Thursday, July 4, 2019

    First July 4 without Mike. Feel a little sad.  What I miss the most is his loving him and being loved by him.  I was so comfortable with him, so completely myself.  Knowing I could trust him enabled me to expand my trust to others.  I am so much better off for having been his partner for 45 years.
    I slept through the whole second half of Bikram, lovely deep relaxing sleep. When I get new movement in my hip and back, it limits how much more I can do that day.  I have to give my body time to consider the changes and decide how it wants to respond.  It needs time to learn. Because Scott is in class, and I know that he can peel me up off the floor when I can’t get up on my own, I can relax completely. What a luxury!  Sometimes I’m so relaxed I can’t imagine ever getting my muscles into action again.
    When I got home, I suggested a garlic rinse to Katrin to help with the infected wounds on her legs. Also,  Sandor came over today. He worked on scanning all the letters mom had saved. Most are in German, but I’m pretty sure they are all letters responding to the news of my birth. He set up the blog too. He said before we broadcast it, he wanted to make some refinements.  He was lovely company. I got tired and took a nap while he finished up working on the blog.
    Sandor took one of the hard copies of Mike’s book on the diaconate. He had been reading it slowly to savor it.  I asked him directly about the quality of the book.  I told him I found it repetitious and overwritten. Sandor said yes, but this how all theology books sound. Ow!  How counterproductive. I also showed him Mike’s book on the Foundations of Theology, the one I knew he was writing. He took that home to scan it.  He said this has to be published too.
    Sandor is planning on taking all four of Mike’s four-drawer file cabinets home with him. This is great. The less Mike’s precious collection goes into the trash, the happier both Mike and I will be, him because it’s his precious collection, and me because it is his precious collection and I hate to add to the trash collection. After I’m through cataloging the books, I will have to clear off the papers on top of the cabinets. Then Sandor will move them out one drawer at a time.
    The night concluded with all the usual routines.  I’m almost finished entering the books into the catalog.  I must have under 200 left to go.
    I stopped watching Silent Witness. Many moons ago, I commented on how predictable and steady the show was.  I considered not watching it anymore, but then the format changed.  The original lead actress dropped out, and the plots became edgier.  However, they have become too edgy now. I’m having nightmares. Not my idea of entertainment.  For anyone interested, the show is on Amazon and that 23 (twenty-three ) seasons.  I’ve switched to watching Vanity Fair, also on Amazon.  Much more to my taste.

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Musings:  I’m putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.
    Mike’s parents were card-carrying Communists.  One of my Republican friends asked me recently how they could have aligned themselves with that political point of view. I said because they were concerned for the welfare of the marginalized in our society.  They were concerned about the unequal allocation of wealth and power in society that made workers into helpless victims of their employers.  While I agree with their concern, we know now that their allegiance was horribly misplaced.
    We know now the Soviet Union turn into a brutal dictatorship, killing millions of people who didn’t give their whole-hearted support to the party.  We also know that the former ‘proletariat’ turned into the same monster as their predecessors once they had power.
    There were two serious miscalculations.  First, beware of enforcing a utopian vision. I believe it is considered a sin in Catholicism to pursue a utopian ideal.  Christianity, at least, reserves the utopian vision for God’s domain, something not possible while on the Earth.  Simple wisdom.  I can think of many stories where utopian ideals have gone sour, but I know of none where they have worked.
    I wonder if the Shaker communities are a counterexample, but these communities were based on equality of all individuals and were able to maintain that ideal – it seems.  Again, I have never read about them in detail. Their sect came to an end because celibacy was one of the demands of the community. No sex; no children. No children; no one to carry on the tradition.
    The second miscalculation was Marx’s vision of the human condition.  All those who supported the Communist ideal believed that when the oppressed gained power, they would be compassionate, a severe miscalculation.  It assumes that people who were once victims can never become villains, abusers.  Boy, did Marx get that one wrong!  He knew nothing about the humans who, once given the power to design and run the utopian ideal, turned it into a living hell.  So much for utopia. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Does anyone know a case where that is not true?