Sputnik, Chou En-Lai (Zhou Enlai), Bridge on the River Kwai

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Ah, back on the horse. Honestly, I suspected the lag to be longer and the finish to be more distant when I picked back up. So count this as a Pinter Pause and move forward.

Sputnik translates into English as “traveling companion” which reminds me of the following (with reverse translation by me) Paul Simon lyric from “Graceland”:

My Sputnik is nine years old. He is the child of my first marriage.

Maybe that doesn’t really work.

I remember my father telling me the story of his father waking the family up so that they could listen to the beep of Sputnik on the radio. Maybe they even watched it’s orbital track? Not sure on that.

Chou En-Lai (Zhou Enlai) attended a religious school in Japan, swung through France to pick up Communism, and ended up as Mao’s slightly less bumbling Dan Qualye. He’s also responsible for Nixon going to China. So thanks for taking him off our hands for a week or so. Writing this is making me feel exceptionally ignorant about everything outside of my small world. I did actually finish reading a whole entire book written primarily for adults recently:

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It was fiction, about Japan, and interesting. I bought it in an airport.

The Bridge on the River Kwai is a novel written in 1952 by Pierre Boulle. The movie is better known than the book. The Music Section in the Wikipedia article provided me much amusement upon reading. Mostly because it lead me to the song “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball” (Spotify link).

The end is a beginning

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Much of the past few weeks have been spent thinking of, acting on behalf of, talking or being with my fraternal grandmother Mabel. I’ve spent more time with her in the past 6 weeks than I did in the previous 30 years. Until she moved to Wichita, we never had a particularly close relationship. She was never outgoing, gregarious, and she always called me “Champ”.

Grandma Mabel is the strongest fighter I’ve ever known and I’m certain she’s never thrown a punch.

I was sitting with Grandma last night. We looked at the picture from her kitchen. The picture of her wedding day. She stands straight, dark, and beautiful next to Grandpa John. The smiles on their faces and the synchronized twinkles in their eyes have been genetically transferred to their great-grandsons. Miles, Abe, Tynan, Otto, Owen, Leo, Ronan, and especially Huey. They possess all those mischievous possibilities in their own eyes.

Her initial words to me last night were a croaked, “I love you.” I left her in hospice care to tend to my own and she left me with a clear admonishment to “hold your moments with them close.”

And I trust that clarity because I know she spent her life fighting for it.

40 and counting

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It’s almost baseball season, almost spring.

I think of my grandmother Mabel at 94 and in winter. Her children in fall and mine back in spring.

Which puts me in summer. In the heat and toil of work. Goal-set against the failure of the growing crops. Hoping desperation won’t drop from the sky or sweep from the horizon.

On this day and all the rest,
may the yields rise, prices be fair,
and gentle rains prevail.

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac

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The US Supreme Court decision in 1954 that “…in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” (Brown vs Board of Education (Topeka)) lead to The Little Rock Nine. Nine brave young people standing together for education equality.

The US Army was called in to escort and protect these children just so they could walk through the doors of their high school.

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian poet and author. He received the Nobel Prize in 1958 “for his important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition” His singular novel was Doktor Zhivago (1957). I saw the movie, it looked cold. I thought about the movie when I rode the overnight train from Moscow to St. Petersberg. It was cold.

The Commerce Comet – Mickey Mantle represents the promise and humanity of baseball. Bob Costas probably said it best in his eulogy of The Mick, “In the last year of his life, Mickey Mantle, always so hard on himself, finally came to accept and appreciate the distinction between a role model and a hero. The first, he often was not. The second, he always will be. And, in the end, people got it.”

Hey, Jack Kerouac:

httpv://youtu.be/wZHOBw4j1w8

Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez

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Did I ever really listen to this song? I know my hearing is bad, but I thought for the longest time this stanza was:

Princess Grace, gave good face, trouble in the sewers.

Anyway, Grace Kelly was an American actress in the “golden age of Hollywood”. I know very little about movies from that era. She married Prince Rainier of Monaco in April of 1956. Had a stroke while driving in 1982 and died a day after the crash.

I am now typing this with one hand because Otto is sitting in the chair with me.

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Peyton Place is a novel written by Grace Metalious and published in 1956. It centers around women characters of “illegitimate” parentage. Salacious for its time it was of course made into a movie.

The trouble in the Suez was a clash of western (British and French) political and economic interests against Egypt’s anti-colonial sentiments and desire for sovereignty. Egypt’s President Nassar (remember him?) took control over the Suez canal because the US and the UK pulled the funding they had pledged for the Grand Aswan Dam. France, Britain, and Israel invaded with a peace agreement eventually brokered by the UN and the US.