I find myself pondering the Nuremberg Trials of twenty-four Nazi war criminals, which began this day in 1945. Here we are 79 years later, and it seems many have forgotten the events that led up to that horror in history, its beginning ushered in with the banning of books, restricting rights, spouting hatred and all manner of injustices with false claims of greatness. I struggle to comprehend what drives society and governments’ behaviours so I’m in my “hiding under the bed” phase as I try to right myself and find a way to not merely exist in this confusing world but to participate. I would spend far too much time circling the drain if I were to dig into the events that led to Hitler believing he could rule the world and all these years later why and how exactly a felon can take the highest position in a country’s government, so I turn my attention to more positive things.
Something else happened on this day in 1902 – George W DeLong patented his pencil with the attached eraser. I discovered mostly contradictory information about said pencil, but whoever is to have credit for the pencil with the attached eraser, I’m so very glad it happened, and I could very well be its biggest fan. A pencil is a fine writing implement that allows one to change her mind. The pencil with the eraser is the poster child for “nothing lasts forever” and … it got me thinking.
I look around my desk at some of my most treasured inventions. The stapler, created in 1866, is a winner, just a hair over the paperclip. I love paper, with its start in 300 BC, especially those pages bound into a journal type book and though I own far too many of them, reluctant to use them as if they were guest towels and fancy soap, I have refrained from buying any this year and that fact should have me knighted. The domestication of the horse in 3500 BC. was another great day, one which a few years later allowed me to gallop over hill and dale aboard my trusted steed Nassau, whom I loved with every fibre of my being. Public sewage and sanitation were wise strategies in 2600 BC. It took until 589 AD for paper to get around to the concept of use in the bathroom. A great number of weapons were designed in the 13th century, and I can’t help wondering why. The zipper came in 1891, and I love a zipper far more than the dreaded button. I am ever so grateful for insulin in 1921 and though I am allergic to penicillin I confirm its value since 1928. The first personal computer was manufactured in 1957, and it certainly has changed our lives so that by the official birth of the internet in 1983 we never have to remember the truth and now think that anything available on the internet can be heralded as fact.
All sorts of handy inventions can be found on my desk – a SAD light for those dark winter days when my spirit needs a boost, high-liters and a collection of my favourite pens, a bulletin board and a John Steinbeck novel. John Steinbeck came along in 1902, the same year as my adored pencil with the attached eraser. Steinbeck dedicated his craft to writing about those who struggled in life – the working class, migrant workers, the disenfranchised. His “Grapes of Wrath” of 1939, that most of us studied in high school English class, won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and in 1962 Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Steinbeck worked alongside migrant workers on sugar beet farms in California where he witnessed firsthand their struggles at the mercy of those with the power who would abuse them. Steinbeck’s work was criticized for being of a socialist nature, deemed by some as having communist themes. Eleanor Roosevelt wasn’t having that and spoke up in support of his work. Thank you, Eleanor.
“All the goodness and heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins – it never will – but that it doesn’t die,” wrote Steinbeck in a “Life of Letters”. These words were written for you and for me. So, I lift my pencil with the attached eraser, my sword, and I continue on as best I can. Thank you, John Steinbeck, for getting me to crawl out from under the bed. Now I can see the light.
wendistewart@live.ca
