THE PAGE TURNS

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.

November 19, 2025November 20, 2025

Not Going Gentle (Part I): Mose Triplett

These are tough times. But we are a tough people, we humans. I came across a story last week about how strong people can be, how they can–as Faulkner said–endure the most extraordinary things. Sometimes we’re just too ornery to quit.

It was a rabbit hole, and I am infamous for not knowing when to stop. The rabbits multiplied in their little warren so much that this became two stories. If you like human interest stories, I promise this pays off.

The starting point was two weeks ago, when I failed a little history quiz. It was the Saturday Times Flashback test, the one where you have to put historical events in order. This ought to be my wheelhouse, but there’s always that one trick question that mars my perfect score and makes me curse the quiz-writer.

For this November 8th quiz, you had to guess the approximate date for when was “the last Civil War pension check distributed”? You had hints–it was either before or after 1957 and before or after 1823. I thought I had this one for sure! Definitely before 1957 but after 1823. A man was in the Civil War, let’s say as young as age 15, then his child maybe was born as late as 1880 and died in… NOPE! Not even close. She was born in 1930 and died in 2020. WTF?!? Yes, WTF indeed.

That was just the start of this intriguing story about the father Mose and the daughter Irene. Most of the info we have is about Mose, who fought in the Civil War–on both sides. Much of the legwork was laid out in a 2014 a Daily Mail story augmented by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael M. Phillips. Irene was tracked down by Lorraine Orton, a historian with the Women’s Relief Corps, and her husband Jerry, who found Irene after thirty years in a nursing home.

The news articles follow the journalist rules, laying out key known facts. But I find myself trying to understand the people. What kind of a person does THIS? What kind of a person could live through THAT? Today: “Uncle” Mose’s story. Tomorrow: Lydia and Irene’ story.