14 February 1957
I pulled a “Nancy” today. When I went to the PTA meeting – I got some tickets for the spaghetti PTA scholarship dinner. Mrs. Adolph’s purse and my purse were on the chair between – same kind, different colors. Mine was brown, hers was black. When I got home, although I remember placing the tickets very carefully in the bottom of my purse – I couldn’t find them.
(Nancy had a similar experience with her bus pass over the weekend.)
This morning Peg Spindle called to ask me to come to Miss Robert’s office to have pictures taken for the spaghetti dinner. After she hung up – I remember the “lost” tickets.
Mrs. Adolph wasn’t home when I called about the tickets. Her daughter couldn’t find them in her mother’s purse. My first impulse after remembering the lost tickets after Peg’s call, was to call her back to report the lost tickets. Then I thought “no,” I better call Mrs. Adolph because she didn’t call me regarding my call to her home the other night.
Then I remembered Nancy’s “lost” bus pass. Using the same advice I gave to Nancy, I walked over, picked up my brown purse, and noticed the zippered pocket on the inside of that purse. The bottom of the purse was sure enough empty. Slowly with dawning realization I unzipped the side zipper pocket.
Sure enough there were the PTA tickets.
#
Later, I called Mary Anderson to relate an accounting of the speech by Comay. Her comments: So long as, it was sticking to the facts, he spoke as a man, and as a lawyer. Just the minute he started talking as a Jew he crossed the point of no return.
#
She based this on J. Paul Thompson’s “canons of law” theory: the minute a man calls himself a “Jew” and whines to be recognized as a “Jew” instead of as a citizen of the world at large he crosses the point of no return.
#
For instance: so long as I speak as a mother in a mother’s world, but only as a citizen of that world – I will make sense. But, the minute I start talking as though I were a banker, or a broker, or what have you – then I can no longer be considered as talking with in my category.
You know! I really would like to have a discussion with Mary Anderson on the subject.
Is man always to be smartly pigeonholed as a Jew? A mother? A spinster? A “nigger” when he does not stick to the subject you know something about? Must he always only discuss his own pigeon-hole never to express any opinions beyond his own bailiwick without someone from that set bailiwick smartly smacking his knuckles?
If this is true, then who are human beings? A regimented bunch of robots, propelled by whom? Which one of us is so smart? Who decides what is correct?
#
To answer my own question – I suppose the one who is considered the smartest in his particular field; but then someone has to determine who is the smartest.
The merry-go-round goes round and round. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Who should get the brass ring!
The moral of the story is: one doesn’t know, does one, from minute to minute who is getting on the merry-go-round or who gets the brass ring. Then after the free ride is over there is another customer for that selfsame brass ring.
There isn’t a crown jewel in the lot! Because human beings don’t know that none of us have the crown jewel. . . Not even Modern Jurist – counselor, and probate court specialist [i.e. Mary Anderson], even though she is plenty smart!
Dictionary definitions:
inhuman: adj. Cruel; unfeeling; without kindly qualities. Syn.: Brutal, savage, barbarous, ruthless, merciless, ferocious.
(I guess there is a little humanity and the best of us.)
Inhumanity: the quality of being unfeeling or unkind
flip: a liquor composed of beer, spirit, sugar, etc.; A short quick stroke; a flick; to jerk with the fingers; strike with a short quick blow.
flippancy: purpose; thoughtless talk; as the art of flippancy of her remarks displeased everybody.
flippant: lively and fluent in speech; talkative; impertinent; disrespectful; characterized by thoughtless speech, or apartness, trifling.
pert: saucy, forward, bold; as a pert child.
Words like perspective: (basically objects as they appear to the eye; a Vista or distant view, the art of representing objects on a plane surface, in three dimensions, as they appear to the eye etc.)
Perspicacity, perspicuity, perspicuity’s, per tenacious, obstinate etc. are other good words to look up.
A writer is never out of his bailiwick, a lawyer, a doctor etc. except in the eyes of others, or when he steps out of his own field.
If anyone doesn’t like to read a writer – he can always throw the book or newspaper aside. Ditto TV or any other form of communication – even to walking away or glancing away from the speaker.
Zachmannisia for the day:
I guess it’s the height of politeness to glance away when your unwitting guest is using the wrong spoon.
To use the same spoon your guest uses is the highest of humanity.
Might look up “height”, to
I wonder in what pigeonhole Mary Anderson speaks of the Middle East: as a Christian, a lawyer, or as a woman? Nine chances out of 10, it is a little of each.
#
My questioning of Mary Anderson could go like this.
You say he spoke as a Jew, not as a lawyer.
What’s a lawyer? (Her explanation of a jurist duties).
What’s a Jew? (She’ll talk on religion.)
I could keep asking her questions until she ended up with humans and their creator.
#
Maybe then! She would see the light!!
(over)
I sat here for a while thinking over Mary Anderson’s reaction to my recitation of the Cleveland Bar Association luncheon trying to figure out why she – of all people – who is so much of a Sunday school teacher – it’s suddenly bared her teeth of prejudice at the “Jew” in Comay.
Slowly the truth dawned upon me. Prior to my telling her about the actual speech, I went into an introduction about my reactions to the quote male world of lawyers” [and] how absorbed they were in their man lawyer talk. About Dorothy Fuldheim not getting a Howdy Doody on the speakers’ platform, etc. Mrs. Edelman of B’Nai whatever it is.
I had forgotten what I had written in this notebook yesterday: not this book my previous book to this one: the adult human race has eight major branches in the male and female species for each
Male: bachelors, married men, fathers, and widowers.
Female: spinsters, married women, mothers, and widows plus assorted grandparents and “in-laws”, and last but not least, assorted grandchildren and children.… And they all talk different languages, although they are generally found intermingled.
Oh Lord! I forgot something.
It has 10 major branches in the male and female species – five each
Male: bachelors married men (husbands) fathers and widowers.
Female: spinsters married women open paren wives) mothers and widows
the flick of the dragon’s tale.
flick: to move with an unsteady and quick motion; flutter with the wings; and unsteady lighter movement; the golden winged woodpecker of North America.
woodpecker: a bird that climbs the trunks of trees and taps them to find insects.
dragon: a very large imaginary animal represented in fables of stories as a winged serpent or lizard; a fierce person: 80 J. Fierce, destructive.
Other interesting words are: Dragonode (punishment inflicted by soldiers); dragonfly; dragon drains; dragon’s blood; drainage; drake
drama, drama, dramatic, dramatic person I, dramatist and so on down the meaning of words.
Definitions of crumbs, dough
from crusade to crush, to crust, to crusty, to crush, to cry, to crying, to crypts, to cryptic, to crystalline, to the cubbyhole which is a pigeonhole, a closet; a small enclosed space – to cards and cuddle cuddles – to cudgels to cues: the tail end of a thing, to cuffs, to cuisine, cull de sacs (a blind alley), to culinary (pertaining to the kitchen to call (sort out the inferior from the rest)) to culminate and culmination – the biggest attainment point: to come to a final result.
#
One can have a wisdom, or a truth, but it is not ones to keep. Once another recognizes your truth or wisdom and he has accepted it; once it is accepted; it is no longer your wisdom, but his or hers, whichever the case may be, to help. to keep until it can again be passed on.
#
Seems to me, at this point, when you are playing ball with the tough bunch of roughnecks is no time to be a pantywaist! Polite little girls and boys have little chance with the playground roughneck, unless someone teaches them the facts of life.
#
Achilles heels – most people aren’t aware they have them! Even when that is all they do have!
Heels can be used in two ways – to walk on others, or to be walked on by others.
#
I wonder does one ever learn to live with them?