Jealousy, Anti-Semitism and Fish Out of Water

Dodd

My wife was once asked by a co-worker to stop doing such a good job, if not in so many words. Same old thing: you are doing a better job than we are and you are making us look bad. (Short version: she kept doing a good job and she moved up the ranks. So it goes.)

I know you are supposed to talk about books after you have finished them, but I am in the middle of Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts and I recently read a section in which the "main character" (it is historical narrative, not fiction) William E. Dodd, the man who was America's ambassador to Germany during Hitler's rise to power, is talking to Hitler, himself. During the conference, (and all dialogue in the book is from record, not speculation, according to its author -- all dialogue is from reliable documents) Dodd told Hitler:

"You know, a number of high positions in our country are, at present, occupied by Jews, both in New York and Illinois [Dodd's home state]...where the question of over-activity of Jews in the university or official life made trouble, we [have] managed to redistribute the offices in such a way as not to give great offense and...wealthy Jews continued to support institutions which had limited the number of Jews who held high positions." Dodd maintained that "the Jews in Illinois constituted no serious problem."

It seems this otherwise well-meaning guy saw Jewish folk as "a problem." Why? Because they indulged in "over-activity" in the highest levels of public and academic life? Sounds, on a larger and more insidious scale, like my wife's co-worker.

A Pocket Full of God

A rare repost, from two years ago, but it is a summation of the way I feel about our veterans, and about one veteran in particular, my great uncle. 

I knew a man from South Jersey. He was the sweetest, most lovable old fellow you would ever want to meet. He'd been a welder who built great ships, but an accident had rendered his leg lame. Still, he could always be seen walking the main road in his town, usually with frequent stops to talk to every one who know him -- which was, really, everyone. He was my Great Uncle Vince.

He had been a soldier in World War II. In fact, he had been in the D-Day landing. Sometimes, he would tell me stories, cautioning me not to tell my mother -- he feared she would be shaken up by the details. But I think he believed that every little boy should know a little of what war was. Maybe he was right.

In short, if you ever saw the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, you got the truth. The stories my Uncle Vince told me matched that opening in such detail, I would have placed a bet that Spielberg had interviewed my uncle, though he had died many years before the film was made.

But the best story I ever heard was this: