The Day That Will Live in Infamy, Among Other Things

So, consider this: Every date on the calendar grid is the square-shaped tip of a time iceberg, of meaning.  All those anniversaries. For sure, December 7 is no exception. For one thing, one of my earliest memories is being 5 years old, going into the bedroom one evening and picking up my new baby brother Timothy, startling the grownups by carrying him into the front room. On this day in 1990, the wife of that same kid brother gave birth to a baby girl. 

There are probably still plenty of people who think that Franklin D. Roosevelt knew that the Japanese were going to attack the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor,  Hawaii on that fateful Sunday morning. Do I think so? No, but history is chockablock with mysteries. The dead take many a secret to the grave. 

Ms. Fay Bainter – Is that a great face or what?

And it's the anniversary of the birth of writer Willa Cather, in 1873. Of the singer/songwriter Harry Chapin, who'd be 70 today. Of the wonderful actress of the old silver screen, Fay Bainter (1891). Of singer/trumpeter and voice of Jungle Book's orangutan king, Louis Prima (1910). 
   Apart from all that, it's a chilly grey day here, but not a proper December day because it's not COLD. It's not SNOWY, which is wonderful because don't you hate the notion that once you step outside into the beautiful, sparkling icy snow, you face the risk of slipping and changing your life, maybe forever? 

Women's History Month No. 21

"A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water."

"My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths."

"Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one."

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, "First Lady of the World" Oct. 11, 1884 ~ Nov. 7, 1962

Look at those eyes; very blue they were. These images here are my two favorite pictures of Elliott (charming drunkard, alas) & Anna Roosevelt's daughter, Theo. Roosevelt's (that "steam engine in trousers," as Mark Twain, no fan of the imperialistic President, not at all, referred to this most interesting American ever.), favorite niece, FDR's valiant, albeit grudge-bearing, far-traveling wife; and the complex mother of Anna, James, Franklin Jr., Elliott, & John; first cousin, too, of the very beautiful, but rather nasty & sharp-tongued "Princess Alice" Roosevelt. I had the privilege of writing about Eleanor Roosevelt in several of my books: Rabble Rousers: 20 Women Who Made a Difference, Franklin & Eleanor, and Remember the Ladies: 100 Great American Women.

How I loved reading about this thoughtful, compassionate, and complex woman [and her whole family, for that matter]! This writer, politician, and humanitarian. She and her husband were some pair of complicated coconuts, I swear.

"The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard."

Barbara W. Tuchman, big deal historian, who was born 100 years ago today, who, I'm pretty sure, wrote and/or said many a cool, intelligent thing but the above quotation has got to be one of the coolest. But the birthday person who's been on my mind today [along with a dreadful, infuriating, nightmare-inducing story I heard on NPR today and how truly marvelous & splendid is the 1999 movie Topsy-Turvy which I had on while I was painting this morning] is the 32nd President of the United States, who turned 30 on the day Ms. Barb was born. That'd be Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of the greatest, most interesting & complex Americans ever born, no foolin.'

‎"Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle...."True individual freedom cannot exist w/o economic security & independence. People who are hungry & out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made." Franklin D. Roosevelt, b. 30 Jan 1882.

84

“Let him who elevates himself above humanity . . . say, if he pleases, "I will never compromise"; but let no one who is not above the frailties of our common nature disdain compromise.” Henry Clay, b. 12 April 1777

So, it was on this day in 1920 that my mom's big sister was born. Red-headed Dorothy Lea Wolfe. She had lots of beauty & lots of pain.

It's the birthday of Henry Clay, savvy Compromiser of Lexington, Kentucky. He was young Lincoln's 'beau ideal' of a politician. Just for you to know.

And it's Franklin D. Roosevelt's deathday. Imagine Americans' shock, hearing that news, that the President they'd known for 12 years was gone - and w/ a huge, whacking war still to be won.

Lilacs and redbuds, just as now, were festooning & purpling the yards 1920. 1777. 1945. 1861 (and 100 years later when the first - think of it, of 27-yr-old USSR pilot Yuri Gagarin, the first human allowed himself to be strapped into a rocket & sent up into space) - in the north & in the south, when patriotic hotheads fired their first volleys, thinking that they were doing, not treason, but a righteous & noble thing. And how could their lofty notion of the consequences - a nation in which states & individuals governed themselves, free of central command, free to buy and sell people, work 'em & breed 'em, as unusually clever, bipedal livestock - even resemble what really happened over the next four years? It couldn't. The future's always hidden 'round the bend.

What This Day Represents.

So, this being the 15th of April, may I point out that this is the 27th day of spring and the 106th day of the year, more or less.

On another April 15th, in 1542, Leonardo da Vinci was born. Charles Wilson Peale, another remarkable artist, naturalist, and observer of life was born on this day in 1741, almost exactly 200 years after Leo. d. V. entered life. On yet another, 15apr, this one in 1912, the glory of the White Star Line went down to the bottom of the North Atlantic, in the same week that the glamorous, ambitious, world-traveling Harriet Quimby became the very first woman to fly herself and her dragonfly contraption of an aircraft across the English Channel.

And, this being the 15th day of April, let me say that when it comes to taxes, the levying & the paying of them, I concede that I agree with Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society." I'm just saying.

~Franklin D. Roosevelt

It's D.E.A.R. Day, M'dears

"Come, shut the door! And when thou hast done so, come weep with me!" Me, paraphrasing Wm. Shakespeare by way of Juliet Capulet, whose life would have been a helluva lot more tragic had she had to fool with computers. I'm just saying, as I retype this blog entry for today as the earlier effort got deleted somehow.

So, sure, it's FDR's deathday - what a remarkable life! The book I did about him & ER [Franklin & Eleanor, Dutton. out of print now, the world being rotten.] Check out this site for a bit of FDR bio:http://www.whitehouse.gov– the 149th anniversary of the big shots @ Ft. Sumter, SC [It's said that the Civil War began there, but it really began about 5 years earlier out here in western Missouri.] - & my Aunt Dee's birthday – I lack the will/skills/hardware/time to post her picture here, but trust me when I say that long-gone Dorothy Wolfe Holloway was a delicate red-haired beauty. – but today also marks the beginning of National Library Week. It, in turn, begins with today: Nat'l D.E.A.R. Day : Drop Everything And Read!www.dropeverythingandread.com

that's just what I'm going to go do. Go thou & do likewise. You won't be sorry!