Friends
The Maundy Monday Newsletter - This Week in History January 12 - 18.
Turning 50 is quite tiring.
I had a wonderful birthday week. And believe me, it was a week of festivities.
Thanks to everyone who sent along notes, texts, and calls. I’m deeply grateful to hear from so many of you.
I need a nap.
Wednesday itself was packed with fun activities. Went to the gym, then Mass, then ate blueberry pancakes with Anonymous, then we went to the National Archives, where I spent time looking up information on my great-great-grandfather, who fought for the Confederacy.
I knew he fought and was captured at the Battle of Franklin, but I presumed it was the larger, better-known Battle of Franklin, fought in November 1864, which was incorrect. He fought in the first battle, which took place a year earlier.
You can’t really call it a “battle” since so few people participated. It was a cluster of a fight, and the Rebels “won” despite giving up some territory. There were just a few casualties. I think my great-great-grandfather was the only person captured.
That sounds like such a Chris Dake thing to happen.
“Oh, hey Dake, we thought you got killed. Where have you been?”
“Yeah, I was captured and sent off to a horrible prison in Kentucky. During the battle, I tried to fight off 50 of those dirty-no good Yankees, but I ended up just getting tired, so they hauled me off to prison, where I regained my strength and broke out!”
Rebel Dake did, in fact, spend about three weeks in a federal prison in Kentucky, but was most likely released because he was annoying.
Finally, Anonymous put together this amazing book of memories from friends and family.
It was quite overwhelming to read everything from siblings to friends to coworkers. It’s a gift I will treasure forever, so thanks to those of you who took the time to send in notes.
Okay, let’s highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here’s what I got:
1. Congress approved the invasion of Iraq on January 12, 1991. The Democratic controlled Congress gave Republican President George HW Bush the authorization to attack Iraq and liberate Kuwait. It was the first time since 1964 that Congress gave the president this power. Two days later, the United States launched air strikes. Iraq responded by sending missiles into Israel. The war would continue for about a month. In the aftermath, we left Saddam Hussein in charge so we could run this back ten years later.
2. Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706. Franklin would become the first Postmaster General of the United States. That’s probably the least thing we remember him for. Franklin did many things in his life, but became wealthy by writing the Okay History of his time called Poor Richard’s Almanac. His profile has been featured on the $100 bill since 1914. How about that.
3. Charity song hit Number 1 on the Billboard on January 18, 1986. Rod Stewart wrote “That’s What Friends Are For” in 1982, but Dionne Warwick and Friends released it as a fundraiser for AIDS awareness and prevention. Over the course of the year, the organization raised $3 million.
Her name was Renee Good.
Here’s her poem “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs”
i want back my rocking chairs,
solipsist sunsets,
& coastal jungle sounds that are tercets from cicadas and pentameter from the hairy legs of cockroaches.
i’ve donated bibles to thrift stores
(mashed them in plastic trash bags with an acidic himalayan salt lamp—
the post-baptism bibles, the ones plucked from street corners from the meaty hands of zealots, the dumbed-down, easy-to-read, parasitic kind):
remember more the slick rubber smell of high gloss biology textbook pictures; they burned the hairs inside my nostrils,
& salt & ink that rubbed off on my palms.
under clippings of the moon at two forty five AM I study&repeat
ribosome
endoplasmic—
lactic acid
stamen
at the IHOP on the corner of powers and stetson hills—
i repeated & scribbled until it picked its way & stagnated somewhere i can’t point to anymore, maybe my gut—
maybe there in-between my pancreas & large intestine is the piddly brook of my soul.
it’s the ruler by which i reduce all things now; hard-edged & splintering from knowledge that used to sit, a cloth against fevered forehead.
can i let them both be? this fickle faith and this college science that heckles from the back of the classroom
now i can’t believe—
that the bible and qur’an and bhagavad gita are sliding long hairs behind my ear like mom used to & exhaling from their mouths “make room for wonder”—
all my understanding dribbles down the chin onto the chest & is summarized as:
life is merely
to ovum and sperm
and where those two meet
and how often and how well
and what dies there.
(source: Poets.org)
Have a good week, everyone. Be good to each other and remember we will be okay.
Okay,
Chris
