Tag Archives: New York Times

The Hana Chronicles: Month 7, Day 1

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Posted by on in children, collaborating, Community, Education, Family, Historical, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving, Travel

July 22, 2026-Hana started her new month with a new behaviour- wanting to more actively take part in Story Time. She wants to be able to look at a page for several minutes after I have read the words. She focuses on the pictures and the form of the words. She also likes to touch the page, especially if it has a smooth texture.

She laughs a lot more now, taking delight in all of my antics and silly songs. Once, this afternoon, she put her hand over my mouth.hen I was singing to her-then she started laughing. She also likes to tip a tower of rings over, as soon as I put the rings back on. It is just another of the games that get invented by infants, using their observational skills.

We went on our morning walk early, again this morning, thus avoiding the later 105 degree still air. Few people were along the path, but there was a group of Middle School Track Team members, getting ready for what was hopefully a brief pre-season workout. Hana, for her part, spent part of the walk asleep in her stroller.

HANA’S NOTE- I want to know what this reading thing is. The stories that Papa reads to me are sometimes exciting and other times just silly. I am looking at the pictures and making little stories in my mind. Sometimes, I dream of them.

YEAR IN REMEMBRANCE-1974 I spent my first year at UMass-Amherst living in a co-ed dorm. Having a large group of brothers and sisters was nothing new, so I was quite relaxed. Still, ever the rube, I used my antiquated record player-which became known as The Set”. Most everyone else had a boom box, state-of-the art stereo systems, etc. I was okay with what I had. I was also the “editor” of a residence quad newsletter called “The Sage-Revisited” and I delivered The New York Times around campus, six days a week. That lasted about five months, then I forgot yo change the code to “Sunday”, a bunch of Sunday Times were ripped off and i left that job. The editor position wasn’t much more successful. I did a lot better, academically than in extracurriculars.

I kept encountering Baha’is in Amherst, though I remained Catholic. I did not find the Newman Center (Catholic student union and parish) very supportive of us students, so in hindsight, I might have made more inquiries into the Baha’i Faith-my second Residential Assistant, and one other RA across the Quad, were Baha’is. I babysat our RA’s infant daughter on at least one occasion. (I would later meet both mother and daughter, at Baha’i gatherings in Arizona, in the 1990s.) The Dean of the College of Education was also a Baha’i.

Summer of 1974 was mostly spent at a resort hotel in western Maine. Quisiana was/is a music camp, so there was a wealth of musical talent. I wasn’t part of that talent. I worked as a busboy, did a credible job and explored a lot of Maine, those eight weeks. Young women floated in and out of my life, which was okay. I have never been much for brief affairs.

This was the summer of Goodbye, Nixon. The staff dining room attendant made the announcement of the President’s resignation, on August 2. It was a quiet day, otherwise. This potentially unsettling year was like my one encounter with a juvenile moose-could have been troublesome, but …Nah

Re-assessing and renaming

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Posted by on in children, Community, Family, impediments, Inner Struggles, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, service, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 19,2026- I propose, as some others already have, renaming the commemorative, unofficial holiday known as Cesar Chaves Day, National Farmworkers Day. Juneteenth is, rightfully, a Federal holiday; so should there be a day to honour all farmworkers. How many of us chowhounds would willingly pick potatoes and carrots all day long? How many would work the fields picking melons and strawberries? Even emptying trees of citrus fruit, apple, peaches and pears is backbreaking work!

A social justice movement is far more than the one or two who are its public face. I prefer to call the January holiday that has been focused on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Civil Rights Day. As much admiration and respect as I have for Dr. King, he himself would have been the first to say he was not a perfect individual. He had his lusts and pitfalls, though he has never been accused of such atrocities as those or which his contemporary, Cesar Chavez, has been posthumously charged.

The revelations documented in the New York Times illustrate the folly of adulation. Small children idolize their parents and grandparents. As they get older, they learn of their elders’ imperfections. Hopefully, they continue to love those elders, but they will know that they are not amidst living saints.Along those lines, we were wise, as a nation, to recast George Washington’s Birthday as Presidents Day- honouring at least those whose terms in office added luster to the nation’s history and offering a fair assessment of those whose terms did not.

Cesar Chavez apparently gave in to the worst elements of the culture in which he was raised, compounded by the bright lights and hero’s welcomes he received. It will be a step forward, for any future leaders, to transcend the impulse of feeling that there are lesser human beings, who owe them favours for what they have achieved.

There are no lesser human beings.