MAUS

  

A Tennessee school district has voted to ban a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust due to "inappropriate language" and an illustration of a nude woman.  

  - Orlando Sentinel, January 28, 2022

When David and I first met he was living in Edina, Minnesota and I was living here in Altamonte Springs, Florida.  As time passed our visits back and forth became longer and longer.  

There was a large bookcase in David's bedroom.  I had previously read about half of the books but, over time I read almost all of the rest of them.  They were right up my alley.  

This bookcase was where I first found the remarkable graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman.  At the time, I wasn't a fan of graphic novels but this was different.  Very different.  Art Spiegelman has a tortured relationship with his father and wants to understand why his father is so miserable to be around so, over an extended period of time he drags out the story of what his father and mother endured in Poland during the war.  It is horrible, as you can imagine.  

But this is a graphic novel.  The word graphic takes on a much deeper meaning here.  I read it all in one sitting.  Then I read it again.  The book flap said a sequel was coming soon.  I began a long computer search but managed to to find the sequel.  Maus - And Here My Troubles Began.The first is titled Maus - A Survivor's Tale.  The Jews are depicted as mice, the Nazis as cats.  

I couldn't find the nude woman/mouse today but, in the second novel I did see silhouettes of naked men/mice being forced to run in the snow by fully dressed Nazi/cats.

Coincidentally, another article in today's paper tells us that Polk County has "quarantined" 16 books from school libraries.  Among them are The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseine and two books by Toni Morrison, Beloved and The Bluest Eye. 

The Last Goodbye

 On Saturday we had David's ashes interred in the columbarium at our church.  He died in 2019 but donated his body to the UCF School of Medicine, so it took a while for his cremains to be delivered to me and for his family to come together to place the ashes in the wall.  

Despite plans needing to be changed almost hourly due to COVID and freezing rain, we got the job done.  There was just a hand full of us, mostly due of my inability to deal with crowds, but his close friends and family were there for the send off.  

In the photo you can see David's children in the flection from the niche.  

Before they arrived from other parts of the country I gathered things that they might want to take home with them.  While I was compiling all of this I ran across an article which appeared in the Independence, Kansas newspaper in 1939.  Most of us who know David know he had an unusually challenging  childhood,  But he never admitted being traumatized.  He often said that he loved his life and would be happy to come back and live it all over again. 

David Runyan, 7, Makes Trip of 12,000 Miles for Stay at Relatives Here.

He wasn't a bit tired after a 12,000 mile journey via freighter, streamliner and automobile from his home in Ipoh, Federated Malay States. (This is now Malaysia.)

David had told his family over the years that he essentially traveled across the Pacific unaccompanied but the article tells us he was accompanied by Rev. Dodsworth, Methodist district superintendent in the district where David's father was a Methodist missionary.  

From California David made the train trip alone to Kansas. But then he was used to traveling alone.  He had just spent a year in kindergarten in India, having sailed from his home without his parents. 

He (David) was one of twelve Malayan children to go to Hebron, a school in the hills in South India, for a year.  

I love the last lines of this article. 

David speaks with a distinct English accent...While he has been residing in Malay, he has learned to speak several languages.  On Monday David will be enrolled at the Lincoln school.  He will be given tests to determine the grade he is to enter. 

If we live long enough, we will go through many, many chapters of our lives.  As you know, I think every one of us has a story.  I'm grateful beyond measure that I got to share David's last chapter. 

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These Precious Days

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Several weeks ago my friend, Ann, gave me this book, by Ann Patchett, one of my very favorite writers.  I admire not only her writing, but her purpose driven life and her ability to share her truth, even when it can cause pain, which it has. This book is a series of essays.  Much of them have been precious to me.  And I think when Ann Patchett titled her book "These Precious Days" I feel she was speaking directly to me.

In one of the essays she tells us that she and her husband are thinking about buying a bigger house but, instead, they carefully purge their current home of things they no longer need; like brandy snifters and manual typewriters.  They gather all of these things in their basement and then invited friends and colleagues to take what they want.  

I don't like clutter.  When David was alive we gave away a houseful of things that we no longer needed.  We had both been married for decades to spouses who were collectors of beautiful things.  But for the last ten years of his life, we were able to be "us."  If something came into the condo, something else had to leave.  If a beautiful painting went up, another came down. We carried out newspapers and separated the trash every single day.  

After David left us I've continued the process.  This past Thanksgiving weekend some family members cleaned out my attic because David's children are planning a visit and I was sure he had stored some valuables from the first 70 some years of his life up there.  And, neither he nor I were ever again going to make the big climb up the pull down stars in the garage.   

As it turned out, there were only a handful of David's items.  However, there were various things of mine and my husband Ken's, that had spent the entire 26 years I've been here, living in the attic.  My children and I threw away mountains of bedding and comforters and clothes that we felt (possibly) varmints had invaded.  Of what was left, my family took what they wanted - which wasn't much.  When my daughter escorted me to her home in Atlanta at Christmas time, she boarded the plane wearing her dad's college letter jacket, his hat, and carried the walking stick he and I purchase in Trinidad many years ago, because it has special meaning for her family.  

David's children are arriving on Friday.  I have several precious things ready for them, things that they grew up with.  They can either take them, discard them or leave them with me where I will keep them safe until I'm gone.  

This morning I opened a large packet of things David had sent me prior to our first face-to-face encounter.  We were pin pals for a year prior to meeting and this packet reminded me of how much we knew about each other prior to laying on eyes for the first time in Chicago.  I have photos and letters covering his unorthodox birth and growing up, plus photos of the family he created with his wife, Audrey. We don't have much here, but what we have is precious.  

Of the photos and writings I want to keep, we can make copies right there in the guest room.  As I age, I don't want to forget David's life story.  I feel the same way about Ken's life and those of my ever growing family. 

On the other hand, it pleased me to give my son his namesake grandfather's 100 plus years old leather suitcase, with their initials etched on it.  The biggest attic surprise  for me was finding two my dad's paintings he'd done in oils on small hand saws.  I was angry with him decades ago when I received the saws so I hid them away and forgot about them.  Now I have no interest in being angry with anyone.  I'm planning to have the saws mounted on my kitchen wall.  

And so, with my own days winding down to a precious few, I'm enjoying this trip down memory lane.  All days are precious, but I think Ann Patchett is reminding me to keep my priorities straight. 

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Happy Birthday Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

It's long been my custom to read Dr. King's I Have a Dream" speech on his birthday.  Today I mixed it up a little, by reading "Letter From  Birmingham Jail."  Addressed to "My Dear Fellow Clergymen," it was written in April, about four months prior to the "I Have a Dream" speech he delivered to about 200,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial.  And, of course, from a very different setting.  

He wrote the letter sitting all alone  in a jail cell.  He wrote it in longhand.  The letter is long, very long, and has tremendous depth.  I'm in no way qualified to critique its content.  

But here are a few thoughts:  The first thing that struck me was being reminded of MLK, Jr's academic excellence.  He did his under grad work at Moorehouse College.  At Crozer Theological Seminary, one of only six Black students, he was president of his class and was awarded a fellowship to Boston University where he received his Ph.D. 

One of the criticisms he dealt with constantly was the concept of his being an an "outside agitator." His response was "Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds. "

He emphases to his followers that they must be able to accept blows without retaliating, and to be able to endure the ordeal of jail, as well as other horrible experiences.  

He quoted great theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr who said "groups tend to be more immoral than individuals."  

St. Thomas Aquinas said:  "An unjust law is a heinous law that is not rooted in internal law and nature law."  MLK, Jr. said, "A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God."

Jewish philosopher Martin Buber substituted an "I It" relationship with an "I Thou" relationship."

Paul Tillich said "Sin is Separation."  MLK, Jr. asked the question, "Is not segregation an existential experience of man's separation?"

MLK, Jr.  "One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty."

As examples of extremists he sited, The Apostle, Paul,  Martin Luther, John Bunyan, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Jesus Christ. 

I used to love moderating discussions on the thoughts of the great minds in our past and present  I no longer have the capacity to do this.  But good people who have different views, coming together to discuss truth, the nature of God and the nature of us humans is, and always has been, exciting to me. 

Wouldn't it be a blessing to have a kind discussion with people of faith, from various points of view, grapple with the underlined statements above? 

In the meantime, as for MLK,Jr's question, "Is not segregation an existential experience of man's separation?," following is a little poem I learned years ago to explain "Existentialism."

I and Thou,

Here and now, 

Wow!

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