Present Day

Now I am old, and retired—a grandmother of 16. I live alone in a yellow 3-bedroom house with attached garage across the street from my youngest daughter. She is a professor and very disciplined and appreciates my help with the 2 boys. Her husband also has a demanding job downtown. My son also lives nearby and works long hours. The little families are very busy.

Whereas I nap quietly in my chair by the fireplace with a little strawberry blond dog by my leg. I send up quiet prayers of thanks for this pretty sweet afternoon. The only drawback is chronic stiffness and constant pain.

Polio myelitis they called it—scourge of childhood in the 1940s.  Polio also carried off adults, including my best friend’s mother. My own bout at age 7 was less fatal, less dramatic; but perhaps responsible for my lifelong clumsiness and most likely for the crippling “arthritis” or “fibromyalgia” or whatever this invisible syndrome is. One mustn’t complain because one knows so many have it worse etc. etc. But the pain is to be lived with and managed by the day by the hour.

Yet, pretty sweet existence. Denny would say, “You’ve done OK, Pat!”

Photos from Those Days

Rooster Street 1972-1977

In 1972 Denny and I began our family together. As my four-year-old daughter said, “You and Dad were married and Denny was married to Birgit. Then Denny decided he wanted to come and be in our family so you got divorced and now we all live together on Rooster Street.”

After a pause she concluded. “Well…. That’s that!”

Denny had enough for a small down payment on a small two-family brown-shingled house in a neighborhood with mechanics, musicians, and old ladies the state of whose teeth made me gasp. We all got together at a block party where the old ladies brought wonderful potluck and Stormin’ Norman and Suzie made music off a truck. That is the title of one of their songs: “Rooster Street.”

One of the reasons we moved to the two-family was because Alan had decided to go back to the law. He had hated corporate law and then disliked the family business; so when we had our mid-life crises, back to law, only this time criminal. He grew a moustache and bought a motorcycle and got a job at a runaway house called Project Place.  Alan was working all the time; so I thought if we lived in the two-family the children would at least see him around on the house.  For example, they could go down the back stairs to Alan’s kitchen in his first floor apt. and have breakfast there.  

Of course, we gave them breakfast lots of days too, which I know because one morning Tory and Denny were discussing the Revolutionary War Bicentennial that we took them to in Lexington.

“Tory, Tory, finish your breakfast,” I said, and she said, “What’s more important, Mommy, eating a fried egg or learning about history?”

The kids’ home was with Denny and me on the top two floors.

That first year, Nick and Amanda had bunk beds and shared one of the little rooms off the pink-linoleumed kitchen. Denny and I had the other. Through a little hallway from the kitchen you found our one bathroom on the right and could walk straight through to the living room. We fixed it up with paint and wallpaper and hired a friend of Denny’s to build cupboards in the living room to hold our books and TV. For poor folks we lived pretty well.

Of course, we didn’t have closets or anything but there was a cubbyhole in our bedroom. Denny and I shared a hand-me-down bureau from my grandmother. The girls had beds and dressers from a bedroom handed down from my parents: Vermont rock maple.  So they were in pretty good shape on the third floor, which had two large bedrooms with closets and a smaller alcove by the back stairs. It wasn’t quite heated, so we let the doors open so the heat from the kitchen could get up there.

Two weekends a month, Alan had charge of all four; I think in retrospect they saw more of the real world than I would have liked. However they did somehow stay safe. The other weekends, Heather, Heidi and Kristen joined us and then the fun really began! Their ages were 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 7, and 9, with 5-year-old Nick being the only boy. The older girls invented lives for Barbies or putting on little costume dramas.  The “babies,” as we called them, had little plastic motorcycles that they rode through the house. For some reason, Amanda always carried a mirror around when she was on hers.

On Saturdays there were outings to go sledding or to the Museum of Science. Denny made the plans and called these trips “adventures.” There was more adventure than we wanted one day, when he took them to that big MDC Park on Memorial Drive and came home without Amanda. I had stayed behind to hang wallpaper in Tory’s room, and was the first to notice: “Where’s AMANDA??” It turned out OK, some kind people helped her find a policeman; but omigod. Raising kids, there are a lot of times when you just have to be lucky.  And we were so lucky and blessed, more than we even knew.

On Saturday nights, we all got in our jammies and crowded onto the couch to watch Mary Tyler Moore, and Carol Burnett, and the Jeffersons.

The first year Denny and I dreamed of earning our living as writers. After packing the lunchboxes and the seeing the kids off from their breakfast at Alan’s to the Agassiz School, we’d work on our projects. Denny might boil up a bunch of clothesline in the kitchen to craft a Twin Oaks hammock for the book he was writing. “How to Make Your Own Hammock and Lie in It” (Workman Publishing 1973). I took writing classes and even a magazine publishing course; as I had dreams of a feminist magazine called “The New Broom.” I also wrote a weekly book review column in a small-town newspaper started by our friends Kathleen and Ed in Harvard, MA.

But the royalties could not quite cover the nut, as Denny used to call it. Alan turned over his entire paycheck for child support plus his rent; but then of course, we had to send $$ to Birgit and put braces on her children’s teeth.  We were always broke; I was kneeling in the aisles of Kresge’s to try on shoes on my children’s feet.  We qualified for receiving the mystery meat from the government in cans dropped off at the Agassiz School. Finally, I thought I should probably put the writing on hold and look for a job, the day I answered the doorbell to two huge guys with guns to repossess my little green Maverick.

Repossess my car? But I’m a former debutante! So when the wolf showed up at the door I invited him in for coffee. While was making it, Denny was whispering to me, “Is the television paid for?” “Is the couch paid for?” 

While the three men chatted about how the repo guys were just trying to make a living like everybody else, I was frantically on the phone to Alan.

“What happened!! You were supposed to make the payments!

“…….. “  Alan said; and “………” which ended up with “Just let them have the keys.”  As I handed them over and the big guy stood up, I saw his jacket was ripped all down one side and held together with safety pins. Then Denny went to clean our stuff out of the car, and that was the last of the Maverick.

Then, what is a former debutante do on a Friday afternoon when her car is repossessed but call her parents.  Saturday Daddy called back and said Mother was flying in on Sunday, to make sure that I had some kind of car. Saturday afternoon Denny and I found one we liked, a 1969 Ford Country Sedan, maroon, with 44,0000 miles for $1,750.00.

When Mother visited, Denny and I were nervous. About not being married about being broke. As Barthelme’s genius says, “This is my worst moment.”

But after a couple drinks with Mom we felt better.

“The children are growing beautifully,” she said. She was reading to them and holding them. Soon they would grow old enough to fly out on their own to visit her in St. Louis. Mom gave us a check to buy the car, and that would be our wedding present.

Yes, we did have to get married. And I started grimly looking to find a job, feeling I was stepping onto a treadmill with no hope of getting off, ever.

-30-

BRRBS

The place I worked was called the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Board of Registration of Real Estate Brokers and Salesmen, quite a mouthful when you’re answering the phone! The Chairman of the Board —an outside governing group appointed by the governor-- hired me to do p.r. because some state official was saying not-nice things in the news, such as it was a revolving-door agency and that real estate licenses were being sold.  The Chairman Mr. Corcoran wanted a big p.r. splash to convince consumers otherwise.

Chairman Mr. large, handsome, crewcutted, entrepreneurial Corcoran was from the world of real estate development. (You still see Corcoran Property ads to this day 40 years later.) In his business if he wanted something done he hired someone to do it. But a state agency has positions created years in advance, by mysterious behind-the-scenes mechanisms; and the only position open was Investigator. To get a p.r. position onto the payroll of a state agency would require nothing short of an act of the General Court (official name of the state legislature). Worlds in collision.

But Joe Corcoran had hired me, and I considered myself hired ,and neither one of us knew the above quite yet; and so one day in December 1973 I took the Red Line from Harvard Square to Park Street, walked up the hill past the State House and the Parker House (where Mr. Corcoran had interviewed me for the job over a drink) to a big curvy brick building in Government Center. In the large corner office sat the Executive Director, Jack McIsaac, a leprechaunish, canny person, chatting with Louise Allen, a statuesque African-American Office Manager. (Great fingernails!) You could tell from their relaxed posture that they were allies, friends even.

                  “Go home,” Jake McIsaac told me cheerfully, “and don’t come back.”

               Well, of course I came back, after marshaling Mr. Corcoran and my own political connections which weren’t nothing; and I worked there more than three years, until I was good and ready to leave. I would be working there after Jake McIsaac had left, after Louise Allen had quit. (I was an easy person to underestimate in those days, as opposed to today in my old age. Today if you underestimate me, you’ll probably be right.)

              As I said above and hope clearly, the position was Investigator; Joe Corcoran wanted p.r., so I did both jobs. Fortunately that wasn’t difficult. Working for state government in Mass. In the early 70s the biggest problem of the job was there wasn’t ENOUGH to do.

             There was a core of investigators, perhaps a dozen, and I have to say they spent a good part of their day at the race track. White-haired red-faced Billy Craven thoughtfully taught me to fudge my expense reports; ending with a flourish, “and then you can goof off!” There were three extremely fat older men called Supervisors, a title which meant their racetrack hours paid better. My nominal supervisor, Fitzy, and a woman named Irene  (who seemed to work a lot from home) covered Western Massachusetts, and so I would do some of the same. These jobs were political appointments, not civil service, although our pay and benefits were the same.

            

            Investigators were supposed to spend a day a week in the office; in my case two days because I was also the p.r. person and of course a woman. We would spend the day answering consumer questions over the phone and doing license checks or whatever. Every Friday I personally wrote a press release, typed it, mimeographed it, and addressed about 230 envelopes to go into all the news outlets in the state. I also subscribed to a service, that sent me newsclips for me to paste into a scrapbook. In time, I would do radio shows and also arranged TV appearances for Jake McI. I could do this on Fridays and easily in between my Investigator duties.

                  Investigations are part of the way the state regulated certain occupations. There were something like 24 state Boards of Registration who oversaw the licensing and regulation of such professions as nurses, doctors, plumbers, hairdressers, and real estate brokers. Things changed later; but in those days there was a whole suite of offices just for the real estate license commission on the 6^th floor of the Leverett Saltonstall building, Government Center, 100 Cambridge Street, Boston, MA 02202.

      There were three components to investigations: random spot checks in real estate offices;  investigation of cases opened on consumer complaints; and appearances at hearings and court cases when the cases got that far.

                  On days in the field you investigated your cases and you did “general inspections,” which were random drop-ins on random real estate offices. The businesses were subject to the spot checks to make sure their brokers and salesmen had all their licenses on proper display and had the money in escrow that was supposed to be there. The businesses didn’t like that and the general inspections I considered the toughest part of my job. I would be driving around strange towns, with my propensity to get lost; and nobody was glad to see me when I arrived. Lonely work.

                  The broker would say make an appt. and come back, but the whole point of the inspections was they were drop-in. Then they would not want to show me the files on their current deals. Then they would REALLY not like it when I asked them to sign the form that let the bank show me the balance in their escrow accounts. In the beginning, when someone was mean, I might, when I got back out to my car, cry.

                  But I toughened up, of course. I took to carrying a copy of the license law with me so I could show the brokers the exact place in the law where it said could look at all that stuff. And—oh yes—I had a badge!

                  After visiting the offices in the towns I had chosen for that day’s general inspections, I called in at the banks and went through the same kind of routine. I think only once was I not successful in getting the bank to show me the money. Most of the time everything was OK. About 10% of the time there would be an expired license or a financial discrepancy; and the state might open an investigation on the office even absent a consumer complaint. One time I found a broker sitting in front of a rack that contained all the escrow checks he had collected, flapping in the breeze.  The Director called him, and I assume he opened an escrow account.                  

                  The investigations were another matter and much more interesting. A typical case involved the deal fell through because the house didn’t pass the inspection or the buyer didn’t get his financing, and the broker would not return the $1,000 deposit to the buyer.  They were interesting and some complicated.  I might have occasion to check titles or a business license at City Hall. I learned that there’s an amazing amount you can learn from public records. I also interviewed witnesses: the complainant, the complained-against, and any other relevant persons. I learned that if someone comes around your neighborhood asking questions and flashes a badge, your neighbors will be happy to say everything they know or think about you. At the end of the investigation you wrote a report and recommended either close the case or hold a hearing on it.

                  The hearings and occasional court appearances were interesting also. An administrative hearing is a whole other level of the justice system whereby a professional license can be suspended or taken away.  A lawyer named George Belsky with an alluring bald spot (I had a little crush on him for a couple weeks) would come in and  conduct the hearings in one of the well-lit, shiny-tiled conference rooms on the floor. People would testify just like in court; often lawyers were involved. (I remember one who was in the habit of taking off his shoe and looking inside it, to show how much he disrespected the whole process.)

                  I have notes on one hearing where a blind guy had been sold a house with a giant hole in the foundation. In another, the dispute was over water: there had been a promise involving an artesian well. It could be pretty dumb stuff and often hard to sort through. I saw one complainant take down a corrupt rental ageny becayse he was persistent enough press it all the way to a hearing despite it was only $25. He lost. I realized then the secret to succeeding at crime is take small amounts from many people. Nobody will care enough to see it through.

                  On the apartment rental thing, I had a chance to go undercover. These so-called agencies were not normal real estate offices: they were a scam that advertised so-called “hot lists” of apartments and charged $25.00 to people just to read these lists.  For a day or two I posed as a naive prospective tenant and paid the $25.00 and sat at a dusty table with some messy lined ledgers and wrote down the listings that fit my pretend requirements.  Then I left and went to a phone booth and called them all—maybe a dozen. Lo and behold, Not ONE was an active rental listing. Some had never been for rent according to the person on the other end of the phone. Most had been rented a long time ago. Snap, clamp.

                  While investigating the complaint, in the meanwhile I was issuing press releases and consumer tips about the places, and the regular media got involved. Finally so did the Attorney General and eventually the places fled by night.  Pretty good case, and illustrates what I enjoyed about the complaint process. Most of the money amounts were so small it would not have paid the consumer to hire a lawyer; but our agency’s services to the public were free.

                  At the end of the year, as part of my publicity role, I went through all the cases and put together statistics on how many investigations we had closed, how much money was returned to consumers, and then sent out press releases on that.  Meanwhile, each week I would write, duplicate, and mail a “consumer tip” to the 200+ newspapers and broadcast media. I had decided on a steady drumbeat of positive publicity to lift the agency’s image, rather than the big attack on the cabinet secretary that Joe Corcoran had envisioned. (My only second though is I should have been clearer with him about it.)  I also made radio appearances and arranged for Joe Corcoran and Jake McIsaac to go on local TV shows to talk about consumer protection.

                  I also lobbied up at the State House because the Board wanted educational requirements to get licensed. At that time, all you had to do pass a multiple-choice exam, fill out the application, and pay the $50.00.  The Board didn’t like that; they wanted there to be school, which would require an act of the great and general court of Massachusetts.

                 

                 

             

Back writing again

I joined a memoir group and my daughter laughed at me. "You're back writing again, just can't stop can you."

It was a surprise; did not think of memoir as writing--

But the first meeting in lovely friend's lovely living room consisted of just that: writing. There were handouts, there was discussion, and there was writing exercise.

Oh well. Just stay away from wasting time on publishing anything.

So this morning came a new strange anxiety attack. What is the matter with me? Why so jumpy? Why doesn't my skin fit better? Better take a nap! Better get out this new notebook with the red cover and this pen...

The goal is to produce some things for future genealogists like I wish I'd found more of in the papers I have: details of daily life and work. My second great-grandfather had a dry goods store--how big was it? Was it basically a wooden place, floors shelves and all? My great-grandmother, taught piano--but piano teacher doesn't show up on any census forms I find for her. Did she teach in the ten years between censuses? Or was her occupation so little regarded as to be subsumed under the description of 22-year-old Fannie as "At Home"?

So for the benefit of future archivists if there be any I started writing the details of my job as a real investigator for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Board of Registration of Real Estate Brokers and Salesmen. I described walking the wide tiled halls of large state office buildings, where I grew fond of big institutions and learned to untangle red tape. One had to know the state house, the court systems,  and deed registries in order to clear up grubby little crimes done against trusting gullible persons.  I worked among the people, where our agency nested in a culture of mediocrity and Massachusetts politics--which included hiring the handicapped long before any private enterprise did. For those not in a protected category, there were constant shakeups and rumors of shakeups.

One day for some reason, I brought my four-year-old daughter Amanda into the office. A fuss was made over her, and the head of the agency taught her to do a highland jig. On the way out after work, a woman in the elevator asked her, "Did you go to work with Mommy today?"

"Yes," Amanda said, "there really wasn't very much to do."

Woman laughed, knowingly.  Good job, though.

And writing about it, that was OK too.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Commemoration

Martin Luther King, Jr., 15 January

Martin Luther King, Jr., 15 January  

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Throughout history, human rights violations have plagued our earth. From the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, to genocide in Rwanda, to the quality of education in the inner cities, diverse peoples have struggled to survive in a world often filled with fear and hatred. The problem is evident. Without a universal respect for human rights, the world cannot achieve peace. Violations of our inherent rights represent an absence of value and respect for human life. Our peace heroes are those individuals who have expressed a sincere compassion to alleviate the sufferings of others. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is such a peace hero. He led a heroic mission to educate, awaken, and revolutionize the American people to fight the injustices inflicted upon African Americans. But, like Gandhi, he fought the injustices with love, respect, and non-violent protest.

Born on January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King Jr. was not a stranger to racial discrimination. The democratic liberal values promised to the American citizen were shadowed and debased by racial inequalities. In the late 1950s, segregation in schools, lunch counters, and other public facilities was prevalent. Furthermore, African Americans did not have the right to vote and were denied many economic opportunities enjoyed by others. Raised in a society engulfed by oppression and humiliation, King believed that he had a social and moral responsibility to educate the nation about the evils of racism.

With a Ph.D. in Theology from Boston University, King encouraged his believers to participate in a non-violent mission to achieve those freedoms constitutionally guaranteed to each and every individual. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and refused to move to the back for a white passenger. Her subsequent arrest rallied King and his followers to begin a surge of boycotts. Inspired by the success of the Montgomery boycotts, other movements began spreading, protesting racial discrimination across the South. These movements became the heart of King's non-violent crusade for peace.

King's peace mission followed the lessons taught by other peace heroes such as Mahatma Gandhi. His technique was known as a non-violent resistance, using love, prayer, and speech as direct action against physical violence. King taught love instead of hate, kindness instead of aggression. The act of nonviolent resistance displayed the protester's courageous will to bring peace and dignity to the nation.

King's nonviolent pledge for peace is unique, because in the past heroes were often those who used violence to fight injustice. When his house was bombed, he preached "We're going to fight but not kill." When 600 members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, they were attacked by state troopers, trampled by horses, and many were hospitalized. When King heard of the events on March 7, 1965, Bloody Sunday, he called for another march on City Hall. They were stopped again by the state troopers, and to avoid arrest King and marchers knelt and prayed. As a peace hero, King fought his oppressors with a higher conscience.

Throughout his life, King played a vital role in achieving significant gains for humanity. From the desegregation of schools and other public facilities, to the acceleration of civil rights as a government priority, his peace mission was a success. In 1964, at the young age of 35, King was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his accomplishments. King's legacy offers a hope that someday racism might be replaced with love and respect for human rights.

written by Andrea Walker

Prayer

O God, fashion and mold our memories into a guiding vision for active discipleship, so that we may not only long and yearn for thy coming kingdom but may also recognize its arrival and presence in the risen Christ Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, in whose blessed name we pray. Amen.

written by The Reverend Dr. Randolph Nugent

Christmas Letter 2012

                                                                                                December 28, 2012

Dear friends,                                                                       

What to say on this feast day of the Holy Innocents? The Church called the little boys slain by Herod the first martyrs for Christ. But why do there have to be martyrs, and involuntary ones at that? After Sandy Hook, persons of faith are looking for God in the love of community and wishing that Christ didn’t have to come in the midst of evil and death. Persons of unfaith reach different conclusions--and all of us hold our young ones tighter.

In my fourth year of my third retirement, the eighth year without Denny, I spent as much time as possible with those young ones and older ones too. Alan paid a visit in March from Las Vegas; in April I flew to Boston to celebrate my granddaughter Megan’s Confirmation. Back up there in June for to my stupendous Wellesley 50^th reunion, I was happy to see my dear friend Dona, who--after bravely suffering chemo--had emerged cancer-free and ready for Legal Sea Foods.  

After that exciting time: more excitement, with the quads’ 16^th birthday. Can you believe they are looking at colleges; and grandson Max is a sophomore and granddaughter Hannah has sent out applications? Plus, the Tams will be back next summer on a college tour for Amelia.  Megan and Rachel took a tour of Davidson when they visited me in July. We giggled at a play, “Rumors,” and squealed during a “Downton Abbey” marathon. Heidi also dropped by from Colorado; and from August to November, my sister surprised me by moving into a little apt. right around the corner. Sue and I had a wonderful time going to book group, getting manicures, walking our dog, and watching “Hardball” on msnbc.

Yes, we got quite caught up in electoral politics, upset especially about the encroachments on women’s rights.  Sue supported my canvassing and telephoning for Obama. We suffered through the debates, the vote counting; and we celebrated the outcome. Now ho-ho ho-ho over the fiscal cliff we go!

Politicking was one way I spent time after deciding to quit writing. I have written three books and co-authored one and have a couple of completed manuscripts filed somewhere. The co-authored one was printed for classroom use, and I ran off the cookbook for family. I self-published The Santa Book. The Psalm Meditations is not even really a book but a congregational resource that sells poorly at Leader Resources (although it is actually lovely). I have enjoyed giving retreats and talks on Psalms, and there is a demand for revision of the cookbook, so I’m doing that. But I have QUIT, I tell you, quit!

Yes, I threw out Writing the Perfect Book Proposal and How to find the Perfect Agent. I tossed the files full of bios and plot synopses. I forgot all the “elevator lines” and trashed the “lists of names” an author is supposed to keep. Although I still blog, I seldom contemplate building a web site anymore. (Of course I’m still tempted.)

So in deteriorated prose, I greet you. I’m proud that grandson Connor has already published his first e-book. He has the talent and energy and savvy to keep it fun! I admire that Amanda has submitted the final revisions of her second book. She got up every day at four all summer to work on translating and writing commentary on Russian women’s poetry. I myself am still in the middle of the cookbook revision, because I like to sleep late.

Not writing also gave time for other kinds of research and learning. Genealogy progresses, with 17 cartons that Sue delivered to my garage. I feel like some kind of hoarder, only with archives. If there is a TV show for that I would like to go on it. Meanwhile, I have my own show of baskets full of historical matchbooks, old sunglasses, scrapbooks pasted with concert programs, movies of trips through the Panama Canal in 1937, and the handwritten minutes of the first Pi Phi meeting in St. Louis. 

In 2012 also pursued two other subjects: piano lessons and an on-line class called “Radical Hope” with Prof Jane Redmont.  In December I performed (most of) Mozart’s Sonata No. 1 in a recital—which for me was a triumph. I so enjoy playing through to the beauty of the piece. As for the Hope class, it made me wiser forever, as it included writings of Dorothy Day, William Stringfellow, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Nancy Eiesland. These theologians, who faced oppressive circumstances, even martyrdom, taught me that hope doesn’t come in the good times; it is for things that are not yet. Hope originates in God, who seems so absent sometimes; and hope stirs one to action towards the Reign of God’s justice.

Whatever is doing, I always begin and end with God. Prayers and worship and community support the faith that sustains beyond words; which is good because so often no words will do. I hope your faith, hope, and love sustain you, too. I miss you and wish I could see you. In my heart I hold you tight.

Love,

Pat

                                    

Deb Cannavino m. Alan Caplan --- div  --- Patricia Caplan Andrews --- wid. Denison Andrews

Karen-Caplan    Tory Caplan        Nick                Amanda &                Heidi&;           Heather& Drew       Kristen 

Perry                    Peter Tam            Caplan            Craig Ewington        Brad Rude      McCarthy                    Andrews            

Megan, Connor    Amelia (16)     Sophie( 15)     Angus(12)               Max (20)          Samantha (10)         Jack (8)

Rachel, Ben (16)  Isaac (14)         True (12)          Louis (9)                Hannah (17)      Jack (8)                    Emmett (5)

                                               

The Routine?

From my Diary Tues., April 17, 2007

"There was a poor father on CNN describing how he worred about his beautiful freshman daughter and kept 'doing research' to track her down. She wasn't answering her cell and finally about 7:30 p.m. one of the ambulance drivers broke the news to him and his wife; but they're not allowed to go to the morgue. They had checked all the hopsitals in their research.

"One professor saved his kids by blocking the classroom door, and he was killed. He was 76, a holocaust survivor; his son was interviewed in Israel.

"Some students blocked their own classroom door with furniture and kept the shooter out. He was a So. Korean named Cho who creeped people out with his disurbing writings. Seems he also wrote bomb threats. South Korea is very sorry. So is Paris. My daughter sent me an editorial from Le Monde about 'Prairie Mentality and the American Dream'.... leading to American tragedy."

Well it was sad. The worst mass shooting in U.S. history. A South Korean in Virginia acting out the "prairie mentality."

The day before Virginia Tech, my diary was ruminating on the sorrows of aging; the day after, evaluating a Psalms class I had taught and worrying about a friend in the cardiac ward. We went on with things after Virginia Tech.

But now--December 2012--we've had (to hit the highlights) the Tuscon mall; the Aurora movie theatre; and the Wisconsin Sikh temple. Now tonight on the "News Hour "we got to watch the faces of twenty little first-grade children go by in memoriam and we got to contemplate what an assault rifle wielded by a combat-clad 20-year-old had done to their little six- and seven-year-old bodies.

These scenes have made the country extra-traumatized, at least I hope so. In his speech last night, President Obama said we can't keep tolerating this, we can't just keep accepting these shootings as a routine part of living in the USA. He said, "We have to change."

We shall see.