I am sitting in a classroom waiting for my first class of the day as I type
this, listening to Chassol's *Big Sun* yet again. Lately my local NPR station
has been presenting some of its historical "StoryCorps" interviews, so I have
heard a couple of these on my car radio before class in the morning, and they
have been fairly tearjerking. There was an interview with Juan Romero, the man
who held Robert F. Kennedy as he lay dying. Romero was a bellhop at the hotel
where Kennedy had been staying, and recalled how Kennedy made a remarkable &
congenial effort to aquaint himself with Romero and other members of the hotel
staff, how all he could think to do when Kennedy was shot while shaking Romero's
hand was to keep his head off the cold floor and give him the rosary beads he
kept in his pocket. And there was an interview with Melvin Pender, who was
ordered by the U.S. military to leave Vietnam, where one of the conscripts for
whom he was responsible had just died in combat, to compete in the 1968 Olympic
Games in Mexico City, where his roommate was John Carlos, a track athlete who
famously delivered a Black Power salute from the podium as he was awarded a
bronze medal. Pender and other athletes sent by the military were extensively
warned not to participate in any such demonstration under threat of demotion,
which would have meant Pender would not be able to return to the platoon he had
promised to take care of. Pender recalled that after that eventful medal
ceremony, Carlos, on the verge of tears, told him "I did what I had to do," &
Pender told him he was proud of Carlos.

I have been looking to history, as many of us have, to answer a pertinent
question: What is there for us to do, when we barely have control over our own
individual lives? How do we stand up to injustice when we are only footsoldiers
in the dominant social order, which has co-opted the formalities of democracy to
lend authority to our marching orders? More and more, I suspect the answer will
often lie outside the obviously or overtly political, & definitely outside
traditional partisan lines. I am thinking, for example, of mutual aid, and also
of anti-pipeline activism, which is thoroughly opposed by of the two dominant
U.S. political parties and largely disowned by the other. I am thinking of local
public libraries offering Spanish-language information on immigration law to
patrons, and of the U.S. and French farmers who have been indicted by authorities
for providing water, food, & temporary shelter to migrants in border regions.

But then, for me all of this is theoretical, because I spend essentially all my
time trying to bring myself & my family into a more stable financial situation,
through work & school. But I'd hope that if I had to do something in the city
I'd at least be capable of videorecording a police officer who is moving to
arrest someone, should that occur in front of me, but then there is the question
of my everyday anxiety. Am I going to let that get the better of me?

* * *

I have reached what I think is the busiest point in my academic career since I
came back to university to study computer science. As I've mentioned, this is my
first semster studying CS full-time, and I'm trying to determine how much more
simultaneous coursework I can handle before I have to step back and make some
difficult decisions. I think I can sustain this level, at least, for a little
while. There's some medical forms I need to submit that I wasn't aware of; I
will not be allowed to register for fall courses until I have submitted
immunization records, and I am trying to determine whether this hold will remain
in place until I also submit paperwork from a physical exam. I hope this is not
the case, because I have not had a physical exam recently enough and the
earliest one I could schedule is after course registration opens. I can't keep
going to my current GP for insurance reasons, so I have scheduled a physical at
a comprehensive LGBT health clinic in Boston. I'm excited because I know it's a
very good medical practice, but I'm also a little anxious because getting into
Boston is difficult; either I have to carefully time a trip by public transit
which will take a couple hours each way and involve several transit systems, or
I have to find somewhere to park my car, either at transit stations whose
parking lots tend to fill up, or at my destination, where I have to hope a
metered spot is open or wind up paying a couple hours' wages to park in a
garage.