Category Archives: Social Justice

Looking Back at a Unique Woman Author — “Go Set a Watchman”: My Review

Surrounded by her former peers, the painfully uncomfortable Jean Louise is peppered with questions about her life in New York City, which to many of them might as well be on Mars: how can she stand it? All those people, including “Negroes,” on the loose. The noise, the constant hubbub, the rudeness and ugly accents. Not to mention the fact that she’s (still, at 26!) single there, and working.

Jean Louise speaks up tepidly for her urban existence, but thinks to herself more candidly about its pluses and minuses.

In truth, she often resents the patronizing attitudes of many New Yorkers toward other, benighted regions, especially the South. She bridles at how so many of them, with the smug assurance of big-city liberals that hasn’t changed much since Lee wrote in the 1950s, feel they know all the answers for problems there, even if their nostrums are no more than bien-pensant slogans, based on little or no knowledge or experience.

Yet she puts up with this annoyance because New York offers her a compensation she has to have, and can’t hope to find in her hometown: anonymity, and the space created by the indifference of the mass, in which to continue seeking her identity and destiny.
If that sounds pompous, the clumsiness of expression is mine, not Lee’s; but that’s what it was. Later, after the shattering confrontations with Atticus and ex-beau Henry, there seems no way forward for Jean Louise but to climb on the train and head back up north, alone. This reader was relieved that she had somewhere to go for refuge, someplace where she could at least breathe, and be herself, even as a stranger in a sea of strangers.

In Manhattan she could bask in being ignored, free of family and community expectations, no longer carry the stigma as the renegade runaway daughter who abandoned a “good family,” and get on with the long work of becoming a writer.

A Haunting Quaker Story about U.S. Concentration Camps for Japanese Americans in World War Two

“You been hitch-hiking all the way?”

“Oh no,” he said. “Only here and there. Out to the camp in Manzanar, where there wasn’t any bus or taxi. And a stretch in Mississippi, after we got bumped from a train by some war shipments or other.

He shook his head. “Same thing happened in Cleveland. The army wants a train, they get it. Then you either wait for the next train, or find some other way. I couldn’t wait anymore, so here I am. That happened to you? Getting bumped from a train, I mean.”

“Um,” I stumbled, “not recently.” I was sure now that I was carrying some kind of mental case. Probably harmless, but not operating in the same dimension.

A blast of static from the radio caught his attention. “That a ball game?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. Pirates and the Cubs.”

“Is that so?” He seemed puzzled. “They in spring training?”

“No,” I began, but then stopped. I had a feeling it wouldn’t do any good to explain that the season was half over. His time sense was clearly out of whack. “Cubs are ahead,” I said lamely.

“Don’t have a radio in my truck,” he said. “Too bad. It’d be good to listen to on some of my runs to the camps.” He rubbed his hands together. “I’d a driven it out here if I could, but o’ course, you can’t get gas, what with the rationing and all.”

While I was trying to remember when there had been gas rationing, he looked around the interior of my Toyota. “Real nice car you got here, friend. You maybe working in the war effort?”

The question caught me off guard. “I-I guess you could say that,” I answered. After all, I thought, what else is designing parts for missiles?

My hesitation seemed to embarrass him. “Gosh, Mr. Nelson, I don’t mean to be asking sensitive questions,” he said hurriedly. “I’m not digging for military secrets or anything. It’s just hard to get away from the war, you know?”

missile-launch
A home run?
“Yeah,” I said, “I know.”

Eating Dr. King’s Dinner – A Moderately Long Holiday Read

“And to put ourselves into the proper frame of mind for these times of retreat,” Dr. King concluded, “we have always made it our practice that for the first two days we are in jail, we will fast.”

So there it was, finally.

As I say, these were not his exact words, but the cadence and content are all there. In any case, when the trusty heard the word “fast,” his mouth dropped open. Mine did, too.

The trusty frowned more deeply, and turned his head slightly, as if he was working up to ask a question, perhaps something like, “Say what?” Dr. King headed him off.

“And that, my friend, is why I very much appreciate the effort you’ve gone to,” he said, “but I’m afraid I am unable to eat your greens.”

“You mean – ?” croaked the trusty. Much of the rest of the disquisition may have gone over his head, but this last was sinking in.

Dr. King nodded.

The trusty looked genuinely confused.”You mean,’ he repeated, “you can’t – ?”

Now Dr. King shook his head slowly.

The trusty looked at Abernathy, who had moved to Dr. King’s elbow. He smiled apologetically, but shook his head also.

The trusty blinked and turned toward the other staffer, who had hung back silently through this whole exchange. His head shook too.

The trusty stood there for a moment, without a clue as to what to do next.

And then, he looked at me.