Snow Days
The Maundy Monday Newsletter - This Week in History January 26 - February 1.
Washington, DC, is covered in snow and ice. Which means Blue and I will be stuck in the house for a few days. I’ve come to terms with the fact that shoveling wears me out quicker than it should. Fortunately for Anonymous, she dipped out of town earlier this week and headed south to hang out with family where it’s warm. What timing!
I miss the days when I was a child, and I got out of school because of the snow. Being an adult is okay. It has its rewards, like going to bed when you want. But unlike school, adult work is never cancelled, especially since adults invented technology that keeps us productive.
Really would love to thank the adults who made this possible.
While “Snow Days” were the best, being out of school because of parent/teacher conferences was a close second. You remember these, right? Your parents would take off work, drive to the school, and sit with one of your teachers for about an hour, who would describe how you behave every day. As an adult, you are probably doing this for your children, which is a downside because you leave your work to do other work.
There’s one particular parent/teacher conference that stands out for me and how it connects to our focused history lesson this week. My family moved down the interstate from Cleveland to Columbus in the summer of 1985. In January 1986, my mom and dad experienced the parent/teacher summit in the new Catholic school for the first time. They met my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. O’Donnell, a lovely woman, who no doubt explained to them that their son was full of energy but appeared to struggle with just a few basic subjects, like math, science, and reading. As a lovely woman, Mrs. O’Donnell probably gave them hope by highlighting my attentiveness in religion classes and my ability to retain information delivered by Jesus.
The exact date of this meeting was January 28, 1986. Since it was parent/teacher conference day, my sister and I stayed home and watched television all day, without worrying that our parents would realize in real time they were wasting their hard-earned money on the early education of their idiotic youngest.
It was a big day for the country. The Space Shuttle Challenger was set to launch. So my sister and I turned on the small TV we’d placed on the kitchen table, since it was close to lunchtime, and watched Peter Jennings on ABC News.
I’ll never forget not understanding what I watched as 73 seconds after takeoff, the Space Shuttle exploded, killing all seven people on board.
This is what we learned: Due to the cold weather, an O-ring seal failure caused a booster to fail immediately after the launch. This failure caused burning gas to reach the outside of the Shuttle to the external fuel tank. The entire rocket was destroyed, and America lost Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. McAuliffe was a school teacher, and her opportunity to go into space was witnessed by millions of students, like me, across the country.
President Ronald Reagan was supposed to give the State of the Union address that night, but instead he spoke to the nation for about 5 minutes. It was a solemn, elegant speech, addressed to the families who had lost loved ones, helped a nation heal, and spoke directly to children like me who were trying to understand what happened.
My favorite part of Reagan’s address is towards the end.
“The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to ‘touch the face of God.’”
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. The U.S. Air Force started atomic testing on January 27, 1951. Operation Ranger was the first time the United States dropped nuclear bombs domestically. The first device, called “Able,” was a one-kiloton blast that landed on a dry lakebed at Frenchman Flat in the Nevada desert. I have no idea what a one-kiloton is, see 4th grade report above, but it sounds like a lot. It took us 100 tests over the years to begin to understand that it was having a negative health impact on locals. So we did another 26 and called it quits. The last one we did was in the 1990s. In October, President Trump stated he wanted to restart the program.
2. Louis Brandeis was appointed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on January 28, 1916. Nominated by President Woodrow Wilson and confirmed with the vote from a Nebraska Republican who proposed the Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Brandeis would become the first Jewish American on the bench. Known as the “People’s Lawyer,” Brandeis advocated for social justice and the breaking up of monopolies. Wish we had him on the bench right now – he sounded awesome.
3. White supremacist terrorists bombed Martin Luther King Jr’s home on January 30, 1956. A month after Rosa Parks sparked a boycott of the Montgomery Bus system and launched King into the national spotlight, and consequently a target for white supremacists. While King was preaching at a church, a man drove to his house, walked up, and tossed an explosive on the porch. It caused some damage, but did not harm King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, and their daughter, Yolanda, who were inside. Despite the attempted murder, King reiterated his non-violent approach. “I want you to love our enemies.” The suspect was never caught.
Vivek Murthy is about a year younger than me, but unlike me, he was a good student growing up, which led him to become the 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States. In 2023, he declared loneliness a health epidemic. He said that Americans had been trending this way for many years, but COVID exponentially accelerated the problem.
Loneliness can affect anyone at any time. I have experienced loneliness plenty of times throughout my life. I know, it sounds crazy, a guy like me with great hair, but it’s true. When you feel like everyone’s against you, you become overwhelmed by anxiety, depression, and anger, all of these interconnected feelings that can have devastating impacts on your mental health.
When you can’t think straight, and loneliness takes hold of you, you seek out belonging and purpose. An unfortunate outcome could lead someone to join a cult. One expert in cult psychology, Margaret Singer, says there are six conditions for cult leaders to succeed with people. One stands out for me:
Create a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that cannot be changed by anyone other than the individual(s) in charge.
“Create a closed system of logic…that cannot be changed by anyone other than the people in charge….”
That’s what we’re living in right now.
The United States executed another protester in Minnesota on Saturday, this time an ICU nurse who worked at the Veterans Hospital, who was trying to assist a fellow protester. Both were expressing their God-given First Amendment rights.
His name was Alex Pretti. On Friday, anyone who would describe him would use the present tense, but because we live in a world where lonely people have found purpose and belonging in a cult, Alex can now only be referred to in the past tense.
The US has now murdered a poet and a nurse in broad daylight on public streets. Just like I was in the 4th grade, I watched this tragedy on television, but this time, instead of the president of the United States speaking to me to help me understand what happened, we have people in his administration trying to control the logic of what they want you to think happened.
It’s terrible to imagine that only Trump can change the way many lonely people think.
I hope the weather hasn’t wrecked your weekend or caused any issues with the upcoming week. I think this type of situation is a nice reminder to slow down and enjoy the gifts we have in being warm and safe.
Blue in particular loves this weather. He can never hide as he bounces through the snow, his favorite pastime that doesn’t come along often.
Have a good week. Appreciate you.
Okay,
Chris
