Don,

The mention of your father, whom you never knew, prompts these comments about the relationship with the father I knew. Never sick a day in his life, he died at age 56 from pancreatic cancer. This was 36 years ago.

As I began the process – in fits and starts, at first – of writing my series of Easy Essays, I found myself drawn to write about my father. Strangely, I felt just the opposite about my mother. Even though both were deceased when I began to write, I instinctively felt my father would approve, and my mother would not. I still feel the same way.

Through death, you lost a father, whom you never knew. Through a series of voluntary separations, I lost my own father. At the age of fourteen, I left home to attend boarding school sixty miles away; I came home once or twice a month on weekends. This would have been 1948. The second separation occurred a year later when I entered a religious monastery. For the next seven years I saw my father only once a month on “Visiting Sunday”. A further, and more deliberate, separation was caused by strict adherence to the monastic religious ideals of seeking to separate oneself from the world, including one’s family members, for the sake of serving God – we were taught to be “in the world, not of the world.” Such separation included wearing monastic garb, giving up the family name and replacing it with a religious one, and keeping one’s family at a distance, lest they become a distraction and/or interfere with our religious calling.

I cannot say what the relationship with my father would have been without these voluntary separations. Probably not much different, I suppose, than what it turned out to be. In the first half of the 20th century, the family role of fathers was much different than it has become thus far in this century. My father’s relationship to his own father seemed detached and distant to me, much like my own to my father.

In your case, you think – and wonder – about what relationship you might have had with your father if you had been given the opportunity to know him; and in my case, even though I knew my father, I wonder what my relationship might have been had I not chosen to separate myself from him.

All the best,

LeRoy

Don,

My definition – a compilation, really – of an organizer goes something like this:

>An organizer is a person who knows how to create something out of nothing.
>An organizer is a person who takes something that does not now exist, and make it exist.
>An organizer is a person who creates his/her own reality.
>An organizer is a person who knows how to create a path of forward motion moving from the known to the unknown.
>An organizer is a person who knows how to mold chaos.
>An organizer is a person who recognizes the blind alley, knows how to alter course and pick up the pieces.
>An organizer is not the person who does all the work, but the person who knows what work has to be done, who can do it, and why.
>An organizer is a person who interprets for others the small victory achieved today, which will surely lead to a larger victory tomorrow.
>An organizer is a person who recognizes the seeds of victory sewn in today’s defeat.
>An organizer is a person who does not ask others to do what he/she will not.
>An organizer is a person who leads not by fiery bombast, but by example, by patient teaching, by their wits, and by a stubborn persistence.
>An organizer is a person so convinced, that others respond to his/her request for help.
>An organizer is a person who organizes the march, not the person who leads the march.
>An organizer is a person who does not accept no for the answer.
>An organizer is not an administrator, that is another person.

Have a nice Friday.

LeRoy

Don,

In anticipation of surgery, the medical profession strongly recommends at least two weeks of abstinence from the use of aspirin. Presumably, this is a preventative measure to control excessive bleeding or some other, but in my case this recommended aspirin-abstinence has generated some drug withdrawal-like symptons, especially a feeling of insecurity. Believe it or not, I have taken two aspirin-a-night for at least 50 years, certainly since 1956, but I believe even before that. Do the numbers: 36,500 aspirin. Is it any wonder that I am experiencing the pangs of withdrawal.

Who is to blame for my addiction? That’s easy, my grandfather and the Christian Brothers. During certain extended periods of my childhood, I lived with my grandparents – this would have been during the 1940’s. Every evening at bedtime, my grandfather would take down a glass tumbler from the cupboard, fill it with water, and bring it to the dining room table. Into the water, he dropped two Alka-Seltzer tablets, which fizzed so loudly you could hear it, especially if you placed your ear right next to the glass. Before the tablets were completely used up, he drained the entire glass with a gulp or two. Sometimes, he would let me take a sip just before he drank it down. Why did he drink Alka-Seltzer? I have no idea, but he did so every night, as regular a ritual as that of my other grandmother who knelt down every night – and everyone in the house with her – to pray the Rosary before she went to bed. In the 1940’s, adults were in charge, and children were meant to be seen and not heard, and no explanations about these kinds of family rituals – health or religion – were ever proffered.

True, Alka-Seltzer is not aspirin, but I knew there must be some relationship between this mysterious fizzing medicine and sleeping well, and besides, aspirin was readily available to me, and Alka-Seltzer was not – the drugs are different but the principle was the same. However, the real culprit responsible for my aspirin addiction were the Christian Brothers. As a young – a very young – Christian Brother, just out of college, we were permitted to drink a glass (or two, if you hurried) of wine before the evening meal. This was the modern-day equivalent of the cocktail hour, except in our case, it was 30 minutes by the clock. The wine was sweet – a sherry, a tokay, a port – and on a growling stomach waiting for the dinner bell to sound, it packed a wallop. Looking back now, I cannot even imagine how I was able to drink it. But the nighttime effect of this sweet wine resulted in a throbbing headache; I could not sleep. I remembered my grandfather’s remedy and simply substituted two aspirin. I tell you, it was a miracle cure! Two nighttime aspirin warded off all the side effects of the alcohol stupor, and I slept like a stone.

The story of my aspirin addiction.

Take care, Don.

LeRoy

Don,

Your daughter was kind enough to alert me that you have been knocked off-line since last Thursday, and might not get power back until later this week. This explains your (enforced) silence. Truthfully, I was getting worried about you, and besides, how would I explain to our vast Website audience that I was carrying on a dialogue with a silent classmate? It is true, I talk to myself, but not in public.

Today marks the first U.S. Immigrant Boycott Day in our history. Millions of immigrants and their supporters are expected to take to the streets to protest the efforts of House Republicans to classify them as criminals and have them deported. Think about it: advocating legislation to create a criminal class of 11 million people. Even the W isn’t willing to pander to that extent.

Last evening I talked with a longtime friend and colleague, albeit much younger than me, about Mexican immigrants. He is Latino himself. He made these two points:

1. Most Americans do not yet realize that the U.S. – Mexico border has already been moved northward – at least fifteen miles or more, by his estimation. This new area – between the old and the new borders – in effect belongs to Mexican nationals. In the abstract, it still remains U.S. territory but in reality, it is Mexican. If the W administration is truly serious about building a thousand mile Israeli-wall on our border with Mexico, I wonder which border it will choose? The wrong one, I’m sure.

2. When my Latino friend is challenged: Why are you supporting this gated 2 billion dollar subdivision when you know that only rich white people can afford to live there? I look at it this way, he responds. Those are our (immigrant) jobs! We are going to get the unskilled construction work to build those homes, we will clean their houses, nanny their children, landscape their gardens, and wash their cars – and when our grandchildren marry their grandchildren, they will move into those houses. Cesar Chavez had a saying: your currency is either time or money. Immigrants don’t have the money, but they have the time.

Have a nice Friday.

LeRoy