed in the general euphoria. Was that a fair trial? Was a fair trial possible?

 

Mr Biden and I seem increasingly at odds. A few days ago, it was his slow and sloppy response to Prince Philips’s death. For our quarrel before that, see my blog entry for last Saturday, the day of Prince Philip’s funeral. I’m sure he’s not worried about our differences; maybe I should stop fretting.

 

James Thurber, from “My Life and Hard Times”:

 

“Ohio State was a land grant university and therefore two years of military drill was compulsory…As a soldier I was never any good at all…One day General Littlefield picked our company out of the whole regiment and tried to get it mixed up by putting it through one movement after another as fast as we could execute them: squads right, squads left, squads on right into line, squads right about, squads left front into line, etc. In about three minutes one hundred and nine men were marching in one direction and I was marching away from them at an angle of forty degrees. ‘Company halt!’ shouted General Littlefield. ‘That man is the only man who has it right!’”

 

That’s how I feel today.

8 comments:

  1. Love the Thurber quotation. In my jazz dance days, a teacher in The Dance Studio in London said, "If you exude confidence you can make it look as though everyone else is out of step, even when you're the wrong one" - not the point you're making here, but I've never forgotten it. Jean, I add my thanks to Judy's, for drawing Fruity Knitting to my attention 2-3 years ago. My very modest Patreon contribution will also continue.

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  2. Something you said a long time ago: you were fed up with Jigzone since they kept recycling the same old pictures - well they seem to have done a spring clean, and in the last week the site is cleaner, and they are putting up pictures that I have never seen before. Just saying!

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  3. Jean, when considering Biden, just recall the last four years - and what might still be. That should put things in perspective.

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  4. There’s a piece in the NYT (yesterday maybe?) about languishing: that blah feeling that isn’t as bad as depression but certainly isn’t normal emotion. We’re all languishing.

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  5. I don't know if it is about languishing or depression, but there are many days I feel as if the world has been infected with something besides Covid19. For me it is seen in the incessant tit for tat, gotcha of politics and the spate of shootings we have occurring in the U.S.
    My remedy is my garden. I hope your garden is doing well.

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  6. Jean, I think many here in the US are carping at Biden for a number of reasons. Since the Orange Man is gone it seems as though we want Biden to do everything RIGHT NOW! He has only been in office 122 days, he has made some significant decisions, his polling numbers are higher than the OM's ever were, and everyone I know is rejoicing because we don't wake up in the morning fearing what awful things he has done or tweeted. Yet.......I agree with Judy above, everything is just off kilter and there doesn't seem to be an end to it all.

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  7. I believe Chauvin got a fair trail. George Floyd did not.

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  8. Biden's opinion on the Chauvin trial was not reported as explicit; one just assumed he was for conviction. Also Biden has not yet been in office 100 days. Chauvin had a trial. He has his life. What does George Floyd have?

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