We had talked multiple times about what to do in these circumstances. When I finally got medical staff with to level with me that she was dying and would never have proper brain functioning again, I told them to let her die. I was with her when they removed her oxygen mask, and she was dead within seconds. It was 11:15.

If it had to happen, I’m glad it happened quickly, and that she was almost certainly unconscious nearly the entire 3 hours.

On January 6 (of all dates), Hamden Hall held a memorial for her. They have a web page with many photos, along with a link to a video of the eulogies (over 2 hours long):

https://www.hamdenhall.org/dr-barbara-beitch-memorial?pending=true&cached=false

On a number of occasions, we had promised each other that when one of us died, the survivor would grieve and build a new life. She had the same agreement with Irwin (her husband of nearly 50 years, who died almost as suddenly and for whom she had to pull the plug), or she and I would never have met. I shall be trying hard to keep  my promise.

I have never been loved as she loved me, and have never loved as I loved her.

Perhaps I’ll write more in future, but I’ve been forgetting to post this information, so I’m going to stop for now.

This is my effort finally to write down some of my memories. As with any reminiscence, this may reveal more about me than about her.

Judi died shortly before her 78^th birthday. For several years she had been suffering from Parkinson’s Disease and (so it seemed to me) rapidly increasing dementia (a common but not inevitable result of Parkinson’s).

I don’t remember the last time I saw her, but it may have been as far back as three years before her death, when I went to Brooklyn for a memorial for our mother. I also don’t remember when Judi no longer recognized me, which I think was before that; that absence of her self would have been a stimulus for my future physical absence. My reaction would have been reinforced by my limited experience with the horrors of dementia in both our parents—our father for some 10 deteriorating years before he died at 85 in November of 2003, our mother for her last year or so before dying at 98 in December of 2017.

My absence did not endear me to her immediate family, who, unlike me, could not avoid daily experience of her condition and accompanying responsibilities.

Judi started spelling her name that way (instead of “Judy”) in girlhood, perhaps during puberty. My impression is that she wanted her name (and herself) to be unique, or at least not run-of-the-mill ordinary.

She and I were almost 22 months apart, and as children we fought like crazy. Our sibling antagonisms greatly vexed our parents. We lived on two different chicken farms over a period of about 12 years, from when Judi was about 3 and I about 5. She told her children that I had hit her and thrown eggs at her, and I don’t doubt she was right: when we were children, I was not at all a loving or considerate brother. I have no memory of what she may have done to me in turn, but I seriously doubt it approached the level of what I did to her, though I don’t know at what point I might have stopped my own violent behavior. During her final two years of grade school, I was in junior high, and it’s possible that the partial separation decreased our animosity. But maybe not.

We grew up on two different South Jersey chicken farms. I recall little about the first, though I remember the nearby one-room schoolhouse I attended through third grade (so she would have been there through 1^st grade). I have no memory of what life for Judi was like in those years.

Our second home was not too many miles away and is the setting for further childhood memories. The 10-acre property had been a tree nursery, and our father had almost all the trees knocked down, with the fallen trunks gathered into large wood piles scattered over the property. I used to play in those piles, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Judi did, too.

On the cleared property, perhaps 30 yards from our house, Dad built a chicken coop from scratch. This was a man who had never completed high school but read and/or talked to people about how to lay out a foundation, order needed materials, and build up brick walls topped by windows strung with chicken wire. The steeply sloped room was covered with tarpaper. He may have hired someone to help at certain points, but that would likely have been to save time, not add to his knowledge.

Raising chickens for eggs lasted about 7 years, til about 1957. For maybe a couple of years after that, our parents turned to operating a kind of frozen custard stand, then sold it (at a significant financial loss), declared bankruptcy, got college degrees by their mid-forties, and became teachers in North Jersey for the rest of their working lives.

While the chicken business existed, all three of us kids worked with the hens and their eggs in various ways corresponding to what our parents thought was age-appropriate. Presumably because I was the eldest (and male), I would have had the hardest work, and if so, this could easily have exacerbated my antagonism towards my sister (which hardly needed any help). The only thing I can remember of my sister’s chores was sorting and packing eggs, which we sometimes did together and presumably would have been when I threw one or more eggs at her. But perhaps she did some of the feeding, too, when she became old enough.

I suspect that to some extent our mother schooled Judi in stereotypical female duties of those days. In junior high school, boys’ education included wood shop, while girls took “home economics.” It would have been unheard of to do anything else.

I remember a birthday party with Judi’s girl friends when she must have been in her early teens. There’s film of it, in which she is shown happily dancing with her friends and twirling around in a broad skirt. Some (much?) of the filming takes place outdoors. This would have been late October, so apparently the weather wasn’t very cold yet.

One of her friends was Doris Ernst, the daughter of our family doctor, who lived about 10 miles away. I don’t know how often they saw each other. I’m pretty sure this friendship was encouraged because our two families were among the few Jews in our neck of the woods, though so far as I know, Judi never encountered antisemitism. I have the impression that she had a good collection of friends from school.

Probably before she was 10, Judi was playing with our father in a way that prompted her to jump on his side while he was on the floor. She broke or cracked a few of his ribs, and for awhile he had to wear a metal-reinforced vest-like structure that, I guess, kept his ribs steady while healing. The device looked uncomfortable. I don’t think he ever chastised her for this but accepted it as an unfortunate side-effect of having fun with her—and I do think he quite doted on her. If so, was this yet another basis for my resentment of her? My hostile feelings were probably over-determined.

All of our father’s children were influenced by his talent for acting, and I remember Judi playing Dolly Levi in a high school production(?) of The Matchmaker. I was in college then and had started acting myself. Because I had no experience of her as an actor, I didn’t expect much, but I remember feeling surprised and thrilled when I saw how superb she actually was. I hope I told her so.

Was our sibling rivalry ending by this time? Had it been ebbing before this?

I have a memory of another play that included Dad, Mom, Judi and David. I wasn’t around to be part of that, and I’m not sure if I saw the production.

I have the sense that while growing up, Judi immersed herself in much of the gendered behavior expected of female children of that time. Of course, as she grew, she increasingly liberated herself from such hobgoblins.

Judi’s first two years at Douglass, then the women’s college (auxiliary?) for Rutgers, overlapped with my final two years at Rutgers. I don’t think we saw much of each other during that time—our colleges were at opposite ends of New Brunswick (though I did often cross town for the theater program based at Douglass). But I’m pretty sure she met Joe after he and I were in some Rutgers class together (German?), so I may have been inadvertently instrumental in their meeting. I have a vague feeling that she had dates with one or more of my other Rutgers acquaintances, but I’m not at all sure.

I have always remembered Judi’s first wedding, to Joe, where I watched her walk down a side aisle or whatever building we were in, a bit unsteady and pale, with Heidi showing in the womb. I don’t know if this was in a shul or even included a Jewish ceremony, but Joe and maybe Alan would know.

I had flown up for the wedding in the middle of a summer month that I spent in Mississippi Freedom Summer, and I note that because when I phoned our parents to tell them what I was going to do, our father said that Judi had just told our parents of her pregnancy. He insisted that he wouldn’t let her marry Joe unless she loved him, though I doubt he had the power to enforce that. This tale is more about my parents than Judi (or me). Already taken aback (presumably that’s too mild a description) by Judi’s news, they now had to add fear for me (I’m not sure if the remains had yet been found of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, but it was certainly known that they had disappeared). I have no idea how our folks coped with all this, but coping with adversity was a skill they developed throughout their lifetimes.

The marriage to Joe, of course, didn’t last. After the wedding (or perhaps after Heidi’s birth) they moved into family student housing on a hill owned by Rutgers University, where Joe was pursuing his PhD. I was told that Judi came to feel he was so immersed in his studies that he paid little attention to his family, and if so, she must have been practically a single parent—practice, I suppose, for her life after Joe and before she and Alan married. I don’t remember if motherhood delayed completion of her undergraduate degree at Douglass College, and if it did, I don’t know how she finished it. But she did. My sister was nothing if not determined when she set her mind to something. I suppose she got at least some of that from our mother’s example.

For most of her younger adult years, perhaps starting after both her daughters were born, Judi was active in social justice and educational endeavors, especially in relation to combatting racism. Along with Alan (and early on, Joe?), she was a mainstay in the Brooklyn community program and its summer camp (Camp Hurley, which their kids attended) they helped manage. My memory is that Judi was heavily involved in childcare. My impression is that she was something of a dynamo with that organization. But that should come as no surprise.

I suspect that at least part of Judi’s often amazing ability to cope with life’s difficulties (though perhaps not always with full equanimity) came from our mother, who modeled resilience in the face of life’s vicissitudes, some of which I have inherited. But Judi’s range of endurance was far greater than mine has ever been. Perhaps the difference between how Judi and I leveraged our mother’s model is a function of a difference between mother-daughter and mother-son relationships. Or perhaps it’s just a difference between our emotional, moral, and mental makeups.

As young adults, I don’t think Judi and I saw each other often, but I believe we were gradually growing closer, to the point where (thank goodness) we eventually could bond and talk about the ins and outs of our lives and feelings. (Could that have started in our teen years? Probably not.)

During my nearly 15-year relationship with Maxine, the four of us (Maxine, Judi, Alan and I) spent congenial times together, sometimes going on outings together. Judi and Maxine formed a bond that I suppose faded away after Maxine and I split up; perhaps Judi’s Parkinson’s had already begun at that point. But overall, I remember those as good years with both Judi and Alan, and at times with their children. For a few summers, she and Alan even rented a home in Madison, Connecticut, where Maxine and I were living, and we saw a fair amount of each other there.

Judi used to tease me that when I first introduced her and Alan to Maxine, I was embarrassed and afraid they wouldn’t like her because she wasn’t politically radical. In fact, from the start they all got along extremely well.

Barbara got to know Judi a little before the dementia kicked in. They seemed to like each other, and I think that like me, Barbara felt a loss as Judi faded from life.

I suspect that when, in their early 40s (overlapping with when Judi and I were in college), our parents earned college degrees and became teachers, they modeled the principle for both Judi and me, and probably David, who reached his teens during that time, that we never had to stay stuck in a frustrated life. I don’t know whether that model helped spur Judi to get a PhD in her own later middle age, but she did so, and she moved on to a college teaching job, which she later had to abandon when her dementia got too bad. I remember her specialty as children’s literature.

That Judi and I both ended up studying literature of one kind or another, and that David became engaged with the theater’s literature and performance, may have been significantly influenced by our upbringing in a home filled with books, as well as with my father’s own involvement in theater.

Some years after we kids left home, Mom herself started a PhD program. I think she finished her coursework but dropped out when her thesis adviser didn’t fill her needs in trying to write a dissertation on James Joyce; I couldn’t believe she was taking on Ulysses, a text I would never have dared investigate beyond the one read-through I managed on a freighter between New York and Antwerp. I cite this example, seemingly external to Judi, because I expect that Mom’s effort was also in the background of Judi’s—successfully—taking on PhD study.

Starting maybe in the 1980s, our parents lived in a house in a retirement condominium community in North Jersey. Judi and Alan would often drive there from Brooklyn, and I was a bit in awe of their dedication and emotional stamina; even if I lived near our parents (in fact, I was conveniently in California much of that time), I could never have done that.

In the late 1990s or so, when our father’s dementia was well advanced so that he needed constant care, our mother, who had refused to get help at home with him, needed to undergo surgery (hip replacement?) and rehab away from home, and Judi stayed with our father for those several (three?) weeks. This was a mitzvah to end all mitzvahs. In his dementia, our father was often even more difficult to deal with than when he was compos mentis. I don’t know how Judi was able to do what she did. Again, I couldn’t have. To use money in place of personal responsibility and action, Maxine and I later took Judi and Alan for a getaway (long weekend?) together.

In 2004(?), Heidi provided twin grandchildren whom Judi (and Alan) adored. The grandkids were still relatively young when Judi’s dementia began, and I think it got hard for them to experience, and maybe understand, the condition of their Grandma, always so present up until then.

I want to include something about Alan during Judi’s illness, and how he helped her when the dementia arrived and worsened. When on occasion I ate with them in their apartment, I would watch Alan feed Judi and care for her in other ways, with amazing patience and gentleness. I expect this was a counterpart to how Judi was able to care for our father while our mother was recovering from her surgery—only this had to last far longer. I know that neither Judi nor Alan was patient all the time (who is?), but it seems that when it was necessary, they could both step outside their own needs. Until writing this, I had never thought about that special compatibility between them.

In writing this, I have been struck with how scattered my memories of Judi are. If I have further memories, I hope I’ll add them later.

It appears that advertising as a profession and a business arose in the late 19^th century.[1] With the advent of digital media, we are probably confronted with hundreds, maybe even thousands, of ads every day,[2] though not nearly as many as the 10,000 frequently cited with little empirical evidence.[3]

I often despair at how much our lives are manipulated by elites—governmental, economic, religious, policing—add your own troubling categories.. Not too long ago, I became especially aware of how social institutions like on-line media (news media, social media, retail media, and on and on) tell us what we should care about[4]—and how we way too often submit to their enticements.[5]

Advertising of a material product, or a political candidate or cause, is the most obvious, and perhaps longest lived, example, but nowadays it’s often a subset of some larger “concern” to which we’re being alerted. I think the problem extends to the entire digital world, especially in this age of nearly constant attention to our digital devices (which seems to cut across ALL age groups—that’s right, us old codgers, too).

Some examples:

• Picking up on contemporary standards for what is important in our world (commonly revolving around money, power, controversy, and sexual attractiveness), news headlines highlight people whom media and their subjects want us to care about, like billionaires (as in the catastrophe of the deep-sea vessel visiting the Titanic, or the latest shenanigans of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or Jeff Bezos), or feuding politicians (especially when they’re in the same party), or people characterized as celebrities (as in how much money they just paid or received for a house, or whom they’re sleeping with). More everyday casualties of any sort don’t generate sufficient readership.[6]
• Headlines commonly use unspecified but titillating references about supposedly important information, so that digital lemmings that we are, we click and read what is often bland content. But by the time we realize that, we’ve witnessed multiple ads embedded with the “news” item—and often, we anyway click on links embedded in the “news” story.
• Headlines lure us with heart-stopping adjectives like “bombshell,” “stunning,” “shocking,” “devastating,” “jaw-dropping,”
• We take brand names so for granted that when a crossword puzzle uses them for entries, we feel proud if we know the relevant name—or frustrated with ourselves if we don’t. [7]

Do we ever question the media’s construct of imaginary agglomerations of people with supposedly unified positions? These instant individual or group self-styled authorities give us the scoop on endless significant or trivial features of our culture. Here are some generic templates used by so many digital media sources:

• Sports report vital information like “Major League Baseball [or your own favorite professional or collegiate sport] world [or “Twitter” or just “the internet”] expresses [some elaborate emotion, preferably akin to outrage] over [anything at all]”
• Or: [Athlete in some sport] [accomplishes something unspecified] never before seen[8] [or at least not seen in donkey’s years]
• “[Very young person] gets rich [with unspecified innovation] ”
• “The [some one- or two-digit number] best [Netflix films this month, EVs, hidden travel sites, etc., etc.]”
• “I’m an expert in [anything the news service has dreamed up], and I have this startling news for you”
• “The nation [gasps/reels/reacts] as [one famous person or social group or government institution attacks another]”
• “New poll shows [dramatic but unspecified truth about some topic of purportedly crucial importance]”
• “Genius trick[s] to [accomplish something you’ve unwittingly been doing all wrong up to now]”
• “Shoppers agree on the superiority of [some popular consumer item], and it’s on sale right now at [usually Amazon] for [this amazingly low price that you can’t pass up]”
• “[You need to] [do this thing you didn’t know about] right away”
• “Most iconic [whatever]”
• [Review after review (including great bargains, as appropriate) of anything imaginable, material or otherwise]

I have the impression that sources about which we might care have taken up many of these techniques to draw us in[9]—and, not incidentally, to motivate us to make donations. Here are some examples from August 9 of this year (I will not waste your time or mine with examples from the Wall Street Journal[10]):

• NPR: “A boy on the autism spectrum struggled with a haircut. His barber saved the day.”
• CNBC: “At 101 years old, I’m the ‘world’s oldest practicing doctor’: My No. 1 tip for keeping your brain sharp”[11]
• The Guardian: “What I learned from hiking with a partner who strode ahead—and wouldn’t slow down”
• BBC “Can eating dessert for breakfast actually help you lose weight? A scientist explains.”[12]
• National Geographic: “Animals trapped in war zones find a second chance here.”[13]
• Smithsonian: “Can Peacock Vasectomies Save This Florida Town?”[14]

As I was finishing this commentary, I encountered this on-line headline: “World reacts to Megan Rapinoe’s clear opinion on America.” I end with it because of how its reach tries to smush together very different (though not to the headline writer) concerns:

 Context: Rapinoe has been a star member of the US women’s soccer team that recently was knocked out of this year’s women’s World Cup championship (after having won it the two previous years, which took place, before the pandemic). A lot of people seemed to feel patriotism was wrapped up with either rooting for the Americans or condemning them, and apparently the outspoken Rapinoe has become the focal point for whatever is viewed as wrong with the team.[15]

1. Rapinoe has made some critical comments about the US (no free speech in sports, of course), and has been taken to be unpatriotic (I can only hope she is).[16]
2. The concern in the headline, however, is not stated to be about soccer but about the entire United States.
3. Given other sports headline phraseology, we might have expected this statement to start with something like “US soccer world.” But no—suddenly the entire globe (try to picture that) is gripped by this drama and has deep concerns about this very narrow topic, symbolized by a single soccer player, in one very specific country.
4. Of course, we won’t know what Rapinoe’s “clear opinion” is unless we click on the headline. I leave it to curious readers to suss out exactly what the expression means.

A final note: You may have observed that I have not ventured into the quicksand of internet use for political malfeasance, though of course politics and any economic system intertwine to the point of being indistinguishable.

[1] I have a vague memory that Henry James used the novelty of professional advertising as one key character’s job.

[2] I gather that for starters, an awful lot of people, and especially young people, subscribe to multiple social media, which I also gather are riddled with ads.

[3] One thoughtful article on the history of such estimates begins with “Hundreds of articles and blogs will tell you that we see up to 10,000 ads a day. The problem? No one – from Harvard professors to Market Research Council hall-of-famers – believes it’s true.” (https://www.thedrum.com/news/2023/05/03/how-many-ads-do-we-really-see-day-spoiler-it-s-not-10000)

[4] You might wish to add that they also try to tell us what and how to think, but I see that as a side issue (albeit troubling) that doesn’t matter so long as you buy advertised goods and services.

[5] My only social medium is Facebook, which I view infrequently and almost entirely for leftish political posts (though these can get pretty repetitive). If you’re on one of the social media, think about how often you click on ads.

[6] Except, it seems, for the latest wartime deaths and mutilations, many or few, in Ukraine (but typically not Russia, much less other countries where fighting is happening).

[7] Further re brands: Consider how we love to urge specific brands or businesses on our friends. And how we offer this free advertising without expecting to be paid by the companies we’re touting.

[8] I like to imagine that the unique event (they are almost daily) is scatological.

[9] Even the leftish Huffpost[9] has a daily section called “Huffpost personal” that, judging by its headlines, are full of extravagantly boring personal tales imagined to be valuable for our own lives.

How many readers today know that Ariana Huffington was once a right-winger married to a California Republican congressperson? Not, of course, that past behavior should ever be predictive of future results.

[10] Of course, nothing and no one is objective in the sense we normally mean by that term, but the Journal can almost always be counted on to push any news in a conservative if not ultra-right direction. I have some limited trust in, but still check with caution, headlines (and sometimes parts of corresponding articles) in the NY Times and the Washington Post (though I never forget that Jeff Bezos owns the Post), but I use FAIR (Fair and Accuracy in Reporting—fair.org) to keep up with current examples of how journals like these are skewing news, especially in relation to biases about social justice and economic issues. I have some fondness for, and relative trust in, articles in, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and The Nation.

[11] If it’s so goddamned important, why isn’t the answer in the headline????

[12] Judging by the second line, the answer to the question is “yes.” (I refuse to click and find out.) If so why pose it as a question? And notice that we are to assume, here and elsewhere, that ANY “scientist” is an unimpeachable source.

[13] Is “here” so complicated it can’t be specified in a word or short phrase?

[14] So hard not to click and see the details on this especially provocative locution…but I managed…so far.

[15] Aside from losing that key match, during the tournament many of the American players refused to pay homage to the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Reading a headline about this supposedly unpatriotic protest of American social injustice, which I could wish all athletes would repeat, is what made me pay attention to the tournament at all.

[16] I have always felt dismay at how patriotism (coined in English in the 17^th century) remains so highly valued, apparently in all countries. I always liked the relatively conservative Samuel Johnson’s “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” until I recently learned that, according to Boswell, who recorded the quote, “he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest.” (I took this quote from https://interestingliterature.com/2021/05/patriotism-is-the-last-refuge-of-the-scoundrel-meaning-origins/. You can find the larger context by searching for a unique part of the quote in Gutenberg.org’s version of Boswell’s voluminous Life of Johnson at https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1564/pg1564-images.html.) Boswell’s description, of course, continues to apply to many politicians.

After several days of rooting for effective Ukrainian resistance with minimal[2] loss of life and limb, I’m realizing that at some level such a feeling may be little different from the let’s-go-to-get-‘em! war emotions that political leaders easily stir up in a population. Think, for example, about the huge US enthusiasm among Americans for attacking Afghanistan after 9-11 (I wasn’t one of them) or enthusiastic German support for World War I as depicted in _All_Quiet_on_the_Western_ Front_.[3]

Not unlike government leaders when they infuse a population with war lust, most of the rest of us are personally far removed from the reality of what is happening in Ukraine, and so our vehement cheering can be viewed as convenient and easy. We become like the cheering crowds who pack sidewalks as Our Boys (and now Girls) march gallantly off to defend home and hearth.

This is not to say we shouldn’t condemn the Russian war effort, nor that we should expect the Ukrainian people to roll over in the face of the threat to their cultural and biological lives. But for me, it does mean we should be cautious about racing to find heroes, a tendency that media play up or, as in the cited article, may actually use to stir war fervor and, in promoting unity of purpose within our population, normalize some of the worst aspects of our own culture. So far as I can tell from history, one overwhelmingly common effect of war is to encourage rationalizations that encourage the worst in many people, civilian and military. One such effect is to prompt us to ignore any behavior that doesn’t fit our polarization of events into angelic or demonic.[4] While it no way redeems what they are wreaking, I have no doubt that some Russian soldiers are torn about what they’re asked to do and may even at times do generous things for those they defeat. There could even be a 21^st-century version of refuseniks among them, though I doubt we’ll ever hear of any, or that Ukraine supporters outside the country care. (I can understand why Ukrainian citizens themselves wouldn’t care or even believe such reports.)

Then there are the ostensibly supportive and unambiguous cultural mantras we bandy about. I think especially of preserving “democracy,”[5] a thorny term that has always been compromised—among other ways in who is allowed to vote, who is able (or allowed) to run for office, and the level of critical thinking skills an electorate applies to political or war campaign slogans and behavior. Guess which severely compromised country of which I’m a citizen is high on my list here?

No nation in war (or peace) is pure, as we know if via no other source from the history of war attitudes and atrocities among American troops during our own history.[6] Consider reports that Ukraine border guards discriminate against dark-skinned people trying to leave the country, whether their own citizens or foreign students. If this prejudicial behavior is accurate, I can’t know if it’s narrowly limited to the guards’ culture[7] or, more likely, reflects a larger Ukraine attitude towards non-white-skinned people. In any event, it’s discouraging and a reminder that we at a distance who are white probably take for granted that the Ukrainian population we see looks incredibly white.

Starting from the fairy tales we encounter in early childhood, and continuing into adult delight in the morality tales of the Iliad or Arthurian legend or (good) police TV series or superheroes or westerns or spies saving the world from destruction, we are infused with a quest for heroes in our lives to give us some hope in the face of an often-hostile universe. From the likes of Donald Trump and his fellow white supremacists to Stacey Abrams and farther left, we seek heroes (a word I intend as ungendered) to save us from rampant untruth, injustice, and the unAmerican way that keep cropping up.[8] And while many of us may condemn war in principle, we can quickly support it when leaders use an atrocity to demonize those who (allegedly) perpetrated it. Because we have learned that wars can indeed be terrible, we yearn for no war at all or, if we have to have one, a Good War, but I suspect there are only Less Bad Wars.

It will be interesting to see the long-term effects of the (sort-of) non-violent economic and isolating techniques being used against Russia,[9] though as Putin claims, they are indeed a form of war.[10] I can hope that regardless of their current effect, they turn out to be a constructive way of diminishing loss of life and even destruction of infrastructure in future conflicts.

It will also be interesting to see, when this war ends (whatever that means, exactly), how long it will take before a return to business as usual with Russia by the tsk-tsking international Western businesses currently joining the stampede to condemn and punish Russia. I suspect much of that behavior will turn out to be for public relations. And I expect that like the days in this country after 9/11, the unusual unity within our culture will quickly dissipate into long-familiar variations of oppressors, oppressed, and the lucky people like me in the middle who can afford to take a wide variety of hedging positions towards our cultural problems.

______________________________________________________________________

[1] Here’s a recent commentary that echoes some of my concern: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/media-hawkish-iraq-ukraine_n_622125c4e4b042f866eaf43c?utm_source=pocket_mylist.

[2] Note how this very qualification compromises a moral discussion about war in particular and violence in general.

[3] And apparently common in any population for any war. This might be a good time to watch a powerful anti-war film.

[4] See, for example, https://news.yahoo.com/fact-mythmaking-blend-ukraines-information-190837967.html?utm_source=pocket_mylist.

[5] While in our own country I have been extremely troubled by right-wing efforts to repress voting that would go against them, I am also unhappy that we in opposition pretend that we’re defending a “democratic” tradition that hasn’t yet existed, though we have gradually seen an expansion of those technically entitled to vote (and I am well aware that many people will admonish me to be thankful for what we’ve got instead of railing against what we don’t).

[6] I had a Lower East Side Jewish communist uncle, desperate to fight Hitler but classified 4F, who managed to get himself into a Red Cross unit in the European theater. He told me that he discovered extensive anti-semitism among many of our own troops, who, he opined, should have been fighting for the other side.

Demonizing an enemy with, for instance, demeaning labels, seems universal; presumably this doesn’t help matters when the winners have to reconcile with those they defeated.

In the mustering of foreigners to fight in Ukraine, I see echoes of the Spanish Civil War—a seemingly (lost) Good War, a characterization which Hemingway reminded us was not entirely valid.

[7] While, especially in having elected a Jewish leader, Ukraine as a whole may have distanced itself from its history of anti-semitism, a core of such attitudes remains and seems to have some influence within the country: https://getpocket.com/read/3567406974

[8] Need I observe that we will never agree on the meaning of those terms? Or that the third one is narcissistic (if that can apply to a country—maybe I should say “jingoistic,” though perhaps that term isn’t well known any more)?

[9] I doubt I’m the only one who has wondered why so much of the world can be so thoroughly united against Russia and in support of the single nation of Ukraine but can’t do the same in relation to the impending climate catastrophe that affects every nation.

[10] Compare, for example, the use of war blockades and sieges in recorded history, and presumably earlier.

JESSE’S NOTES: The Greenbergs (cousins to the Beckers). Lower East Side of New York, 1914.

Back row, left to right: Beckie (Greenberg) Yanowitz, her sister Helen (Greenberg) Nemetz, her sister Bertha Greenberg.

Front row, left to right: their brother Joe Greenberg, their brother Julius Greenberg, and Beckie’s husband, Louis Yanowitz.

At 79, my brain is bifurcated about my age: on one hand, cultural conditioning says I’m pretty damned old and should be getting decrepit and could die at any moment; on another hand, I don’t feel “old,” and with some exceptions, I don’t think I act “old.” And at some inexplicable level, I’ve never believed I’m going to die. Enhancing what I know is oxygen to me, I am driven to keep reading and writing and occasionally teaching, and once lockdown is over, return to tennis doubles.

Enough of that crapola.

Probably like others, I have had a lot of personal issues resulting from this history, but I have valued my father’s “memoir” and, in that spirit, have been sporadically adding to my own web site and blog to leave curious descendants some idea of who I was and how I was influenced by family history.

Why did I put “memoir” in quotes just now? When my father started it, my brilliant but repressed mother, Mae (died December, 2017 at 98), demanded he not write about anything during their life together. He mostly stuck to this, and so we have a seriously truncated version that cuts us off from Ed’s perspectives on his decades of adult life before underaking the memoir. He had always wanted to be a writer (as have I), but this is his only creation that has seen a version of publication.

Yes, Ed thought he had killed his mother (and he writes that a couple of aunts also blamed him), and neither I nor my mother thought he ever got over that. I think he was depressed throughout his life. (creeping dementia started setting in about age 75, and he died a shell of himself at 85). Enraged as a child by Lou’s treatment of Becky, Ed nonetheless reconciled with him when he started having kids (I was the first), claiming he was doing it for the children; I’m not convinced this was his main motive, but who knows? His elder brother, Hy, never forgave Lou.

Desperate, I believe, to redeem his background by raising a happy family, and becoming a father just four years after his mother died, Ed (from my adult perspective on what I identified only in my early 40s as physical abuse) screwed up badly. I won’t go into that here, but I mention it as honesty about any bias I may embed in these comments. Only in recent years, in my 70s, have I begun to have compassion for the destructive forces in Ed’s life. I fear that some of my own self-sabotage in life resulted from practicing what he sometimes silently modeled.

Like Heidi, I had never seen a photo of a young Louis until now, and I find you’d one fascinating. I try to connect this image with the grandfather I remember. By my teens and probably earlier, I knew about his betrayal of his family (and especially Becky), but he was always so unflinchingly kind to me that I could never feel angry towards him. He had re-married to a woman to whom he was probably faithful, and she, too, doted on me (and my siblings). I looked forward to leaving our South Jersey chicken farm and spending a couple of weeks with them in Brooklyn every summer.

While I recognize the oldish man (he died at 65—of liver complications from alcoholism, I think) in the stiff youth photographed here, I can no more synthesize the young and the old Louis than I can connect the Grandpa Lou  I knew with family lore about his having been a vile adult at some point into his marriage. I have always believed those claims, but In the middle of that last sentence, my usually active critical-thinking self suddenly woke up from decades of unquestioning trust for those reports with no ability to confirm their accuracy.

Projecting myself into old photos of any kind has long been a habit of mine (often painful), and here, on the surface, Lou looks to me to be a young man with so much promise. I guess at that age Ed was, too, and despite his guilt and depression and relative failure—in my eyes—as a parent, he did make a lot of his life, like getting a college degree and becoming a teacher in his early 40s (alongside my mother at the same time—models of never-giving-up that have always influenced me).

My grandmother Rebecca (I have only called her “Becky” since Jesse started his search) died so young that the few photos I’ve seen don’t hit me as especially different. Nonetheless, I find this image intriguing, and I find myself trying to penetrate her mind and feelings, too—and her ignorance of what her life was soon to become. My mental image of her is uniquely of a frail, little woman on her hands and knees scrubbing stairways for money to support her children.

I previously knew about no one else in the photo, so that I read discussions about them with mild interest but no emotional connection. That, no doubt, is a weakness of mine from who-knows-what source.

When I was suspended/expelled from a South Jersey one-room schoolhouse near the end of 3^rd grade (another story not unrelated to behavior probably driven by family history), Ed took me to Allentown, where I met Uncle Julius and his wife (whose name I used to know). My only memory of this excursion is their kind of small candy-and-similar-products store, where Julius gave me my pick of candy they sold. O the long-term influence of tiny acts of kindness!

I find it impossible to keep up with all the family intricacies that relatives are sharing via Jesse’s astounding willingness and industry (but then, he is an historian, isn’t he?) to collect and organize all this data. But I’m certainly glad the information is available.

Jesse: are you collecting all this somewhere other than facebook to pass down as new family members emerge and old ones disappear?

What has happened to progressive standards of free (civil) speech and open debate? It’s one thing to require reliable sources for a claim or demand civil exchanges (I’ve seen far too many social media vitriolic attacks even from people with whom I like to think I share political goals); it’s another to reject civil disagreements because someone or a cadre of people doesn’t like them.

This (new?) standard reminds of the sectarianism and dogma that has appalled me all my life on the political left. And how does it differ from the kind of behavior we hate in our enemies?

When I signed onto this group (because I wanted to see what other progressives in CT were thinking during the Trump years), did I fail to see that the group is a bastion for selecting and then protecting the “right” candidates? What will constitute a violation of this rule? Criticism of Joe Manchin? Of moderate, non-progressive Democrats? Will non-Democrats not be allowed (in which case, please let me know so I can withdraw)? Indeed, is this a Democratic Party site?

Did I miss an open consultation of members of this group about enacting this policy? How exactly was the decision made?

And who moderates a moderator’s decisions?

Is constructive criticism (which I hope this is, though I’m sure my anger peeks through my formal prose) no longer a value?

Will this post itself be censored?
d onto this group (because I wanted to see what other progressives in CT were thinking during the Trump years), did I fail to see that the group is a bastion for selecting and then protecting the “right” candidates? What will constitute a violation of this rule? Criticism of Joe Manchin? Of moderate, non-progressive Democrats? Will non-Democrats not be allowed (in which case, please let me know so I can withdraw)? Indeed, is this a Democratic Party site?

Did I miss an open consultation of members of this group about enacting this policy? How exactly was the decision made?

And who moderates a moderator’s decisions?

Is constructive criticism (which I hope this is, though I’m sure my anger peeks through my formal prose) no longer a value?

Will this post itself be censored?

I often cite the limitation rubric about crying fire in a crowded theater[1] (which I guess is a synonym for “clear and present danger”). This “definition,” of course, can be used as a cudgel in all sorts of adverse ways, as in wartime censorship, or hysteria like the HUAC-McCarthy era and 9/11, or the bullying presence of the Official Secrets Acts in the UK.

Thinking, of course, keeps evolving and old truisms keep getting debunked and tossed into rubbish heaps. But I have a sense that all humans resist entertaining such a thought about ideas most precious to us, like core tenets for those of us who support the ACLU. I fear that we are starting to contort old arguments into new contexts where they don’t fit. In particular, I’m concerned about how the huge effect of social media may need to moderate our exact approach to free speech.

I don’t know the history of how law, anywhere, has handled changing communication tools that became bedrocks of everyday life. Did the telegraph or telephone raise civil liberties issues, and if so, how were they handled (or mishandled)? What about teletype or faxing or [your top-of-mind pre-hi-tech communication service here]?

The Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol invasion, the full impact of which is only beginning to penetrate my brain, seems a kind of climax to the power of Twitter that we have seen exercised so appallingly in the last four years. It underscores the old dilemma of what to do if permitted freedoms are bringing about their own demise. Especially if we’re privileged and not personally among a class of people whose victimization we sincerely seek to correct, we may feel detached from their concerns and comfortable about sticking to our ideals because they haven’t seemed threatened (until now?).

I can’t remember where I read this recent provocative comment: “Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big tech.”

Even if it ends up producing no clear answers, should we not be re-examining exactly how we approach civil liberties? Many of our traditional ACLU concerns will always be present, but some, I strongly suspect, require revamping to factor in the social media age. This is most obvious with what is apparently a powerful impact of social media, notably facebook and Twitter.[2] Among the several articles I’ve read on this subject, new ground doesn’t seem to be getting broken. I’d love to know of writings that do otherwise.

So far as I can reckon after nearly eight decades of life, the ACLU and its high civil liberties’ standards should be at the forefront of such re-evaluation, but should not shy from it just because it causes anxiety about the organization’s heritage. I’d like to see intensive study, aided by recruitment of the best (who decides?), diverse honchos in relevant areas of thought and practice.[3]

Considerations must include the insoluble problem (about which I’ve spoken and written) that different humans have different unprovable basic assumptions (often called articles of faith) that provide little or no basis for confronting a different set of such assumptions. “Facts” and “objectivity” are approximations of what they claim to be, and not all people will agree on how to determine them. (To us, for example, covid = hoax is a flagrant disregard or deliberate obfuscation of “facts.” Thousands of other such disagreements have arisen throughout human history but, for our purposes, notably under Trump. I’ve written and continue to read about what may be motivating such seemingly irrational thought.)

How do we conscientiously enforce adherence to basic standards of rationality that WE value when others think we’re crazy (as we don’t understand them and how they “think”)?[4] Who gets to define a “fact” or a “lie”? In short, how do we (conscientiously) enforce a Western tradition of rationality that I certainly venerate? And why should we? Perfectly fine cultures embrace other approaches without ever descending to the hellish pit we’ve recently been experiencing: religion, mysticism, alternative medicine, ancestor worship, and so on—none of which are among my articles of faith.[5]

Indeed, what right have we to demand other cultures practice what we define as responsible morality? Female genital mutilation? (And since we do make this condemnation, doesn’t consistency demand that we ban male circumcision?) What we perceive as oppression of women? Child labor? Punishment by whipping or severing body parts? Genocide or “ethnic cleansing”? Slavery? Etc., etc. And yet we do—and I do. Much as I hate religious missionaries, I have to realize that we all, including me, are missionaries of a kind—and a kind that others may detest as much as we detest certain behavior. Converting others to our key (or not so key) viewpoints seems hard-wired.

In case it’s not clear, I’m trying here simultaneously to promote the idea of devising some new approaches to free speech that factor in unanticipated consequences of digital communication and to underscore how slippery that task would be.

Other countries seem to have found (relatively) comfortable limits on free speech. (I only know specifically of Germany’s laws against promoting the Nazism that destroyed the country, and I have no idea how they work.) Can we learn anything from them that would be useful in the context of our own history and current realities?

I have no solutions to offer here, though I’d probably be happy to be part of any effort to carry out what I’m proposing.

_______________________________

[1] I thought I got this from John Stuart Mill, but apparently, as probably all of you know, it was first articulated by Oliver Wendell Holmes in a 1910 unanimous SCOTUS decision: “The most stringent protection would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”

[2] I am on facebook but not Twitter or any other social media (except for a brief and stormy relationship that ended with right-wingers bullying me off Next Door). I only engaged with facebook after Trump’s election; I looked to it to give access to what politicos progressive and further left are saying, and to share my own thinking in relevant areas. I have learned a lot this way, though part of that learning is that all too often, similar-minded folk fall prey to the same kinds of infuriatingly poor critical thinking that seems to permeate our enemies. Most notably, unsupported stories are shared as true, claims are “shared” with no supporting evidence, and invective replaces reflection and analysis. I don’t pretend I’m perfect, but I try hard to come close.

[3] Should “disinformation” be illegal? If so, who gets to identify it? Were it realistic to ban social media, would that return us to some kind of “traditional” approach to free speech? Or setting boundaries to what a given social medium can do?

[4] In my research on right-wing conspiracists, I found that pretty much all of them embrace a notion of “sovereignty,” which very roughly means being able to do pretty much anything they want without interference from (intrinsically) corrupt governing or corporate entities.

[5] I’m reading a fascinating book (Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Successs: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution) on how culture and its evolution often produces biological selection pressures for evolution. One discussion contends that certain cultural behaviors are dependent on NOT having a rational understanding of the procedure—that such consciousness would undermine the efficacy and efficiency of the procedure.

1. A compilation, sometimes edited, of messages I wrote about our experience as it happened. My intent is not to elicit sympathy but (1) to let people know whom I haven’t had a chance to tell, and (2) to assemble what may be useful insights (sometimes repetitive for some readers) into aspects of our covid experience.
2. Thoughts about covid deniers, prompted by my covid brain in tandem with my ongoing efforts to understand the “logic” of Trump supporters, that may already be out there but I haven’t seen.

If you want to read some but not all of this, the document has a table of contents to indicate what topics I cover.

Critically thoughtful feedback is welcome.

I expect that the “we” in what I write includes few members of long-marginalized demographic groups, who may readily respond, “What’s so great about what we’d go back to?”

That said:

1. We [see above] are so dismayed with what we seem to be losing and have already lost that our focus keeps dwelling on reversing post-election horrors and somehow returning to a nostalgic condition, comfortable to us, before the loss.
2. As history and psychotherapy (and Thomas Wolfe) have taught us, one can’t go back to an imagined past.
3. And of course, “back” had so many problems. But no matter how much we cared about the problems, few of them affected our PERSONAL daily comfort.
4. Can we go “forward” as we resist in a way that will include IMPROVEMENTS on at least SOME of the past rather than just blocking (more like tilting at windmills, it often seems) the seemingly never-ending barrage of assaults on our (and others’ we care about) well-being? Where do such niches lie?*
5. If only “SOME” of past iniquities, what happens to the rest? How can we possibly prioritize/privilege some oppressions over others?
6. We nobly embrace the the slogan, “RESIST,” but doesn’t that suggest holding a line that narrows our horizons about what we can/want to achieve? Doesn’t it focus on the present and not a future other than one cleansed of trumpist atrocities?
7. To what extent is defeating Trumpism a social immediacy that justifies setting aside some disagreements on what society should look like? (Cf. #5.) How quickly is widespread sectarianism/factionalism (a great scourge, in my eyes, even though I have my own pet beliefs) going to arise to fragment “the movement” (however we define that right now) and contribute to enabling a reactionary governing elite?

I have no clear answers to these moral-strategic problems amidst all the other problems we are constantly confronting these days. But I think we need answers.

THROUGH THE PRIMARIES AND GENERAL ELECTION SEASON, moderates and many “liberals” say to us progressives and others on their left inside and outside the Democratic party: “We’re all on the same barricades, with a common enemy. We have to get Trump out. Any Democratic nominee is tons better than Trump. Don’t be self-indulgent or vengeful, don’t subject the country to possible fascism. Gag if you must, but it is immoral not to vote Democrat this year.[1]” Etc., etc.

POST-ELECTION: “We won! We won! Thanks to everyone who toed the line and voted to get Trump out!” I did feel an intense wave of liberation when he lost, and I have no question that getting Trump out was crucial for every decent human being here and around the world.

But that is what many of us were doing: voting to get Trump out. That Biden consequently got in is a necessary but not necessarily desirable outcome.[2]

But when realization set in that so many down-ballot Democrats lost, within a day those same moderates and liberals started saying to the same people to their left who had agreed that the priority was to get rid of Trump: “It’s your fault we did so poorly! You were too radical! You were self-indulgent by promoting progressive policies that would only alienate voters! We must tack towards the middle! We must make compromises on our core values!” Etc., etc.

This shouldn’t surprise me: united fronts against an agreed evil have often quickly fragmented when the evil is (or seems) past.[3]

Shouldn’t surprise me…but such double-think self-righteousness still enrages me.[4]

And while we’re at it: exactly what would a compromise look like for the rapid acceleration of climate disasters[5], or about the murder and assault of Blacks and trans folk and other marginalized people, about uniting immigrant families[6] and streamlining their admission to “our” country, about the well-being of people with sexual behavior different from some mainstream standard, about the freedom of pregnant women to decide what to do with their embryos or fetuses,[7] and so on through the litany of progressive and further left stances on social justice? What could possibly be a morally acceptable PARTIAL (i.e., compromise) position be in each of these matters and equivalent ones I’ve left out?

Is it a mere coincidence that so many of those moderates and liberals seem to have reasonably comfortable financial circumstances and personal security  in contrast with those whose severely compromised lives they want to “compromise” about? Or that most of them seem to be white?

A great deal more could be said about the preceding, but this is at least a starter in getting across the core anger that I, and I assume many others to the left of compromising Democrats, feel.

______________________

[1] Of course, though this time the difference was palpable, we hear similar pleading in every election.

[2] I hope he’ll be better than I expect, but I’m not counting on it, and I believe we have to be ready to hold his feet to the fire starting yesterday. [Added after original draft:] If accurate this report is encouraging: https://time.com/5910008/joe-biden-climate-change-election/. Cabinet appointments will help gauge Biden’s commitment to key causes.

[3]…though in this case, it is remaining with us for at least two months longer—and of course it will be embedded in much of the country long after that.

[4] Here’s a corresponding commentary from one of my favorite political sources (though sometimes when it pillories an article, it inappropriately condemns the entire journal from which the article came): https://fair.org/home/when-centrists-lose-corporate-media-blame-the-left/. Here is another a thoughtful (to me) examination of the issue: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/progressives-house-races-democrats_n_5fa6981bc5b67c3259aef686. And AOC, whom I highly respect, had this to say a few days ago: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-biden-democratic-party_n_5fa773fbc5b66009569b4349.

[5] Probably including more pandemics.

[6] And getting caged and abused immigrant kids into humane settings in the meantime.

[7] Thanks to my wife, Dr. Barbara Beitch, a biologist, for the following clarification: “[C]oncerning the right of a woman to make the difficult decision about to do when she finds herself with an unplanned pregnancy: Such decisions are usually made in the first trimester, at what we biologists call the embryonic stage. Later in development, when there are changes that make it look more human, we use the term fetus. Richard asked me to make this correction (embryo rather than fetus). And for those who are wondering when we use the term ‘baby,’ biologists refer to the stage after birth, after the umbilical cord has been cut and when nutrients and oxygen no longer come from the mother, via a placental connection.”

*The only ones I’ve seen are related to future elections and by-elections that arise in the meantime. Perhaps this is a realistic limit. Perhaps not. Perhaps it’s more in service of the Democratic Party than a truly progressive country.