Bitter Angels

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“I’m glad I found this meeting,” a newcomer said this morning. “I went to one in” (name of nearby city that is big enough to have a dilapidated downtown) “yesterday and I was scared. I thought my car wouldn’t be there when I left.”

He was not speaking with me. I slowed down my already slow pace to hear the rest, and he supplied it: “You know, because I was the only white person there. I assumed it would be broken into or stolen.” I thought to myself, “Did I really just hear him say that?” I am grateful that racism and sexism and the rest of the hate-filled isms still possess the capacity to surprise me when I encounter them; I am furious every time I am exposed to that level of ugly stupidity, that degree of odious and casual hatred. If he had been speaking with me …

Yeah, and what, Mark? What would you have done?, I imagine someone sarcastically asking me. He was not speaking with me, and I went on with my after-meeting chores, but with my ears tuned to our new racist acquaintance, to hear if he had anything else of note to share about his fears. I do not like that I was shocked into a dull complacency, that I did not speak up.
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Today in History: May 10

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

One definition of the word “promontory” is “point of high land over water.” Another would be “great view here.”

The First Transcontinental Railroad was completed with a single golden spike on this date in 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah, almost 5000 feet above sea level. The rail lines were laid down on a steep incline to such a high elevation because the Great Salt Lake was considered an impediment; the west-to-east Central Pacific line detoured around the lake. Great view, indeed.

Promontory Point was selected by cartographers after conferences in Washington, DC, were held to determine where the Central Pacific line construction (heading east, over the Sierra Nevada Mountains) and the Union Pacific line construction (heading west across the plains, from Omaha, Nebraska) would meet.

The meeting of the rail lines (the “Wedding of the Rails” as newspapers headlined it at the time) was to take place on May 8, but bad weather held the ceremony (photo above) until May 10. Remarkably, the last 10 miles of track had been laid down in only 12 hours to be ready for the May 8 ceremony.
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Captain Chaos

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

There are the Facebook games that must be visited every 23 hours … or else! … and the world headlines to catch up on and oh! Twitter, of course …

My day does not unfold like Ben Franklin’s typical day, depicted in the image at the top. It is more of a stumble and flow. Rinse and repeat.

A writer and editor named Mason Currey started a blog almost a decade ago with the intent of compiling the habits and day-to-day minutiae of famous and successful individuals. The web site was titled Daily Routines and several years later he had compiled so many entries that a book was published, called “Daily Rituals.” It is a fun website and an interesting book, and they are both great to get lost in and waste time reading, which may not have been Currey’s intention.

That was probably a fun meeting, the one in which they decided to change the name from “routines” to “rituals.” Being that I have named approximately zero things that have become successful, I am not going to second-guess the decision. “Rituals” certainly does sound more interesting—and purchasable—than “routines,” because routines are something we are told we must get out of.
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