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A life of suffering anchored in faith
Posted by rlong | 11/03/08
This is the second of three articles on my father and my family growing up in Syracuse in the last century:
I think about my father a lot. Along with my mother he gave me life. I think of his mysterious journey and I also think of my own trip through the wilderness of life.
Besides life, he also gave me my history and my Christian faith. He was 43 when I was born in 1926, the last of six children.
As I wrote last week, when I was 10 years old, I remember a man bruised by life. He had undergone TB (a terrible disease in the early 1900s). There is a telling picture of my father, my mother the former Florence Hauman Long, and their little girl, Eleanor, about 1-year-old, taken at a TB sanatorium at Cranberry Lake in the Adirondacks...
CATEGORY: General Society
TAGS: syracuse,Long family,christian faith,Ty Cobb,Bishop Patrick Ludden
Memories of my father - part I
Posted by rlong | 10/23/08
This 1912 picture of my father on his company’s Harley Davidson motorcycle has been staring down at me for many years in the family room of my home. It was taken 14 years before I was born. It was said to be one of the first Harleys in Syracuse.
Edward T. Long at the time the picture was taken was 29 years old. He was strong, virile, handsome, a dashing figure in downtown Syracuse.
Sadly, my memories of him, when I was 10 in 1936 were of a red-faced older man, bruised by life, angry and dominated by his nightly pitcher of beer. I keep this picture because it reminds me of a happier time in his life, a time when his life was full of promise.
My father was a salesman. Arthur Miller wrote about my father in his brilliant play “Death of Salesman...
CATEGORY: General Society
TAGS: Heaphy,edward long,death of a salesman,syracuse,Arthur Miller, Thomas Long
GOP gets huge advantage because of anti-abortion issue
Posted by rlong | 10/18/08
I have three close conservative friends. Every year, especially in a presidential year, like this one, we have some energetic political conversations.
I am a liberal and I love such liberal presidents as Abraham Lincoln, FDR, Harry Truman and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, to mention a few.
I am sure they like Ronald Reagan and the first George H.W. Bush, the father of the incumbent president.
These discussions every year do get stimulating and loud. And I know I am the loudest, because my friends have to shush me, so that I don’t embarrass them and myself.
Every year, they let me voice my liberal opinions. But eventually they lower the boom on me. They are going to vote for the Republican they say, because he is against abortion...
CATEGORY: General Society
My literary friends are leaving me
Posted by rlong | 09/11/08
My friends are all leaving me. I don’t mean that my two-legged friends are all dying. I have a lot of healthy, but also some arthritic friends, including myself.
I mean those friends up in those eight big bookshelves in my lovely home in Auburn.
Some of them have been sitting in my various homes, rent free, for more than 60 years. Because of my medical condition, this 82-year-old man has decided to move to apartment living, to be close to other people and enjoy a reduced style of living.
I will depart from 3,000 of my books on this weekend — Saturday and Sunday — from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. All of my human being friends have been invited to a garage sale at 243 E. Genesee St., Auburn. And all others are welcome, too...
CATEGORY: General Society
TAGS: book sale,biography,joyce,reading,82-year-old,
Palin for VP
Posted by rlong | 09/05/08
“Wow!’
That was my reaction when I heard the news that GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain had chosen Sarah Palin, 44, governor of Alaska, as his vice presidential running mate. I am sure that was the reaction of most Americans.
McCain passed over at least eight highly qualified Republican men and women who would have been commendable choices. Palin has been governor of Alaska less than two years with no experience in foreign policy.
As a newspaperman I was drawn in by the excitement of the pick. What a story! McCain has always been known as a maverick and I have always admired him for this quality. And now we have a maverick picking a maverick.
My quick knowledge of Gov...
CATEGORY: General Society
TAGS: palin,vice president,alaska,gop,republicans,mccain
Jesse Helms: He threw Abe Lincoln under the bus
Posted by rlong | 07/10/08
Once upon a time there were Republicans like Everett Dirksen, Jacob Javits and Nelson Rockefeller. They were in the forefront of helping pass Civil Rights legislation, Voting Rights and legislation to help the poor.
It could be said that they were the spiritual descendants of Abraham Lincoln. And they were proud to be in the party of Lincoln and Auburnians like Henry Seward and Harriet Tubman.
Then a giant fracture in national politics came along in 1964. President Lyndon Johnson, following the ideals of his predecessor John F. Kennedy, moved to get the greatest civil rights bill and later voting rights bills, through Congress and ready for his signature.
Senators Dirksen and Javits were among moderate to liberal GOP senators that helped Johnson get that legislation enacted into law. Many Southern Democratic Senators had to be really coaxed by Johnson’s persuasion to get on his side. Other Southern Dems and right wing Republicans rebelled. The civil rights and voting rights bills passed, however, over their objections.
These bills, in their simplest sense, allowed African-Americans, especially, to have the same civil rights and voting rights as the rest of the American citizenry, something they hadn’t had, especially in the south, since the beginning of the country.
Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), who died last week, was a radio broadcaster at the time. He was urging Southern Congressmen to vote against the Johnson-Kennedy civil rights bills. Helms switched from Democrat to Republican in 1970. Two years later he won the North Carolina Senate seat as a Republican, benefiting by his racist stand.
It was a great time for Jesse Helms to be a Republican Senator. Millions of Southern Democrats were leaving the Democratic Party and joining the GOP because of what they considered the ‘liberal’ policies of Lyndon Johnson.
Imagine being described as ‘liberal’ for giving all Americans the right to be served in a restaurant and the right to vote.
Anyway, that is how the Republican party got millions of votes in 1964 ensuring the presidential victories of Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes. The racist Democrats became racist Republicans by the millions.
I have always thought that Lyndon Johnson deserved a ‘Profiles in Courage’ award for his actions in the civil rights legislation. A friend of mine in Congress said: “LBJ knew the Democrats would lose millions of votes by his actions. Yet, he knew it was the right thing to do. A brave action. Certainly not political in any sense.”
Jesse Helms stood for all the things I am against. Oh, he was a smoothie. He was one of those courtly Southern gentlemen that I have known during years in Washington, D.C. and Virginia. But if you got close to this courtliness you found out he didn’t want black kids to get the same kind of education the rest of us received; he wanted to make sure they still had ‘white’ and ‘colored’ rest rooms in the South and, most important, he didn’t want those voting laws changed, the laws that discriminated against blacks. And the laws that gave Helms and his kind big majorities in the South.
David Broder of the Washington Post is considered the dean of Washington reporters. He has a reputation for fairness. When Helms retired from the Senate he chided his colleagues for taking it too easy in their stories about Helms. Broder was criticized for describing Helms as a ‘racist.’ He wrote:
“What is unique about Helms-- and from my viewpoint unforgivable-- is his willingness to pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans.”
As I began this piece I recalled some of the great Republicans of the past, those who were in favor of Civil Rights legislation. I used to have some interesting conversations with a Syracuse Republican friend about politics.
Now, on the radio especially, all is noise, the conservative side taken over by the Rush Limbaughs and the Laura Ingrahams.
I was talking to my friend recently. I didn’t even talk about the election in the Fall. I asked him about Helms and Limbaugh.
“Those guys,” he said with a scowl, “They threw Abe Lincoln under the bus. There are not many Republicans today who can brag that they are in the party of Abraham Lincoln. It is sad.”
CATEGORY: General Society
TAGS: long, syracuse, onondaga, politics, Lincoln, jesse helm
My near death experience
Posted by rlong | 05/16/08
My siblings and playing parochial league basketball in Syracuse:
I grew up in a strange way. I had brothers and sisters who were 10 to 20 years older than I was. I guess I was a surprise to everyone, especially my mother.
She thought she had her last child when she was 35. Then I came along when she was 45.
My dear departed friend, Nancy Duffy, used to educate me on Irish phraseology. She surprised me, when I told her about my birth order: “Dick, you were the last shake of the bag,” she said. Took me a while to figure that one out.
Of course, there were a lot of advantages being that far removed from the rest of the family. I was fascinated by my brothers and sisters. There was so much excitement being around them. They all had different sets of friends...
CATEGORY: General Society
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