Quote of the Day (John Paul II, on Mary and the Assumption)

“Mary, glorified in her body, appears today as the star of hope for the Church and for humanity on its way towards the third Christian millennium. Her sublime exaltation does not distance her from her people or from the world’s problems, on the contrary, it enables her to watch effectively over human affairs with that attentive concern with which she obtained the first miracle from Jesus at the wedding in Cana.”--Pope John Paul II, “Homily Given on the Solemnity of the Assumption,” August 15, 1998

I took this photo of the statue of the Virgin Mary that stands outside my alma mater, St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, N.J. Years ago, I, like so many other elementary-school children before and since, would stop by this each May with my class.

Tomorrow night, I’m having a Mass said for my mother on this feast day. It has additional resonance for me, as my maternal grandmother died on the feast day 45 years ago.

Like the story of Mary’s son, Mary's passing represents a triumph over death, a sharing in the Resurrection. It’s the same promise of eternal life that my mother and grandmother hoped for, and that I do, too.

Photo of the Day: Marsh Mellow

I took the photo accompanying this post yesterday at Piermont Marsh in Rockland County, N.Y., near the Hudson River. As you can see, I couldn’t ask for a much better Saturday afternoon, and I’ll be posting some more images I took throughout the next week or two.

This Day in Cold War History (Berlin Wall, Symbol of Division, Built)

August 13, 1961—As more and more of their own citizens chose to vote with their feet rather than live under Soviet domination, the German Democratic Republic (GDR)—a contradiction in terms if there ever was one—acted swiftly to stop the mass emigration by building the Berlin Wall. In a move that must have taken weeks to plan but only 24 hours to implement, the GDR tore up streets, erected barricades of paving stones, placed tanks at strategic junctures and interrupted subway and local rail service. In virtually no time, the estimated 1,500 people fleeing East Germany daily came to a halt.

The move capped a spring and summer of escalating tensions between the U.S.S.R.’s leader, Premier and First Secretary of the Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev, and American President John F. Kennedy. It was the first season of what historian Michael Beschloss would call “The Crisis Years” of confrontation between the American—elegant, aristocratic, young, inexperienced, and battling ill health—and the Soviet—crude, of peasant stock, aging, wily, and eager to exploit the slightest sign of weakness in an adversary.

Still less than half a year in office, JFK had hoped to ease the tensions mounting between the two nations since the end of the Eisenhower presidency by meeting Khrushchev in Vienna in early June. But that summit was disastrous, for reasons barely understood at the time.

To relieve the ferocious pain and exhaustion springing from a longstanding degenerative back problem and Addison’s Disease (a condition in which the patient’s adrenal glands don’t produce the adrenaline needed to get through the day), the President had been secretly receiving injections from Dr. Max Jacobson, the quack of preference for such celebrities as Yul Brenner, Mickey Mantle, Truman Capote, Eddie Fisher, and Nelson Rockefeller. JFK requested more of these “medical cocktails” from “Dr. Feelgood” so he wouldn’t seem exhausted to Khrushchev. He was cavalier about the side effects of these injections on his physical and mental health, telling brother Robert: “I don't care if it's horse piss. It works."

The upshot was that Kennedy encountered his Soviet counterpart, in arguably the most high-stakes summit of the Cold War up to that time, relatively high on speed.

Kennedy should have asked for his money back. Khrushchev went at him with no holds barred, blustering in every way possible, climaxing with a threat: settle Berlin’s future with an agreement within six months, “or else.”

Later, JFK confided his serious concern to New York Times columnist James Reston. The Soviet, Kennedy reasoned, thought that "anyone who was so young and inexperienced as to get into that mess [the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba] could be taken. And anyone who got into it and didn’t see it through had no guts. So he just beat the hell out of me…I’ve got a real problem.”

Summing it up, the young father, brother, and leader who had already lost a brother and sister to death, a baby in his wife’s miscarriage, and sailors under his watch in the South Pacific—not to mention more days of sickness than he cared to admit—called the bullying at the hands of the Soviet “the worst thing in my life.” Given what would happen over the next year and a half—especially the Cuban Missile Crisis—the normally cool, ironic Kennedy was not exaggerating.

What Kennedy, not to mention the American public, did not realize was that Khrushchev was operating from a position of considerable vulnerability himself. Some members of the Soviet Union’s Central Committee had been plotting his ouster for several years. By the late 1950s, China’s Mao Tse-tung was openly challenging Soviet leadership of worldwide Communism.

Now, the pressure was being exerted against him immediately in Berlin, with that massive outflow. GDR leader Walter Ulbricht begged for something to be done to reduce this threat to the size of the East German labor force (not to mention the country's image to the willfully ignorant as a workers‘ paradise). Khrushchev granted the request by putting into motion plans for The Wall.

In a way, it was appropriate that the Berlin Wall ran across cemeteries, for it represented a form of death: death to hundreds of thousands who hoped for a better life in the non-Communist West, death to the hope that Khrushchev could transform the Soviet Union from the mold created by Lenin and Stalin, and the death of illusion.

Kennedy had been so concerned about the possibility of war coming from the Soviet threat to cut off access to West Berlin that, at first, he was relieved by the building of the wall. It might have been a wall, he said, but at least it wasn’t a war.

The issue didn’t receive itself quite so easily, however. Kennedy was so determined to show Khrushchev that he couldn’t be intimidated that he authorized Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric to deliver a speech that frankly contradicted the claim made by the JFK Presidential campaign the year before: that the U.S. was facing a “missile gap” as it confronted its adversary.

On the contrary, Gilpatric claimed in his October 21, 1961, speech, “The Iron Curtain is not so impenetrable as to force us to accept at face value the Kremlin's boasts."

There are certain points and people in history that deserve to be better known because of their subsequent impact on far-more-famous matters. Gilpatric’s speech in Hot Springs, Va., was one of these. It exposed Khrushchev to the world as a bluffer, at the exact moment that the Communist Party Congress was meeting. Three events followed, in escalating order of importance:

* Khrushchev immediately authorized plans to detonate the largest hydrogen bomb ever tested;
* An American diplomat was blocked on his way to an opera in East Berlin, creating a situation in which 30 tanks from each side faced each other at a distance of only 100 yards from each other, before Kennedy and Khruschchev finally resolved the matter through back channels;

* In 1962, welcoming the opportunity of “ throwing one of our hedgehogs down the pants of Uncle Sam,” Khrushchev ordered that missiles be secretly shipped to Cuba, triggering the closest the war has come to Armageddon: the Cuban missile crisis.

Even after the resolution of that threat, the Berlin Wall lasted till the end of the larger Cold War. It became a visible reminder to objective people all over the world that the Iron Curtain regimes could only maintain their grasp on power, not to mention their economies, by restricting their own citizens’ freedom to move. It also provided two American Presidents--one Democratic, one Republican--the opportunity for some of the most memorable moments of their years in office.

In 1987, the world was transfixed by Reagan’s simple demand of Mikhail Gorbachev: “Tear down this wall!” But 24 years before, JFK--who had endured “the worst thing in my life” over Berlin--now electrified an enormous crowd on the West Berlin side of the wall with four words of his own: “Ich bein ein Berliner.”

Most of the fragments of the Berlin Wall remain in the city, but some have landed in unusual places. One is in West Point, but another, surprisingly enough, is in Paley Park, a "vest-pocket" urban oasis on East 53rd Street in New York City. When I used to work across the street from there in the 1990s, I was astonished not simply to see it but also to observe that virtually nobody in the park paid any attention to this hideous structure that, for nearly 30 years, represented for all too many totalitarianism, the failure of international politics, and death.

Song Lyric of the Day (Dan Fogelberg, on “All of the Answers You Seek”)

“There is no Eden or Heavenly gates
That you're gonna make it to one day
But all of the answers you seek can be found
In the dreams that you dream on the way.”—Dan Fogelberg, “Part of the Plan,” from the Souvenirs LP (1974)

I find it as hard to believe that Dan Fogelberg is not around to celebrate his 60th birthday today as that we will not be enjoying new music from him anymore. Not only were his albums constantly on my turntable in the mid-to-late 1970s, but he provided one of the most indelible memories of my teenage years then: an outstanding performance in Central Park as part of its Schaefer Music Festival in July 1977, one of the most deeply satisfying concerts I ever witnessed there.

That summer, Fogelberg was touring to support his LP Nether Lands, which not only contained elements of classical music to go with his more folk-rock instrumentation, but also highlighted his concern for the environment. Above all, his talents as singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist were on ample display. In that Central Park concert, at the conclusion of “There‘s a Place in the World for a Gambler,” another song from Souvenirs, he had the audience in communion with his gentle, questing spirit as he led it in a mass sing-along.

Fogelberg probably hit his commercial peak not long after that with Twin Sons of Different Mothers, his collaboration with Tim Weisberg, and the 1981 double-set The Innocent Age (perhaps the only folk-rock LP I can think of that was ever inspired by a Thomas Wolfe novel--in this case, Of Time and the River). The latter collection contained some of his most personal work: “Leader of the Band,“ a tribute to his father, a high-school band leader, and “Same Old Lang Syne,” inspired by an accidental meeting with a former girlfriend.

My own preferences, though, are for three ‘70s albums--Souvenirs, Captured Angel (1975) and Nether Lands--as well as the 1987 release that came after the collapse of his first marriage, Exiles (featuring one of his most poignant songs, “Lonely in Love”). But all of his work reflected his interest in a great variety of musical styles--folk, rock, bluegrass, pop, classical, jazz, Celtic (one song was about the region in Ireland where my father was born, “County Clare")--and challenged his audience to keep pace with him.

Fogelberg succumbed to prostate cancer in 2007, and his death marked, like the work of his literary hero Wolfe, the irretrievable passage out of youth for many of us. Despite his somewhat pessimistic conclusion in “Part of the Plan,“ I hope--no, I expect--that there is an Eden or Heaven that will reward a valuable life and work that gave joy to so many people over the years.

Quote of the Day (Jay Nordlinger, on Borders' Final Chapter)

“I think this new age for media is a bonanza, a multifaceted gift to mankind. But you’ll understand, I bet, if I offer one cheer for bricks and mortar, and quirky staffs, and popping in and out. You’ll understand, too, if I shed a tear—half a tear, for the dear, old Borders Book Shop.”—Jay Nordlinger, “An End to Borders,” National Review, August 15, 2011

A few months ago, when I wrote about the closure of a couple of Borders stores near me, it felt as if the inevitable were only being momentarily delayed. Now the end is truly here for Borders Books and Music.

I took the photograph accompanying this post outside the Bordes store in Ramsey, N.J. There, as well as in the large location in New York’s Columbus Circle, the lines were long—and sometimes staffers’ tempers (no doubt not helped by the lack of air conditioning at the height of this summer’s height wave in the latter) were short.

Nordlinger’s article captures the ambivalence many of us feel about the larger phenomenon of disappearing books-and-media megastore over the last several years. I’m sure that a number of small independents think the megastores are finally getting a taste of their own medicine for putting smaller mom-and-pops and regional chains out of business. But while they lasted, the big stores were a browser’s delight. The Internet simply can’t replace the sheer physical pleasure of going through one of these.

Photo of the Day: Fancy Colors

If you’re a baby boomer like myself, there’s a good chance you’ll recognize the allusion in my headline to a song from the band Chicago in the early 1970s. The image accompanying this post, if you will, a visual counterpart to the sunburst of sound from this band that thrilled so many of us nearly 40 years ago with its adept and dazzling mixture of jazz and rock.

I took this photo last month at the Chautauqua Institution, where I was vacationing. As soon as I saw this profusion of flowers—pink and white begonias, red coleus, and a dusty miller—I knew that it was practically begging to go up on this blog. I’m happy to oblige!

(Over the next several weeks, before summer ends, I hope to post more photos of the glorious array of flowers at this picturesque gated community in upstate New York. My thanks to my longtime friend Pat for helping me to identify these little marvels of nature.)

Quote of the Day (Frederick Douglass, on His Terrifying Start in Public Life)

“Mr. William C. Coffin, a prominent abolitionist in those days of trial, had heard me speaking to my colored friends in the little school-house on Second street, where we worshiped. He sought me out in the crowd and invited me to say a few words to the [Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society] convention. Thus sought out, and thus invited, I was induced to express the feelings inspired by the occasion, and the fresh recollection of the scenes through which I had passed as a slave. It was with the utmost difficulty that I could stand erect, or that I could command and articulate two words without hesitation or stammering. I trembled in every limb. I am not sure that my embarrassment was not the most effective part of my speech, if speech it could be called. At any rate, this is about the only part of my performance that I now distinctly remember. The audience sympathised with me at once, and from having been remarkably quiet, became much excited.”-- Frederick Douglass, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881)

The above quote was becoming a bit long, so I couldn’t include the coda to what Frederick Douglass wrote here: After his spontaneous address in Nantucket on this date in 1841, he was asked to become a lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society for the next three years. So began the public career of arguably the most significant African-American before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

While this is a virtually word-for-word copy of Douglass’ account of this event from his earlier memoir, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), it considerably expands his first telling of this in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself (1845). At the two later points in his life, when neither his intelligence nor his leadership of the African-American community was in question, he could afford to be frank about his anxiety at his first public appearance.

This expanded version, however, probably also arose from Douglass' intervening years of speaking. Everywhere he went, he was undoubtedly asked how he came to occupy his unique position in American life. Moreover, all the while he had been lecturing, Douglass had learned how to tell a story. And really, what could be more uplifting than overcoming not just one obstacle, but also a second—not merely an entire society’s vicious treatment of slaves, but also the considerable remnant of fear and worthlessness this left him?

In later years, Douglass would not always see eye to eye with William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, but here he generously acknowledged the electric effect that the elder man had on his audience that day. Douglass was too modest to convey, except by suggesting that listeners reacted more to his embarrassment than to his ideas, the full effect that he himself made as a tall, striking 23-year-old escaped slave. But one contemporary correspondent at the event did in observing: “Flinty hearts were pierced, and cold ones melted by his eloquence."

This by no means would mark the end of fear in Douglass’ life. He surely must have felt it again, in 1852, when he delivered an incendiary speech about African-Americans’ ambivalence about Independence Day; in 1859, when it appeared that he might be prosecuted by the federal government for helping to finance John Brown’s failed insurrection at Harpers Ferry; in the Civil War, when he watched sons Charles and Lewis go off to fight in the famous 54th Massachusetts Regiment (the one made famous in the film Glory); or toward the end of his life, when, after watching with growing dismay the retreat of the federal government from protecting freedmen, he took to denouncing lynching with the same kind of oratorical fire he possessed in his twenties.