Francis X Archibald: 2014/07

Saturday, July 26

Equal Opportunity, voters and polling

On this day in 1948, July 26, President Harry S Truman

signed Executive Order 9981, desegregating the military of the United States. This bold stroke accomplished two major feats: it opened the door for African-Americans to advance in the military in multiple new ways and it helped President Truman at the polls in November. The desegregation order and later the civil rights platform adopted at the 1948 Democratic convention helped Truman win large majorities among black voters in the populous Northern and Midwestern states and may well have made the difference for Truman in states such as Illinois and Ohio.

This bold stroke was taken by President Truman because he believed desegregation was a moral issue. His chances of winning the 1948 election were considered by practically everyone - except the President himself - to be less than nil. Many officials in his administration had already lined up new jobs and it is said that even Mrs. Truman doubted her husband would win. So certain were they that the race was over by September, the polling services stopped polling. They would never make that mistake again.

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Wednesday, July 16

How to Be an Asshole

The London Review of Books, July 17, 2014 issue, arrived this week with four books given prominence on the front page. “How to Be an Asshole,” reviewed by Sheila Heti, was number four. I doubt anyone could turn himself into body orifice, but, what the heck, I’ve read books on everything else, why not a “how to be” an “ass” (if not an asshole) and aggravate family, loved ones, friends, neighbors and the old man next to you on the public bus going to pick up his unemployment check. I could hardly contain myself long enough to tear off the plastic wrapper and see man’s guide on how to aggravate and torment.

It turned out that “how to be an asshole” was merely an editor’s slug line to capture attention. Ms. Heti reviewed “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., by Adelle Waldman. (Windmill, 244 pp.) Nathaniel is a struggling writer trying to exist in Brooklyn while waiting for the miracle call from a publisher that something he has written is going to be published and please find an advance check enclosed. He is running one night to a party and encounters a woman he once dated.

“She tells him he is an ‘asshole’ for his behavior after her abortion in the wake of one of their trysts. (He phoned only once in the weeks after the operation, a quick check-up.) He’s annoyed by her accusation, and defensively soothes himself as he walks away: ‘She could have called him,’ he thinks.” This qualifies, surely and unequivocally, as either “ass" or “asshole” attitude and behavior.

The review (by a woman – Ms. Heti) goes on for approximately five and a quarter 14” columns and tells us it is important that a woman (Ms. Waldman) write about a man and his relationship with a woman named Hannah (not the one of the abortion) but who in the end settles on Greer “about whom there are many negative things” but whose story will “sell for six figures.” Hannah’s won’t: “She lacks charisma, is morally cautious, has an average body.”

Maybe Nathaniel is, after all, capable of being an orifice.

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Thursday, July 10

Come to Boston

Joan Baez's rendition of "Please Come to Boston" (a major hit by Kenny Loggins back in the seventies) has always been one of my favorites and I took her advice recently and went up to Boston. I flew on Jet Blue airlines. This was my first experience with this line and it was a good one. Ticketing, checking my free bag, boarding, departing and arriving on schedule was smooth and efficient. I will use that line again whenever I can. After landing in Boston I went to New Hampshire to visit a sister and do a bit of looking around. Two of my sons and a D-I-L met me and we shopped at the Merrimack 80 Premium Outlet near Nashua.