THE PAGE TURNS

January 20, 2026January 20, 2026

Vision

1963 March on Washington speaker podium. Photo by Warren Leffler.

There was anxiety in Washington the day before the 1963 March on Washington. They were so worried, they closed the liquor stores. The opening line of the New York Times article spoke rather fearfully of the “vanguard” of tens of thousands of people, who had begun arriving on the roads and filling the bus and train stations. The largest marches up until that time had been only around 30-40,000 people, and it was pretty clear this would be bigger. Organizers hoped for 100,000. Martin Luther King was last on a long list of speakers.

The concern was unfounded. There was no violence, no major counter-protest (a small group of Nazis was quickly dispatched), little untoward behavior by police or protesters. People showed up en masse but marched as planned, gathered as planned, and patiently listened to speakers as planned. Their patience was rewarded: it was the largest protest march on Washington in history at the time, estimated at 250-300,000. And they heard one of the greatest orations ever delivered.

The Gathering

There had been marches to Washington before, protesting wages, unemployment, and civil rights. Five thousand walked in D.C. at the 1922 “Silent March” on Washington to urge passage of the Dyer anti-lynching bill. But few years later in 1925, the KKK brought 30,000 racists into Washington, one of the largest marches of its time. People came to Washington to protest multiple times during the Great Depression, looking for help and answers.

During the FDR administration, the idea of a march by Blacks to protest discrimination in jobs and the military was advanced repeatedly among leaders of civil rights organization. At the time, marches often helped to pressure Congress, but leaders weren’t sure that the “Court and Congress” strategy was all that effective for Blacks. Plessy vs. Ferguson, the Supreme Court decreeing “separate but equal” facilities were acceptable was only a few decades old in 1933.

The organizers of the 1963 march began planning in December 1961, after Kennedy was elected but in no hurry to champion civil rights. The courts had outlawed some types of segregation in the 1950s, but armed guards still had to accompany children to school. Mass marches and nonviolent demonstrations across many places had been effective, but organizers sensed it was a time to push for more. Kennedy and many in his party supported civil rights in concept, but he urged the organizers not to march. Civil rights was on the list, but low priority. He was working on a bill, people should be patient. Civil rights always are a “distraction” to those who don’t need it.

December 22, 2025December 27, 2025

Festivals of Lights

The Kajmeister backyard has its own small but cheery arrangements.

Imagine you are a tiny speck attached to a giant rotating space ship, not spinning too fast for you to fall off, but enough so that you notice that things change in your environment. Sometimes, there is a nearby furnace with plenty of light and heat but you can’t get close to it all the time because of the spinning, so you have to plan your energy use carefully. Also, some time ago, way before you were born, the space ship was hit by a big rock, so hard that it tilted sideways, so now the whole thing is tilted and wobbly. Although it’s so big and you’re so small, you don’t really notice. EXCEPT! that when you’re on the side tilted toward the orb, it’s plenty warm but when you’re on the side tilted and wobbling away, it’s not always warm enough. You kind of count the hours until you start tilting toward the orb again.

That’s the Solstice. Happy Solstice.

We carbon-based lifeforms like our solar radiation, that light and warmth that’s much better when we’re tilted TOWARD and not away. We’ve been tilting away, but now, starting yesterday we started TOWARD again. Our ancestors liked this so much that culture after culture dragged giant stones up mountains, across logs, along ramps, just to put together towers big enough so that everybody knew when the space ship would start spinning toward the orb again.

November 20, 2025November 21, 2025

Not Going Gentle (Part II): Irene Triplett

Irene in her late 80s; she loved her jewelry. She is always pictured wearing that infinity sign and chain, which seems so appropriate. Photo posted on Reddit.

The teachers beat her at school, for not knowing the answers to questions or how to read or write. Other kids beat her and called her father “traitor,” 70 years after the war had ended. Her mother beat her, perhaps finding her lazy or insufficiently attentive. Her father shot guns at the trees (and the neighbors) and probably beat her for any reason he could think of.

Every story about Irene Triplett centers on the “amazing” fact that she received a Civil War pension, based on her father’s service, until she died in 2020. None focus on the fact that as a disabled child, addicted to tobacco, harassed and beaten, she lived. And lived. And lived.

Yesterday, I wrote about her father Mose, who served on both sides during the Civil War and married his second wife when he was nearly 80. Today, I want to write about his daughter Irene and her mother Lydia, who survived Mose as well as some of the harshest conditions imaginable. They fought their own battles, for a very long time.