Coincidentally its Mother’s Day

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The big news of the past five days since I last posted was the election of Cardinal Robert Prescott as the next Pope of the Catholic Church. I am very pleased. I wrote a column for the Reader which I will post today on Substack but not hear in Lincoln Democrat. I’m hoping to eventually reach a larger audience their but at the same time I don’t want to steal any thunder for now locally from the tabloid the Duluth Reader. And this week’s Reader didn’t carry any of my columns. I labored mightily two Fridays ago to crank one out on a mixture of ideas on Artificial Intelligence the power it requires and the possibly imminent sale/acquisition of my wife’s former employer Minnesota Power ALLETE.

That effort lead to disappointment when I asked Claudia to review it and she found a number of objections to it not the least the articles possible inflaming of paranoia about the sale of which she has no particular opinion other than the demand for more money to fund the immense energy demands of a growing AI economy. Had we not been hosting family for the previous month I might have doubled down to allay her concerns but the night I gave her my column for review she was busy hosting and after reading it she related to a guest my regular defiance here in this blog of her expectation that I never mention her or anything having to do with her employer.

I did violate that trust even if I tried to tippy toe around it. She discovered I had a few regular readers among her workmates who reviewed my column and thus anticipated things like a retirement she did not want to broadcast. I was guilty and no amount of palaver on my part about why the rumor mill was over imaginative means nothing. I guess that’s a mother’s day confession that she will never hear because she has never, to my knowledge read this blog. That I have been giving her my columns to review and offer edits in since I handed over dozens of my old columns for the Book I put on Amazon is a compensation. I know she has finally seen a lot of my written materials and has a better idea of the stuff she avoided for the past couple of decades.

I woke up at 4:30 and had my crusade against Trumpism in mind from dreams I imagine. I hopped out of bed now that the company was gone and I didn’t have to worry about discommoding them. Is that a word? Ah, yes it is. It means to cause trouble or inconvenience. I don’t want to discommode my guests but the Traitor president who is bent of perverting America……you are God damned right I want to discommode that dxxxo. As I told everyone when I went door to door last summer I want to be Donald Trump’s worst nightmare in Northern Minnesota.

So one book review in the Washington Post captivated me this morning. I told Claudia and she put in her list of books to reserve. Its called “Melting Point.” The 30 year-old author Rachel Cockerell is British. She wanted to write a family history much as I do. Her inquiries led to several startling discoveries about a Jewish heritage that had faded with generational assimilation in England. As she wrote it she became convinced that frequent mentions of herself were interfering with a story she found compelling. In short she discovered that a great grandfather had become an organizer from London of the immigration of 10,000 Russian Jews in an era of violent Russian programs to of all places Galveston, Texas. It involved her family the man who invented “Zionism” Theodore Herzl and British playwright Zangwell who married an American suffragette and who promised to raise any children they had as Christians. Zangwell described America with great conflict as the place where Judaism would be euthanized…..through such intermarriages as his own.

Author Cockerell found the book needed no mention of her because she found voices in the record from more than enough people who were thus allowed to speak for themselves. Her research also led her to think about the multiple crises in the Middle east brought about by Zionism and to muse about the conflicts their Zionism would unleash in the future.

So, about Mr. Herzl – You can see a book about him in the photo below:

The book by Ernst Pawel received good reviews so that I probably bought it shortly after it was published in 1989. I’ve never read it although opening it now I see a book mark at the beginning of Chapter 2 and its preceding chapter has my tell tale yellow marker in it.

Like so many other boo that Claudia gives me grief for collecting I read an early chapter or forward to get a better idea of what was in store for me. I’ve already spent a couple hours reading the news….further reading each day requires a little more dedication. I’m sure I decided that this was a book worthy of keeping but that I wasn’t ready for 10 hours on the early years of Zionism. It strikes me that the book I had Claudia reserve may be that book. Certainly in 1989 no one had heard of Benjamin Netanyahu let alone could imagine he would carpet bomb Gaza or have a cheer leader like the historically ignorant Donald Trump whose Dad once got in a fistfight in NYC against people cat calling marchers a pro-Nazi parade.

I’ll call attention to some of the other books in the picture. I regretted never having read Anne Frank’s diaries for decades. In 1996 a version called the “definitive” Anne Frank was published which included more of the intimate writing of the teenage girl in hiding. Her father Otto had abridged the book considerably for the post war Victorianism which would have found Anne’s candor indecent. And yet, Anne herself was rewriting her diary as a war testimonial after hearing a radio broadcast which encouraged people behind the Fascist curtain to do just that.

As for the book whose spines are viewable. Three of the slender ones are books I bought in Yad Vashem the Jewish war memorial in Jerusalem. One is a short piece by a Palestinian author. The fat book is one Claudia read and the Innocents by Mark Twain I read because I had a great grandfather who took a tour of Israel not long after Twain’s trip to the Holy Land. I only read those chapters.

In my list of the books I read each year there are two more books I read before we took a trip to Israel and Palestine shortly before out departure. Claudia read several more on her own including a book by Montefiore of the whole history of Israel which she found pretty bloody.

I read Ann Franks book in about 2010. Its another book that I’ve treated as a plane circling for a landing. They don’t run out of gas so they never crash.

I doubt I will edit this. Church is coming up then my son in law and I are grilling steaks for Mother’s Day company.

About the author

Harry is a ferociously good natured eccentric in Duluth Minnesota who detests traitors dressed up as Uncle Sam. You can find somewhat better edited writings of his at the Duluth Reader "contributors." page. The URL is:
https://duluthreader.com/contributors/h/84/284-harry-welty