Happy Birthday
Happy Birthday to all born this day of June 5, 2022.
This Sunday is the Holy Day of Pentecost, the 50th Sunday from Easter Sunday, and the day of my birth to Jack Bishirjian, a first generation American of Armenian descent. His mother, Sarah Kevorkian and father, Hagop Bishirjian, survived the Armenian Genocide.
My mother, Esther Olen, was a first generation American of German Lutheran immigrants from Poland. Her mother and sister died in 1918 influenza pandemic. Her father died from a fall from a ladder in a brewery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and his grandchildren remember him because he delighted in giving us samples of his homemade wine and beer.
They were survivors of the immigration experience, the Great Depression and World War II.
I’m thankful this Pentecost Sunday because in my own way I am a survivor of the illiberalism of “Liberal” intellectual classes of America and the secularization of American life.
That is another reason to celebrate that my birthday, June 5, 2022, falls on the day we celebrate the Holy Day of Pentecost.