“We have met the enemy and he is us.” Pogo

A few weeks ago the Florida House of Representatives issued an apology to the survivors of the Groveland Four, also known as the Groveland Boys. I had known nothing about the four black men accused of raping a white teenager in Groveland, Florida, in 1949 until I saw Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King at Greenlight Bookstore. I looked at the back cover of the paperback and saw that the book was about racial injustice stemming from a rape charge. I put the book back down thinking I essentially knew this story already since I had read much about the Scottsboro Boys. And, of course, I had read To Kill a Mockingbird. But finally, the third or fourth time I picked up the book, I bought it.

I was surprised. I found King’s book a page-turner, and while it bore similarities to other racial tragedies, the story was not something I had read before. That would have been impossible. I learned many things from Devil in the Grove including that every story of injustice is unique. Every story of injustice is worth telling and hearing.

This story started when a seventeen-year-old said that she and her husband had been attacked in their stalled car and she had been raped by four black men. Three of those men were quickly arrested while the fourth fled. A hundred-person posse using tracking dogs found the fourth in hiding. When the fugitive emerged and supposedly threatened that posse with a pistol, he was gunned down.

Meanwhile, an angry crowd besieged the local jail. When that mob learned that the arrested men were being held elsewhere, it rampaged in the black section of Groveland firing guns and burning buildings. After several days, during which most of the blacks fled their homes to seek safety elsewhere, the National Guard quelled the rioting.

Although the police said two suspects confessed, those two said the confessions were beaten out of them. At trial, the confessions were not presented. The doctor who examined the married teenager did not testify. (It had been suggested that the girl cried rape to explain her bruises from her husband’s beating.) Footprints at the scene did not match the suspects’ shoes. The trial’s result, of course, was a foregone conviction. The youngest of the three men was given a life sentence. He never appealed to avoid the possibility of a death sentence if an appeal were successful and a retrial held. The other two were sentenced to death. They appealed.

The executive director of the Florida NAACP protested the convictions and called for the removal and prosecution of the sheriff. On Christmas night of 1951, a bomb exploded under the bedroom of the NAACP’s director’s house. He and his wife were killed. Nobody was identified as responsible for this double homicide until a 2005 investigation named four then-dead, long-time members of the KKK as suspects.

The two appealed convictions were reversed, and a new trial order. The prisoners were then being held in the state prison, and the sheriff of Lake County, which included Groveland, picked them up to take them back to Lake County ostensibly for trial. The sheriff reported that the two attacked him and that he shot each three times. One was killed at that scene; the other feigned death and lived.  The sheriff was exonerated of any wrongdoing in the shooting.

Represented by Thurgood Marshall, the surviving defendant was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death again. The Florida governor later commuted that sentence to life in prison.

Gilbert King presents strong evidence to show likelihoods that the girl was not raped; that the prisoners were beaten; that forensic evidence was fabricated;  and that the sheriff shot his two prisoners without provocation.  This information has now led to the apology by the Florida House of Representatives.

King, however, does much more than relate the injustices done to the Groveland Four. He places the rape charge and its aftermath into a broader picture of northern Florida society in the post-World War II era. Black’s houses were burned; black veterans were threatened for wearing their uniforms after their discharges; other blacks were simply beaten; black maids were raped by white employers. Blacks could not vote; they could not serve on juries. They were not allowed to hold jobs of importance in the white society. The schools were segregated, and few blacks could obtain a meaningful education.

All this might seem to be a product of simple racism, but King shows that the situation was more complicated than that. The citrus industry boomed after WWII. The government had improved roads so citrus products could be more easily distributed around the country.  Processes to concentrate juice had emerged, and government contracts to buy concentrated juices had been let. But Lake County had a problem; the labor force was thin. Of course, believers in free markets would predict that the cost of labor would increase, but the Lake County citrus growers and canners did not want that free market. They wanted cheap labor.

Racism is a large part of the reasons that blacks were kept “in their place,” but the maintenance of a cheap labor pool was also important. Thus, when workers were needed, blacks were arrested and charged with vagrancy. They got heavy fines and had no choice but to work for the low wages in the groves, often under the watch of armed guards, as part of a process called “debt peonage.” All this required the wealthy whites to urge an interesting line; to keep blacks in their place, but don’t make the oppression so bad that they leave the area. Some places in Florida had been so harsh that blacks had fled to other parts of the country depleting their cheap labor forces. Lake County did not want that. Be harsh, but not so harsh that the black workers left. This more subtle, economic racism turned a blind eye to the actions of the KKK and its ilk as long as it did not cause the Lake County blacks to find homes elsewhere.

We can properly call the society presented by Devil in the Grove racist, but we should also put another label on it. This was terrorism; a word headline writers used in the 1950s to described the happenings in Lake County. The terrorism did not come from isolated pockets in the community; it was a society of terrorists. If it was not state-sponsored terrorism, it certainly was state-condoned terrorism.

Lake County was not alone. Such terrorism was accepted through a large swath of the country for an extensive part of the country’s existence.  Even if slavery should not be formally labeled as terrorism because it was legal, the unchecked terrorism that was inflicted on black society lasted from the end of Reconstruction through the 1960s when it tapered off . . . somewhat. The largest group of terrorists who have ever operated in this country were not foreigners; they were good red-blooded Americans.

Many of us want to deny that the Groveland travesty was typical. Surely it was an outlier. It happened in the South after all. This is captured by a blurb attributed to the Chicago Tribune on my copy of King’s book: “A powerful and well-told drama of Southern injustice.” Southern injustice, not American injustice. As if we are not all one country. (We will ignore that NAACP facilities were bombed in Boston in 1976; in Tacoma, Washington, in 1983; and in Colorado Springs in 2015.)

We should also recognize that the “benefits” of this terrorism extended far beyond the citrus grove owners. For example, the bankers who loaned money to those owners benefited. The canners of grapefruit sections gained from the artificially low cost of the fruit, and, of course, consumers throughout the country benefited from lower costs. It was not, however, just the Florida citrus industry that benefited from our racial terrorism, but all employers, including the genteel white lady with a black maid or cook, seeking cheap labor.

Today we fear terrorism against our country. It is a diffuse fear, one spread to all parts of our society. The terrorist is seen as other; one with roots or connections or sympathies to something foreign; one who has dark skin. This terrorism seems incomprehensible, but perhaps we could better understand it if we our examined our own history. This country’s foundation has many pillars, but one of them has been terrorism.

The victims of this homegrown terrorism were seen as “other,” and that made it easier to target them.  The concept of otherness is powerful. Surely it has been easier for us to wage military actions in places where we see the population as “other,” but we should realize that to those societies we are seen as the foreign outsider.  For the terrorist we now fear, we are now the “other,” and that makes it easier for terrorism to occur against us.

Perhaps we can better grasp today’s if we can understand our own history and how our homegrown terrorism flourished, for then we might recognize “We have met the terrorist, . . . “

Her picture on the badge around her neck showed her with hair much longer than she now had. I said something about that to the Chinese-American nurse who was taking care of me. She said that it used to come down to her waist, but she had it cut so she could donate it for wigs for chemotherapy patients. Then she went on to say, “I am not very curvy, and when my hair was so short, I looked like a boy. I cried for two or three months.” Even so, when her hair grew long enough, she was going to cut it and donate it again.

An attractive server in my local biergarten is in the process of opening her own restaurant. She says that it will be dog-friendly and vegetarian. Can the canines be happy if the doggy treats consist of untouched quinoa, salsify, and (sigh), the ever-popular purple kale?

What does it mean about our patriotism or our education that the words of the national anthem now appear on those large scoreboards at sporting events?

Crossing over the platform to get to another subway train at 8 AM on a Wednesday morning, the mother (I assume) is holding the hand of a three year old.  Mother, pleasantly,”Sweetie, that is not a snack.  That is a treat.”  A couple of beats later, a little voice.  “Then next time, could you pack a treat?”

“Not men who ran the world, but who made it run.” Ian McEwan, The Children Act.

Over dinner, the new acquaintance told me that his son had died at eighteen after years of a disease. The man said that he felt worthless and that he could not work.  How could he be effective at his job if he could not help his son?

I just finished reading Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan. To my surprise, it was not about the beginnings of Goldman Sachs.

A tidbit for your novel: At a scenic view on a trail on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, a chain link fence is in place with a sign warning not to approach the edge of the lookout.  Behind the sign, hidden from the casual hiker, a lovelock is secured to the fence. It does not say, “Sam Loves Sally” or “William and Wesley Forever.” Instead, commercially inscribed on it is only, “I (heart) Paris.”  Write a page or a paragraph.

“Privatizing the gains of investment; socializing the risk. This is a classic strategy for politically powerful entrepreneurs.” Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism.

“Profound ideas bear repeating, or rediscovery, and many original ideas do not.” Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd, Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction.

Four women had just completed a tennis game and were trying to arrange their next match.  It started to take some time as there were many conflicting commitments. Finally, Ann said that she had to leave.  She was going to a local church’s antique fair, an annual event with displays ranging from expensive jewelry to 1970s kitsch. Ann then said, “Oops I don’t have any money with me, but if I find anything I need at the fair, I’ll go home and get my wallet.” Do you ever find something you need at an antique show?

I did today what I often do when I go by one; I visited and pondered a cemetery.    Surely cemeteries have been created to be visited, and you should stop in, especially if it is a nice spring day.

Different cemeteries have different charms. Well maintained ones are often beautiful.  Lush landscaping.  Mature trees.  Birds.  Squirrels.  The rundown cemetery has the fascination of the wonder of lost stories and forgotten lives.

Although the cemetery I visited today contained the graves of many of the famous, I did not seek them out.  I never do.  Instead I look at random inscriptions.  1880-1942.  1921-2010.  Beloved.  Mother.  You Will Live in Our Hearts Forever.  Somehow this gives me peace except for those like 2004-2008, 1909-1919, which produce a sadness for those who were left behind.  In an old cemetery where the tombstones are so weathered that I can only guess at what the inscriptions read, I feel as if the scene is trying to impart some transcendental message, but I never catch it.

I don’t know if my interest in cemeteries existed before I worked in one.  Until then my contact with the death industry had been sparse.  My grandfather, who lived in the upper flat of our two-story house, died when I was in high school.  (He died on his seventieth birthday.  His son, my father, lived until 80.  Ergo, by my impeccable logic, I get until 90.)  Surely there must have been a funeral, but I have no memory of it.

But also when in high school, Mr. U died.  Although I had no contact with Mr. U, he had been an important figure In education in my town and had a school named after him. I was among those tapped to be the student representatives at a funeral-home ceremony for him.  Up until then, I had seen dead people primarily on TV and movie cowboy shows, and these “corpses” always seemed as if they were going to sit up in a moment.  But as I entered, there was not only a group of frightening adults (I did not know them, and I was shy; I tried to avoid talking even to parents of friends), but also an open casket with the remains, my lightning-quick mind concluded, of Mr. U.  Adults tried to talk to me; I would have found this difficult no matter what, but I kept trying not to look over at the dead guy.  And was that makeup?

My first real exposure to a cemetery came in the summer at the end of high school when I had a job in a local cemetery. There I did not look on the dead.  Instead, I was the main watering guy.  It was a hot, dry season.  A portion of the cemetery did not have underground sprinklers, hoses were used to water the grass there.  Each morning I would do a round turning on spigots that had attached hoses.  This took about 90 minutes, and I made a second round.  I turned off the spigot, walked to the end of the hose, moved the sprinkler to an unwatered patch, walked back to the spigot, turned it on, and then repeated this pattern at the next spigot until the end of the work day when I turned off the spigots.  This might seem boring and lonely, but it was not to me.  I had trouble talking with the adults who worked there, and I found the cemetery a place for peaceful contemplation.  The work suited. (Except that the hoses were black and black stuff got imbedded in my fingers’ whorls.  My hands looked dirty, and that bothered me because this was the summer when I was sure that I was going to unbutton a blouse, may unbutton many blouses.  But, I feared, not if my hands looked grossly dirty. I scrubbed, and scrubbed and scrubbed.  Lava soap was my friend.  So was Boraxo. They didn’t really work.)

The cemetery’s full-time employees did the core work.  They dug the graves; they lowered the casket after a service; they filled in the hole; they landscaped after the burial.  Only once in a while, usually on a weekend when enough of the full-timers were not on call, did I assist. On one Saturday when I was helping, I was waiting for the mourners to leave the grave site so that we could shovel in and level the soil.  Then we would be through, and I might have the time to make my baseball game.  But two or three mourners lingered and lingered.  I must have indicated my impatience, and one of the full-time worker quietly but firmly told me to have respect for those still there.  That struck me.  This physical laborer, who must have seen a comparable scene many times, could see beyond himself to the humanity of those others.  His was not just a job to feed his family, but also one to serve those others.  I was embarrassed for myself.

On another Saturday, after the family and friends had left, we went to the grave to do our tasks.  The casket was suspended over the grave by one of those machines with canvas stretchers.  A crank lowered the casket to the bottom of what really was a six-foot hole.  Then one of the stretchers was detached from the machine and pulled under the casket and up to the other side.  In the normal course, the soil that had been put to the side of the grave was shoveled into the hole, and the ground raked.  A few days later, after the soil’s settling, this raw ground would be landscaped.  But this time, after the lowering, the canvas strips got stuck.  The full-timers tried this and that, but the canvas was not freed.  Finally, the crew chief looked at me, pointed at the hole, and told me to deal with the situation.  Either free the canvas or toss the loose end back up so the casket could be raised again and the process started anew.  To this fit youngster, seemingly no big deal.  But, and it was big but, the grave was only a few inches wider and longer than the casket.  I was not really jumping into a six-foot hole; I was really going to leap onto a casket. In an instant, an image stuck in my mind.  My feet would crash through the casket, and I would be standing on a dead person.  Or I would go through the lid, slip, and be lying face to face with a corpse.  And other variations of this theme.  Of course, these were false worries.  The casket was not a pine box loosely hammered together.  It was one of the Cadillacs sold by funeral homes to those who probably could not afford it.  That lid could handle a lot more than my 148 pounds.  It was going to hold more than that when the grave was filled in.  I jumped, quickly freed the stretcher, and clambered out without incident.  But those images were stuck.  I had nightmares for days, maybe even weeks, and I won’t be surprised if in writing about this, that I don’t have nightmares again.

A few weeks later I was called to the cemetery office.  The manager was there with a tiny, old man.  A small box was on the counter.  It contained the ashes of the man’s wife.  The manager instructed me to carry the container to a specified place in the cemetery where a hole for the box had already been dug.  I should lower the container and then help the man fill the hole.

I lifted the container.  It was heavy.  Very heavy.  I stumbled a bit, but then moved on.  I had never before carried human ashes, and I wondered how they could weigh so much.  The man started to talk about his wife as we shuffled on.  I half listened and as I did generally with adults tried to say as little as possible.  Although I tried to hide them, he may have seen my struggles with the box and said that it was lined with lead.  I wondered why he would have his wife cremated and have the remains in the kind of container meant to prevent decay.  He talked more and more about his wife.  I could almost touch his love for her.  Then he started to talk about her death.  It had been a slow, wasting disease.  I could tell it had been awful.  He said that by the end he barely recognized her.  She did not look like the person he had been in love with for over sixty years.  He said that he had wanted an open-casket funeral, but . . . Cremation had not always been the plan.

I had learned some stuff that summer.  I was a teenage boy and (therefore) a wiseass, but I had been taught that I should respect the grief of others.  After the man had tossed a handful of soil on the box, as I was about to shovel in more, I finally said, I guess you are going to miss her very much.  He cried.

So, what is the proper response to this grief of others especially when they are relative strangers and you did not know or barely knew the loved one?  Silence? Platitudes? (So sorry for your loss?)  Something else?

Blaine Harden has written an interesting dual biography in The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and the Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom.  He juxtaposes the lives of Kim Il Sung, who led his country into what we call the Korean War, with that of pilot No Kim Suk who fought in that war but eventually fled to the Americans in a Russian jet. I read the book because I knew next to nothing of these stories, but I also discovered that I also knew next to nothing about the savagery of the American bombing during that time.

Harden reports that we “massively and continuously bombed North Korea for three years, turning nearly every city, town, and village in the Pennsylvania-sized country ” into a wasteland. A postwar Russian study concluded that “85 percent of all structures in the country were destroyed.”  A precise death toll is not known, but good estimates range from 1.3 to 2 million.  The Strangelovian General Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during this period, had urged massive bombing at the war’s beginning. He thought that by killing a large number of civilians quickly, we could  force a quick surrender. American strategists found that proposal too horrible, but, according to Harden, we instead “used massive bombing to kill civilians slowly and in large numbers.”

The result of this carnage was not victory, but a stalemate, with Kim and his heirs still continuing to control North Korea.

This made me reflect on other episodes of American bombing.  My images had been formed by World War II movies where American bomber crews took out Krupp factories or brave fighter pilots skillfully shot Zeros out of the sky to preserve aircraft carriers or to give cover to advancing marines on Pacific isles. But these were military targets.  Of course, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were different, but somehow the use of the atomic bombs was justified to end the war and actually save lives. It was a notable exception to our conventional bombing.  We fought clean.

The image became at least modified by reading Slaughterhouse-Five and Billy Pilgrim’s survival of the Dresden firebombing.  Even tough we had intentionally destroyed this city before August 1945, but I still assumed that Dresden was still just another exception to our general practices.  However, Tony, my knowledgeable ex-marine friend, told me we also firebombed Tokyo.  A little research revealed that Operation Meetinghouse on March 9-10, 1945, was one of the most destructive bombing raids in history.  Hundreds of B-29s dropped napalm and other incendiaries on a working-class area of Tokyo.  The resulting firestorm destroyed fifteen square miles of the city causing an estimated 100,000 deaths in a matter of hours.  I cannot truly imagine the horror.

How little I knew of our bombings, however, was most forcefully presented to me on a recent trip to Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.  After seeing endless displays of historic Buddhas in Thailand, we were on a boat on the Laotian portion of the Mekong seeking yet more religious images.  Our guide was a thirty-five-year-old Laotian native.  I asked him, “Don’t you hate Americans?”  Silence for a beat.  Silence for a few more beats, and then he said, “It depends on how old you are.”  Without stating how his parents viewed Americans, he said that his mother and father had endured many years of U.S. bombing.  A hole had been dug in the floor of their hut in which they huddled whenever they heard American planes. He, however, had been born after the bombing, and people of his age, he said somewhat noncommittally, did not always hold the same view of the Americans as an older generation did.

I remembered that during the Vietnam War, called the American War in Vietnam, we had bombed the Ho Chi Minh trail that wound through Laos and Cambodia to prevent supplies and men from reaching Vietnam.  But, with a little more research, I began to learn how extensive that bombing was.  America bombed Laos for a decade starting in 1964, and bomb it we did—over 680,000 missions.  That averages one every eight minutes, 24 hours a day for nearly a decade.  More ordinance may have been used on Laos than was used on Europe during World War II. Per capita, we made Laos probably the most bombed country on earth.

Many of the cluster bombs never exploded and still sit in the Laotian countryside.  Thousands have been killed or wounded by the bombs since the American raids ended in 1973 with deaths continuing every year. Plowing a field can be an act of bravery or stupidity.

In 2016, President Obama visited Laos, and promised that for three years, the United States would give $30 million a year to find and dismantle unexploded bombs.  One report states that the United States spent $13.4 million per day (in 2013 dollars) for nine years in bombing Laos.

I saw the President described as being of “deep ignorance.” But if you are deeply ignorant, aren’t you shallow, too?

Always ask for directions in New York City in a loud voice. This increases the chance that someone will correct the first set of directions. The correction-giver is usually right.

The eighteen-month child was securely, I say securely, strapped into a stroller. Yet he was wearing a bicycle helmet. Isn’t that carrying protective parenting too far?

I consider myself an intellectual when I make it to the end of a New York Review of Books article.

A person on a TV panel talked almost gleefully about the power of the “mother of all bombs” we had just dropped. Other panelists nodded sagely. He then said, “But we must expect to be in Afghanistan for a generation.” Say what! Did he look so happy about the magnitude of the munition because he thought that if we had not dropped it, we would have been in Afghanistan for a generation and a day?

As a result of a domestic dispute, a woman was murdered in a school along with an eight-year-old “bystander.” I waited for some commentator to say this would not have happened if we unfettered Second Amendment rights so that the little boy could have been packing.

It is amusing to hear the spouse and the daughter discuss whether the spouse is wearing mom jeans.

In a park or outside an old house, I would come across a hand pump as a kid. Of course, I had to try it. The first couple strokes always seemed hard, but with minimal persistence they became easier. As I pumped I would wonder if the pump still worked. Was there really water down there? Sometimes the effort produced nothing, but with others, a little water would spurt out. That sight produced a quickened, more forceful stroke. Then larger spurts, and finally, a stream without interruption. These efforts always produced a smile and a sense of accomplishment. Yet again, a satisfaction that most in a younger generation will never have.

“He is a prince.” Doesn’t sound derogatory. But compare: “She is a princess.”

“Not for the first time, she had validation for her long held belief that Homo sapiens was genetically linked to pond scum.” Elizabeth George, Deception on his Mind

I listen to radio shows featuring what used to be called “the standards” but now are often referred to as having come from the Great American Songbook. The beautiful and memorable music of Rodgers, Hammerstein, Dietz, Lerner, and similar composers are played. Such programs, however, never seem to play the compositions of Hank Williams, an American who wrote perfect songs. Hank Williams belongs in the Great American Songbook.

Are you like me and wonder when you see a 5 Napkin Burger whether that means the meat is that juicy and delicious or that greasy and disgusting?

There was such a difference between a woman’s magazine and a girlie magazine.

consider myself a bright person.  I think I reason well.  I think I generally understand what good proof requires.  I retain a lot of knowledge from the trivial (Norway became independent in 1906; the horse was named Bucephalus; Henry Aaron had a home run taken away because the umpire ruled that his foot was outside the batter’s box) to the more important (a general understanding of Bayes’ Theorem; Article I defines the powers of Congress) to the crucial (my spouse’s birthday).

But no matter how hard I try, I can’t retain information about some topics. I know little about botany even though I have taken many hikes with terrific naturalists who show me how to identify plants. Sure I can recognize a maple leaf, but that is not because of the guides.  I credit “Oh Canada”.  (I credit Canada for many things:  Bobby Hull, Robertson Davies and Margaret Atwood, great comedians and actors, and a plethora of professional wrestlers—I’m looking at you, Bret “The Hitman” Hart and Stampede Wrestling.)  But I can’t tell a rhododendron from a mountain laurel, a coleus from a coelacanth.

Recently I visited a number of western National Parks and heard much about the geology of Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and other parks on the Colorado Plateau.  I learn something, but that knowledge quickly disappears.  I don’t think it is simply because I have heard the philosopher of science Sheldon Cooper’s assertion that geology is the Kardashian of science.

I do actually have some basic understanding of plate tectonics and continental drift.  Years ago I read a marvelous essay by Stephen Jay Gould on the subject.  (I am being redundant; I have found all Gould essays to be marvelous.)  I have absorbed that plate tectonics is one of the most important Kuhnian paradigm-shifting theories of the Twentieth Century, but while I retain the names of other paradigm shifters, Darwin, Newton, Einstein, I have not retained the name of the geology game changer.  I recently read Patti Smith’s description of the Continental Drift Club, and its homage to Alfred Wegener.  And I say, “Who?”  It finally dawns on me that he is the person Stephen Jay had written about, but I had forgotten.  I could remember the origins of the West Coast Offense (a real, not metaphoric, game changer making too many football games alike tedious), but not the person who, in an important sense, remade the understanding of our present world.

When it comes to knowledge going beyond the concept of plate tectonics, however, I am sure that it will disappear.  On the trip just completed, Kirt, the geologist (also musician and photographer), gave wonderful lectures.  I learned about the Cretaceous Sea, Navajo Sandstone, Kaibab Limestone, and how different erosion rates have led to what geologists call the Grand Staircase.  But I know that I have not truly absorbed this information.  A year or two from now if I am asked to describe this geology, I will say something about the Keokuk Limestone that compressed the Beelzebub Basalt with Balthazar Bedrock at the lowest level thereby forming the Grand Ballroom.

On April 15, 2013, two pressure cooker bombs exploded near the finish of the Boston Marathon. Three were killed and about 260 injured. Three days later, authorities publicly identified two brothers as suspects. Shortly thereafter the brothers killed a college policeman and wounded several other officers, one of whom died from his wounds a year later. One of the brothers was killed as the police tried to apprehend them, while the other was captured, put on trial two years later, convicted, and sentenced to death.

The bombing, the capture, the trial, and sentencing all were big news stories.  After all, this was terrorism striking at an iconic American event on Patriot’s Day, which memorializes another iconic event, the day often regarded as the opening of the fight for American independence. And it was Islamic terrorism.

Books have been written and movies made about these events. This is as it should be. Lives were lost, limbs amputated, and nightmares endured. These are stories worth telling and remembering.

A few days after that Boston Marathon bombing another, almost unknown, tragedy occurred at the West Fertilizer Company storage facility in West, Texas. Emergency service personnel were responding to a fire there when a horrific explosion occurred.  Fifteen died with up to 300 injured.  A fifty-unit apartment building was destroyed along with as many as 300 homes. A crater 92 feet wide and 12 feet deep was created.

Two American tragedies occurring almost at the same time. We know a lot about one, but few know or remember the other where there was a greater loss of life and the destruction of the equivalent of a small town. There are reasons for the different memories.  A bombing at the Boston Marathon makes us all feel vulnerable. We might not be spectators at that event, but we might attend other sports contests. We might sense that such a tragedy might happen outside a church or a concert or a rally. It might happen at a mall or a commuter terminal. It could easily happen at some place where we have been. On the other hand, few of us relate in the same way to ammonium nitrate storage, or even to deaths at a work site, even though workplace deaths average nearly 5,000 a year in this country—much higher, of course, than deaths by terrorism.

And, of course, Boston’s was Islamic terrorism, and that strikes chords that an industrial explosion does not.

There have been responses to the Boston bombing. Security has increased for events that bear any similarity to the Boston Marathon. I know of no cost estimates for the increased manpower and searches and barricades, but it has to be immense. On the other hand, response to the West tragedy seems minimal. This is especially striking because an investigative report a year later stated that the explosive material was not safely stored, and that federal, state, and local regulations regarding such substances were inadequate. The explosion was labeled “preventable.” In contrast, was the Boston Marathon bombing “preventable”?

If Islamic terrorism had leveled a small American village resulting in fifteen deaths, there would be an outraged and rapid response, but we don’t seem to bother ourselves if it is merely a corporate explosion. But then a twist. Last year law enforcement said that arson was the cause of the fire that led to the explosion. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has posted a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those who set the fire, but so far the offer only dangles.  Perhaps if the ATF had labeled the event as terrorism, there would be action.

A legal prediction: In the next few years, the Supreme Court will expand First Amendment free exercise of religion rights and essentially ignore that Amendment’s establishment of religion clause.  Religious organizations will more easily get state moneys, and less state money will be available for non-religious organizations. And people and organizations claiming religious rights will be able to discriminate more readily.

“Conventionality is not morality.” Charlotte Bronte, Preface to the Second Edition of Jane Eyre.

We who park a car on New York City streets become followers of religion. New York rules prevent us from parking on streets at particular times so that street sweepers can clean to the curb. Thus, in front of my house, on one side the street I cannot park from 11:30 A.M. to 1 P.M. on Mondays and I can’t park during those hours on the other side of the street on Tuesdays. However, there are many planned suspensions of these alternate side parking restrictions—38 this year. (Emergencies such as storms can also bring suspensions.) Many of the suspension are for secular holidays—Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, etc.—but the majority are for religious holidays, and as some religions gain more adherents in New York, and hence more political power, alternate-side suspensions may increase to recognize another religious festival. (Politics gets played out in all sorts of ways in New York City.) I believe that some Hindu and Islam holy days were added not too long ago, increasing the number of my days on which I do not have to worry if I am illegally park. It may sound odd, but I don’t believe that I am the only car parker who says, “Thank God for religion!”

This year, however, religion has not cooperated as well as in years past. There are a lot of suspensions bunched together now because of Easter and Passover. Alternate-side parking is suspended for the first two days and the last two days of Passover and for Holy Thursday and Good Friday. And they are this year, too, of course, but in most years Orthodox Easter comes a week or more after what someone like me thinks is Easter, and the parking restrictions get suspended for Orthodox Holy Thursday and Friday. But not this year. In a rarity, western and eastern Easter come on the same day. And I lose out on some hassle-free parking days. Religion can disappoint in so many different ways.

My left-handed sister got upset when our jokester father told her that he had bought her a right-handed tennis racket. Then she thought about it.

A legal prediction: In the next few years, the Supreme Court will expand First Amendment free speech rights. The overwhelming beneficiaries of these decisions will be corporations and conservative entities.

All those TV sports shows ought to interview college athletes about their favorite professors and then produce clips of those teachers in the classrooms and interacting with the athletes outside of classes.

When you see security personnel, do you always feel more secure?

The guy who painted our dining room is also a standup comedian. Are you surprised that his act has no jokes about his painting job?

How did a woman in a hoop skirt get into, much less use, an outhouse?

I know someone who doesn’t like sweetbreads.

I wondered what Donald J. Trump is like when he is alone in a room. My friend, stealing a line from John Maynard Keynes, responded, “When he is alone, there is no one there.”

The resurrection of Jesus is at the core of Christianity.  For most Christians their religion would not exist without the concept of life after death. It is important that this particular death, the death of Jesus, did not come from “natural” causes, from cancer or a heart attack or a liver disease or from what sometimes is labeled an Act of God, an earthquake or a flood or a tornado. It seems essential that the resurrection, the new life, came after a death caused by man. It was brought about not by an individual; it was not merely a murder or an accident. it was a death exacted by society. It was, in fact, an execution. If the resurrection is at the core of Christianity, at the core of the drama is also a state-enforced death penalty.  Is there meaning in the fact that Christianity flows from capital punishment?  As far as I am aware, the role of the death penalty in the Easter story is under-played.  On the other hand, the method of carrying out the execution, the crucifixion, which by definition requires a cross, has a central role in the symbols of the religion.

Although not all denominations fetishize the stations of the cross, nearly all Christians have an image of a beaten, yet still heroic Jesus struggling to carry the cross to Calvary. And every follower of Christ has looked in wonder at representations of Him on the cross, which, whoever the artist, are strikingly similar. He no longer can keep his head erect; it slumps to the side. He bears a crown of thrones and a wound in His rib cage. Stripped of all but a loin cloth (where did that come from?), He is dead or nearly so, but still powerful with a muscular torso and manly shoulders.  Even with death imminent, majesty is present.

Sermons and hymns almost rhapsodize over the agonies of the cross.  Nails pounded through flesh, muscle, and bone into the wood.  Hanging by the outstretched arms until death (mercifully) came.  And this suffering, we are told, was for us, for our redemption, because of our sinfulness, so that we can have everlasting life.

As a boy, I felt that if this suffering were for me and my salvation, Jesus’ agonies had to be unique. How else could His crucifixion work this wondrous change in the future of mankind if that pain and torture were commonplace?  Of course, I knew that two others had been crucified with Him and must have suffered similarly, but these deaths were merely an accompaniment to Jesus’ crucifixion. It was confusing, then, when I learned that this mode of execution was not unusual and saw depictions of fields of men nailed to crosses. Many others, I realized, encountered a physical pain that had to be almost identical to what Jesus encountered. If the agony of Jesus was supposed to mean something to me, did the agony of these countless others have special meaning, too?

Although I do not (fully) understand why, Jesus had to be executed for His resurrection to lead to the belief in Jesus’ redemptive power. The crucifixion, however, was not unique to Jesus and many suffered it; therefore His death did not have occur on a cross. But would it matter to Christian belief if a different form of capital punishment had been used? Perhaps it is important that the form was slow and agonizing, but Jesus apparently died a relatively quick death for a crucifixion, as indicated by the centurions’ surprise that He was no longer still alive. But if prolonged agony was important, even a quick form of execution like beheading or a less gruesome form like poisoning could have been preceded by lengthy flagellation and mutilations. And, of course, other horrific execution methods were also used then, such as stoning, impalement, starving, crushing under rocks, burying alive. My question then: What if crucifixion had not been used, but a different form of execution was? Certainly powerful symbols of Christianity would be different. Would that make any difference to Christianity itself? Is belief actually influenced by iconography, and if so, how?

I had not been to my family practitioner doctor in a while. For specific complaints, I had gone to specialists, and before various surgeries, I had had the equivalent of physicals so I had seen no need to go to the generalist. But I finally decided I should get on a more consistent health regimen and went to make an appointment with the doctor I had not seen for a couple years. I dialed his number and instead of the usual message I get from doctors—“please pay attention because the menu has changed”—I got the message, “Your phone call will be recorded. If you do not want to be recorded, hang up.” I don’t remember ever before hearing that my phone call to a doctor’s office would be recorded, and it was not the more usual, “For quality control purposes, your call may be recorded.” It was more ominous, and the message then gave a different phone number to call if I still wanted to proceed. I realized that the recorded announcement had never said that it was  the doctor’s office, and I thought maybe I had dialed wrong or the number had changed.

I hung up and googled the doctor. The first listing stated that his office was permanently closed. For a moment, I thought that he had retired. I didn’t know how old he was, but he was not young. More than once, he mentioned how he had treated Abby Hoffman ,and then I saw the next entry. An FBI press release from a year ago. My doctor had just been sentenced to 20 months in prison.! A New Jersey medical lab had been giving kickbacks for unnecessarily-ordered medical tests.  In fewer than three years, the doctor had received more than $100,000 in fraudulent dealings with medical.

My doctor was not alone. Thirty-eight people, including 26 doctors and 12 executives of the medical lab, had pleaded guilty as a result of the fraud. Looking for meaning in all of this, I thought of all the times that politicians have talked about fraud, and how often they concentrated on the actions of the classes with little power—welfare fraud, of course, and now unemployment insurance fraud—and how little about the actions of the powerful classes, such as doctors and corporate executives. But this narrative seemed a little forced under the circumstances. Doctors and corporate executives went to prison.

So then, even though I am convinced that I am not self-centered and could tell you all the reasons that I am not, I looked for something personal. My doctor, whom I had not seen for years, was in prison. Surely that was an omen. Did it mean that I should see doctors more often?  Less often? That I should think about what might be fraudulent in my life? Others around me? So far, however, I have not found that personal meaning. Any suggestions?