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More Memories

As I deal with the challenges of getting old, which in my case involves a stroke, I am less drawn to writing memorials. I used to focus on the memorializing of famous people who have influenced my life in some way.  But I guess that aging has meant that these influences are more in the past for me as well as for them.  The future is more for younger people than it is for me.

How can I turn this around:  Either I continue to think of myself in the future rather than in the past, or I think of my own memories of these memorable people to be of value to anyone who listens to me!  In any case, I do have someone in mind whose presence in my life stands out even more today than in the past. And that is Jessie Jackson.

What is more to the point, he only passed away in February, less that a month ago.  So I am inspired to include my memories of him in this collection of memorials.  Maybe it will be my last such memorial. But then as I look at my last such memorial, I discover that I had missed another person who had an even more important role in my life and who passed away in 2024, just when I was initially recovering from my stroke.  Non other than Jimmy Carter!

And as I researched his memorials for my own, I realized that I should also memorialize his wife, Rosalyn Carter, who died in 2023.  I hardly knew her, but my search for memories of her husband included references to her that showed how influential she was in his life. They include my own memories of him that I realise now were memories that included the dynamics of their lives together.

But I will go backwards in time for these three, startling with Jessie Jackson, then Jimmy Carter, and then his wife Rosalyn. All three were from the same part of the US.  But that simply shows that all three were part of the same cause of equality that inspires me. In part, that is because it is very much a part of Southern history.  Of course, equality is a bigger problem than that, especially as the country has become more diverse but also more attuned to other challenges to equality.

I start with Jessie Jackson because his particular view of this concern is a continuation of race and other forms of inequality.  But also because of the viewpoint that I associate with Mahatma Gandhi. That is the philosophy of non-violent resistance that was so central to the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King.  Of course I new that Jessie Jackson was one of King’s inner circle and had been with him when he was assassinated in Tennessee. But I didn’t know that he is viewed by many as that succeeded to King.

Jesse Jackson

Actually, the situation was a bid more complicated than that.  Ralph David Abernathy was officially appointed as the head of Martin Luther Kine’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) after King’s death in 1968.  Although Jessie continued for awhile as the leader of Operation Breadbasket, which was part of this movement, Jessie started his own organisation called People United to Serve Humanity (or Operation PUSH) in 1971.  He subsequently established the Rainbow Coalition in 1984. Eventually, these two organisations were merged, and continued to support blacks but also other groups, including LGBT rights.

In his first ran for President in 1984, Jesse Jackson came in third among Democrats (a significant accomplishment since some 19 candidates were running).  And when he ran again in 1988, he actually came in second.  He was the first black candidate to be taken so seriously for this office, although he was not the first, since Shirley Chisholm, a prominent black woman in Congress, had ran in 1972.  Jackson continued to be actively politically throughout the subsequent years of his life, including in several international settings as well as being active in LGBT and civil rights in the States.

I met Jessie Jackson in 1990 when he organized a meeting at Arnold and Porter, a major law firm in Washington, DC which had AT&T as a client.  The meeting was clearly intended to recruit AT&T for a key role in the civil rights movement.  I was working in AT&T’s Washington office as the person responsible for social policies. I was also their lead person for working on these issues with the Business Roundtable, a powerful business association for big business. The head of AT&T oversaw human rights issues there. I had also been asked to respond to a letter to the head of AT&T from the NAACP, whose chairman at the time was someone I knew from North Carolina. So it was already clear to me that the civil rights community wanted AT&T to back some important civil rights legislation in Congress.

I went with my AT&T bosses to this meeting at Arnold and Porter.  I remember that Jessie Jackson was there with a team of others from his organisation. The team from Arnold and Porter included Vernon Jordan, who had been the head of the National Urban League, a major business association for blacks, whom I had met before.  The main objective of the meeting was to convince AT&T to move the Business Roundtable to support the bill and thereby to divine the business community, if not to persuade other parts of the business community to support the bill.

Fortunately my bosses decided to support me. We were able to get two other companies to work with AT&T at the Business Roundtable.  I then organised a meeting in New York with the three CEOs of these companies to meet with the leaders of several civil rights and women’s rights groups, and we were on the way.

Washington representatives from all these groups then met as a working group on a weekly basis through the spring and early summer of 1991. The Business Roundtable hired a lawyer to work with us. We started with the Senate where we worked with two Republican members on the committee charged with handling the bill. As I recall, the Democrat chairman on the Committee was Ted Kennedy, but the Business Roundtable was ideally in position to mobilize Republicans. However, we did work directly with the Democratic Speaker of the House at large to get the support we needed there. Unfortunately, the Business Roundtable withdrew from the bill before it got to the House.

I know that the bill that eventually passed was essentially the version that we had worked out in that working group, supported by the Republican staffer who had worked on it in the Senate.  But, by this time, the Republican President had jumped in to block the deal that we had worked out. The President’s chief lawyer called my CEO in New York and told him to back opp. I recall the Speaker of the House continued to urge us to stay in. But the Democratic chairman of the House committee that controlled the future of the telephone business disagreed with the Speaker and argued that AT&T needed to stay out of the civil rights issue. So we encountered resistance from both sides, Democrats and Republicans. My CEO called the political world a “three-ring circus” and pulled the company (and the Business Roundtable) out of the deal.

Today, these same big businesses are being pressured by Trump to drop the very basis of equal rights that this country stands for.  But I recall that the Business Roundtable did adopt a policy more recently that calls for its members to support multiple interests besides the interest of investors. Where would Jessie Jackson and his National Rainbow Coalition be now? Well, this is 35 years later, and Jessie Jackson is no longer with us.

His memorial service in Chicago in early March of 2026 was an informative display of his origins in the Black culture of America. Al Sharpton was the most memorable of Black speakers, but there were several others, many of them ministers.  And the singers, both famous individuals and groups, were heard throughout the ceremony.  But the event also reinforcing his commitment to the political world – former President Obama most of all spoke to a receptive crowd but also former Presidents Clinton and Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. And speakers from his Rainbow Coalition also including the President of Colombia in Spanish and an unusually articulate Arab American who spoke about his outreach to people around the world.  Jackson remained active in American and international politics until the illness that was originally considered in 2017 to be cerebral palsy but subsequently as something worse by the time he died in 2026.

Jimmy Carter

I was a White House Fellow when Jimmy Carter was President in 1979 and 1980. Although I know that Jessie Jackson supported Jimmy Carter, I think that Carter was more of a centrist than Jackson. Carter did not even support the Democratic candidate for President, George McGovern, in 1972; he even aligned with George Wallace on a number of issues while he was governor. Jessie Jackson reportedly said that Carter couldn’t win in Georgia without having support from racists. I realize that sometimes one has to relate to different people in different ways, while also staying true to yourself.  In my case, unlike Jimmy Carter, it meant that my political career in North Carolina was limited.  I ran for the state senate three times, in 1974, 1976 and 1978.  Carter, on the other hand, was a state senator from 1962 but then went on to become Governor of Georgia in 1966 and 1970 and then President of the U.S. in 1976.

I had moved to North Carolina in 1966.  My first presidential campaign was in 1968 and of course I voted for Hubert Humphrey. Wallace ran as a third party candidate that year, capturing the votes of many Southern Democrats, including in the district where I voted.  I don’t who Carter voter for that year, but I suspect it wasn’t for Humphrey.  And unlike Carter, I then voted for McGovern in 1972 when the district meant for Nixon. The whole South went with the Republican that year, but so did the rest of the country except Massachusetts (1972).

Of course, I voted for Carter in 1976. Carter’s ability to win the Presidential election that year  largely depended on his getting the Southern vote back to the Democrats, especially since the whole West went Republican.  But then he lost it in 1980, carrying only his state in the South. Perhaps it was because Carter no longer worked on getting the racist vote in the South in 1980.  Suffice it to say that the southern racist vote has gone to Republican presidential candidates ever since then. So Carter’s wining in 1976 was an aberration.

It is true, of course, that Bill Clinton was also a Southern Democratic governor before being elected as a Democratic presidential candidate in 1992 and 1996. And he did carry a few Southern states, including his home state of Arkansas, but not the central core of the South that includes North Carolina.  Georgia did vote for Clinton in 1992 but not in 1996.  And Clinton actually rejected Carter, perhaps because of their different wining strategies. It seems that he even dismissed Carter as a renegade.

In any case, that core of the South remains as loyal now to Republicans as it was to the Democrats after the Civil War – and into the 1960s and 1970s.  The shift to Republicans started at the presidential level but extends from there to state and local politics, too. So my three terms in the NC state senate were facilitated by a combination of old and new Democrats in the 1970s that no longer exists today.

My district is now overwhelmingly Republican – except for the Blacks who were part of the new Democratic party but are now in a separately voting unit with other Blacks.  But that also includes another change, since I was elected in a multi-member district that included Blacks who supported me, even though I was White.  Now, all districts are single-member districts. And now, the Senate – and House – have become as solidly Republican as they had been solidly Democratic back when I served in the Senate. But it also means that the racist core of Southern old Democrats has become part of the Republican party, while Blacks have elected Black Democratic candidates.

I did work for Carter’s campaign in 1980 and supported Walter Mondale in 1984.  But I was picked as a White House Fellow in 1979.  I was still living in North Carolina, but I saw the fellowship as an opportunity to move on in my career. I chose a fellowship position that would give me new possibilities.  I was offered a position with the CIA, but I had already turned them down at Oberlin. I was also offered a position with the organisation managing the domestic version of the Peace Corp but decided it was too much life what I had been doing.

Of course, I had wanted a position with the Foreign Service but was beaten by a Catholic priest in my class, with solid East European connections or at the White House itself but was beaten there by a Hispanic American in my class, with a business background. So I chose to go with the head of the public service to learn more about employment and labor relations in a large public institution. The experience helped me to get both the job at AT&T and the job later with the ILO. When I took this position, Carter’s major accomplishment in public employment had already passed in the Congress, but I was involved with several aspects of implementing the new law. It is a law that the current administration has eliminated big time.

But it seems that the current administration is trying to eliminate almost all of what Carter accomplished.  The Panama Canal Treaty, for example, and the arms control treaty with Russia, have been opposed by Trump. Also the various climate treaties that even Nixon supported. He has even removed the solar panels that Carter put up on the White House roof. Carter also created the Education department that Trump has abolished and the Energy department that he has completely changed. One could go one and one.

One cannot ignore the Middle East, of correct.  The disaster of the hostage crises, in my perception, was what ended Carter’s chances for a second term, above and beyond his reliance on old Southern democrats when he himself was not a racist. The internal polls that I saw during the weekend before the 1980 election showed him winning until the very end. Others put the blame on other factors, such as the gas crisis or inflation, but I am convinced that he would have won if he had resolved the hostage crisis before the election. Of course, there is the argument that Iran would never have agreed to negotiate with Carter.  So perhaps it wasn’t even an option in the first place.

But then there is the agreement that Carter reached with Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel at Camp David. I suppose that even that was complicated by the refusal of Israel to accept a Palestinian state. But our class has benefit both from a trip to Egypt and Israel during our fellowship year and a trip to the Panama Canal some yeas later when one of our classmates was the American Ambassador there.  We are supportive of both deals.

Anyway, my memories of Jimmy Carter are mostly associated with the fellowship year during his term as President.  But there are also some memories from his time after that. He is the president with the longest time alive after his presidency.  He spent that time doing several different things, including resolving conflicts around the world, fighting unusual diseases in Africa, and building homes in poor neighborhoods in the US and elsewhere.  He and his wife formed the Carter Center in Atlanta and were active with Habitat for Humanity, where he was able to use his skills building cabinets and such. I have only been to the Center twice and was never participated in any of his activities there or at his church in Plains, Georgia. But I continue to be impressed by his accomplishments for which he received the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.

Carter died on December 29, 2024, following nearly two years in hospice care. Memorial services and state funerals were held in Atlanta from January 4 to 7, then in Washington DC from January 7 to 9, and culminating with a service at his home church and a private burial in his hometown of Plains. The biggest event was the state funeral at the Washington National Cathedral on January 9. It was also televised. My son PJ and his wife Sarah went to this funeral. I watched the whole event at home in France but missed them. It was a large crowd.

I do remember some highlights of the event. In addition to various children and grandchildren of Carter, I was impressed with the other individuals who were on the program. I was especially struck by the appearance of Andrew Young who spoke both as a religious leader and as a personal friend. Both Walter Mondale and Gerald Ford were represented by sons, plus one Carter’s presidential administer rations Stuart E. Eizenstat. And of course President Biden delivered the official eulogy.

Rosalynn Carter

Jimmy Carter’s wife Rosalynn passed away on November 19, 2023. Her time in hospice care was only 2 days, but she died while Jimmy was still in his own longer period in hospice care. She died 13 months before him but 7 months after he had been so limited. He was in a hospital bed to attend her funeral in Atlanta, at the Glenn Methodism Church at Emory University. He did not speak but was well represented by a son and a grandson. Of course, it was a major event that all the living first ladies attended, including two of their husbands, Joe Biden and Bill Clinton. The two presidents were greeted by her grandson as the “lovely husbands” of Hillary Clinton and Jill Biden.

Jimmy Carter related to Rosalynn as his equal. In Georgia in that time, this was probably a big deal. Unlike other first ladies, she regularly attended cabinet meetings and officially represented him in meetings with foreign and domestic leaders. This including her being described as his envoy to Latin America in 1977.  My impression is that she was the more political one of the two, but that is my own impression.

Her biography singles out two areas where she is identified in her own right. One of these is her work in mental health. She took this on when she was the first lady of Georgia, and it continued to be her main activity as first lady in Washington.  But I see this as her own activity and not as part of her joining up with her husband. He did establish the President’s Commission on Mental Health in February 1977, with Rosalynn named as active honorary chair. Later that year, she addressed the World Federation for Mental Health.

The following year, she praised Betty Ford for admitting her addiction to medication and alcohol. and in 1979, she testified before a Senate committee on behalf of the mental health bill that Carter signed into law in October 1980. At the signing ceremony, Senator Kennedy described the bill as a “monument” to the commitment and concern of the First Lady.

The issue continued to receive her attention after their years in the White House. She was especially active with facilitating gatherings on the subject at the Carter Center in Atlanta.  She founded and chaired the Carter Center Mental Health Task Force and the Rosalynn Carter Symposium on Mental Health Policy. And she chaired the International Women Leaders for Mental Health. She also supported a Fellows for Mental Health Journalism. And she worked with David Wellstone to pass the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equality Law of 2009 in honor of his father and Pete Domenici.

Related to her work on mental health, she founded the Institute for Caregivers in 1993.  Although it was stimulated be her concern about caring for people with mental health problems, she was also aware of the overall problem of elevating the quality of  It caregivers generally.

The second area where she is also listed as being active is in women’s rights and particularly in the effort to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. This is something that I myself did not know before looking for her record on the Internet. Well, I knew about the ERA generally, but my recent research shows a much more impressive picture.  Of course, the ERA had a rather mixed history.

In March 1977, early in their first year in the White House, she went to the Houston conference celebrating International Women’s Year to support the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) with Lady Bird Johnson and Bette Ford. Later that same year in November, the three of them were speakers at the National Women’s Conference in New York, along with women’s fights leaders Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem and Congresswoman Barbara Jordan.  It seams to me that I was at that conference myself. And I do remember participating with my sister in the 1978 march for the ERA in Washington, DC on my birthday, July 9. But oddly enough, there is no mention of any first ladies at that march.

The Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution was initial pass in 1972 with a deadline of seven years for the States to ratify it after it passed the Congress. This meant 1979. Carter endorsed the Justice Department’s proposal to extend the timeline by three years to 1982.  In the 1980 campaign, meanwhile, the Carters were challenged by Kennedy before running a losing campaign against Reagan. And, also meanwhile, 1980 was the first time since the original adoption of the women’s rights convention in 1921 that the Republican Convention dropped its support of the ERA.

Interesting, the Democrats didn’t support the ERA until 1960, and event then it conflicted with their support for the labor movements. The AFL-CIO didn’t support the ERA until 1973. President Kennedy set up a women’s rights body chaired by Elinor Roosevelt who opposed the ERA. It wasn’t until 1972 that it based the House and Senate with support from both parties, although the anti-ERA movement was gaining support from right-wing groups by then.

Rosalyn did do some other interesting things, of course. For example, she is attributed with the idea that the meeting between Egypt and Israel that her husband was planning to host should be held at Camp David. And she also associated the Camp David setting as the inspiration for the Carter Center. She was also the first first lady to have her own office, which was in the east wing that the current president had torn down to make room for his ballroom – talk about contrasting views! She was also involved with the founding of the Friendship Force International, a cultural exchange program where she has the honorary chairperson until 2002. But interestingly, it was Jimmy Carter and not Rosalynn who later wrote a book entitled A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power in 2014.

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Retirement

I don’t like the word retirement, but here it is. We, Peppy and I, are retired.  I guess it refers to the fact that neither one of us is currently being paid for the work that we do. And I suppose it refers to the fact that living requires income of some sort by someone in each household.  But not everyone in a household is expected to work. Children, for example. Although there are households that have working children. Older people, too, although many older people do receive some kind of pension income, which means they are retired. And lots of households have more than one working adult.  In fact, households do need both working and non-working people to do the unpaid work of a household, unless all the housework is paid for by employing someone outside of the family.

Perhaps I am too concerned about the  issue of who gets paid for what.  There is a lot of housework and child-care that falls unevenly on women, whether they work a regular job or not. And Peppy is wonderful about dividing up the unpaid work in our household. So complaining about this is not immediately relevant.

The other problem I have about the term “retired” is that we both do or at least have done paid work after our official retirements. And furthermore, we have continued to work at HRI after we received official retirement pay. In other words, it was not an official break between paid and unpaid work. Well, our retirement plans all take this into account,  either by describing the income as “early” retirement or….My dissatisfaction, then, is merely with the permanence that the word implies.

So hear it is. We are retired whether we like the term or not. I still look at people like Kissinger who continued to be active politically until he has 100! But then, I am more aligned with the likes of Jimmie Carter who also lived to be 100 but did go into retirement long before that. Of course, he had dementia for part of that time, put he did launch an active retirement life with his skills both as a statesman and as a builder of fine cabinets and things. And he rote lots of books, both fiction and nonfiction.  I won’t ever be famous, of course, but that is beside the point.  So, on to retirement!

Years ago, when I thought about retirement, I remember thinking that I would learn how to play the organ! I also dreamed of learning to play jazz piano.  I can  still try the jazz idea, I suppose, but I no longer have an interest in the organ.  Our piano is long past its prime, but we do have a keyboard.  And we had  talked about purchasing a new piano.  But I think that is out of the question now. And I am shifting my artistic interests into painting instead of music.

Painting is becoming more and more interesting, as I noted in the beginning of this latest righting exercise.  I have enjoyed the art class and want to speak with Gain, the art teacher, about learning more about the different ways to painting. I suspect I missed an early class when this sort of thing was discussed, but it may also be because I don’t understand much of the discussions in the group.  And Peppy has also suggested that I might want to hook up with my older artist friend.

Anyway, Peppy has fond this to be a handy way to find gifts for me, which is very nice.  I have more art things that I can possibly use, but I am sure there is lots more than can build on what I have. And he has set me up with a second desk in the corner of the room we call studio B. It is also where I have put all my sewing materials, and I suppose I can also get more involved with that, especially with the idea of sewing things for Kaye and Remy.

Another artistic exercise I should develop is gardening.  I have done a lot of it in the past, but I have not ever taken it as seriously as I could. I have lots of books that I could use for better ideas, and I am becoming more aware of how some plants survive better than others in this climate.  Carol Nordquist, in the book and art clubs, gave me a nice plant the other day and said that I don’t need any guidance from her because I have such a green thumb! I almost said she was wrong. Just because I have lots of plants, as she saw when I hosted the art class, doesn’t mean I know what to do!  But I kept my mouth shut.

I do have a lot of learn to do. I had some guidance from my mother, although it was so limited in terms of what I could have learned from her. She was, after all, a farmer’s daughter, who always had a garden wherever we lived. I could have asked her lots of things but didn’t. In those days I was more interested in her political views than in her planting skills. Anyway, I do want to learn more about gardening in this area of France.

Peppy has developed his understanding of olive trees, and we collect olives from some 18 treas in our yard. We do need to learn more about how to trim them, which is a challenge for wintertime. We also have lots of unwanted treas to cut down. Our yard is not really a garden – or at least, it hadn’t been a seriously cared for garden in decades.

And then there is the writing and reading which have been adjusted to deal with my stroke. The reading is important, of course, and I do a lot of it.  But I realize that the writing should be my priority now.  Not only do I have a lot to write about, but I am finding that the writing really helps me to have better reading skills.

More on this later. And also mention Peppy’s interests as well, although I do have in mind a separate essay on him.

 

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International Women’s Day, 2026

I have 10 minutes to wright something for Internationao Womens Day on the day itself this year of 2026. I would like to include photographs from the local majors office, as I have done before, of paintings organizedby by my friend Laila. The displae is on for the whole month, and I plant to stop in to view it as I have in past years. I will have to do that later, but I hope this date will be recorded anyway.

My time has been taken up these past few days righting about the role of Rosalynn Carter, the wife of the President, in the effort to ratify the equal rights amendment to the US Convension in 1975 and 1976 and beyond.  It has been very interesting for me to research this because of my own involvement with the issue in North Carolina.

I have read a lot about the history of the ERA that has been illuminating.  The shift from its being supported by Republicans, especially in the 1950s, to Democrats in the 1960s and 1970s.  Actually, it was even opposed by Democrats before then, mainly because of the resistance of labor to support the bill. In fact, it wasn’t until Blacks became involved in supporting it that the Democrats finally came around. It had been seen as an upped class White women’s issue until then.

A keep turning was a 1973 meeting on International Women’s Day in Texas.

 

 

 

So I have been busy on women’s issues these days, not just the international women’s day as an issue itself.

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Minneapolis

Over the years, I have referred to my impressions of the difference in voting numbers between Minnesota and North Carolina as a critical factor in democratic stability.  My focus was on the principal that the greater the proportion of people who participated in elections, the more stable and established is the democracy. This may be obvious, but it may be that stability is more depends on the composition of the electorate itself. Or is it the way that different people are integrated by a common ethic, no mater how diverse their backgrounds. In today’s world, where there is a different and more diverse distributions among the types of people who vote, can we draw the same conclusion.

I come from Minneapolis and believe that it is the most democratic place I have ever liven. I am sure there are other places that are as fully participatory and democratic as Minneapolis, such as X in Washington State, for example. But my personal experiences with democracy in the States have had lower participation scores. These include Ohio, New Jersey, North Carolina, District of Columbia and Virginia. Are they less democratic as a result? I would argue that this is true. I was elected to the State Senate for three two-year terms in North Carolina. But I was also active in local politics when I lived in Ohio, New Jersey and Virginia. I have also lived in other countries that claim to be democratic – India, for one, plus several European countries – Austria, France and X. My family is American, but we have roots in X and X and have visited both. My father was born in Canada, and that makes it possible for me to choose adding Canadian citizenship.

Minnesota’s voling rate is usually the highest or second highest in all federal elections. And Minneapolis has the highest turnout of voters in local elections among cities in the US. In the latest local elections in  2025, there was a turnout rate of over 70%. So it is ironic that the federal ISE focus is on Minneapolis.

Actually, it may be one of the reasons why it is chosen. Higner turnout has been associated with Democrats and lower turnout with Republicans. Presumably this applies to both voter registration and voter turnout. The higher voter registration is not the same as higher registration of eligible voters, although the two may be related. And of course, different registration rules also influence the tumbers state by state. And it may be that current distribution of voters by party is changing at least for those in the middle if not the rich and poor. But that doesnt explain the Minneapolis numbers.

Turning to North Carolina, which is where I have the most experience wth goting patterns, there is at least one difference that needs to be mentioned.  And that is the rachial mix of the voters, marticularly the presence  of a much larger black population in North Carolina.  During the time that I lived in Minnesota, the voting popuation was almost all white. That has changed, starting in the 1970s but especialy in the 1990s.

Here is the racial distribution for the two states as well as the comparble subunites of Minneapolis and XX.

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Retirement

I don’t like the word retirement, but here it is. We , Peppy and I, are retired. I guess it refers to the fact that neither one of us is currently being paid for the work that we do. And I suppose it refers to the fact that living requires income of some sort by someone in each household.  But not everyone in a household is expected to work. Children, for example. Although there are households that have working children. Older people, too, although many older people do receive some kind of pension income. And lots of households have more than one working adult.  In fact, households do need both working and non-working people to do the unpaid work of a household, unless all the housework is paid for by employing someone outside of the family.

Perhaps I am too concerned about the  issue of who gets paid for what.  There is a lot of housework and child-care that falls unevenly on women, whether they work a regular job or not. And Peppy is wonderful about dividing up the unpaid work in our household. So complaining about this is not immediately relevant.

The other problem I have about the term “retired” is that we both do or at least have done paid work after our official retirements. And furthermore, we have continued to work at HRI after we received official retirement pay. In other words, it was not an official break between paid and unpaid work. Well, our retirement plans all take this into account,  either by describing the income as “early” retirement or….My dissatisfaction, then, is merely with the permanence that the word implies.

So hear it is. We are retired whether we like the term or not. I still look at people like Kissinger who continued to be active politically until he has 100! But then, I am more aligned with the likes of Jimmie Carter who also lived to be 100 but did go into retirement long before that. Of course, he had dementia for part of that time, put he did launch an active retirement life with his skills both as a statesman and as a builder of fine cabinets and things. And he rote lots of books, both fiction and nonfiction.  I won’t ever be famous, of course, but that is beside the point.  So, on to retirement!

Years ago, when I thought about retirement, I remember thinking that I would learn how to play the organ! I also dreamed of learning to play jazz piano.  I can  still try the jazz idea, I suppose, but I no longer have an interest in the organ.  Our piano is long past its prime, but we do have a keyboard.  And we had  talked about purchasing a new piano.  But I think that is out of the question now. And I am shifting my artistic interests into painting instead of music.

Painting is becoming more and more interesting, as I noted in the beginning of this latest righting exercise.  I have enjoyed the art class and want to speak with Gain, the art teacher, about learning more about the different ways to painting. I suspect I missed an early class when this sort of thing was discussed, but it may also be because I don’t understand much of the discussions in the group.  And Peppy has also suggested that I might want to hook up with my older artist friend.

Anyway, Peppy has fond this to be a handy way to find gifts for me, which is very nice.  I have more art things that I can possibly use, but I am sure there is lots more than can build on what I have. And he has set me up with a second desk in the corner of the room we call studio B. It is also where I have put all my sewing materials, and I suppose I can also get more involved with that, especially with the idea of sewing things for Kaye and Remy.

Another artistic exercise I should develop is gardening.  I have done a lot of it in the past, but I have not ever taken it as seriously as I could. I have lots of books that I could use for better ideas, and I am becoming more aware of how some plants survive better than others in this climate.  Carol Nordquist, in the book and art clubs, gave me a nice plant the other day and said that I don’t need any guidance from her because I have such a green thumb! I almost said she was wrong. Just because I have lots of plants, as she saw when I hosted the art class, doesn’t mean I know what to do!  But I kept my mouth shut.

I do have a lot of learn to do. I had some guidance from my mother, although it was so limited in terms of what I could have learned from her. She was, after all, a farmer’s daughter, who always had a garden wherever we lived. I could have asked her lots of things but didn’t. In those days I was more interested in her political views than in her planting skills. Anyway, I do want to learn more about gardening in this area of France.

Peppy has developed his understanding of olive trees, and we collect olives from some 18 treas in our yard. We do need to learn more about how to trim them, which is a challenge for wintertime. We also have lots of unwanted treas to cut down. Our yard is not really a garden – or at least, it hadn’t been a seriously cared for garden in decades.

And then there is the writing and reading which have been adjusted to deal with my stroke. The reading is important, of course, and I do a lot of it.  But I realize that the writing should be my priority now.  Not only do I have a lot to write about, but I am finding that the writing really helps me to have better reading skills.

More on this later. And also mention Peppy’s interests as well, although I do have in mind a separate essay on him.

 

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Living in the States

We lived together in the States for 8 years before we had the opportunity to live abroad.  Actually I have lived in the States since I was 18, and even half of my childhood before that. But I guess I’m considering this second book to focus on my married life with Peppy.  Well, since we met, which was 6 months before.  So January, 1986. I had just moved to Washington, DC from New York. And my North Carolina experiences were long past. Continue reading “Living in the States”

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Reflections

Having a stoke has transformed my life. Given that it happened when I was 80 hears old is both insignificant and significant. It is insignificant to me because it is irrelevant when it happened. I have to change my life regardless of when in my life it happens. It is insignificant to most anyone else because 80 is old. Most of life is past. For most people anyway. But it is significant to me because I have so much more to do in my life. I realize that 80 is pretty old and that extending life beyond 100 is unrealistic. In fact, for me, I would have to say that my family history would make 100 very unrealistic. But I did think, and still hope, that I have at least another 10 or even 15 years to live. And to live productively.  Even with a stroke.

Details of the event

The stroke happened on a Wednesday in August of 2024. It was Wednesday, August 21 to be exact. I was lucky that it happened in a doctors office. Not because the doctor knew what to do, but because his office manager did. I was not alert and dont remember the details. In fact, I was knocked out on the floor of the waiting room. My own recollection was that I had gotten up and moved to a sofa, but I learned later that the crew from the hospital picked me up from the floor. I was out and only remember things from a day later when I was in the hospital.

Peppy told me that he had dropped me off to park the car and only got to the doctors office after I had already been carried out by the crew. Neither the doctor nor his office manager knew which hospital the crew was taken me to.  Peppy then called a neighbor at home and Kristina, who was in England, to help calling hospitals with their better french.  Kristina is the one who learned that I had been taken to a hospital in Nice. Peppy then called the Nice hospital and spoke with the officials in the ICU unit where I had been taken.  By now it was late in the day, I was being well taken care of, and he waited until the next days visiting hours to drive the long distance from our home to the hospital.

I want to step back now to recall the days leading up to my being in the doctors office. Kristina and her family had spend a week with us in Grasse in between time in Bristol.  They left on Tuesday, 20 August. It seems to me that I had already had my fall near the pool when I had injured my hand, before they left. In any case, I had a big wound on my right hand while protecting my face in the fall.  And the fall, or whatever caused it,  came to be considered one of the possible causes of my stroke.

Anyway, back at the hospital, I was first placed into the ICL unit and had my first CT and related tests. I was there from August 22 to 28, when I was moved to the vascular ward.  I was  originally going to be released on 2 September but I apparently had another miner stroke and was not released until September 7. The medical work was excellent in both places, the best in France for strokes, I have been told. The only complaint we would have (both Peppy and I) would be that they werent good about communicatint with either one of us. I guess this can be attributed to our American expectations, which are more communicative between doctors and patients . Of course, our very limited French may also have been a factor.

Nonetheless, they did provide excellent care and explore many factors that could have caused the stroke. They considered my heart, bleeding in my brain, a non-functioning blood vessel,  my previous troubles with my legs, and even that accident with my hand.  They were also concerned  about what effects the stroke had had on me both physically and mentally. I was apparently immobile on my left side at first, but I dont remember this. What I do remember was that I had difficulty seeing things on my right side. And still do. So I went to see an eye doctor after my stay in the hospital.  She concluded that I had no problem with my eyes but that my eye side was affected by the problem in my braid. On that score, I have lots of symptoms.  My reading and righting  skills in particular are week.  Eventually, with the help of some additional tests in another hospital arranged by a heart doctor, they all concluded that it was caused by an erratic heart rhythm that has caused the bleeding in my brain.

The attention to my heart and its effect on my brain involved tests and treatments over the next couple months. There is a node in the Team Kathy WhatsApp that Peppy set up showing that consensus was reached about this on December 6. The supplementary measuring device was installed on November 12. This device was inserted by a special medical staff at the hospital in Cannes. They are connected to a monitor next to my bed that checks detailed heart movements. They can and have contacted me whenever it records any problem with my heart. This has happened only once so far, but it was for a four second delay in my heart beat in September 2025.  Pretty amazing.  But good to know about it, with confirmation from the doctors that it was not serious. But they did call me about it.

Unfortunately, there was another problem, with my legs. The medications for my brain conflicted with the medications I had been taking for my legs. For some years now I had problems with the arteries in my legs. Changing the medications contributed to the need for different treatments. I need to get more acquainted with terminology for this, but suffice it to say here that I started having pain in my legs some two months after the stroke.  I went back to the medical office where I had had my stroke to get the review of my legs, and I also meat with a new doctor specialising in legs.

This doctor was a Russian. My eye doctor and my heart doctor were from Romania, and I thought that was largely because of a historic link between the two countries. But Russia? Well, it is not like politics interacts with medicine, but it was interesting to hear him talk positively about his home country.

This Russian doctor operated on both of my legs, the left leg in December, and the right leg in January. Ralph knows the terminology for what he did, which was different on each leg. The doctor’s work was effective in getting rid of the pain, but not the dead feeling that I have, especially in my left foot. He has suggested that this will fade away but could take up to 12 months. His surgery, by the way, was in a third hospital, near the main shopping center just outside of Nice.

The medical work and support activities have all been encouraging.  I have a full range of medicines to take; a family doctor who has grown with us; specialists galore who check my heart, my head, and my legs.  A good person gives me special exercises for my legs. And a fantastic expert  works with me on my language skills, in english and in french.

Recovery is more than medicines and doctors and hospitals. And I have to note that my darling Peppino was my hero and savior. Having him come to the hospital every day was important in all three hospital stays, but especially in the first one.  We would review the mail, especially the Team Kathy inputs from family and friends and read the news. We played lots of a simple card game Go Fish and took walks up and down the hallway.  And at home, he was super, even holding the pan for me to pee and pop.  His coming up with the Team Kathy idea was especially valuable as a way for others to join in the recovery process. I have enjoyed reading through the messages more than once.

One interesting thing about these months was that we managed to enjoy time with family and friends, both in Grasse and in the States, during this time.  Becky and Scott were with us in Grasse both before and after their time in Greece between 6 and 24 October; and PJ was with us from 21 to 26 October. I think our olive harvest came after that, but it, too, went on with coordinating help from Louise and Pascal and their young family and friends. And we benefited from Charles and Yola hosting a thanksgiving dinner for us in November.  Christmas in Virginia also happened between the two leg operations, from December 17 and 31.  I was sleeping upright during that trip and had nursing services on my left leg during that time, but otherwise it went well. More on these adventures later.

Learning to live with a stroke

There is, of course, the challenge of living with a stroke, no matter how  good the recovery process might be. The medical advice was that I would lever recover 100%, and I suppose this means both physical and mental skills. The former is further hampered by the problem with my legs, of course. But I am especially bothered by the loss of my mental skills.

True, I cant drive anymore. And that means that Peppy has to drive me everywhere.  I used to like driving, but most I dont missed it.  Peppy has to take me to my recovery appointments, twice a week for my head and once a week for my body. And all the other medical appointments.  We do all our grocer and other shopping together, although  he does a lot of his shopping on the internet.  I cant even go walking by myself except in the garden or nearby. So I am not exercising as much as I used to.  I stopped sleeping upright some time ago, but I still have difficulty climbing stairs, most going down than up.

To work on my physical difficulties, I have been going to a specialist once a week. He is good at knowing what level of difficulty I can handle and has me doing a mix of leg and arm exercises with ropes, balls and pads next to a wall with a machine on it. He usually has two other people in nearby rooms and rotates among the three of us for 45 minutes.   Often, these two other people are two nuns in traditional religious garb.   Other times, there are men in shorts and skimpy tops. Once there was an Islamic woman all covered up, oddly enough like the nuns but in Islamic dress and head-gear.  Anyway, the specialist is doing a good job with improving my physical health, but I still have a dead foot.

My eyesight is another problem, although our eye doctor has confirmed that it is not because of any problem with the eyes themselves. And the only time I notice it is when we watch things on the television. I miss seeing things on the right side of the screen unless I turn my head. This can also happen when  I am reading.  I do notice that it seems to be getting less problematic, but that may just be because I have gotten used to it.

And then there is the matter of not being addle to read or write the way I used to.  My speech therapist, Marie-Alix Olivier has been wonderful.  She has been able to connect with me in ways that move beyond the formal.  First, I think she is a skilled speech therapist.  She combines reading and listening with righting, but it is more than that.  She understands about speed and texture and other aspects of speaking and communicating that I dont even know how to describe.  We  combine reading or writing with listening to the spoken word, based on a specific reading.  Often the reading is from a book of my own readings, which is a good way to connect to my writing style from before the stroke.

Another aspect of our sessions is that Marie Aliz is very attuned to me as an individual. She compliments me on my clothing, things that my new glasses make me look younger, remarks that I have a much larger vocabulary in my head than most people. On this last point, she has noted that I regularly find equivalent works to ones that I dont remember.  She comes from the part of France that used to be part of Germany and asserts that she knows German better than English.  She and I have worked on my France as well as my English, of course, and not my German (or my Spanish).  But her background somehow connects with mine, at least on the fact that both of us have Protestant connections. But it is more than that.  We seem to like the same music and other cultural interests.

On my own, I do a lot of reading. I check my emails regularly and can read most of them. I get lots of political mail which I usually delete. Family mail is always welcome, as are notes from friends.  I receive get lots of messages from the Council on Foreign Relations, including notices of Virlual meetings. And I keep an eye out for White House Fellows messages. I also read the news from the Washington Post and the New York Times and some other sources like the Economist or The Atlantic Daily.

Reading books and other longer sources requires a combination  of reading and hearing for me to understand the content. I could, of course, just listen to understand the flow, but the combination works well for me to improve my reading skills. I read books for the local book club and for my WHF class.  I occasionally read articles in Foreign Affairs.

As for my writing, I have two different problems. First, my hand righting is slow and messy. I can’t even right on a strait line. And second, my typing skills are even worse.  I dont remember how to spell words, and I don’t even remember basic computer skills. I know there are ways for me to write with similar help as with my reading, but I have to get better with the basics of righting on a computer first. So I am righting this essay on a computer, my first serious effort to right since my accident. It is very slow, but I have to start somewhere.

Suffice it to say that I have made good progress on my English with Marie-Alix, and I am very pleased with that. I feel that my progress in French is not so good. It isn’t her fault, but we have not found a good path for my French. I guess I was never as knowledgeable in French as I had thought, and certainly not fluent. So my sense of learning French is weak. And my pre-stroke plan to become fluent in Spanish is out of the question now. But I also think that I need to concentrate on English for now.

What else has changed because of the stroke? Most importantly it has  affected my husband and our relationship.  I would say that it has strengthened our marriage, but it has certainly also affected Peppy personally. He has been very attentive to my welfare, and concerned about our future. At the beginning of this section, I noted that he had to drive me everywhere, but he has also been concerned about leaving me alone. He does more of the cooking than before, although this is only a matter of degree.  He monitors my medications and makes suffer I talk them. He orders my books. He steps in to fix my numerous computer mistakes. He even helps me puts my difficult shoes on.

Peppy even came with me to my English class in Peymenade to help me with the class. We eventually decided that it was unrealistic for me to teach the class, even with Peppy’s help.  But we met the class a number of times, in October and then again in January before deciding to wait until the next year.  And now, at the beginning of the next year, I realize that I probably have to give it up entirely. Well, I can wait another hear to decide, as long as the students and the organization are willing.  I still have trouble with reading documents without hearing them.  But I have made good progress and might be good enough in a year’s time.

I have one final thing to say about how my life has changed because of the stroke.  I joined an are club. Would I have joined it anyway? Maybe so, although I would have been less optimistic. It is an outgrowth of the book club I jointed last year – that I helped to organize last year. The book club has evolved into a much more English group than it was at first. And that is a separate problem. But the expansion of the book club included a person who is also an artist, an artist who likes to teach. The art club is simply a sub-seat of book club members. I joined it in January after I had had my second leg surgery. I recall that Peppy really encouraged me to join the group, and so I did.

The experience has been an eye opener for me. I do not consider me to be an artist. At least not my pre-stroke self. And I still have reservations about my artistic abilities. But I am intrigued by discovering how I approach art differently now. The art teacher seems to think that my art has a contemporary style to it. I personally think it is terrible.  And all the other students are more precise in what they draw. But OK. Peppy seems to like it. And he has enjoyed giving me lots of artistic tools to play with. So I see it has a new post-stroke experience. I’ll even include some of it in this exercise.

 Aspects of life and family in general.

I am still in a reading group.  I have other groups to connect with on the internet, including my While House Fellows class and the Council on Foreign Relations. I’ve renewed contact with my graduate school, the School of International Service at American University, and I do intent to do more with the French group that organizes international conferences in Paris. I even toyed with the idea of connecting with the local university department involved in foreign relations.   I am still interested in Democratic groups, both the local group and various groups in the States, especially involving Virginia.  Peppy and I have become supporters of the area’s Pay de Grasse Tourisne group,, and I might even join some other groups here, such as the American club. 

I am slower with household and gardening activities, but that is more because of my age than my stroke. I maybe do like our living arrangement more than before. Accepting it as the way to enjoy what we have together.  Life with Peppy is wonderful. He has his photography, his music, his excellent cooking skills, his home improvement skills, and so much more.  We have a wonderful family to enjoy from afar. And another trip to the States at Christmastime. 

I don’t like the word retirement, but here it is. We , Peppy and I, are retired. I guess it refers to the fact that neither one of us is currently being paid for the work that we do. And I suppose it refers to the fact that living requires income of some sort by someone in each household.  But not everyone in a household is expected to work. Children, for example. Although there are households that have working children. Older people, too, although many older people do receive some kind of pension income. And lots of households have more than one working adult.  In fact, households do need both working and non-working people to do the unpaid work of a household, unless all the housework is paid for by employing someone outside of the family.

Perhaps I am too concerned about the  issue of who gets paid for what.  There is a lot of housework and child-care that falls unevenly on women, whether they work a regular job or not. And Peppy is wonderful about dividing up the unpaid work in our household. So complaining about this is not immediately relevant.

The other problem I have about the term “retired” is that we both do or at least have done paid work after our official retirements. And furthermore, we have continued to work at HRI after we received official retirement pay. In other words, it was not an official break between paid and unpaid work. Well, our retirement plans all take this into account,  either by describing the income as “early” retirement or….My dissatisfaction, then, is merely with the permanence that the word implies.

So hear it is. We are retired whether we like the term or not. I still look at people like Kissinger who continued to be active politically until he has 100! But then, I am more aligned with the likes of Jimmie Carter who also lived to be 100 but did go into retirement long before that. Of course, he had dementia for part of that time, put he did launch an active retirement life with his skills both as a statesman and as a builder of fine cabinets and things. And he rote lots of books, both fiction and nonfiction.  I won’t ever be famous, of course, but that is beside the point.  So, on to retirement!

Years ago, when I thought about retirement, I remember thinking that I would learn how to play the organ! I also dreamed of learning to play jazz piano.  I can  still try the jazz idea, I suppose, but I no longer have an interest in the organ.  Our piano is long past its prime, but we do have a keyboard.  And we had  talked about purchasing a new piano.  But I think that is out of the question now. And I am shifting my artistic interests into painting instead of music.

Painting is becoming more and more interesting, as I noted in the beginning of this latest righting exercise.  I have enjoyed the art class and want to speak with Gain, the art teacher, about learning more about the different ways to painting. I suspect I missed an early class when this sort of thing was discussed, but it may also be because I don’t understand much of the discussions in the group.  And Peppy has also suggested that I might want to hook up with my older artist friend.

Anyway, Peppy has fond this to be a handy way to find gifts for me, which is very nice.  I have more art things that I can possibly use, but I am sure there is lots more than can build on what I have. And he has set me up with a second desk in the corner of the room we call studio B. It is also where I have put all my sewing materials, and I suppose I can also get more involved with that, especially with the idea of sewing things for Kaye and Remy.

Another artistic exercise I should develop is gardening.  I have done a lot of it in the past, but I have not ever taken it as seriously as I could. I have lots of books that I could use for better ideas, and I am becoming more aware of how some plants survive better than others in this climate.  Carol Nordquist, in the book and art clubs, gave me a nice plant the other day and said that I don’t need any guidance from her because I have such a green thumb! I almost said she was wrong. Just because I have lots of plants, as she saw when I hosted the art class, doesn’t mean I know what to do!  But I kept my mouth shut.

I do have a lot of learn to do. I had some guidance from my mother, although it was so limited in terms of what I could have learned from her. She was, after all, a farmer’s daughter, who always had a garden wherever we lived. I could have asked her lots of things but didn’t. In those days I was more interested in her political views than in her planting skills. Anyway, I do want to learn more about gardening in this area of France.

Peppy has developed his understanding of olive trees, and we collect olives from some 18 treas in our yard. We do need to learn more about how to trim them, which is a challenge for wintertime. We also have lots of unwanted treas to cut down. Our yard is not really a garden – or at least, it hadn’t been a seriously cared for garden in decades.

And then there is the writing and reading which have been adjusted to deal with my stroke. The reading is important, of course, and I do a lot of it.  But I realize that the writing should be my priority now.  Not only do I have a lot to write about, but I am finding that the writing really helps me to have better reading skills.

More on this later. And also mention Peppy’s interests as well, although I do have in mind a separate essay on him.

 

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David Nabarro

I am awestruck by how similar my view of the world is with that of David Nabarro, a dear friend and colleague who passed away on July 25. This isn’t the first of my friends to die at a younger age than me, but he is the first of my friends who was also a colleague. I suppose I should describe him as a boss, since he was in charge of the organisation for which I worked to advance this particular view of the world. True, in this organisation, he advocated it for a particular cause, the cause of ending child hunger and starvation. But the many people who have written about him now describe this same world view in this work throughout his life, the more I realise that it was this view of the world that drove him. As a teacher, as a leader of efforts to end various diseases, as a key advocate on health issues in the UN, as the head of his own organisation to train others, he was always advocating for the involvement of everyone.

I now realise that he pursued this cause in a way that had far more impact on the world than my more general advocacy of the same philosophy. It was an honour to join with him in the specific approach of child hunger. And I see that he did move to broaden his dedication to the cause by connecting world hunger with climate change.  Perhaps it is the more effective way to advocate an inclusive strategy. It is remarkable that someone trained as a physician would be so knowledgeable about the intricacies of human interactions. What a delight it was to know him and to appreciate his leadership in bringing people together, not only between different parts of the world but also in the different ways that people can help each other by working together.

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Personalized Impressions of Indian-Americans in American Politics and Culture

The phenomenal upsurge of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris in July and August is inspirational for me to witness – and support. She brings a multi-ethnic background to her Presidential candidacy that is unique – and illustrative of how significantly the American population has become so diverse.  While it is obvious that an over-emphasis on ethnic identities could also operate negatively, I am personally impressed with how immigration patterns of the past fifty years have become so well integrated into the American politic.  And for me, it is how Indian Americans, in particular, have emerged as a significant presence in the American political world that has caught my eye.

Continue reading “Personalized Impressions of Indian-Americans in American Politics and Culture”

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Updating the Ste Anne Campaign Poster Battles

Monitoring the campaign poster saga a short distance from Villa Ndio has been an opportunity for me to appreciate the push and pull between right and left extremes in French politics from a fairly disinterested perspective. From time to time, I pass by one of the public signboards that are available for posting various announcements. This one is quite remarkable for its visibility from the main (and only) road between Peymeinade and Grasse. Above the signboard, it says “Grasse – Libre à vous afficher” (meaning it’s supposedly available for anyone to post something).   But it is clearly dominated by rival political factions in the immediate vicinity of the signboard – a small enclave known as “Ste Anne”. Continue reading “Updating the Ste Anne Campaign Poster Battles”