May you live in interesting times: a Chinese curse
Thank you all for your birthday wishes and greetings. So many of my cards, texts, and posts alluded to this being a year of stupendous events. It is indeed. Locked in, but fortunate enough not to have Covid, I remain outraged by the systemic racisism. I am lucky to have friends of diverse backgrounds to guide and accept my love for them. But when one has lived many decades, other times and upheavals were also part of what Life is. I was born in 1943 during WWII and the Holocaust. Dad was in the navy in the Pacific Arena, and Mom and I, along with my Aunt Lily (changed later to Lisa) and cousin Michael, lived in Bubby and Zayde’s apartment in West Side Chicago. My grandparents and my aunts and uncles of their generation were immigrants who had lived through pogroms, but had escaped what the Nazi’s did to their families in Eastern Europe. My father’s mother died of the Spanish Flu in 1918 right after Dad was born.
For all the horrors (Nagaski & Hiroshima and the revelations of Hitler’s carnage) going on in other parts of the world during and after the war, I was fortunate. My life was filled with good relatives and happy times. But the years in which I was a child were also fraught with dangers. I hid under school desks while sirens shrieked during air raid drills, in case the Russsians dropped the A-bomb. I watched the McCarthy hearings. I marched along with Paul during the years of civil rights, women’s rights, against the Vietnam War, and then was horrified to see students slaughtered during protests, the savage lynchings and murders of blacks, the attacks on the people struggling for integration at lunch counters, and the assasinations of the Kennedys and Dr. King.
So interesting times are a part of what living in this world is about. The Little Prince was published in 1943; a story for adults through the childish wisdom of St. Exupery’s little boy from another planet. He encountered people throughout his star travels concerned with “matters of importance”. Those “matters” were based in a quantitative view of the world. That little prince’s wisdom regarding the quality of life has been a part of my own life from the year I was born. That quality of life, my family and friends are my riches.
That is where I was when after leaving Facebook, I was compelled to return. I missed you!
So many of you dear friends and family are on this strange media thing, that can keep us in algorithms as targets for ads, but I’ve found the matters of importance are here on Facebook, when it comes to knowing your ideas and interests. Yes for private things we can connect in other ways, but connected we are. The longer I’ve lived, the more places I’ve been, the best of my experiences are meeting friends and maintaining relationships. You made my birthday wonderful. Your greetings and warmth are with me every day.
