F. Scott Fitzgerald, master of concluding cadences, finishes his short story “Three Hours Between Planes” (Esquire, July 1941) with this phrase embedded in his final sentence:  “the second half of life is a long process of getting rid of things.”

Nearly paralyzed by the prospect of sorting through and discarding the accumulated stuff of two lifetimes, agonizing over what “sparks joy”—or might do so in the future (ah, Marie Kondo, there’s the rub!), I startled on hearing that line at the end of yesterday’s Selected Shorts broadcast.  But ever since attending WGBH’s “Community Conversation:  Roe Overturned” broadcast from the Boston Public Library studio on 30 June, I’ve been thinking about the remarkable haste with which the conservative super majority of the Supreme Court has gotten rid of things I believed essential to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness:  bodily autonomy, protection from gun violence, clean air, and the separation of church and state. 

Clarence Thomas’s shopping list appalls, as does the eagerness of his wife to overturn a free and fair election.  The first caller into the 30 June broadcast, Daniel from Marlborough, was a veteran so horrified that rights guaranteed to half the population of his country would now be denied, rights he said he and his comrades had bled and died for, that for him, the Fourth of July was canceled.  He was burning his uniform, and he invited any women needing support or protection as they protested Roe overturned to call a veteran, who would stand and fight with them for women’s health protection rights.

I am certainly well into the second half of my life, Mr. Fitzgerald, but am loath to think my country is, too.