A Mixed Bag of Family Emotions

Despite my respite from writing a column/blog post/newsletter for a week, I didn’t take a break from soaking up news and views making their way into my inbox. I yearned to write, but the urgency of saying a last goodbye to my mother (d.1/26, memorial 3/23) and acting as trustee for her estate took precedence.

The emptiness of her absence was counterbalanced by the renewal of relationships among siblings and spouses, nieces and nephews, and one very special great-grandchild. We worked and lived side by side, after decades of physical and emotional separation. (The baby sister among us has applied for social security!) 

Dozens of photo albums reflective of a lifetime spent exploring the world and wondering at its magnificence brought us back into the life mom lived as a Navy wife, a fashion model, a dedicated traveler, family historian and church activist. 

Mom was also a packrat, apparently unable to throw out any piece of paper that crossed her path. We found elementary school report cards, documents (on carbon paper!) from my father’s 30 years in the Navy, and even a receipt from a 1976 satellite dish installation. 

My parent’s two car garage was the staging ground for shipping beloved possessions, mostly to grandchildren wanting to incorporate pieces of Ethan and Mary’s life into their futures. And we spent fabulous amounts of money with Jose the junk man, who hauled away truck loads of the things now without a purpose; unsuitable for donating, too voluminous for ordinary recycling, and/or worn out but never discarded. 

That’s it from me today. I’ve got some weekend reading to share and goodbyes to say.

(***Please don’t contact me with sales pitches or special offers about my parent’s estate; what’s done is done, and no amount of promises, goodwill, or financial gain will force us to relive the great sorting of our family’s past.***)

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Friday’s Other Stories of Note

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What is fascism? by Ruth Ben-Ghiat at Lucid

• The GOP politicians who now feign outrage at Trump's association with Nazis such as Nick Fuentes had no problem with his mainstreaming of extremism, perhaps because some of them are extremists themselves (Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene have appeared with Fuentes).

• It’s time to accept that the GOP, which was complicit with Trump's Jan. 6 attempted authoritarian takeover, has become a party that furthers Fascist values and practices. That means the hate crimes that have skyrocketed in America since 2016 will likely continue to expand.

• However we define Fascism, remembering that its essence is violence is more important than ever.

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Donald Trump and RFK Jr Have the Same Largest Donor Via Newsweek

• The biggest individual contributions to Donald Trump's and Robert F. Kennedy Jr's 2024 presidential Super PACs in January both came from the same longtime Republican mega-donor, according to filings.

• Timothy Mellon, heir to the Mellon banking fortune, donated $5 million to the Trump-aligned MAGA Inc. fundraising attempts in January, as well $5 million to a Super PAC supporting the Democrat-turned-independent's presidential bid the same month, Federal Election Commission (FEC) listings reveal.

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GOP Lawmaker Thinks He Exposed Busload of ‘Illegals’ … It Was the Gonzaga Basketball Team Via Rolling Stone

• On Friday, the fifth-seeded Gonzaga Bulldogs take on the top-ranked Purdue Boilermakers in the Sweet 16 round of the men’s NCAA basketball tournament in Detroit. It should be an epic showdown for a dominant pair of teams, but Michigan State Rep. Matt Maddock apparently had issues more pressing than college sports in mind when he posted an alarming tweet on Wednesday night.

• “Happening right now,” Maddock wrote. “Three busses [sic] just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?” Attached to the tweet were grainy photos of white buses at Detroit’s airport and a plane. He tagged Pete Hoekstra, a former representative for Michigan in Congress and Ambassador to the Netherlands under Donald Trump.

• Maddock’s pointed question, which has apparently been viewed 4 million times on X (formerly Twitter), is of a piece with a far-right conspiracy theories about how the Biden administration is secretly flying thousands of migrants into the country. These unfounded claims have fueled belief in the so-called “Great Replacement” theory, which holds that the population of white Americans is being overwhelmed by non-white demographics with the help of Democrats and other nefarious actors. That racist ideology has inspired mass shootings and found proponents in the likes of Elon Musk and House Speaker Mike Johnson.