A boy is boy; a girl is girl

These photos show a boy is boy; a girl is girl!

Feeding the body and mind all at the same time

When Katy was back in Taiwan visiting her parents my most enjoyable moment is on the dinner table at home as I can read and eat, feeding the body and mind all at the same time.  The photos show Gabby was doing her art work at the breakfast table.  If Gabby is allowed to do it, so am I.

Christmas comes earlier every year

We came to Michigan to see Ben and Gabby for Thanksgiving, and as they say Christmas comes earlier every year, Jo and kids set up the Christmas tree so we can have an early Christmas. I'll be working during the Christmas holiday season this year.

Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy

Both Lincoln and JFK had a vice president having a name of Johnson.  Lincoln took his Presidency in 1861, JFK 1961, 100 years apart.  Both wives were well versed and fluent in French.

Mary Lincoln was a good conversationalist, using with equal fluency the French and English. Carl Sandburg wrote, “she had partaken often of dinners in which only talk in French was permitted, and read French classics of literature in the original.”

Once she was not satisfied with a translation of speech made by Victor Hugo on capital punishment, published in the Southern Literary Messenger. She got hold the speech in French, and told Henry Rankin [who worked in Lincoln's law office], “the better to show the strength of Hugo's oratory and the difficulty of translating into English a French oration of such intense feeling so as to preserve the true Hugo fire and force.”

Lincolns received diplomatic corps at White House on 3/7/1861, the minister from Portugal made a speech in French, which Mary understood without the translation that her husband needed.

Jacqueline Kennedy stole the thunder from JFK on their 1961 visit to France and that led JFK to say he was known as the husband of Jackie.  She knew very well the French history and literature. Before the state visit she asked   “could I meet André Malraux? Do you think I could even sit next to him at some thing?”

André Malraux was an art historian, novelist and heroic leader of the French Resistance during WWII, de Gaulle appointed him as the minister of culture after the war.  Jackie read many of his work.  About four days before the visit the tragedy struck—both his sons were killed in a car accident.  Jackie sent word that Malraux need not bother with her, but he insisted to be his host in his grief, thus began a beautiful friendship.  Jackie invited him to visit the White House in early 1962 (see photos).  Malraux dedicated his autobiography, Anti-Memoirs (now on my to-read list), to Jacqueline in 1968.

Arthur Schlesinger asked Jackie about their visit to France in 1961, she said,

Yeah, Because I’d ask him [de Gaulle] things of history—or all the things I wanted to know, like who did Louis XVI’s daughter marry, the Duke of Angoulême, did she have any children, and this or that.  Then he leaned across the table to Jack [JFK] at lunch and said in French, “Mrs. Kennedy knows more French history than most Frenchwomen.” So Jack said, “My God, that would be like me sitting next to Madame de Gaulle and her asking me all about Henry Clay!”

Lincoln was a great admirer of Henry Clay.

英雄難過美人關 (Even a hero can be seduced by a beauty)

(I am somewhat reluctant to use this Chinese idiom for the title of this post as it may give too much credit for their appearance)

Jo asked me who is the twin sister of “that girl” (of course, sophisticated and intrigued like this ‘heart affair', there are two “that girls”); this proves she hasn’t kept up-to-date with our national affair.  I always pay attention to the current events, especially when our national security is at stake.

Now I know not all West Point women are “Porcelain on Steel: Women of West Point’s Long Gray Line” (the book Janice introduced me and I dutifully read).  Both Petraeus and Broadwell are West Point graduates; Petraeus also got a Ph.D. from Princeton whereas Broadwell got a master from Harvard Kennedy School and I believe, she turned her dissertation into a book of “All In”.  It will be “All Out” when the dust has settled.  Not everything is teachable, even in Ivy League schools.

A Wall Street Journal editorial ends with “What a pity that his service should come to a premature end through the collision of personal error and a zero-tolerance culture that doesn’t always serve this country well”, insinuating the behavior like this should be tolerated.  This is why I always say I am more conservative than the New York Time and more liberal than the Wall Street Journal.

If you Google search “Petraeus and Shakespeare”, Maureen Dow’s (the NY Time’s columnist, the intellectual feminist) “Petraeus’s love affair becomes tangled, Shakespearean web” will pop up.  She uses Macbeth and Othello as the two examples.  This is another reason one has to pay attention to the national affair like this; one may learn a thing or two about the Bard.

A few months ago I read Omar Bradley’s A Soldier’s Story, fighting the WWII in the European theater with him.  I bought the book after finishing reading the one from library.  It is a Must Have book.  This is why I always found my heroes more in the past.  They don’t make the generals the way they used to.

Shortly before German army surrendered, Ike telephoned Bradley for a situation report, Bradley suggested Ike have a plane prepared to fly them to their thirtieth class reunion at West Point the first week of June [1945].  Gen.  Patton graduated from West Point 6 or 7 years earlier.  These are the golden days of West Point.

The Notable & Quotable at the Wall Street Journal a few days ago was a speech Gen. Douglas MacArthur made at West Point in 1962, “Duty-Honor-Country.  Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be . . . ”  A timely quotation

Visiting JFK Library and Museum in Boston

JFK’s hiding of his multiple medical problems led some people to raise “question of character” and see him as less than honest.  But, listening to Jackie Kennedy’s conversation with Arthur Schlesinger, one may understand JFK genuinely hated to talk about his medical problems, including to his families.

In talking about JFK’s back problem, Schlesinger [JFK’s special assistant at the White House] said, “Yet I never—from what I saw of him, it was total stoicism about this.  Did he ever mention it?

To which Jackie responded,

“He was never—when you think how many people are hypochondriacs, or complain, he never liked you to ask him how he felt.  You could tell when he wasn’t feeling well—you’d take care of him and put him to bed or something—but he was never irritable—he never liked to discuss it and he made a conscious effort to get his mind off it by having friends for dinner or talking about—you know, or going to see a movie, or—just to not let himself be sitting there having a pain.”

We all know his PT-109 boat was sunk by the Japanese destroyer but few knew that he used family connection so the Navy wouldn’t know his extensive medical history including admissions at Mayo Clinic (I think the diagnosis of Addison disease was made there) and let him get into Navy.

While visiting his museum and library, Janice and I heard him talking about the Civil Right movement; he was talking about finishing the job Lincoln started.  A great man, indeed.  Like JFK, I found my heroes more in the past; I apparently do not need to look too further in the past.

Design garden with signature planting: forward and hope

Paula is home visiting her mom.  Seeing we’re planting hyacinth, tulip and daffodil bulbs, etc., she asked “how many?” I said “you mean how many hundreds?”

Emily Dickinson wrote her garden “perished with beautiful reluctance”, but seeing the garden “sank from color, scent, and liveliness into decay” evokes melancholic mood.  Planting in November for next spring is therapeutic, it connects this season to the next; it makes one feel the garden hasn’t died; life goes on.  These sleeping beauties will hibernate when the winter comes.  If the winter comes, can spring be far behind?

So our garden moves “forward” and there is “hope” (I am using Obama’s winning campaign slogans).  With hundreds of bulbs to plant, we have to be creative.  You can see KATY’s tulips.  Planting this way is a gamble, as KATY may not be fully shown unless all bulbs planted emerge next spring.  But, then again this is “the Audacity of Hope”.

Jackie Kennedy resented JFK’s back surgery

Being a history buff, I rarely read JFK, thinking he was my contemporary, not yet a historical figure.  Visiting his library and museum with Katy, my two daughters and Edwin at Boston last month changed my view.  I put down Paul Murray Kendall’s Richard the Third (a 1955 book) and began to listen and read Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy (an interview with Arthur Schlesinger). 

Jackie is very articulate (one meaning of articulate is 咬字清晰), it is a pleasure listening to the CD, but reading the book version is quite helpful to get the full story as it comes with lots of annotations of the people and events of interest.

This post focuses on JFK’s back surgery.  The right choice of management (surgery vs. non-surgical approach) for the herniated disc or spinal stenosis of spines remains elusive in many cases; the unpredictable outcome remains true in select cases to this day.  JFK didn’t have the good outcome and Jackie resented it bitterly; she even used the term of “criminal” in criticizing the surgeon’s decision. 

The following is from the CD.

“Yeah, with the back. It had just gotten worse and worse.  I mean, the year before we were married, when he’d take me out, half the time it was on clutches.  You know, when I went to watch him campaign, before we were married, he was on clutches.  I can remember him on clutches more than not.  And then, in our marriage, he’d be off it a lot, and then something would go wrong.  It was really—I mean, the problem everyone found later—he didn’t even need the operation.  It was that he’d had a bad back since college, and then the war, and he’d had a disk operation that he never needed, so all those muscles had gotten weak, and gone into spasm, and that was what was giving him pain—the muscles.  And so, then he’d go—I think if he went on crutches for four days, you know, he’d get everything better, but again that was only weakening it.  And it wasn’t until after his back operation that the poor doctor who’d been his medical man, Ephraim Shorr [a New York Hospital endocrinologist], said to him, “Now I think I am at liberty to tell you something which I wanted to tell you before, but I didn’t think it was correct to do that to Dr. Wilson [the surgeon, who was a Harvard classmate of JFK’s father],” who was the back surgeon.  This made me so mad how doctors just let people suffer, and don’t say anything to hurt the other eminent physicians’ feelings. . .after a year of surgery and a year out, his back was weaker than ever. . . .”

 [What Dr. Shorr said could be a hindsight 20-20, though.]

Schleisinger asked: “In other words, the operation of 1955 was not necessary?” to which Jackie responded,

“It was no more necessary than it is for you to have one this minute.  And it was just criminal.  But, you know, all those bone surgeons look at X rays—you see, Jack was being driven so crazy by this pain. They even said to him before it, “We can’t tell if it will help or not.”  I remember his father and I and he talking, and he said, “I don’t care.  I can’t go on like this.”  It was, you know, one chance in a million, but he was going to take it.”

Jackie’s knowledge about JFK’s back problem might not be 100% correct, thus her resentment might not be fully justified.  Robert Kennedy wrote an introduction for the memorial edition of his brother’s book, Profiles in Courage, published in 1964, in which he wrote, “half his [JFK’s] days on this earth spent in pain.”

There is a lengthy article about JFK’s medical problems in the December 2002 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, which is an excerpt from Robert Dallek’s An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy,

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/12/the-medical-ordeals-of-jfk/305572/1/

The movie Lincoln to be released today (and November 16)

Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln will be playing in theaters nearby you on November 16, but limited release will be in select theaters today (November 9).   Rarely did I go to a movie theater; I have to make an exception this time around.  After reading Lincoln and Civil War for so many decades, I have known Lincoln inside out; I have formed my opinion and prejudice.  I’ll be curious in finding how the movie portray him or how faithful it follows the book (Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The political genius of Abraham Lincoln) that I read a few years ago.

I mentioned this movie in a post nearly two years ago,

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2010/11/daniel-day-lewis-is-to-play-lincoln.html

What’s The Battle Hymn of the Republic got to do with the movie Lincoln?

You may have watched the TV commercial for the movie Lincoln this past week.  It shows this photo with a background music of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.  If you read this post (what I posted at Sermo on Lincoln’s 200^th birthday on 2/12/2009) you would know that it makes sense.

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2012/02/happy-birthday-abe-lincolnthe-moral.html

This is the Battle Hymn of the Republic,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5mmFPyDK_8

“I think he was always looking for something in books—he was looking for something about history, or something for a quote. . . .”

“I think he was always looking for something in books—he was looking for something about history, or something for a quote. . . .”

Jacqueline Kennedy said of JFK. 

It may be a grandiose delusion for me to compare with JFK.  But, I really thought she was talking about me.  After visiting JFK Presidential Library and Museum (in Boston), I am now listening to Jacqueline Kennedy’s historic conversations on life with John F. Kennedy (Interview with Arthur Schlesinger Jr.).  The recording (8 CDs) took place in early 1964, shortly after JFK’s assassination and was released last year.

Was JFK's concentration history at Harvard, the same as mine in my 'continuing education' of life? I actually double major in history and life science.

“I think he found his heroes more in the past . . . He was really looking for lessons in the past and history.”

She talked about me again. :- )

Decision day for America

With a bucket of Kentucky Chicken, I went to vote around 6:30 PM. There was a long line, Katy and her co-workers may not have time to enjoy the chicken. We left home before 6 o’clock this morning to set up the shop in our voting precinct. Such a tight Presidential election, people are coming out to ensure their man got the job.

Reminiscing at Harvard Yard

We went to Boston last week; I attended a one-week meeting.  Since this is a so-called educational trip; it is appropriate to visit the Harvard Yard, reminiscing the day when we first brought Janice to her dorm, Matthews Hall (see photos) in the Yard.  It was built in 1872.  William Randolph Hearst (newspaper magnate), Robert Rubin (Clinton’s Secretary of Treasury), Chuck Schumer (US senator) are some of the famous residents.

JFK lived in Weld Hall in the Yard.  After spending the first semester of freshman year at Princeton, he took ill and then went to Harvard, instead of returning to Princeton.  The people at Princeton would like to say he must have gone out of his mind with his illness.

 

Katy gave a talk at MGH Museum—真是像模像樣

We went to Boston last week; I attended a one-week meeting trying to get some education.  It looked like Katy gave a talk at the Russell Museum of Medical History and Innovation—an MGH (Massachusetts General Hospital) museum.   I have pictures to prove it. 真是像模像樣.



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