Thursday

20 April 2017

— not a cloud in this morning’s robin’s egg sky

Good Morning All,

Today is my mother-in-law’s birthday. She would have been 115. Unfortunately it is also Hitler’s birthday. In Denmark, you get to put the flag up on your birthday, but during World War II Mormor (Mother’s mother), as we all called her, declined, not wanting anyone to supposed the people in her house were Hitler fans.

On this day in 1945, by the way, Hitler came up to the surface of the earth from his Führerbunker for the very last time, in order to dish out a few Iron Crosses to a few boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth. Ten days later he would be dead, apparently by shooting himself, although I’d be willing to bet he had to ask Eva to pull the trigger before she gobbled up her cyanide capsule.

One reason I continue to hope—against considerable evidence to the contrary—that there is a benevolent and just Divine Power up there somewhere in the Cosmos is so that people like Hitler and Stalin, Nixon and Kissinger, Amin and Mugabe, get what they deserve. 

Not to mention my tenth grade English teacher who gave me a D- one semester for suggesting poems might have more than one valid interpretation. She should have to write on the board 18 billion times: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is actually about the heartbreak of psoriasis.

And while we’re at it, the guy in a black Ford pick-up truck up in New Hampshire back in the 1970s who cut me off in traffic three times in one week, should have to circle the Fresh Pond Rotary in Cambridge, MA, in rush-hour traffic for eternity.

While I was typing that last bit, the receptionist at my dentist’s office phoned to say she had to cancel my 1:30 appointment today because the dentist was ill. Oh, happy day! I was instantly transported back to my childhood kitchen during a 1950s, early morning, intensely listening on our counter-top Zenith radio to a man with a beautiful voice intoning the the purest of all poetry: “No Schools all schools all day in Abington, Acton, and Arlington, including the Parmenter School where little Ronny Pierce is a fifth grader.”

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. Thanks so much for the condolence notes for Professor Bentham. It is true, as one of you pointed out, that time flies and a fly’s time is all too short.