Last week’s miserable weather gave us few options for amusement. Hitting the bars, or enjoying a meal at your favorite restaurant? Too cold, unless you could find a parking place within a block – so why even try? Tidy up the house and do minor repairs? Not if you have three unhappy dogs who, like their owners, are bored inside and miserable outside. That leaves a single option: go through the bookshelves and find something you haven’t read – or read it so long ago that you’ve forgotten the plot, the characters, or whether you liked it in the first place.
That’s particularly true of me, a book hoarder, with thousands of frayed volumes collecting dust in multiple bookshelves. Some I inherited, some were presents, some I bought at bookstores, garage sales, thrift stores and some are just there. Looking at them, I’m reminded of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven. “Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered, weak and weary Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…”
As if guided by Poe’s spirit, I opened a book that I’d never noticed, never remembered buying or acquiring, and never opened: Volume II of Appleton’s Portrait Guide of Women, published in 1875. A carefully folded blank letter was enclosed, bearing the name Isabel Clark in gold letters – nothing more.
Democrats, independents and principled Republicans need to band together and resist this dreadful oligarchy.
The women celebrated in the book included Pocahantas, Maria Theresa, Catherine II of Russia, the Empress Josephine, Florence Nightingale, Martha Washington and half a dozen others. Each was pictured in delicate etchings, regally dressed and radiating loving yet distant femininity. Bound in dark brown leather with gold lettering, the book is beautifully printed and probably hasn’t been opened since the late 19th century or early 20th century, when Isabel Clark used the heavy old volume to press flowers.
They’re still there: pansies, petunias, bluebells and half a dozen others, bright and cheerful remembrances of a long-forgotten summer. The Portrait Guide was published ten years after the end of the Civil War, in a time when our nation was trying to heal the wounds incurred by both North and South.
Ours is a very different time, one of increasing anger and division. Far from trying to heal wounds, the new administration wants to create many more, imprisoning the innocent and freeing the guilty. It’s a season of revenge led by tax-evading billionaires who want to run everything, of angry men and proud ignorance.
At 84, I’m in the deepening twilight of life, so I should probably just pay no attention to the evildoers in Washington and enjoy my remaining days in our much-beloved Westside home.
But thanks to Trump and his uncivil servants, I can’t look away. And I don’t know what to do, other than to support candidates for office who are not enslaved by the siren call of the Trumpistas. Good luck with that, as virtually every Republican elected official has pledged fealty to the master of Mar-a-Lago. We can hope that things will change, but that’s futile. Democrats, independents and principled Republicans need to band together and resist this dreadful oligarchy.
It won’t be easy. As Shakespeare wrote, “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.”
Or just sit at home and admire the pressed flowers…
