Randall & Rawls

THIS IS A GUEST POST OF SORTS. These are the words of my friend Randall O’Brien. I often turn to Randall’s words when I’m trying to try to make sense of things. They are a wonderful lens to view the world through. Let me give you an example. At the end of this post is a link to an essay Randall wrote. Please click that link and read it. It’s not long. It’s true. It’s powerful. It’s timely. If it doesn’t touch your heart deeply, yours may be hardened to stone at this time.

Among several graduate degrees, Randall studied Human Nature and Personality at Yale University. Mostly though (in my opinion) he studies real life.

He knows a lot. Most importantly, he knows ABOUT being a POPS. Randall is a self-described “hands-on grandparent, hoping to help raise five good humans.”

---

After the emotions, comes thought:

A THEORY of JUSTICE
(A theory, a book by John Rawls)

Changes anyone???

1. Who was John Rawls?

• A philosopher who taught at Oxford, Cornell, M.I.T. and Harvard.

• Famous for his Theory of Justice, and his book by that title, which sold 200,000 copies, and spawned 5,000 articles, papers, and other books (and counting).

2. What is Rawls’s Theory of Justice?

• Concerns SOCIAL JUSTICE.

• Rawls, essentially sees “Justice as fairness.”
  He establishes justice, or fairness, through a hypothetical “Veil of Ignorance.”
  Meaning? Meaning we imagine agreeing to the rules of society—fairness and justice—without knowing our place in society, our class, social status, assets, intelligence, etc, to which we might add race, gender, sexual orientation, abilities, or any other imaginable demographic.

In other words, what rules for a fair society would we write beforehand if none of us knew who we’d be in this world? This “Veil of Ignorance” should lead to fair rules, and laws to enforce them.

3. So.
Question: If we were to seek to form a more just society using Rawls’s theory, what changes would we make.

4. Let us remember: Justice is a coin with which we purchase peace.

5. With a tip of our hat to JFK, shall we acknowledge: “Those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable.”

Hope.

By Randall O’Brien

---

Thank you Randall—for friendship, for shining the light on things I would have not seen otherwise.

CLICK HERE TO READ RANDALL’S ESSAY: A Bronze Star for Brenda

FOR TODAY

TODAY IT SEEMS ESPECIALLY CRUEL. I’m not much of a socializer. It’s not that I’m shy or too sophisticated for small talk, or uninterested in the lives of others—well maybe a little. Let’s just say that when it comes to the social distancing part of quarantine, I’m okay. Except! When it comes to our kids and GrandKids; and Mom, especially today.

On May 12, we sang Happy Birthday to Malachi on a Zoom call. It broke my heart. I’m grateful for Zoom and FaceTime and for kids who are doing what they can to help us stay in “touch” with the GKs. But this is hard. Sunday, was Karlee’s piano recital. I’ve never missed one; until now. Oh, we watched on YouTube and it was wonderful, but different.

Today though it seems especially cruel. Today would have been Mom and Dad’s 74th wedding anniversary. This will be her first one without him. It will be her first one without anyone from her family being physically there with her. She is in assisted-living with strict lockdown. It is as it should be for now, but hard nonetheless.

I’ve thought about how it might be different for her if Dad were still here. Their life was pretty well suited to a quarantine type existence. They started each morning the same. Dad would be up first, his coffee made, waiting for her to start their daily readings. His eyes failed him years ago so reading was impossible, but he had mom. They would start with their daily devotional book and move on to the daily newspaper, page A1 headlines first and then the sports page (a routine she follows to this day, although the sports page is not what it once was). They would have been fine as long as Gunsmoke, M*A*S*H, and Jeopardy were on. The turmoil of quarantine would have hit once the scheduled St. Louis Cardinals’ game didn’t begin.

For a lot of 90-somethings you could have played any old Cardinals game from the past. They wouldn’t have known that Ozzie retired years ago. But Dad did. Mom served as a sort of play-by-play announcer for him. She knew all the players. She probably wouldn’t pronounce their names correctly but she knew them. Dad could see enough that he could tell the Cardinals players apart. I don’t know if he recognized their silouette, their batter’s box routine, their pitching motion?

But the Cardinal’s aren’t playing for now. Mom has a wonderful team of care-givers where she lives. For now, for today that will be enough for her. She is resilient. She has her books, her eyesight and GrandKids who love her. As she says, quoting her own mother, “This too shall pass.”

But for today; it seems especially cruel.

O WORDS, WHERE ARE YOU

IT’S LIKE MY WORDS ARE QUARANTINED TOO. For days now I’ve written nothing in a journal. I’ve tried. I’ve doodled some. I want to write something, something profound that some day someone will find and say, “Look, here’s a journal from The Quarantine of 2020! Wait, all it says, page after page is, ‘the same as yesterday.’”

Numerous times I’ve sat, fingers hovering just above the keyboard, quivering, waiting for the brain to send a message to those fingers to type something. There should be plenty to say. There’s certainly time to say it. But, the words don’t come. And when they don’t, this kind of stuff gets published on a blog.

In my conceited opinion, there isn’t much good TV programming being created these days. There is no original Law & Order, no Seinfeld, no Parks & Recreation, no King of Queens, no Big Bang Theory… So I watch reruns. Actually I’m watching very little TV. YouTube, Yes; TV no. But when I do, it’s reruns. Recently I watched an episode of Frasier. (Where is a show like that when we need it?) In this episode, Frasier was going to be out for a time from his radio gig. So they were going to air the best of Dr. Frasier Crane for his listeners.

Then it hit me. I’ve been writing this blog sporadically like five years now. That’s pretty long in blog years. Surely there is some “best of” stuff I could re-air. Fortunately the blog utility I use offers all kinds of analytics including “Most popular posts”.

The most popular ever was a post about selling our first Airstream, Bambi. That post was listed on a highly-trafficed website so it’s popularity is skewed somewhat. So, we’ll eliminate it. Other than that one, here are the top three. You can click on the title to see the post if your self-quaranteed and bored out of your mind. I noticed these are from 2017, 2015, and 2016 respectively. Apparently the oldies are the goldies.

CHECKING THE BOXES

THE PEACOCK VOW

LOVE STORIES

So, there you have a few reruns you can check out. In the meantime, so I have something thought-provoking to share here and also to write in my journal, and while my own words fail me, I’m using the words of others.

Here are a few quotes for our time in the Big Q.

“If you are solitary be not idle.”

— Samuel Johnson

“If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

“I have let myself go and am less strict with myself.”

— Leo Tolstoy

I had written these quotes down on a scrap of paper and I don’t remember the source. It was probably The New York Times, The New Yorker or The Atlantic, or Fox News, but probably not.

---

TODAY IS SATURDAY

THE DAY IN BETWEEN. This is what we do on the in-between days, between the beginning and the end, between the start and finish, in the uncertainty between what we know from experience and what we hope will be. One time; in-between was 40 years in the wilderness between bondage as slaves and the Promised Land. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could send 12 spies down the road of the coronavirus to bring a report back; what’s it like on the other side? Of course, there are tons of speculators now, people who think they can see there, from deniers to doomsdayers. I’m firmly in-between.

Today is Saturday. It’s a day of complete uncertainty, probably some chaos, some despair, short tempers, panicked discussions. That may be somewhat true of this Saturday, April 11, 2020, too. But I’m talking about that Saturday, centuries ago, the actual day between the crucifixation and the resurrection. Sure, now that we know how things turned out we can take a pretty relaxed view of the Saturday in-between. But on that first one—who knew? Now that we know, we can spend today (with a few twists and some ad-libbing) doing normal Easter weekend stuff: dying Easter eggs, making sure we have some stuff to fill Easter baskets…

Many many years ago I was a huge Miami Dolphins football fan. One of the times they would be playing in the Super Bowl, I prepared the VCR to record the game. We were having a Super Bowl party at our house after church activities. Early in the game, the Dolphins were struggling, mightily. I panicked; not that I had a big bet at stake, but my certainty that the Dolphins would prevail was on the line. I snuck back to the bedroom and tuned in to a radio broadcast of the game. They lost! I mourned quietly and returned to the living room with the arrogance of certain knowledge. I KNOW HOW THIS ONE TURNS OUT! I’m not in-between anymore. I know how it started. I know how it ends.

Remember two of those 12 spies came back and reported that moving in to the promised land was achievable and worth it all. The ten naysayers prevailed and the in-between lasted four decades. If you have heard yourself saying over the past few weeks, “For now…” then you are in-between. That’s where we are; not for the next 40 years, but for now.

So, for now… Here are words from Jane Kenyon.

OTHERWISE
Jane Kenyon - 1947-1995

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

---