Pepin the Short, Louis the Pious, Charles the Bald.
Are they familiar characters for you? They did not qualify as household words for me until this summer. That’s when I took a course in medieval history, presented by Yale University.
Yale had never touched my academic life. Till now.
What do you call a beginning student who’s advanced in age?
If you were trying to solve a recent New York Times acrostic, you would need to search in your head for an eight-letter word that answers the question. For the life of me, I could not discover or devise any such word.
That frustration held despite my keeping up with gerontological lore featuring continuing education and other forms of learning on the part of elders. This country offers programs galore for older people eager to learn more.
It’s not enough to respect yourself. All of us need to be respected by others as well.
When that fails to happen, we are shocked, quite appropriately.
Millions of YouTube watchers were horrified, a few weeks ago, by what they saw happen to a woman named Karen Klein. A video showed a group of middle school students making a shocking attack on this woman’s dignity.
My friend, Kathleen, when I asked what dignity means to her, responds like this: “To act in a way that respects yourself.” This strikes me as a fine definition, one that can serve for ongoing inspiration.
It’s not enough, however, to respect yourself. We all want and deserve to be respected by others as well.
When that does not happen, we are shocked, quite appropriately. Millions of people were horrified, recent weeks ago, by what they saw on YouTube. They watched a group of middle school students violating the dignity of a woman named Karen Klein.
A 68-year-old school bus monitor in the school district of Greece, near Rochester, New York, Karen was subjected to harassment shocking in its meanness and vulgarity. The students abused her verbally and even poked her physically.
The boys largely focused on Karen’s shape, repeatedly calling her “old ass” and “fat ass,” mixing the terms with other words I will not use here. By reason of these assaults on her dignity, she was reduced to tears.
Among gerontologists, abuse of old people has been long recognized as a widespread social evil. It can work subtly.
One of the worst aspects of abuse is its power to make elders internalize the abuse, making it part of their own self-image.
Old age in itself, without external influence, makes some people come to doubt their own worth. This often develops as a side effect of illness. Being sick can easily make us doubt our human value.
When those who provide care for us fail to respect our dignity, this comes as a heavy blow to our self-worth. Sometimes that happens when medical professionals, consciously or unconsciously, talk down to us or otherwise belittle our stature.
My impression both from visiting hospitals and being a patient myself suggests this kind of treatment has become more rare than it used to.
The saga of Karen Klein’s abuse has an ending, in part happy. It even restores something of her dignity.
Following the brainstorm of a Canadian fellow who discovered her plight and organized a fund drive aimed at giving Karen a big-time vacation, large numbers of sympathizers have contributed.
For this purpose, the Canadian proposed a goal of five thousand dollars. At last count, more than five hundred thousand has been raised!
Perhaps the great majority cares about the dignity of old people after all.
“Please don’t go, Jack.” I felt myself pressing this warning on President Kennedy as he prepared to fly to Texas in late November of 1963.
Such was my emotional response to Robert Caro’s The Passage of Power, volume four of his great biography of Lyndon Johnson. And it wasn’t only the writer’s account of the Kennedy assassination that brought me to tears. Throughout my reading of the 600 pages, I often choked with deep feelings about the many people and dramatic events described.
“The most important moral problem facing America today.” That’s what Robert Putnam calls the inequality plaguing our society.
It was not always so. As recently as the 1960s we were becoming more equal. But by the next decade, inequality among social classes had increased again and is even worse today.
“Are you Mr. Kletzsch?” This question came suddenly from a man who was holding the locker room door open for me.
“No,” I answered, “but I knew Charlie very well.”
My questioner, it turned out, was attending his 25th reunion at Harvard College. He had come from his home in Portland, Oregon for this event and mistook me for an old friend and, perhaps, mentor.