...and it has been since very early this morning. No kind of day for a walk at all. The kind of day to get back to some major stretching, which my back needs desperately. I had forgotten about the unending back pain that accompanies walking, which I believe comes from the back's effort to compensate for nonexistent stomach muscles as the body gradually gains in overall strength.
So what have I done today since I haven't been out to play? A few loads of laundry. The grocery shopping for the next few days. An adult church class (I teach that one) and church itself, where I was just like a fidgety six-year-old (the dreary, cold, and wet weather, I'm sure). A couple of hours of preparation for my high school students' upcoming final projects on Watergate and World War II. The Watergate work is fascinating -- I was in college during Watergate, so it's probably the first major sequence of political events of which I have a reasonably clear recollection. I am thoroughly enjoying this opportunity to reread articles from The Washington Post and The New York Times that I first read as a student while the events were unfolding.
Personal Watergate Memories:
(1) I was working at the Hasbro Toy Factory in Pawtucket RI making GI Joe flashlights during the summer of the televised Senate Watergate hearings -- a miserable job in an un-airconditioned warehouse building. The only good thing about a daytime factory shift is that it ends at 3:00 p.m. I would return to my apartment every afternoon covered in sweat and grime and sink into the tub to relax for an hour and watch Senator Sam Ervin demonstrate how to run a Senate investigation.
(2) A few months later I was riding my bike across an autumn picture-perfect New England campus when someone called out, "Agnew has resigned!" A few weeks later, we watched the news in amazement as Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Cox and two of his senior administration officals promptly resigned, a series of events that became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre."
Of course, Watergate continued to dominate the news and our lives until Nixon resigned ten months later.
1 comment:
I was 13 the summer of the Watergate hearings and my family was living with my grandparents in Alexandria Bay, NY. We were supposed to move to Ireland that summer. We'd sold everything we owned but our clothing and personal items. My father had gone to Ireland and run into problems with working papers and we were unable to go. So, we literally had nowhere to go and ended up living in my grandparent's guest house. It was a beautiful place right on the river but the tiny guest house was way too small for a family with five children (my older sister was in Georgia). My father went through a period of unemployment after his return from Ireland and he spent a great deal of his time that summer watching the hearings. At 13, I had little interest in Watergate. Anyone else remember much of Watergate?
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