The haters have tried to make Charleston the Dallas of 1963

In 1963 I was blamed for JFK's death at the hands of an American communist who was then killed by another American who followed crime stories and hung out at the police station. (I don't think I was blamed for what Jack Ruby did, however). I was a 23 year old white woman working in the Russian Language and Area Studies Center at the University of Illinois, and even then, as a liberal, I thought that was pretty far fetched.  And I was sensible enough to know the south and people of Dallas weren't to blame either--another favorite whipping boy of the media, even 50 years ago. I was able to narrow the responsibility down to the man who shot him.  Now once again we have hate mongers attempting to blame everyone whose ancestors came to the U.S. from Ireland, England, Germany, Switzerland, Bosnia, Russia, including Jews, Mennonites, Lutherans, Catholics, Orthodox, and atheists  (but not Spain whose people got here first but they are never blamed in these racist plots because of the made up word "Hispanic." ) I believe the people of Charleston have come together to show all the haters, those druggies who join hate organizations on the internet, and those mind addled who sit in their parents’ basement or are tethered to their i-phones making up lies about Drudge, the Tea Party and Fox, just how to share the love of Jesus.  The crazies are out there, just like 1963, but I’m older now, and wiser, and I won’t take it anymore.

Today in History--Patsy Cline died--one of my favorites

March 5, 1963, Patsy Cline died in a plane crash.

Friday Family Photo

This is a really terrible polaroid shot--wasn't even good when it was new. I think my father-in-law was just learning how to use it and didn't get the preservative fluid on it right--remember you had to smear it with something? This was taken at my in-laws' ranch style home on Mitchner on the east side of Indianapolis. They had moved there in 1957, and in order to finish at Arsenal Technical High School in the city, my husband listed his address as his aunt Bert's--the other half of the double they had lived in for about 15 years. And the furniture! I still remember the bright red couch with lime green accessories, step end tables and those funny lamps. One looks like a flying saucer about to land, the other like a strangled boa constrictor. That huge old TV with rabbit ears--wow! Did my parents even own one? Their decor was so much more modern than my own parents' style, that I'm sure I was impressed. My father-in-law worked for RCA and they had had a TV since the late 1940s. I wore that outfit, which was new then, for years--black and white wool tweed with black leather trim.

This photo is so tiny I had to see it on the computer screen before I realized that we still have the coffee grinder that's sitting on the end table. I knew it was from their home, but didn't know its age. Now I know it is at least 45 years old.

What you don't see here is our struggle to smile. Our only child had died about two months before, so this may have been one of our first ventures back into normalcy by attending a family function, perhaps Easter, but I noted only the year on the back of the photo.

Friday Family Photo--Summer of '63

If I knew where this photo was, I'd rescan it because I think I could do a better job. However, I think it is the summer of 1963 and we were probably in Indianapolis because my husband's sister (far right) was visiting from California. Last Friday I showed the Goff family, and the young teen on the far right, is the older woman in her late 70s on the left in his photo, my husband's grandmother, his beloved Neno. I'm not sure why we are "dressed up," but perhaps we weren't--it's possible we just dressed better in those days. Even if it was a Sunday afternoon, I don't recall ever attending church there except when we were dating. You can't see our feet, but we all had on high heels--mine were white.

The smiles look a bit forced. I don't think it was the sun. I'm second from the right and in the middle of what was the worst two years of my life (although I didn't know it that summer, thinking things couldn't get worse) and my sister-in-law wasn't in a good place either, as things would turn out which I didn't know then. Neno had been a widow for 7 years and still grieved her loss, and Aunt Marg, a nurse (2nd from the left), was slipping into poor health and would soon retire and move to California to live with her widowed sister as an invalid.