Yesterday, I left the house and drove my car for the first time since I tested positive for COVID. Not a big trip – to Zips, the dry cleaners, which is about a half mile from my house. A number of things surprised me. First, there were other cars on the road. That meant I had to be extra careful. Some of them were coming in the opposite direction, right at me. Then, as I turned into the Zips parking lot, a battered dark red car drove out, and the driver motioned for me to stop and roll (ha, ha, I mean push?) my window down. I did, looking at him and deciding that I hoped he was going home for a shower, and looking at his car which had seen better days a very long time ago, and he surprised me by saying “I used to work for Toyota and I have the white. Want me to fill in your scratches?” My car is white – but it is very low on the scratch count, and his car…….one big scratch, it seemed to me. At any rate, I did get home without any new scratches, but – recovering as I am – I really think my reaction time wasn’t what is normally is. I’ll give it another day or two. Weird. Why aren’t I all better?

I did watch the entire House Government Oversight Committee hearing with Atty Gen Garland. Basically from 10 to about 3:30. Pretty much a waste of my time. But let me give kudos to three: (1) NY’s Gerald Nadler – who summed it all up in a terrific opening statement; (2) CO’s Ken Buck – a Conservative Republican who actually asked substantive questions, and (3) MO’s Cori Bush, who – in spite of being a Democrat – set out a list of civil rights type issues where she felt the DOJ could be doing much better. Cori Bush takes a lot of flak, because of her sometime outrageous comments, but this time I thought she was right on. Both Buck and Bush were doing something unusual in an oversight hearing; they were focusing on oversight.

Garland did a good job, I thought, of saying nothing (and appropriately so). Most of the Republicans wanted to bash him for keeping David Weiss on the Hunter Biden case (can you imagine what they would have said if he had replaced Trump appointed Weiss with someone who would need time to catch up?), and for various aspects of how the case has been handled. Garland maintained that he had not intervened in the case at all – that this is what he promised when he was first nominated to be Atty General and that this is what the Republicans then wanted from him, afraid that he would put political weight on the outcome. Why did they fear him this way? Probably because it’s what they would have done.

And of course, they were equally critical of Jack Smith, but there were really few questions on the Trump situation. They wanted to concentrate on Hunter B. Why did Weiss work out a plea agreement that a judge found ludicrous? Why did Weiss let the statute of limitations go by for Hunter’s 2014 and 2015 taxes, the years when he made so much from Burisma? Why isn’t there an ongoing investigation as to who is buying Hunter’s art work? There was a lot of preening for the TV, of course, and a lot of false claims. Garland’s answer was universal: I didn’t intervene, ask Weiss. I was surprised, by the way, that there was not one mention (that I heard) of Hunter’s laptop.

While watching, I was also doing a quick read through David Suzuki’s book “The Sacred Balance”, written in 1997. It’s a book focused on humanity’s destruction of the earth and why that’s a bad idea – chapters about cosmology, water, air, soil, sociology, ancient practices and so on. I thought it was a great book – written so you can understand what he is saying, and all-inclusive with regard to the relationship between humanity and everything else. Most of it would probably be the same if it was written today – maybe a little more about extreme climate events, about technology (especially AI), and about the dangers of war. I suggest you read it – it is not heavy and you could get through it in just a few day.

Back to St. Louis. We watched an hour long video on You Tube that I think was produced by the public TV station in St. Louis on the Jewish history of St. Louis. Easy to find.

An interesting, if not perfect, documentary, it tells of a story that started in the early 1800s, when the first Jews came to a territory when it became U.S. territory and Jews were allowed to come. The film goes through the history of religious St. Louis Jewish history – the forming of United Hebrew Congregation, first west of the Mississippi, in the 1830s, and the various breakaway congregations, B’nai El and Temple Israel, with Shaare Emeth breaking from Temple Israel. The growth of St. Louis reform Judaism all the way to the movement of the congregations to western St. Louis County, and then the establishment of Central Reform, back in the city. It also covered the start of two of the large St. Louis department stores, Stix, Baer and Fuller (the Grand Leader), formed by two young men from Ft. Smith, Arkansas, who move to St. Louis and joined Charles Stix in this venture. Interestingly, the Tilles family, as will and the Baer and Fuller families all got their mercantile starts in Ft. Smith. And then there were the Mays, who started in Leadville CO, moved first to Denver and then to St. Louis where they bought two existing stores – The Famous Store, and Barr.

If you watch the video, you will see that it ends with a discussion of Jewish involvement in the early civil rights movements in St. Louis, and concentrates on a fascinating woman, Fannie Cook, who was an author, a literature instructor at Washington University, and the wife of my grandparents’ doctor, Jerome Cook. Fannie Cook died very young, in her 50s, in 1949 and I don’t remember her. I do remember her husband, who was at my grandfather’s bedside when he passed away in 1953.

Fannie Cook wrote several novels, apparently all based on Black-Jewish or Black-White relations in St. Louis. The one that I read (some time ago – I should look at it again) was Mrs. Palmer’s Honey, which I thought was an eye opening book when I read it. Mrs. Palmer was a middle class, or upper middle class, Jewish housewife living in suburban St. Louis, and Honey was her Black maid. They were very closes to each other, but there was a big difference. Honey knew everything about Mrs. Palmer’s life, and was there to be an advisor and confidant. Mrs. Palmer knew nothing about Honey. Nothing really at all. They both had sons about the same age (I don’t remember if Mrs. Palmer knew about Honey’s son or not – probably knew of his existence). Mrs. Palmer’s son graduated form high school, enrolled at the University of Missouri and joined a Jewish fraternity. Honey’s son worked in the dining room of the fraternity.

As usual, I remember the characters and remember nothing of the plot line. Did the two boys become friends, or enemies or what? How did this impact on either Honey or Mrs. Palmer? I gotta go back and see.