Charles Norman Shay, 1924-2025

Mr. Shay was a 19-year-old medic on D-Day at the landing on Omaha Beach.  He won the Silver Star for his efforts to save wounded men in the water by turning them over, grabbing them under their shoulders, and dragging them through the waves up to the beach.  He served with the troops at the battle of Hurtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge.  He was captured by the Germans and liberated in April 1945.

Mr. Shay was a member of the Penobscot Tribe in Maine.  When he tried to vote in 1945, wearing  his uniform with the Silver Star, he was turned away.  Maine did not allow Indians to vote in federal elections until 1954 and state and local elections until 1967.

Until 1967.

I’d like to think that the days of discrimination against Indians are over, but last night I saw an interview with an Indian woman was in the cast of the recent streaming drama entitled “Dark Winds.”  She showed the I.C.E. agents her tribal I.D. card, but the agents said that didn’t count. She was arrested.  Where the fuck are you going to deport an American Indian to?  

Mr. Shay moved to northwestern France not far from Omaha Beach in 2018 and lived there until his death.  Wise move.  

If you want to read the full obit of Mr. Shay, you can find it in today’s New York Times.

West Bank colony

 I wrote my Ph.D. thesis on the efforts by the United Nations to bring an end to colonialism.  Angola and Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe were still colonies when I completed it, but it was fairly obvious that colonialism was on the way out.  After the Portuguese colonies and what was then South West African and Rhodesia gained independence, the only colonies left would be remnants like Puerto Rico and some small islands.   

Now Israel has approved 22 settlements in the West Bank on territory owned by Palestinians.  The Palestinians did not give up this land willingly, but they had no choice.  A process that I thought was basically over in 1973 when I completed the thesis has come roaring back.  And it has come back because of Israel. 

In the past I considered myself a supporter and friend of Israel.  No more.  

See Natan Odenheimer and Fatima Abdulkarim, “Expansion in West Bank Adds to Displacement,”  New York Times, (5 Dec. 2025), p. A9.

Eating Lemurs in Madagascar

Lemurs are primates with big eyes and long and soft tails.  They are also in decline and are considered endangered.  Why?  Because people in urban areas in Madagascar consider their meat a delicacy that promotes health.

37 percent of shark and ray species are also threatened with extinction.  Why?  Because people kill them for their fins, their meat, and their liver oil.

You know what?  I don’t care if people in Ohio really do eat the cats and the dogs.  We have too damn many cats and dogs in any case.  If you want to get concerned, get concerned about people eating octopuses and shark fin soup.  Quit eating veal with its pens to keep calves from exercising.  Quit eating pigs that are slaughtered by bleeding them to death.  Quit eating eggs from caged chickens that never get to walk around.  Quit eating beef fed antibiotics on feedlots.  

I am not a vegetarian, although I am moving in that direction.  If you do eat meat, buy your meat from local butchers who raise their own animals.  Know what you eat.  

Deported on the way to Thanksgiving with her parents

A 19-year-old college student, Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, was headed home from Massachusetts to Texas for Thanksgiving with her parents.  She was brought here from Honduras when she was seven.  Her father’s employer had arranged for her flight so she could surprise him at work.

There was a court order that she could not be removed from the U.S. while her case was pending.  She was arrested at the Logan Airport in Boston, detained in Texas, and  “...put on a bus with shackles on her wrists, waist and ankles before being put on a flight to Honduras.”

She had been studying business at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.  She is now in Honduras with grandparents.

We have become evil, led by an evil man and abetted by evil underlings.

Information for this post, including the quotation, is from Amada Holpuch and Annie Correal, “A College Student Tried to Go Home to Texas for Thanksgiving.  She Was Deported,” New York Times, (2 Dec. 2025), p. A17. 

Where was Gen Z?

In an article in the Opinion section of the Sunday New York Times, Brendan Nyhan bemoaned the absence of young people at the latest  “No Kings” rally.  He thought maybe it was because meaningful change seemed so unlikely to young Americans.

Both of the rallies I attended in Carbon County had a wide mixture of age groups, from people in their teens and twenties to people who were what I would consider elderly.  

I’ve been to rallies in the Sixties and Seventies where almost everybody was under thirty.  I’ve been to anti-pipeline rallies where almost everyone was over 50.  The No Kings rallies, by contrast, contained a broad cross-section of Carbon County residents.  We even had a guy in a MAGA hat.  Great turnout.

Admiration for Francisco Franco?

 Generalisimo Francisco Franco, an ally of Hitler and Mussolini, came to power in 1939 after a bloody civil war.  He then ruled Spain for 36 years, killing and imprisoning his enemies, retarding Spanish economic progress, mistreating Spanish colonies in Africa, and ruling Spain with an iron fist.  He died in 1975, 50 years ago.

I was in Spain in 1979, four years after his death.  It was an exciting time.  The bookstores were selling books by Marxists and Socialists And Feminists.  I stopped in at a local Socialist Party headquarters and got a huge poster, which I still have.  Spain was free and democratic, the country was vibrant, and people were happy.

Now I read that many young men in Spain admire Franco and long for the type of tyrannical leadership he provided.  I think this must be some mental aberration on the part of young men.  The same thing seems to be happening in the U.S. where young men like tech bros and Proud Boys and followers of Charlie Kirk think it is manly to be racist and “tough.”  

Get a grip, guys.  You are not “masculine.”  You are like sad little boys trying really really hard to be grown up men.

Two-movie Weekend

Some days I can’t bear to read the news.  Selling out Ukraine, “disappearing” immigrants, speeding global warming, fake news from the White House–it’s all too much, too evil, too hateful, too everything.  

So yesterday I saw “Wicked 2,” or whatever it is called, and today I saw “Knives Out–3,” which I think is called “Wake Up Dead Man.”  Sequels are never as good as the originals, but I spent four hours not thinking about the cruel and ugly people running my country’s government and the awful things they are doing not just to the United States, but to the future of the planet.

I’ll be back at it tomorrow.  Promise.