October 2021 – Sally-Jane's Blah, Blah, Blog

My Dear Friends and Family,

Your first quiz, for a free pass and tour of the National Archive Building:

What Federal Building in Washington, D.C. has that statement inscribed on it?

You are just too smart for me. You are right!

*Northeast corner of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C.*

Sooo…. What has any of this to do with anything? You always know the right question to ask.

The news of the world at the present time gives me very little pleasure. I really do try to limit the news media of the day, but somehow it creeps in, not on little cat paws, but earthquaking Shrek-sized feet. I have lost my Pollyanna credentials, but still keep an optimist’s eye, even if it is a little cockeyed, on what I read and experience. I don’t know about you but for me it is getting harder and harder to join Candide (by my dear friend Voltaire’s character) in his famous exclamation,

“This is the best of all possible worlds.”

Really??? I don’t think so!!! Maybe instead he should exclaim along with the rest of us as we struggle with the ways of the world,

“Wha’ happened?”

How many times can I quote Voltaire again? “History doesn’t repeat itself. People do.”

If something still bites me, I shall of course put my Five Hundred Dollars in. It used to be two cents but with inflation…

So I am going to go back into my memories to write about them. Not to worry family and friends, no names. And the only fool you will find in my stories? C’est moi.

Here’s a sample…

Even if I need fingers and toes to count, I think I can figure it out. I just turned 88, right? So if this wedding took place when I was 8, then that was 80 years ago. Get out! 80 years ago… Yikes… we are talking 1941. On October 19, 1941 my eldest sister got married.
I was there and I loved every minute of it. Against parental sturm and drang, the lovers persevered. Like every World War II movie you ever saw. The parents said wait until the war was over. Unequivocally, my sister said, NO! (You must have heard that word from her a million times) Well, having missed out on my eldest brother’s wedding because they had eloped (which they were never forgiven for), Nana surrendered and told Pop to surrender too. (That’s the kind of marriage they had) Here comes the juicy stuff.
It was to be a home wedding…
~ SJ Heit October 19, 2021

Stories like that one give me a sense of peace and continuity. As I begin to write some memories, there are many thoughts that crowd into an already overcrowded mindball. I think the most important thought for me is this…

When does my memory meet with a perspective that will allow me to remember the memory and at the same time, give it enough air to be able to see it in a perspective of whatever smarts I have gleaned over these many years?

Not many, I can assure you.

My favorite Three Little Words have always been, I LOVE YOU. Abused, misused, and ultimately, on good days with great humility, expanded to include the judged, and found wanting persons who brought grief to my person; a real achievement for this Master of Judgement. Today those 3 words are neck and neck with these 3 words, I DON’T KNOW (for every control freak I have ever known, including yours truly, this is yet another miracle).

*The Heit Family on the Atlantic City Boardwalk Circa 1938*

There will be some memories that I shall want to share with you and some I shall not. Not because of shame or guilt. Come on guys, we have all lived with those emotions forever, so as not helpful as they are, they are very familiar. And in this case, familiarity really does breed contempt. Most importantly, hopefully, there is a way to acknowledge their presence and yet fold them into my life.

Oi vey, who asked me to do this? No one, that’s who.

Not true. I am asking me to do this.

Today, this is the phrase I trot out for all important occasions and decisions, IF NOT NOW, WHEN???!!!

Right?? Of course, right!!!!

Love, Sally-Jane

It’s official. I just celebrated my 88^th Birthday.

No applause. No gifts. Unless, of course it’s a ticket on the William Shatner and Jeff Bozos… oops, I mean Bezos, moon rocket… NOT. Whatever days I have left I am not willing to risk it all being over while I’m in company with an actor (believe me having been one I know just how boring they can be) and a gazillionaire who like Nero before him spent his money playing with rockets while his country burned. The jury is back. I am wholeheartedly judgmental.

Back to my special day. I was gifted with a novel, Behold the Dreamers, by Imbolo Mbue, a beautiful and talented Cameroon immigrant. I began to read it. Not at the party. I waited until everyone was gone.

I was talking to a friend about how good the book was. It occurred to me that the immigrant story is a forever story. Whether it was then or now… forever. And then a light bulb went on in my headball. I am telling you my friends, it is crazy, absolutely crazy, this crazy mess and mix up of who is the immigrant and who is not. Get it clear, my friends. Except for the Indigenous folk and their descendants, we are all immigrants.

WHO WAS HERE FIRST?

I guarantee unless you are an Indigenous American or have American Indigenous blood in you…. it wasn’t you. This includes each and every descendant of the Jamestown Colony of Virginia and the Mayflower, AKA the Plymouth Colony, or the New York City Dutch Colonials. And let us not forget the Spaniards of Florida, the West and Southwest, the British of the Northwest. And by the 1800’s the ongoing stampede from Europe, the Germans, the Irish, the Greeks, the Italians, the Swedes, the Danes, the Norwegians (I Remember Mama), and oh so many other countries, as well as from every shtetl in Eastern Europe and Russia.

I’m exploring this theme because it has brought to mind the many memoirs I have read of the more recent immigrants from Africa, Viet Nam, India, Korea, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan along with the many Latin American countries… the Islands, Central and South America. I’m not sure about the flood (literally and figuratively) of Inuit and other Northern Eskimo tribes. But once the Poles complete their meltdown I assure you they will be rowing their way to our shores.

OK, here is your first test. What is the difference between the immigrants of the founding countries of this yet to be United States of America and the immigrants of the last 50 years of these United States of America?

You are too smart! You are right! COLOR!

CAVEAT: I do not count the African Black population of the 17^th and 18^th Century that arrived by the boatloads. Traveling in storage, not steerage…storage! Kidnapped, enslaved and in chains doesn’t count as travel to the new world. Journey to and in Hell is more accurate. And as a matter of real fact, they actually weren’t counted as human at all, anyway. That came later. What am I saying? It’s not here yet. Hopefully, soon.

Here’s my question… Would we be so up in arms about immigrants if they looked and thought and sounded like white Americans. Wouldn’t it be great to take all the naysayers back to their roots to listen to their family accents, their family old country traditions, their difficulties in assimilation.

Aha! Assimilation! Most of the white immigrants managed to assimilate… some more successfully than others. The possibility of assimilation through work and education particularly in this country was always a possibility. Only if you were white, of course.

Isn’t that what this is all about? The majority of the immigrants over the last 50 to 100 years are people of color. Pretty hard to assimilate when ones color is the first thing you notice about a person.

No matter what race theory you subscribe to, consciously or unconsciously, there is no getting away from being a different color.

It’s not easy being green… is it?

Anyway, I find myself amused when I realize how upset everyone is about the immigrant situation. Often my amusement turns to anger when someone wants to put up a wall or chase immigrants down a river on a big horse with a big whip. That’s when I want to give them a big shake, shouting, “Hey Jerkball, you are not an Indigenous American. Therefore, you’re an immigrant, too! I promise you… someone in your family came here from someplace else. Give someone else the same break your ancestors had when they arrived. If by chance they didn’t get that break, well let me be the first one to tell you LIFE IS NOT FAIR. And yet, even today with The Troubles (lots of the Irish immigrant in this country can definitely relate) this is a great and unique country. There is still plenty of land. And there is always someone willing to climb a ladder. Got it! Get it. Good! “

However, it won’t work. Today, no one listens to anyone. Unless you are parroting what they say. Then, you are not really listening. You are a parrot. Nice feathers… no sense.

Here’s the kicker. Anger is not helpful to my blood pressure and man, it really saps my energy. So I am just going to do what I can for others. Keep love on the front burner. Call it like I see it. Have some more birthdays so I can keep Blah, Blah, Blogging.

Right??? Of course, right!!!!

Love, Sally-Jane ❤️

Here are lists for books and memoirs on Immigration.
https://www.businessinsider.com/best-immigrant-memoirs-books
https://www.lirs.org/books-about-immigration

And some Films.
Golden Door
America America
Amistad
PBS Trail of Tears trailer

And finally, I leave you with this…