Category: musings

after the report

Nana is dozing in her recliner, so I thought I would try to do a quick post on my reactions so far to the redacted release of the Mueller report. With everything going on in my family life, I haven’t been able to read all 400+ pages, but have seen excerpts and analysis from lawyers and investigative/legal reporters, which I have found very helpful.

As longtime readers may recall, I was very concerned about Russian hacking and interference in the 2016 US presidential election, even before the voting took place, so volume one of the report, which details the Russian attacks, is chilling. It reveals how extensive the attack was, confirming that it reached millions of potential voters, some of whom were targeted with particular posts or ads because of where they lived, their race, and other personal factors. It also deals with the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and other campaign systems with release of materials to the public, as well as attempts to hack voting systems.

I am very concerned that Congress has not done enough to help the FBI and the states and localities identify potential weaknesses, especially in technology systems, and rectify them for the 2020 race, which has already started with many candidates declaring their intent to run in the party primaries. We need to be prepared for both similar attacks and for different kinds of attacks from Russia and from other countries. This should not be a partisan issue at all; people across the political spectrum should all be committed to protecting our national security and our freedoms.

The second part of the report is about possible obstruction of justice by the President. It makes it clear that no charges were filed because it is Justice Department policy not to indict a sitting president. Mueller also made it clear that he could not gather all the evidence needed, as the President and several other key figures were not able to be interviewed by the investigators. However, the report lays out details of possible counts of obstruction, which could be taken up by Congress as part of their investigations (which could lead to the filing of impeachment charges) or which could be charged by the courts after Trump leaves office. The statute of limitations for most of the actions taken by the president is five years, so if he leaves office during his first term or fails to win a second term, court charges could be brought for obstruction of justice.

The question of whether the House of Representatives will move toward impeachment is open. It’s complicated by the fact that the Mueller investigation was focused on Russian interference, but there are investigations on-going in other areas, among them illegal campaign contributions, emoluments, and financial crimes. Trump is trying to block them by ignoring subpoenas, not providing records, and not allowing even former staff to testify to Congress. It’s plausible that this could cause additional impeachment charges of obstruction for not cooperating with a Congressional investigation.

Additionally, people have to be aware that the standards for impeachment are different than they are for court trials. For example, one of the impeachment charges against President Nixon was lying to the American people. There isn’t a specific law against this, but it is considered a “high crime or misdemeanor,” which is the Constitutional impeachment criteria.

Some people say that Congress should just wait until the 2020 election, but I disagree. I’m afraid if these things aren’t investigated, with impeachment charges filed if found appropriate, it will look as though anyone who is elected president can get away with breaking laws and ethical codes for four years without consequence.

That is a terrible message to send. We, the People of the United States, deserve better.

SoCS: contribution

I wanted to make a contribution to Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week, but I had another post that I needed to write.

And, yes, I am shamelessly using this post to promote this post from yesterday about my parents’ 65th anniversary and the follow-on post I just finished minutes ago.

So, yes, a sneaky SoCS contribution from me this week…
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “rib” or a word with “rib” in it. Join us! Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2019/04/19/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-20-19/

65 – continued

Yesterday, I wrote about my parents’ 65th anniversary.

This morning when I arrived at Nana’s room a little earlier than usual, she was still in her nightgown.

It was the one from her honeymoon to New York City.

When she had wanted to change to short-sleeve nightgowns, I had found this pastel one folded up in her drawer, so I pulled it out and Paco brought it over to her. When I was there next, Nana told me she was afraid it wouldn’t fit because it was from her honeymoon! Apparently, she had not worn it much and had kept it in her dresser, because it looked almost like new. I showed her that it was the same size as another nightgown she was wearing, but it has hung in her closet for weeks without her using it.

I am not sure how it came to be that she wore it last night, sixty-five years after her wedding night, but the poignancy of it took my breath away.

I hope that she was comforted by it last night and slept well, wrapped in remembrance.

65

Today is 65th wedding anniversary of my parents, known as Nana and Paco here on the blog.

As people who read regularly or know me IRL will know, Nana is currently in skilled nursing under hospice care with congestive heart failure. My father still lives in their apartment in the independent living section of the senior community and visits her several times a day.

She isn’t eating much these days, so I couldn’t arrange to bring in a celebratory dinner. Instead, I brought in creme brulee for Nana and a slice of apple pie for Paco. At lunchtime, Nana ate some of her treat and some cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, and fruit cocktail. Paco put the rest of the creme brulee in the refrigerator in the leisure room for later.

I found a 65th anniversary card at the Hallmark store from us and bought them cards to exchange. Fortunately, they both liked the cards I picked out.

It was really hard for Nana to stay awake for very long but I was grateful that Nana and Paco had some time to celebrate together.

They have been such a great example for all of us of love, togetherness, and caring. I’m very grateful that they made it to this milestone.

In 1954, April 19 was Easter Monday. Weddings were not held during Lent, so Easter Monday was a good day for a spring wedding. It was also Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts, so my father had the day off from work. They thought that they would always have a holiday for their anniversary, but the Monday Holiday Bill intervened so that Patriots’ Day was always on a Monday rather than on the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775, which began the Revolutionary War in what became the United States.

This year, April 19 was Good Friday, the most somber day of the Catholic calendar.

It felt appropriate.

St. John Passion

Over the weekend, daughters E and T accompanied me to a concert of Bach’s Passion According to St. John. The Binghamton Madrigal Choir was joined by the choir of Trinity Memorial Episcopal Church, soloists, and an 18-piece orchestra for the performance.

Trinity Church was filled to capacity for the concert. I worked at Trinity for a couple of years in the mid-1980s and sometimes visited there afterward for concerts and services, as my friend Peter Browne served as organist and choirmaster there for many years. The choir stalls had been removed and the organ console moved to the center, a reminder that the organ had recently been extensively rebuilt, as the console used to be fixed in place. The accompanist of madrigal choir played the organ while Peter’s successor played the harpsichord.

Bruce Borton, under whose direction I sang for many years with the Binghamton University Chorus until his retirement, directs the Madrigal Choir and conducted this performance. It was great to see him conducting, even though we could only see him from behind.

The concert was very moving. I especially enjoyed the choral movements. I had had the opportunity to sing the St. John Passion with University Chorus in the ’80s, when we were still under the direction of founding director David Buttolph. I love to sing Bach and was remembering many passages as the choir sang, including how many (terrifying) times the choir has to begin a movement with no introduction, finding their pitches from the prior cadence.

In order to make the concert more easily understood, especially as it was just before Holy Week, the original German had been translated into English. The English translation was occasionally awkward, but it did allow the audience to join the chorus in singing the chorales that appear among the recitatives, arias, and choruses. When the director invited us to sing the chorales, which were printed in the extensive program, some people laughed as though they thought he was joking, but that is how the congregation in Bach’s time would have participated in the Passion.

My daughters and I thoroughly enjoyed singing the chorales. After the concert, the man who had been sitting in front of us turned around and said that someone behind him had a lovely voice. I told him that it was E and T.

As we were putting on our coats, the woman next to me told me that I had a nice voice, too. I know that I will never have as nice a voice as my daughters, especially E who had sung the soprano arias when she was in school, but it was a sweet gesture.

I want to thank all the musicians who made the performance of the Passion possible. It was also special to be able to attend a concert with my daughters. Because the last few years have been so intensive on the caretaking front, I haven’t been able to get out to cultural events very often, so it was extraspecial to be able to experience this together.

SoCS: ellipsis

I am very fond of using ellipses.

(I resisted the urge to end the prior sentence/paragraph with one.)

I find myself using them quite a lot on comments on Facebook or here at WordPress. I like that they are more open-ended than periods, when I mean to be less conclusive or expect continuing discussion, although it doesn’t always work out that way.

I probably use them more often than is warranted for that purpose. I do sometimes still use them when I have left something out of a quote, as I was taught to do by Mrs. England in sophomore English class at Drury High School. And, yes, I did have an English teacher named Mrs. England…

(You know I had to put an ellipsis in this post!)
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week was the word “lip” or a word that contained lip. Join us! Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2019/04/12/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-13-19/

Binghamton Poetry Project Spring 2019

I actually managed to attend all five weeks of Binghamton Poetry Project this semester and decided to submit to our anthology, even though I could not make today’s final reading. I generally post the poems that I put in the anthology after the reading.

The first two poems were actually written in the summer session of 2018, but there is no anthology in the summer, so I decided to publish them this time. A note on “An American Family”:  I want to acknowledge that indigenous/First Nations people are the original Americans; this poem refers to the vast majority of people in the United States who are either descendants of immigrants or immigrants themselves.

Enjoy!
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At Thirteen Months

My granddaughter grabs
at the floor lamp again
knowing that it is forbidden
but not that it is dangerous

looking at the adults
in the living room
knowing we will say
no

will pick her up
take her away
set her down
in the middle

of the room
where her toys
are scattered only
to have her rush

back to the lamp
look to make sure
we are watching
repeat the scenario

I finally resort
to what I did
with her mother
take her away

but hold her
in my arms instead
of placing her on the floor
she squirms and cries

a bit but
thirty seconds
is a long time
for a 13-month-old

she toddles back
to toys not lamp
a tear glistening
on her cheek

*****

An American Family

We are an American family
but people stare.

At the park, they assume
my sister is her children’s nanny.

I worry about my brown-skinned
nephews being stopped by the police,
but not my blond one.

Most Americans have roots
in Europe, Asia, or Africa.
Why is it so hard to accept
our family’s roots in all three?

What could be more American?

*****

We always wanted to roast marshmallows

after the hot dogs and hamburgers
had been grilled
and the charcoal glowed
red, under its ashen coat

We cut green sticks
whittling them down
to a point
ready to pierce

the Jet-Puffeds
We didn’t want
them to catch
fire, to burn

black, just a nice
golden brown
soft and sweet
as we three

girls, protected
from charred
bitterness
and burnt tongues

JC’s Confessions #3

On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert does a recurring skit, now a best-selling book, called Midnight Confessions, in which he “confesses” to his audience with the disclaimer that he isn’t sure these things are really sins but that he does “feel bad about them.” While Stephen and his writers are famously funny, I am not, so my JC’s Confessions will be somewhat more serious reflections, but they will be things that I feel bad about. Stephen’s audience always forgives him at the end of the segment; I’m not expecting that – and these aren’t really sins – but comments are always welcome.
~ JC

When Stephen does Midnight Confessions, in his lead-up he often says that he doesn’t get to go to church as often as he would like and he misses one of his favorite things, going to confession. At which point, I usually think, “Said no Catholic ever!” Everyone with whom I have ever spoken about it feels that it is a stressful situation, even with a good confessor (and downright terrifying with a poor one).

For the last several years, our diocese has had a day during which every church is open for the Sacrament of Reconciliation, as confession is more properly called. I confess that I find it very creepy that they advertise this on television and with billboards, as though mercy and forgiveness are commodities.

It also makes it seem as though forgiveness is only available through this sacrament, even though the church recognizes many other routes for this, such as the penitential rite during liturgy, asking for forgiveness from someone whom you have hurt, prayer, making reparations, and receiving the Eucharist. Indeed, individual confession is only required in the case of serious sin, one which fractures the relationship of the person with God.

I admit, not confess, that I haven’t gone to individual confession in years. This is partly due to a priest from my past who was so unstable I was afraid to be alone with him. Even though he is no longer a threat to me, it makes the thought of going to confession even more fraught.

What is even more difficult is figuring out how to confess my own part in social sin. I grieve that the United States is participating in violence and injustice, degrading the environment and the climate, and lacking in compassion and assistance for those most in need. We are called in our Constitution to “promote the general welfare”; my faith tells me to love and serve my neighbors near and far. Even though I try to oppose what is unjust and to help those in need, I still bear guilt for being part of an unjust system. Seeking forgiveness for these social sins feels hollow, because I am no less a part of the social system after confession than I was before it.

Wow! When I said in my standard introduction to this series that my reflections would be “more serious,” I didn’t mean to make it quite this serious.  Still, we are living in very serious times with many very serious problems confronting us daily. I can only hope that my trying to do my part in repairing the damage will join with the efforts of other people of good will to improve our country and our world.

One-Liner Wednesday: spring

“Spring has returned. The earth is like a child that knows poems.”
~~~ Rainer Maria Rilke
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Please join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday! Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2019/04/10/one-liner-wednesday-waiting/

SoCS: more things on my walls

A while back, Linda’s prompt had to do with things that we had hanging on our walls – or art we owned or something like that…

At any rate, I didn’t share some things I have hung that are made of fabric.

In the living room, I have an art quilt of trees that I really love:
tree-quilt.jpg

In the dining room, we have framed some piecework that my husband’s great-grandmother had done. She was planning to make them into a coverlet, but never got around to it. His mom had the top piece in her cedar chest, and we cut it into pieces that worked with frames. The cloth she used was very interesting. It came from sample books from Arnold Print Works, where B’s grandfather worked. I love to look at the different fabric prints of the time. It is a bit strange to see some swastikas, though. The fabric is so old that it was well before the time of Hitler when the symbol was called a Teutonic cross, among other names.
dining-room-quilt.jpg
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “fab”. Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/04/05/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-6-19/