Month: August 2018

Three stories converged recently.

Somehow I discovered that I no longer had an electronic copy of my own book, So Help me God. So I have been entering the text chapter by chapter on a memory stick and revising bits as I see the need.

Chester Alan Arthur became President on September 20, 1881. When he received the telegram confirming the death of President James A. Garfield from medical ineptitude following Garfield’s being shot in the back, Arthur sobbed, “uncontrollably” in the words of his butler.

Arthur had no previous experience in elected office. He had government work by virtue of his allegiance to the boss of the Republican Party machine in New York, Senator Roscoe Conkling. He became the Vice Presidential candidate under Garfield to win for the ticket the electoral votes of New York.

When he became President, people assumed that he would be loyal to the machine. To everyone’s surprise, he was a vigorous supporter of the Civil Service Act of 1883, which he signed. The Act attacked the patronage system upon which the machine’s power was based.

When confronted by a Republican partisan who accused him “of acting differently than he would have before, [Arthur replied] ‘since I came here, I have learned that Chester A. Arthur is one man and the President of the United States is another.’” (Ridings and McIver, Rating the Presidents)

Arthur knew who he was, what his role required of him, and was comfortable with both.

Denny McLain was interviewed in the AARP Bulletin. McLain was the last pitcher in major league baseball to win more than 30 games in a season, in 1968. After his baseball career, “history accurately depicts a guy that was out of control,” McLain says. That period of his life included two prison terms, for embezzling and extortion.

AARP asked if these were the low points of his life. McLain responded: “Denny McLain has had two tragedies in his life. Our daughter was killed by a drunk driver [in 1992] and my wife, Sharon, getting Parkinson’s disease. Otherwise, I’ve had a great life. To worry about the things that happened many, many years ago doesn’t make much sense.”

“I work every day. I’ve got a very sick wife who I take care of the best I can. I do lots of sports memorabilia shows. I am always looking to speak at a dinner—that’s my shtick.”

“I enjoy life as much today as I did when I was 24.”

When asked if he felt slighted by not being in the Baseball Hall of Fame, he said, “my family is hurt much more than I am. I have the memory and the thrill of being a player—that’s my Hall of Fame.”

In March, I was part of a large group of people celebrating the life of a teacher-friend who had died suddenly last summer. A few days after, our friend’s significant other, who had organized the event, sent us a copy of a letter he had received from Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

While in college, Justice Sotomayor had been tutored by our friend. Though that relationship was well in the past, the Justice wrote kind words about the help and encouragement she had enjoyed from our friend.

Justice Sotomayor is of particular interest to me. I have read dozens of biographies about U.S. Presidents (go figure!). I have read the life story of only one Justice of the Supreme Court, hers. My Beloved World detailed a life begun in circumstances unusual for someone who achieves such high station in life. Justice Sotomayor wrote frankly about the obstacles she faced as an Hispanic woman achieving the education she needed that was prerequisite to building a career in law.

I am partial to her as a Justice because she recalls earlier days when those on the Court had actual experience with criminals, juries and trials, not just appellate experience following a career as a law professor. I am a fan of “the life of the law is not logic but experience.” (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.) So I was excited when my friend told me some time ago that she had a personal relationship with someone I admired.

What comes through in My Beloved World is a person who does not hold grudges against people or circumstances that might have made her path rockier. Nor does she regret the person she has become, in part because of those obstacles. She seems a person comfortable in her own skin.

I sometimes wonder if our world is filled with people who need to stay busy all the time, enabling them not to think too deeply or too often about the arc of their lives. And, I wonder if that restlessness is rooted in not feeling comfortable in one’s own skin. I’ve lived long enough to know how difficult it is to fairly assess one’s self, an assessment fundamental to coming to feel comfortable about who and what I am.

Perhaps it is a gift, or perhaps mere grace, that allows for people of any age to say to themselves, this is who I am, and feel comfortable about it.

Daniel E. White

August 26, 2018

Recently, we watched the movie Nostalgia. It begins in a cluttered room full of the stuff of the widower’s life where the man sits passively. An insurance appraiser comes to visit, hired by the widower’s granddaughter, to appraise the stuff, to see if there is anything of value worth saving, value meaning money.

The appraiser reports that there are a few things worth not all that much. When he asks the granddaughter whether or not any of the photographs might have a value other than money, she never answers the question.

In the next vignette, the appraiser meets a widow amid the rubble of her house, burned to the ground a few days before. She had time to save only a few items from destruction, pieces of jewelry and a baseball signed by Ted Williams in the 1940s. She is, naturally, distraught over her losses, especially the photographs.

The baseball was a family artifact, passed along from grandfather to father, intended to be passed along to the father’s son. Everyone involved understood the baseball to be more than a ball and a signature. The widow had not yet given it to the son but intended to one day.

But, something prompts her to consider selling the ball through a shop in Las Vegas that trades in collectibles. Ultimately, she does, for something over $60,000. She seems relieved, not by the sum but by not having the ball anymore.

The shopkeeper then leaves, bound for his now-deceased parents’ home, where he meets up with his sister. They are about to begin to disassemble the place, starting in the attic, chock full of things that meant something to the parents, a few triggering memories for the man and his sister, including photographs.

The sister’s daughter comes, asking permission to go away with the weekend with her girlfriends. The mom tries to persuade the daughter to stay and go through the attic stuff with them. The girl gingerly says, “this stuff has no meaning to me. It’s your space, not mine.”

Thus admonished, the mom agrees to let the daughter go with her friends.

On the way, the friend’s car crashes and the daughter is killed.

The film made us think. When do the things we keep for nostalgic purposes become clutter, either for us or for those who will face the task of taking apart our places?

“A picture is worth a thousand words but being there is worth ten thousand pictures.” I spoke these words at Grossmont Christian Church in Spring 1966. I was talking about my trip aboard the Seven Seas, the college-credit program that circumnavigated the globe in a semester. The sentence might be the only original thing I ever have spoken, appropriately pretentious for an 18 year old and achingly obvious.

Taking pictures is a common activity for travelers. The possibilities for picture-taking offered by Smart phones has made all of us more profligate photographers.

Phone camera photos are digital. What about the pre-digital-era pictures we save? Why and for whom? What do we do with them when we begin to downsize our homes?

One of my first About Aging pieces wondered what should be done with the National Geographics we all seemed to find stashed by our parents. Turning these into trash seemed almost sacrilegious. When the pictures are ones you have taken and the destinations you have visited are your own, what do you do? The shelf below our TV, with multiple photo albums, is a regular reminder of the dilemma.

We took those pictures because we wanted to remember. We look at the pictures…almost never. We have disposed of hundreds of photos in the last few years yet hundreds more remain, and a thumb drive in our safety deposit box is our insurance against losing our digital ones accidentally.

We continue to take pictures. Some we have printed and framed. A few of those serve as prompts for conversations beginning “remember when” or “that reminds me of.”

The movie showed the weight nostalgia can be. We saw similar weight when we took apart Mom’s house. We recognize the weight underneath our TV.

To see photos and things as prompts for remembering is not a bad thing. Being there is worth ten thousand pictures but if you cannot be there, the images sometimes do stimulate fond sensory memories.

At a memorial service for a colleague who died young, a slide show about her life ended with a photograph of her taken from above. She is looking up into the camera with sparkling eyes and a smile that blends joy and puckishness. It captures her well.

She is no longer where she once was, available for a hug. She is, however, indelibly fixed in the minds of her friends by that photo, all the senses engaged in the memory.

Beyond that group of her friends and family, the picture has no meaning, however. The daughter in the attic was wise.

People of a Certain Age, the dilemmas remain. Each of us will address them differently as did the folks in the film. For now, perhaps it is sufficient to regard the photos and the stuff as alternate ways of being there.

Daniel E. White

August 12, 2018