Keep Calm and Carry On
Oct. 23rd, 2014 08:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraBlue dawn; blustery day. There’s a partial eclipse of the sun today in Scorpio, the sign of sex, death, and probate! Venus is also conjunct the sun – sistuhs! A good time to practice multiple orgasm.
I continue in my meh mood. Probably just lack of exercise, but it translates psychically into low self-esteem and the general conviction that life is not worth living. I suppose I should drag my sorry ass to the gym.
Last night, I went to watch long-time Ken Burns collaborator Geoffrey Ward speak at the Roosevelt Library. Pretty interesting. Burns as much as anyone has managed to kindle a renaissance in American history by positioning what happened to all those dead people as narrative rather than as a musty collection of dates and facts. Pert-y revolutionary stuff. Imagine if the past was actually interesting enough so that you could learn from it! Burns has.
Ward had polio as a kid and therefore identifies with FDR in a big way. I hadn’t realized the full extent of FDR’s disability before I watched that documentary, but FDR was so disabled that when you propped him in the back of a car and he fell over, he would remain there on his back like an insect, ineffectually flapping his arms. Reportedly, he remained cheerful throughout, even cracking jokes. Keep calm and carry on. That is pretty admirable, in my eyes.
Ironically, even though American culture is far more receptive to disability and handicaps on a whole, there is no way that someone as severely disabled as FDR was could get elected today. The 24/7 media circus would hound him mercilessly in order to get those cockroach-on-its-back-type photos. The Daily Mail would publish them, and people would just not vote for him.
I continue in my meh mood. Probably just lack of exercise, but it translates psychically into low self-esteem and the general conviction that life is not worth living. I suppose I should drag my sorry ass to the gym.
Last night, I went to watch long-time Ken Burns collaborator Geoffrey Ward speak at the Roosevelt Library. Pretty interesting. Burns as much as anyone has managed to kindle a renaissance in American history by positioning what happened to all those dead people as narrative rather than as a musty collection of dates and facts. Pert-y revolutionary stuff. Imagine if the past was actually interesting enough so that you could learn from it! Burns has.
Ward had polio as a kid and therefore identifies with FDR in a big way. I hadn’t realized the full extent of FDR’s disability before I watched that documentary, but FDR was so disabled that when you propped him in the back of a car and he fell over, he would remain there on his back like an insect, ineffectually flapping his arms. Reportedly, he remained cheerful throughout, even cracking jokes. Keep calm and carry on. That is pretty admirable, in my eyes.
Ironically, even though American culture is far more receptive to disability and handicaps on a whole, there is no way that someone as severely disabled as FDR was could get elected today. The 24/7 media circus would hound him mercilessly in order to get those cockroach-on-its-back-type photos. The Daily Mail would publish them, and people would just not vote for him.
