As Americans Celebrate Thanksgiving, Obligation to Remember Our Real History

Mural replica in Silverton, Oregon, of one of Norman Rockwell's "Four Freedoms" paintings,  at Wikimedia Commons

It's not Thanksgiving the world over, of course. But for us Americans, who tend to be self-focused, in any case, this is a day on which I suspect many of us think the whole world stops along with us to revel in "memories" of an iconized, mythologized American past that never really existed — at least not in the way we want to recall it. And to the extent to which it did exist, it meant a heap of misery for a lot of people who were mere adjuncts to the main narrative celebrated in our national icons, a narrative of happy native Americans sitting peaceably with grateful colonists, genocide and plunder of land nowhere in the mythological picture. Our iconic picture of American Thanksgiving is an equally fabulous (emphasis on root word "fable") picture of happy (always white, white, white) families, grandparents, parents, children, sitting thankfully and amicably at a long table eating bland foods devoid of herbs, spice, garlic, chili, nary a quarrel or disagreement (or thought?) in sight.

Remembering a Grandfather on the Anniversary of His Death: "Everything, in Time, Gets Lost"

As I've said here before, Daniel Mendelsohn's book The Lost is one of the most powerful books I've read in my long lifetime of voracious reading. I read it soon after it came out in 2006. It recounts the engrossing tale of Mendelsohn's years of searching for information about what happened to his relatives in Ukraine during the Nazi period. Mendelsohn’s obsession to find out the fates of his relatives began when he was a young teen, and continued into his adult life — and The Lost recounts the story of how, miraculously, he eventually discovered details about the final days of these relatives, their murder during the Holocaust.

Historical Memory and Political Imagination (2): The Magis of History That Frees Our Imaginations to Recognize More Possibility for Present and Future

Here's the historical anecdote I wanted to attach to what I wrote yesterday about how history itself, the real McCoy, the raw data prior to the historical massaging given to the data by historical narratives, always contains a magis, a more, a complexity and imbrication that surpass what historical narratives usually tell us to imagine about history. And so, as I proposed yesterday, paying attention to history — in a way that exercises a justifiable hermeneutic of suspicion about what we've been told to make of historical events and facts — allows us to keep our imaginations about what is possible now and for the future sharp and open when the cultures in which we live want to herd them into official grooves and ideological channels.

Historical Memory and Political Imagination: "When the Discourse of Politics Amounts to a Choice Between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton"

What's that I hear you say? More history, please! Or perhaps I'm hearing, at this far distance through the ether of cyberspace, the sound of only one hand clapping as I bring up the topic of history again.

As I was recently telling my friend Alan of the excellent Hepzibah blog (it's in the blog list here), history fascinates me because of how it undercuts the predictability of our expectations about the present and the future. Many historical narratives certainly do seek to smooth out the wild unpredictability, the stubborn odd facticity and givenness of history as it actually unfolded, but those flattening narratives are commonly superimposed on historical events that are far from smooth or flat.

I Spent Five Months in Prison and Got Exiled to Nova Scotia for Loyalty to the Crown and This Lousy Land Is All I Get?! Or, the Story of David Dinsmore and How We Spent Our Summer Vacation

We're back from our vacation, and it may take me a number of days to get into the swing of posting real stuff here again. I apologize that so many of your very welcome comments have gone unacknowledged. Please know that I appreciate them. Meanwhile, a vacation report . . . .

Sharing Our Life as Theology: Another Videotaped Theological Conversation with Ivone Gebara, About Diarmaid MaCulloch's Silence, Christian Amnesia, and Gospel Mandate for Inclusivity

I've previously shared with you two videotaped conversations that I had the honor of having in the past year with the distinguished Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara (here and here). As I noted when I shared these videos, Mark Shumway and Rachel Fitzgerald Shumway, who maintain the evolving deep forms blog, organized and videotaped these conversations (with expert technical assistance from Mark's son Chris Shumway and Rachel and Ivone's friend Marlene Denardo, who speaks Portuguese and helped facilitate the conversation when Ivone and I needed her wonderful linguistic skills).

Quote for Day: Fred Clark on Antonin Scalia and How to Avoid Having One's Death Perceived As a Source of Liberation

Fred Clark on the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:

Remembering Antonin Scalia: Twitterverse Testimony

I wish Antonin Scalia the peace, mercy, & happiness in death that he tried so hard to deny me in life.

— Katie Grimes (@KatieMGrimes) February 14, 2016

On History and the Importance of Remembering: An American Family Story for You

I think that perhaps too many postings from me are a big bore. They bore me, if no one else in the world. With that warning, I have thought to share something with you from the previous two weeks in which I worked intensively on getting that book project underway — keeping in mind your many good suggestions to me about that project.

Quote for Day: "All Lives Do Not Matter When We Must Sort the Dead by Sides" — A 9/11 Remembrance

Patricia J. Williams's powerful observation yesterday at The Nation site, which has to do with what we get when we remix the Confederacy for 2015, strikes me as valuable commentary, too, on 9/11, as the United States remembers that event:  

Katrina: The Obligation to Remember — "Hurricane Katrina Exposed Our Nation's Amazing Tolerance for Black Pain" (Jamelle Bouie)

Rebecca Solnit on why we need to get what happened in New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina right: 

Remembering a Friend on His Birthday: Holiness in Ordinary

I didn't actually say I wouldn't post this weekend, did I? :)

What prompts me to do so today is that today's the birthday (in 1916) of a remarkable person who, along with his wife, had a great deal of influence on Steve's and my life over many years, and I feel prompted to share with you some memories of these friends. Two nights ago, I dreamt of them, and yesterday when I thought about the dream, I did a bit of googling and discovered that today is my friend's birthday. Abner died in 2003 and his wife in 2005, not long after she and the other elderly residents of the care home in which she was living were evacuated from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. 

Thoughts Following the Funeral of a Friend Today: The Rare Gift of Being There for Others

I'm sorry to be slow to blog today and to respond to comments, folks. Today was the funeral of a friend and neighbor of ours, who died suddenly last week. I've been rather dreading it, because I knew it would force me to face the fact that she is, indeed, gone — and because I feel so deeply sorry for her husband that I wasn't sure how I'd be able to offer my condolences to him without adding to his misery by breaking down myself.

Confronting the Real History of American Families: Stories Hiding in Plain Sight

This is one of those family-history postings that may interest only a slice of regular readers of this blog — except that it tells, I myself think, a story that may interest people who aren't particularly interested in genealogy. A story that hrh might call zaftig . . . . Often, in our research about family history, such fascinating stories are hiding in plain sight. This is one of that sort, I've concluded, one about a cross-racial family. 

I Try to Keep You in My Memory: On the Struggle to Remember, a Poem on the Anniversary of My Brother's Death

Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of my brother Simpson in 1991. His was one of several family deaths at which I'd be present during the decade 1991-2001. As I noted in this posting in 2008, I wrote the poem above in 1989 when a brilliant young Dominican priest whom I had hired to teach theology when I chaired the theology department of Xavier University in New Orleans — Stephen Goetz — died suddenly as he was working on his doctoral studies at Yale University. The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament organized a memorial service for Stephen at Xavier, and I wrote the poem as my contribution to that service.

Social Networking Sites and the Way Americans Do Death: My Notes with Questions

I wonder if this has happened to anyone besides me. First, I happened to notice a posting pop up on Facebook last year from the Facebook feed of a friend in Florida from whom I hadn't heard in some time. 

Violets Gathered on a Funeral Morning: A Poem Commemorating the Anniversary of a Grandfather's Death

A few days back, I shared a story of the final days of my grandfather's life, a memory of an experience I had as I sat in the hospital waiting room during his final illness. Today's the anniversary of my grandfather's death in 1976, and so I thought I'd share with you a poem I wrote not long after his funeral. 

A Memory: A Grandfather's Final Illness, Pink Shirts, Sissies, and the World's Going to Hell

A memory. We all have them, don’t we, those flashes of recollection that leap into our minds, triggered by nothing we’re doing or thinking at the moment? It’s 1976, the weeks of my grandfather’s last illness. So perhaps around the very time of year in which I’m writing this memoir, January, since he died in early February.

A Remembrance of My Grandmother on Her Birthday

Two women sit sewing. You’d call the scene quiet, if you didn’t see the frenetic quick gouges the needle of the younger is making through the mending she has knotted in her hands. 

Remembering Maya Angelou: Bill Moyers on Maya Angelou and Facing Evil — "We Need the Courage to Create Ourselves Daily"

Full Show: Facing Evil With Maya Angelou from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.