Got A Beef -- And It's Age-ism

We continue to hear a good deal of speculation on the new Pope. Without casting any negative aspersions, I'm not surprised that some Marxist materialists (not all), some of whom are very good personal friends, are critical -- and there may possibly be some grounds for that -- but they're often critical of any Pope and sometimes churches in general.  (Now that Francis is on his Chair of Infallibility, we'll just have to see how things turn out.  At the least, and hopefully, he'll permit reasonably positive flexibility "on down" through the ranks.)

But critiques of the Pope are not my beef.  Pretty consistently we hear on the Pope that "He won't be around much longer" -- a clear reference to the fact that he's 77 or so.  Well, there are a number of good folks on our discussion lists who are in that general age range -- I'm pushing 80 -- and I doubt, to toy a little atypically for a moment with political correctness, that any of us so situated are pleased with that  example of "age-ism."

I, at least, don't expect to cash in any time soon -- and not in the far foreseeable future.  Neither does Eldri, a year younger than I.  And I suspect there are many around, on our discussion lists and otherwise, who definitely join us emphatically in that.

In that context, I always recall my maternal grandfather.  He was born in Ontario in 1875 but raised from very early childhood on in Dakota Territory where his father, beginning in 1870, had accumulated a very large landholding where he raised horses and then horses and some crops, and had ten other children. My grandfather, a college trained engineer, developed quickly into Capitalism Incarnate.  Beyond his own father, his initial mentors came from the Mine Owners Protective Association in North Idaho where he was into mining engineering.  As far as he was concerned, the last good president was William Howard Taft (who had left office in 1912) -- and it was all downhill after that.  Despite a growing gap in values between us, he and I (the oldest grandchild) always got on very well with each other.  And, in his own way, he had a sort of grudging admiration for his labor adversaries, including the Western Federation of Miners and the IWW -- perhaps sensing in many of them the very same Western flinty qualities he so frequently exhibited. 

And he was OK on racial matters.

At the age of 97, a capitalist right to the apparent last, word came that he was dying.  My mother and her brothers rushed to his side.  Many other relatives gathered at the hospital into which he'd recently been incarcerated (like myself, he hated hospitals), and, with the exception of my mother, they all waited for his departure into the Future Happiness.

But she went right close to his ears and began whispering vigorously to him.  Almost immediately, he flew into a rage, partially rising from his deathbed. One hell of an argument ensued. His blood pressure soared.

And he lived another full year.

In the context of the Pope's age, Eldri and I were talking about this.  We'd wondered back then what Mother had said  but had never pressed.  "What do you think it was?" Eldri asked -- as she occasionally had over the years.

And I guessed, as I had a few times in earlier years:  "It just had to be, in a word, 'FDR.' "

"Of course, that wouldn't work with me," I continued.  "But if it comes to that, you might try 'Gun Control'."

Now Eldri's father lived to be 95.  But he was a consistently gentle soul -- a clergyman -- who never ran his engines on Rage.

Hunter Bear

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

See the new and expanded/updated edition of my "Organizer's 
Book." It's the inside story of the massive Jackson Movement,
bloody repression and murder, and more -- including a myriad
of organizing "lessons."  And with my new and 10,000 word
Introduction. http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm (". .a local activist's
 important account of the deleterious effects the involvement of 
national organizations can have on indigenous protest movements."
David Garrow in "The Age of the Unheralded", Progressive Magazine,
April 1990.

See my piece ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE:
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded in 2012. Photos. Material on our Native
background.)