Temporal Whiplash

George Templeton Strong

During a day spent largely in airports or airplanes, I continued my reading of New York Diaries: 1609 to 2009. Many of the entries I read were the oldest in the collection, dating from 1609, and describing the exploration of the area by Henry Hudson. One of the more diligent diarists to accompany Hudson during the expedition, Robert Juet, recorded the first known European expedition into New York’s Upper Bay. Interestingly, that entry was made on September 11^th, 1609, so the entries for that day include that historic expedition, and the response of several New York diarists to the terrorist attacks that same day, 392 years later.

That juxtaposition and conversation between the centuries produced a kind of dizziness in me. The rapid jumping back and forth across the years can give one a feeling of vertigo. Of course, the artificial atmosphere and pressurized cabins of modern air travel might have contributed to my sense of temporal whiplash.

For example, in my reading yesterday, I encountered vivid descriptions of the 9/11 attacks by those who lived in New York. Those descriptions were interspersed with news of George Washington’s brilliant retreat from New York in 1776. (Yes, it was a retreat. Yes, it was brilliant. If you’re not familiar with this episode of American history, I recommend reading 1776, by David McCullough.) There was also a moving account of a New Yorker with a loved one living through the London bombings of 1940, and the news of Benedict Arnold’s treason in 1780. Among those more dramatic entries were several that just recorded day to day life, from society news of 1832, to World Series news of 1963, and teacher strikes of 1968.

Among the more quotable were two separated by a little more than 100 years. George Templeton Strong, who I apparently favor, as he featured in my previous entry, had a scathing entry condemning the church in 1862 for not speaking out more forcibly against the evil of slavery. “Her priests call on Almighty God every day…to deliver His people from ‘false doctrine, heresy and schism,’ from ‘sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion.’ Now, at last, when they and their people are confronted by the most wicked of rebellions and the most willful of schisms on the vilest of grounds, viz. the constitutional right to breed black babies for sale…—the church is afraid to speak.” That sentiment is still alive and well today. The church as a whole is often afraid to take on the real issues of the day, but often seems content to focus on theological debates that don’t matter to the common woman or man, especially in light of suffering and injustice.

The other quote also refers to race, and to suffering. It’s from Judith Malina, in 1968, and is about the teachers’ strike going on in October of that year. The strike drew interesting supporters, among them, the Black Panthers, which made people’s reaction to the strike into a reaction to the Panthers, and a reaction to racial tensions. Malina quotes a conversation she had with her dentist about the strike, and Malina’s political activism. The dentist was Jewish, and felt himself to be among the persecuted as well. However, Malina’s final comment on his attitude was scathing.

“Suffering has only taught him how to suffer.”

The Drive to Make a Difference

This has been a wild week. My parents, who are 74, landed in the emergency room after a freak accident. Mom has a broken hip, and is still in the hospital, awaiting a transfer to a rehabilitation facility. Dad has returned home, which presents its own problems. In the days since the accident, I’ve been facing questions about their future health and safety, and, of course, mortality. While going through their closets, looking for clothes to take to them for their stay in the hospital, I had an epiphany, a sort of déjà vu-in-reverse experience. I was struck with the realization that I would be going through that closet again one day, when they have left the house for the last time.

Those thoughts echoed with an entry in the book I’m reading, New York Diaries: 1609 to 2009, edited by Teresa Carpenter. The book is a collection of diary entries from New Yorkers famous, infamous, and unknown, and from visitors who recorded their observations while passing through the Big Apple. It’s organized by calendar date, so today, May 27^th, has entries from 1844, 1925, and 1972, for example. I’m enjoying the book on the whole, though its organizational approach presents some interesting challenges. Reading it cover to cover, as I am, one sees little vignettes played out over days, when a diarist is included for several days in a row. For example, Gouverneur Morris records his response to the killing of Alexander Hamilton in a series of diary entries from July, 1804. These entries are interspersed with others made during the same week of July, ranging from 1776 to 1885, which, of course, have nothing to do with the duel between Burr and Hamilton. Much of the time, however, there is no narrative thread connecting one day to the next, as the diary entries included jump from century to century. At times, this lack of a narrative thread is mildly irritating, but it’s a natural consequence of the clever organization structure.

The entry that jumped out at me this week is from George Templeton Strong, a well-to-do lawyer whose contributions included in the book range from 1835 to 1875. His diary entry from July 7, 1851, struck a chord with my thoughts on mortality, morality, and the way that we all want to live a life of consequence. In that entry, he commented, with a mixture of revulsion and pity, upon gangs of young girls that could be found in parts of the city, and the terrible lives that they were forced to live in order to provide for themselves.

His final sentence, quoted below, is a beautiful appeal to himself to remember his urge to live a life of significance.

“But if Heaven will permit and enable me, I’ll do something before I die—to have helped one dirty vagabond child out of such a pestilential stink would be a thing one would not regret when one came to march out of this world…and would be rather more of an achievement than the writing [of] another Iliad.”