- Mar 11, 2015
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Thank you. The best human beings are the ones who never get to speak in public or become yapping politicians. I bet there are similar people in your family, who just soldiered on through life, living their solid values every day without fanfare, even when life got tough. These are the unsung people who keep humanity going. These are the people we have to emulate. Wishing you, as Springsteen wrote, all the blessings that Heaven will allow.Thanks. Maybe my post was TMI, but you've got to get your guts from somewhere. Just one more tidbit because I'm remembering Dad today. I'm 15. I've gone to an anti-war candle-light vigil in the town square without permission. I'm standing there silently holding a candle. Who comes walking by but my Dad, who never took the car anywhere that he could have walked. I thought "Oh shit. Here it comes." He walked wordlessly by me, giving me the "thumbs up." God bless him and I hope he is in Heaven and I will meet him there. There is so much unsong virtue in this world.True. You not a racist. As for me I thank you for how you stand up to the racists here when you really don't have to. Thank you.
You are so welcome. My late father, back in the 1960's, decided that he liked the then-popular saying "tell it like it is." He drove my teenage self to any religious service I wanted to go to, after I got disgusted with Roman Catholicism. Actually, his Irish Catholic self quit going to mass and just walked to the church every Sunday after mass was over and sat, meditating, so I guess he got pissed, too. I never heard him say a bad word about anyone and he never said a swear word in our house. During that time, we saw how the bodies of the three civil-rights workers unearthed from the levy in Mississippi, and all the rest of the murders. Later, in high school, we were shown the pictures of the Nazi death-camps being liberated and the extent of the carnage. We had to read Native Son and watch Raisin in the Sun as part of our schooling.
My mother told me of an evening after WWII broke out, before they were married, when someone whom my father knew took them to one of NYC's finest night clubs as a send-off for my father, who was an employee of the Waldorf Astoria, going into the Army. She never quite said it, but I got the impression that this friend of my father's friend was gay, and as such, could not serve in the military and was trying to give what he could. My father, however, was a flaming heterosexual. My mother was a "bathing beauty" in the 1940's calendar style, and my father made no secret of appreciating it. When I was a little kid, they used to neck while doing the dishes. We went through some tough times, though, when my older brother started showing signs of mental illness and someone at school got him involved with right-wing hate groups and he brought anti-Jewish and anti-black crap into our house, my house. Eventually, it was up to me to remove his guns from the house and have him arrested (on advise of counsel), and get him into treatment.
I guess what I learned from all of this is that you have to love and care for your fellow human beings, you have to allow everyone to tell the stories of their own lives, and you have to stand by the truth.
Amen.
Not a problem. Your dad was a good man. And perfection is not required for heaven or none of us get to go.
Same to you. I've met some decent humans who were politicians, hey usually operate at the local and state level or they operate in DC but are not the ones who get the cameras put in their faces.. They are unsung and they toil trying to make certain those they represent get what they need.