Chronicles in Ordinary Time

Same title above, different texts

Star Trek first aired in 1966. Three years before, in Great Britain, Doctor Who began.

For those who are keeping track, there are several iterations of Star Trek and the Enterprise. Doctor Who chose a different path. When the actor playing the Doctor had to retire from the television show for health reasons, the producers and the directors had a brilliant idea. The Doctor ‘regenerates’ when the Doctor needs to change. The current #14th Doctor [Disney] is the same character, still flying in his TARDIS, with Companion[s]. The Doctor is over a thousand years old and has many changes of face and behavior. He retains his memories, but each regeneration brings changes in personality. The 13^th Doctor was female. The 14^th Doctor has brown skin. In an episode of the 13^th Doctor, she meets another female Doctor, with brown skin.

The point? I have some financial situations to deal with, and I am stressed. Doctor Who is a frequent rest-from-stress-stop for me. During the 50^th Anniversary Special, the War Doctor is introduced. The destroyer of his home world, and those attacking his home world. The man who did not act as a Doctor, the one who acted as a destroyer. The one who found redemption…We all need redemption. If you, the reader, believe that you do not need Redemption, that’s part of the problem in the world today.

I could write more about The Man Who Would Be King; there are better writers doing that, every day…

“For months, aides to Mr. Trump had worked to engineer a new system to deport immigrants rapidly to Central and South America, with little to no oversight from the courts. The strategy hinged on using an 18th-century wartime law and treating the migrants like citizens of a country at war with the United States.
But the application of the rarely used Alien Enemies Act appeared to be haphazard, pulling in migrants whose relatives insisted they were not gang members. Government officials hurried to assemble documents detailing who was sent to the prison and justify the deportations in court. The process was so messy that eight women were among those flown to be incarcerated in the Salvadoran prison, an all-male facility, and had to be swiftly returned.“
Opinion | Trump’s Cabinet Members: A Rorschach Test for America – The New York Times

I entered Adulthood during the Civil Rights era. Black people attacked by White [pink—I’m an illustrator] people. Every Day. Ruby Bridges integrated an elementary school—resulting in some of the most disturbing photos I’ve seen. White Adults screaming threats at a six-year-old child, protected by four Officers.

We currently have a president who daily sends officers to deport guys/women with Tattoos to South American countries without due process. He does not care if he’s breaking laws. No one stops him. During his campaign for President, he promised Retribution. People could not imagine what Retribution would mean. A large number of the Members of Congress campaigned for him. Voters voted for him, even after his most despicable statements.

A brown-skinned woman, the Vice President, lost the election not by a mandate, but by the Electoral College. By the population of one large city in America.

Nixon was an amateur. Nixon was forced to resign.

Ruby Bridges is two years younger than I am.

She simply wanted to go to a better school, where she wouldn’t be accosted on her way to school. While she ‘integrated’ a White school, she had almost no contact with the students already at the school. Ruby, and her White teacher spent all of their time in the one classroom, and she was not permitted to interact with the White students. He teacher balanced the need to keep the room cooler by opening the windows with the abusive language from the adults outside the school. She traveled to and from school by US Marshals.

I started watching West Wing again.

I stopped when the Orange Idiot became president the first time around. The comparison became too painful.

Now, the Idiot-no-longer-Orange isn’t even trying to be anything more than a Convicted Felon.

The Peace Corps (J.F.K.’s Bold Legacy), 1966.

Story illustration for Look, June 14, 1966. Rockwell repeated the simple and powerful style used in Freedom of Worship to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Corps. During his 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy proposed the idea of a volunteer organization of trained people who would be sent to developing nations in Africa and Asia to assist villagers in educational and agricultural projects. In 1961, the program, which Kennedy hoped would promote understanding between nations, was officially instated.

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